Back in June, I took part in the annual Photomarathon for the first time.  It was definitely weird using a chemical camera for the first time in six years!  Like many of the competitors, I also had my digital equipment with me, and I’m really glad I did, because as the sun was setting I was wandering past Cardiff Bay’s run-down railway station, and was able to snag this shot.

This station sits at the southern-most end of the oldest surviving railway line in South Wales - the Taff Vale Railway (TVR).  Sadly I haven’t been able to find any photos online of what this station looked like when the docks were in full swing, but books such as the Glamorganshire and Aberdare Canal do have some photos on the printed page if you’d like to compare.

This is the very first HDR shot I’ve processed since being forced to upgrade from PhotoMatix Pro v2 to v3.  I’ve used v2 for all of my HDR work to date, but sadly it doesn’t work under OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.  Still, first impressions of v3 are very encouraging!

Pontypridd stands on the banks of the River Taff and the River Rhondda as the gateway to the valleys beyond - and the mineral and coal riches that were exploited between the late 1700’s and the 1980’s.  From its first bridge in 1750, built to allow travel to market without crossing a deadly river ford, via what is possibly the world’s oldest surviving railway bridge, to the modern road bridges of today, it has always been necessary to bridge the rivers at Pontypridd in order to get from A to B.

Thoughts On The Day

I was taking a week off between jobs to get my annoyance with my former boss’s behaviour out of my system, and it was a real relief to get out and about with the camera.  The weather was lovely, and what could be better than a walk through Pontypridd taking shots of the different bridges that have sprung up in this market town?

I’m always surprised at how Pontypridd has failed to capitalise on Cardiff’s growth.  Why hasn’t it become a booming commuter town for everyone who can’t afford the house prices down in Cardiff itself?  Sitting at the very northern end of the Taff Vale, the old TVR railway splits north of Ponty to take travellers up the Rhondda Valley to Treherbert, up the Cynon Valley to Aberdare, and up the Taff Valley to Merthyr Tydfil. That gives Ponty three times the amount of trains passing through each day.

Today, Pontypridd feels more important to the folks who travel down from those valleys than anyone else, marking as it does the half-way point in the journey from the tops of the valleys down to Cardiff.  I guess the history of its bridges shows that Pontypridd has always been a place people travel through rather than a destination in its own right.

Favourite Photo From The Shoot

It wasn’t easy to pick just one photo from this group, but this is the one that I like the most.  I just think it does a great job of showing off a very beautiful bridge

The Photos

Here are all of the photos from this photo shoot.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Post Production

This set of photos marks the start of the next evolution in my photographic style.  I’ve been using HDR for several months now, but this time I was determined to put together a workflow that brings the HDR images closer in initial appearance to regular, single-frame photos.  Before HDR, my favourite style had been the slightly desaturated look of the Taff Vale Eastern Ridge Walk set. What I wanted was that look, but with the added detail that HDR brings.  Too many HDR photos just lack a certain subtlety - as do too many single exposure shots, it has to be said!

Since taking these photos a year ago now, I’ve refined the HDR workflow over and over before finally coming back to these photos and re-processing them for publication at last.  I promise that I’ll do a full article on the workflow in the near future, but the main points are to avoid over-saturating the original HDR image, and then using Aperture 2’s new Saturation and Definition tools to bring out the best of the HDR detail whilst toning down its exuberance at the same time.

Sadly, I’ve been too short of time to thoroughly research each of the bridges in this set.  There’s also one bridge missing - Brunel’s bridge that carries the Taff Vale Railway north from Pontypridd station over the River Rhondda towards Abercynon.  I only noticed that whilst doing the write-up.  Doh!

Although I haven’t been posting new articles on here for some time now (new job and my Tai Chi school have had to come first, sorry), I’ve still been getting out and about with my camera taking new photos for future articles.  Redevelopment at both ends of the Merthyr Road area (Cardiff City Centre and the land to the south of Dowlais) make it more important than ever to capture this area’s industrial history before it’s gone forever.

I’ve updated the list of upcoming articles on the Merthyr Road project page.  At the current count, I have most if not all of the photos for 38 more articles, and I’m expecting to be out and about several times a month getting photos for even more articles

On top of that, I’ve started planning a third series of articles, to sit alongside the main Merthyr Road articles and the growing Single Shot Series.  I’ve been wondering what Cardiff and the valleys might have looked like if - instead of ripping up the canal and working hard to erase it from memory - if instead it had been protected, renovated, and still existed today.  I don’t have the means to travel to a parallel universe with my camera to capture this, but what I can do is visit other places in the UK which still have their canals, and play what-if that way.  So it seems appropriate that this new series of articles will be called the What If Series.

