I’ve been posting pictures regularly for some years now.

It’s time for a break.

Thing is, like many photographers I’m having a good rethink about the direction of my site.

I’ll still be posting sometimes but my posts will be likely be about photography rather than describing single photos.

At the moment I’m involved in building up my collection on SmugMug,

On Keywording my latest photos and so on.

I’ll be posting about these things as I find the time.

And

I’ll not be forgetting to show photos by increasing the number of galleries.

Of course,

I’ll continue posting now and then on my activities with advice, reviews and so on but, for the moment, not posting a picture every week.

If you’re interested in keeping up with my posts, the best way is to subscribe to the RSS Feed.

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Trees and Sun in Växjö, Sweden

Trees and Sun in Växjö is a picture which is based on using the full range of tones in monochrome.

When I took this photo originally it was with the intention of producing a print for personal use or magazine reproduction.

Today things have moved on with production on a computer and reproduction often ending on a screen.

The main problem is still how to deal with range of tones in involved.

Växjö in Kronoberg County is, in many ways, a landscape photographers paradise with its clean air, forests and lakes

Trees and Sun in Växjö, Sweden – Photo Facts

As I was cycling through the surrounds of Växjö in Sweden I came across this clump of trees.

The sun was low in the sky.

I realised that there was no way I could get detail in the trees while keeping tone in the sky and an image of the sun which was more than a white disk.

I bracketed some exposures with the intention of losing detail in the trees and going for a sillhouette effect to create a semi abstract composition.

When shooting into the sun there are a few things to think of:

The most important is the safety issue:

Don’t look at the sun directly or through the viewfinder.

Photographically, a lenshood will not be much help but you need a lens with very good multi coating and with a clean surface.

For this kind of photo I prefer to use a prime lens with fewer elements and also I take off the filter I normally keep over the lens.

A filter introduces another source of reflection.

Using a clean prime lens made it possible to shoot this picture of Trees and Sun in Växjö without distracting reflections and light trails

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Blue Shutters White Wall on Thassos

Blue Shutters on a White Wall on Thassos is a picture with a strong design element – perhaps a simple picture.

Of course.  It’s possible to say a lot  about windows – verging on the pretentious-  openings to the soul and so on.

One thing that is clear to me is that over the years I have taken a large number of pictures with windows and shutters so there is some fascination for me.

There’s also a difference now that I’ve gone digital in that I often take pictures of windows and shutters in notebook style with the view of using them as design elements in other pictures that I might compose later.

Blue Shutters White Wall in Thassos – Photo Facts.

Thassos is a Northern Island of Greece famous for its greenery.

From the photographic point of view, the daylight is clear and bright with little pollution – obviously this leads to high contrast.

Lighting is so important in photography that it can make all the difference between a good and a bad photo.

Sometimes there are suggested rules – for example many photographers consider that lighting for outdoor photography is best in the early morning and evening and that midday is a sort of photographic no persons land.

This is often true but there are a couple of caveats:

Sometimes it’s impossible to choose the timing – if you want to photograph the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace then you can’t choose the time and this goes for lots of event and festival photography.

Another reason applies here – where your subject matter is vertical.

When the sun is high in the sky this is the time it provides shadows and emphasizes textures on walls and steep mountainsides and becomes the lighting of choice.

For this picture of blue shutters I was looking for the harsh lighting to give some 3 dimensionality to the subject.

I was struck by the repetition of shadows which gave some more detail and pattern to the white wall.

I shot from a position which would give some key stoning to the shutters and an angle to the top of the wall to provide some dynamism in the composition.

This is more or less a monochrome picture not black and white but blue and white. I think another colour would not have been so effective – blue shutters are more effective here than red, green or some other colour.

I shot the picture hand held with a crop sensor Canon camera.

The bright light meant I could choose a low ISO and a fast shutter speed to eliminate camera shake.

This picture of Blue Shutters on a White Wall on Thassos  comes from my gallery Thassos the Green Island.

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Ice Cream Deckchair in Torquay

Deckchairs are a feature of the English seaside.

But that doesn’t automatically make them iconic.

I was looking for an image which would sum up the seaside but clearly would not identify the locale in the way of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Ice Cream Deckchair Photo Facts.

Of course it’s a very simple picture but simple pictures still need some planning.

The first point was the concept. How to show the seaside without the sea and the sand.

And then not just any deckchair would do.

I don’t know when the technology for printing bright patterns on deckchairs came in and I don’t know how colour fast it could be.

The deckchairs of my youth were patterned with faded stripes.

I started by looking for the perfect deckchair.

There were groups of chairs with bold patterns and I took some group shots.

Finally I decided on a tight crop leaving out the wooden frame and legs and concentrating on the pattern.

As the subject is reasonably flat, there are few depth of field problems but this is a shot that depends on overall sharpness so I stopped down to make sure and also to choose an aperture of optimum quality.

As always the lighting was crucial.

The weather in England is changeable even in summer.

I wanted bright but diffused light.

I waited until there was some cloud cover to get the effect I wanted.

Then it was just a question of composing tightly and taking care to hold my Canon EOS Mark 11 steady.

I used my standard Tamron SP 28-75mm zoom – but if I had planned more carefully I probably would have used my 50mm prime.

This picture of an Ice Cream Deckchair  comes from my gallery Images of England.

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Grey Heron By the Lake

Grey Heron by the Lake is an urban wildlife picture.

Often wildlife photography is associated with far flung, uninhabited places on the globe.

There are places, of course, where living creatures are so unused to humans that they show little fear and allow a close approach.

Still the same is true in many urban environments where animals have got used to  us humans and have found that we are no threat.

Grey Heron by the Lake Photo Facts. 

 As is often the case in photography, equipment and technique are not what it takes to get the picture.

For this photo of the Grey Heron the most important point was to identify locations where herons liked to be.

I was staying in central London and soon found that some of the parks were home to herons.

The main problem was that most of the day the parks were full of people, the weather was either dull and rainy which I tend to associate with England, or  as it was summer, the light was harsh and over contrasty.

Another problem was the background – it’s too easy to think that just because you’ve found a suitable subject that’s the end of the matter.

The background is crucial, it must not be distracting and should give some sense of the environment even if you’re looking for the sort of fox in a dustbin approach.

My solution, as so often with wildlife and landscape photography was to get up early.

Setting out at 5 or so in the morning means there are very few people about, and often you can deal with wild creatures as they to respond to the light and begin their day.

I arrived before there was enough light to take the picture but by waiting patiently and keeping still I was able to find a good location.

This Grey Heron was cooperative and I was able to try several shots.

For this photo I used my Canon EOS 5D Mark 11 and a 75-300mm IS zoom lens – a combination giving plenty of detail while throwing the background out of focus. 

This picture of a Grey Heron by the Lake comes from my Wildlife Gallery.

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