Interestingly, my thoughts about the Nokia N82 as a camera has consistently been one of my popular blog posts these past few months.  If that’s your thing, I do have several equipment reviews I’d like to write up and publish, including reviews on Foolography’s bluetooth GPS adapter for the Nikon D200 (summary: it’s worth every penny), my new Panasonic DMC-LX3 (summary: it’s very good, but it’s definitely not a general purpose camera), and the new Panasonic G1 kindly loaned to me by Panasonic this year (summary: it almost didn’t go back).

Finally, I’m hoping to write more articles on technique as and when I can.  I need to bring out an updated version of my popular Aperture Workflow article, I think it would be good to share the process behind my HDR photos (with the D200, I shoot mostly HDR these days), and after a near-miss at the weekend, an article on safety as a photographer probably wouldn’t go amiss :)  I’d also like to encourage others to do similar projects to mine, by explaining how I go about my research and the wide range of tools that are available to you today that you may not realise can help.

I hope you enjoy the work I publish. If you do, it’d be great to hear from you via comments left on the blog.  And I’m always looking for suggestions of new locations to visit and explore with my camera.

This one has been up on Flickr for several months now, but somehow I forgot to actually write a blog post about it to match!

Cardiff Bay has been (almost) completely transformed from abandoned dockyards into the playground of the wealthy in South Wales.  At the very centre of this new role proudly stands the Millennium Centre, a world-class arts venue for Europe’s youngest capital city.  And, when the sun strikes it at the right angle, it positively radiates.

There are good reasons why just about all the best photos of the Millennium Centre tend to be from this angle.

Known locally as the Coal Scuttle because of its distinctive shape and colour, the Millennium Centre is a surprisingly difficult subject to photograph.  If you think of its rivals around the world - most notably the Sidney Opera House - they are iconic buildings standing proud and prominent, an absolute delight to photograph and very difficult to photograph badly.  Sadly, like Cardiff City Centre after it, Cardiff Bay hasn’t been so much designed as a whole as had individual efforts constructed next to each other.  This has left the Coal Scuttle with mostly obscured lines, and as a photographer I’m left with the impression of a fat cartoon character trying to hide behind skinnier friends.

I think this is a real shame.  This is truly a great venue, with a real will to put on a world-class programme of arts to match.

Although the glorious Easter weekend weather is largely behind us now, for a brief moment this evening we had just a tiny reminder of how beautiful the sunsets can be around here …

It’s also the first shot taken with my new Nikon 70-300mm lens.  I’m certainly looking forward to getting it out into the field for a full Merthyr Road photo shoot

So here is a look at the 40-odd times I made it out in and about with my cameras in 2008, and a glimpse into the 4,462 photos I took.

I hope you find this enjoyable, and I’d love to read your review of 2008 in photographs too.

February started with a trip to Brighton for the day.  Although we’d been to Brighton many times in the past (we’re both great fans of Moshi Moshi and the Lanes Armory in equal measure), this was the first time I’d seen the ruined Brighton West Pier.  It left a lasting impression with me, and made for my most striking photo from the day.

March was a busy month, starting with the Explore show at the NEC, Birmingham.  One of the features of the show was the Ordnance Survey’s Outdoor Exploration Portal website, which I’d contributed to in 2007 and 2008.  I’d just finished a secondment to the Ordnance Survey, and it was nice to see the team promoting the website to visitors to the show before we all headed off to pastures new.

We actually spent the week staying in our favourite cottage up in the Malvern Hills, a place we love to retreat to when life gets a bit too much.  I always prefer photographing Malvern outside of the summer months, as the lower sun really brings out the contours of those wonderful hills.

And, although it’s a photo taken in 2007, March was the month that my shot of the rainforest biodome of the Eden Project was chosen to be the front cover of the Eden Project’s 2008/9 Guide Book.  Sadly, I haven’t made it down to Cornwall this year to see the books on the shelves in person, but the Eden Project were kind enough to send me a copy.

May saw us return to yet another stomping ground - Chesil Beach in Dorset.  We were last there in December 2005, my last trip out wielding the Nikon D100.  I’d always wanted to go back with the D200, but grey skies and gentle winds conspired to deny me the shot of waves crashing against this amazing beach that I was after.

June was another quiet month, photography-wise, with my cameras making it out the house just once, coming with me to work in Bath for the day.  Bath is such a beautiful city when the sky is blue, thanks to the sandy-coloured stonework throughout the city.

July followed the precident set in May; another trip to revisit somewhere with the D200, another denial.  This time, the place was Llanberis and the fabulous castle tower of Dolbadarn.  I’d last been here in 2003, using my Sigma 15-30mm lens for the first time.  The shot posted on Flickr from that visit had to be cropped because of vignetting I didn’t check for at the time; I’ve been wanting to try that again ever since, and as I had to drive up to Harlech to pick Kristi up at the end of a week-long art course, it seemed like a great excuse to swing by Llanberis and try again.  Unfortunately, Dolbadarn was closed to visitors, as it was being used for some sort of filming.  Epic fail!

At the very end of August, we headed up to the North Yorkshire Moors for two weeks of holiday.  Based in the picturesque village of Thorton-le-Dale just outside Pickering, we had a blast.  After arriving on the 31st, we wasted no time on the 1st September by heading out into York to visit the Minster.  Without a tripod, I found the low light conditions inside very challenging, and I managed to get into trouble for having my hat on my head (I’d run out of hands!)

There was no let-up the following day.  We went north to the Devil’s Arrows, before crossing over into the Yorkshire Dales to spend several wonderful hours exploring Brimham Rocks.  It’s one of the places from my childhood, and a great place to go to pick winberries (something we’d been and done in July).  We finished the day off with tea in Scarborough.

We went even further afield the following day, all the way up to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.  This is the wall built from one side of England to the other to keep out all the troublesome Celts to the north.  Parking up at the visitor’s centre at Once Brewed (no, I didn’t make that name up.  There’s also a nearby village called Twice Brewed), we walked a bit of the wall in between sheltering under trees from heavy showers.  It’s a beautiful place, but our highest peaks are much more developed than this.  Well worth a visit, but make sure you bring your own food!  Soggy and hungry, we retired to the amazing Roman excavations at Vindolanda.  This one site is where much of our knowledge of Roman life in England comes from.  Photography isn’t allowed inside the museum, which I found disappointing, but if the Romans are your thing, there’s probably no better place to visit in the whole of England.

After such a long day, we made the next day a relatively light afair, visiting the bizarre standing stone at Rudstone in the East Riding.  This stone is remarkable for its size and location, standing almost as tall as the church which has sprung up beside it.  After a trip down to Hornsea in search of potteries that I remembered as a child but utterly failed to find as an adult, we retired back to Thornton-le-dale for me to wander around making the most of the late afternoon sun.

Friday was a rest day. Good job, as it turned out.

The plan for Saturday 6th September was to head out to the White Scar Caves on the west side of the Yorkshire Dales, where we’d meet my Dad travelling up from his home in West Yorkshire.  This was the day that the Dales were flooded, with roads closed and communities cut off.  Although the caves were still open when we phoned ahead, by the time we’d forded the floods and made it there they’d had to close the caves for the rest of the day.  The rising flood waters meant that we couldn’t head back the way we’d come, so in the end we headed out west to the M6 and turned south towards Manchester and the M62.  This is when I decided to kidnap Kristi for the rest of the day and take her to Blackpool to see the illuminations.  (Blackpool is a sadly run-down Lancashire seaside resort famous these days for its tower, the rides at the Pleasurebeach, a popular destination for hen and stag nights, and the Illuminations that it puts on from later in the year).  We had fun on the gentler rides at the Pleasurebeach, but by the time it was dark enough for the Illuminations to come on, we were too tired to really enjoy them.  I didn’t get any photos at all; I’ll have to go back another year to try again.  My Panasonic DMC-FX33 finally died too.  This day turned into an epic fail I think.

Sunday 7th was a much more successful day.  Kristi grabbed her pots and paints, and we ended up in Runswick Bay just north of Whitby.  Mmm …  a lovely relaxing day after the long mileage the day before, and Kristi did a lovely little painting that she finished and sold whilst we were there.

With the floods receeding by the Monday, it was time to head back into the Yorkshire Dales to Malham Cove.  I was really looking forward to exploring the limestone paving at the top, and of putting my 10-20mm lens to the test down in the cove itself.  Unfortunately, as we were walking along the footpaths towards the Cove, someone fell from the top of the Cove and died.  The party of walkers in front of me found him and called in the emergency services, but there was nothing anyone could do for him.  We spent the afternoon over at nearby Gordale Scar (my first visit there), before finishing the day taking photos of the small but perfectly formed Janet’s Foss.

Tuesday 9th was a rest day, and I took a day out of my holiday on Wednesday 10th to visit a customer for work.

Flamborough Head was our destination on Thursday 11th September.  We pottered around a bit, enjoyed a somewhat windswept picnic, and swiftly retired back to our holiday cottage for the day.

Friday 12th September was the last day of our holiday, and that meant it was time to travel on the North Yorks Moors Railway.  This privately-run steam railway winds its way through some picturesque countryside, with several stations along the way where you can hop out and explore.  Our first stop was the Malyan Spout waterfall near Goathland.  It’s an impressive sight, and I was both stunned and privately annoyed at the young woman who hiked out to it to then take photos of it using her camera phone.  I mean, a camera phone ffs!  Damn, it still annoys me now, months later :)  We had lunch at the pub in Beckshole, before heading back to Goathland to catch the train once more.  The train terminated in Grosmont, where Kristi decided to hide out of the rain with a cup of tea whilst sending me on a speed march up above the valley to find a stone circle shown on our map.  I had something like an hour and a half to hike 3 miles up the hill, find and photograph the stones, and then make it back for the last train home.  No wonder she stayed behind!  It was wonderfully eerie up in the mist, and whilst the stone circle was definitely of the kind you find when you stub your toe on it, just being so away from everyone else felt really great.

And that was it … our annual vacation was over, and it was time to come home.

We went on our first Flickr meet in October, to Margham Country Park with the folks from Welsh Flickr Cymru.  We didn’t really know anyone else from the group, and we’re both very independent people, so we actually spent the day wandering around on our own, occaisonally bumping into other WFC members.  We did really enjoy ourselves, got some nice pictures … but haven’t been on a Flickr meet since.  Hrm.

In November, I spoke at PHPNW 08 up in Manchester. On the way up, I picked up a Panasonic DMX-LX3 to replace the FX33 I killed during my September holiday, and all I can say is yum :)  It’s still early days with this camera, but I’m really enjoying the photos it can take.

Back from Manchester, I went for a walk down by the river in Bath with the LX3, checking out its black and white modes.  I’m not yet convinced that it’s a decent camera for black and white photography, but perhaps more experimentation will yield better results?

December was a relatively busy month with the camera so far, all in the name of putting the LX3 through its paces, you understand. :)  It’s also helped that, after the dullest summer for years, we’ve enjoyed a relatively sunny (if cold) end to the year.  A trip down to the Glamorgan Heritage Coast is always good for an eye-catching shot, and this year was no exception.  With my Dad visiting to drop off and pick up Christmas presents, and his new Canon Powershot G9 to compare with the LX3, we headed off down Cardiff Bay for a day.  Although we weren’t very impressed by the latest Doctor Who exhibition, as the sun set I was able to snag my favourite photo of 2008.  And we did have fun with the cameras the following day at Caerphilly Castle, where amongst the stalls of the medieval fayre I found a new supplier of the wonderful Moniack Mead :)  If you’ve never had Moniack before (and chances are you haven’t unless you’re a sad LARPer or you’re married to one like I am) then you’re really missing out.

Finally, to bring the year to an end, we spent Boxing Day out in the Brecon Beacons with the cameras.  Four years ago the Beacons were covered in snow, but this year muddy paths and bright sunlight (eventually) greeted us.  We started at the Castle in Crickhowell, moved on to a large but seemingly imposssible to reach without trespass standing stone on the north bank of the Usk, before enjoying a beautiful walk along the towpath of the Brecon and Monmothshire Canal to Brecon and back in the setting sun.

My photo of a stone wall on the Western Isles of Scotland has just become the third of my photos to reach the milestone of 1,000 views on Flickr.

This is even more of a surprise than my graffiti photo (which has now accelerated past the 1,600 views mark), as I just can’t imagine who is looking at this photo or why it is so popular.  From the information provided by Flickr’s stats, it seems that its catching the eye of folks searching for stone walls on Yahoo Images …

This view from atop Caerphilly Mountain will be on display as part of the slideshow of the Freedom 2008 exhibition.  Organised through Flickr, Freedom 2008 is part of Photomonth - the East London Photography Festival running at the Dray Walk Gallery, Old Truman Brewery during 29th October – 9th November 2008.  

There’s a discussion thread on Flickr where everyone selected for this exhibition is currently posting their shots.  If, like me, you can’t actually make it to London to see the exhibition for yourself, check out the thread.  Congrats to everyone who had a photo selected!

If you drive down the A470, over the Gabalfa fly-over and into Cardiff city centre, you’ll be familiar with one of the peculiarities of the roads in Cardiff.  I’m not talking about the continuous experimentation with partially-closing St Mary’s Street; I’m referring to where four lanes of traffic goes down to just three as you reach Blackweir.  On the right there’s the long, thin car park with the beauty of Bute Park beyond, and overhead the direction of traffic is controlled by these new digital signs.  That car park has been built over the top of the old Glamorganshire Canal.

The new signs were installed either in 2007 or 2008 (I didn’t make a note of exactly when), and they replaced older mechanical signs that sat on top of the same gantry.  (I have a similar shot of the old signs that I’ll dig out and post later).  You’d have thought that they could have given the gantry a lick of fresh paint at the same time, wouldn’t you?

Last Saturday, Kristi and I headed down to Margam Country Park near Port Talbot to meet up with quite a few folks from the Welsh Flickr Cymru group on Flickr.  We had a great time, took loads of photos, and even got to see a few deer

Thoughts On The Day

After a summer of wet and dull weekends, it was a real joy to be out and about once more with the camera.  For what I think was the first time this year, instead of heading out with just the 18-135mm lens, I packed up the full kit - Sigma 10-20mm lens, Nikkor 18-135mm lens, Sigma 50mm macro lens, and the long-reaching Sigma 80-400mm uber-lens.  

As always on a Saturday, we headed down to the Knapp first to play some Tai Chi, wolf down some lovely Segafredo coffee, and then pottered down the M4 to Margam Country Park.  We all met up in the car park first, which was very handy, as neither Kristi nor I really know anyone from the Welsh Flickr Cymru group.  We said hello to everyone, posed for the group photo, and then buggered off on our own for the day.  I’d seen the old chapel up on the hill plenty of times driving past on the M4 and with the glorious weather was determined that this was the day I was finally going to make it up there

On the way to the chapel, we ran what I think was a volunteer group, who were working on rebuilding the old path up the hill.  They’re currently making it safer than it was, and they hope to have it finished in about six months or so.  Until they’ve finished, to get to the chapel its a short walk up the road and then take the first left by the footpath sign.  The footpath is a little muddy, but it wasn’t overgrown at the time.

It’s well worth the trek up the hill just for the view:

We headed back down to enjoy lunch outside the house, watching the deer running through the trees behind.  Sandwiches downed, we set on in search of deer!  I shot a good 30-40 shots of two deer under the trees.  Another photographer (not part of the meet I believe) wandered by partway through, and made the comment that surely we’d both taken enough shots of the deer by then.  I’m glad we ignored him, because out of those 40 shots, I only ended up with 4 that I was happy with.  Even with the 400mm lens, it was difficult to get close shots of the deer eating under the trees.  Might be time to trade up to a 500mm lens next

Further along, the path climbs up to the top of another hill overlooking the country park.  The top of the hill features a lovely little copse of trees, and a very strange brick-lined pit.  Kristi reckons it must have been a swimming pool, but if you can shed any light on it, please leave a comment below!

My favourite memory of the whole day has to be the gum tree near the Orangery.  As you approach it, all you can hear is the humming of all the bees drinking nectar from the tree.  There’s a lovely bench underneath where you can sit, relax, and just enjoy the sheer sense of life all around you.

The Photos

Post Production

Since March this year, I’ve been working on improving my HDR post-production technique, trying to find the right settings in both Photomatix Pro 2 and Aperture 2 to tone down the unrealistic colours to match the ‘faded’ look I’ve been developing since my Taff Vale Eastern Ridge Walk set last year.  Although it adds a lot of time to the post-production work, the results are photos that hopefully are starting to take on a distinctive style not just in composition but also in colour and appearance.

Found On Flickr

Don’t forget to check out all of the other excellent photos taken by members of Welsh Flickr Cymru during this meet.