Wowee! I made it as a nominee in the 5th Annual Spider B&W Awards!!

I was dumbfounded to find out I made it to nominee status in the 5th Annual Spider B&W Awards!!

Haystack and Tracks

I'm over the moon about it because the winners get chosen from the "nominees". Here is the image, it got chosen for the Nature category:

Haystack and Tracks

...and here is the Spider Awards page it's on.

I didn't get chosen as a winner though :( so that means I just got pipped at the post! but who cares? A nominee! Woohoo!!

comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Desiderata Poster - love it or hate it?

This just goes to show...

I Have Time

I took this picture ages ago now and returning to it recently, I wondered why it's not proved more popular. My artistic intent was to use it to portray a sense of facing the future, one with portent and hazard but with a feeling of being in control of your own destiny.

A serene horizon shows the outlook is potentially good but the overhead clouds curling down, almost reaching for you (the pillar), acts as an omen, warning of the potential danger that lies all round.

I processed it with that in mind, going for heavy contrast and lots of grainy, dirty noise in the sky. Maybe it was lacking something else? This is the one:

I Have Time

As I said, its not done so well in views, comments or with real-world galleries. But I was confident in its 'worth' as an image so I scratched around in my head for ideas and Desiderata (that great verse, starting "Go placidly amidst the noise and haste...") came to mind.

It's a wonderful verse, imparting great wisdom from a father to his son. Written in the 1920s it was, and still is to this day, great guidance for any teenager.

There's such a great fit between my artistic intent for the image and the verse, that I put the two together for a poster in my Zazzle store ...and a couple of days later I sold two!
Here it is with the verse in place.

Desiderata poster by HightonRidley
More Inspiration Posters

Yaay for me!

The lesson? Don't give up on an image that you feel is great. All you have to do is find the right venue and audience. Like that's easy! lol, but at least you know where to put your effort.

comments / feedback always welcome :)

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Introspective - Barbican Steps image

I've moved this introspective over from my main site where it's been for a while. A lot of my followers only read my blog and would otherwise miss it.

Barbican Steps

Ancient and worn granite steps. Plymouth Barbican, 2008

I'd never had occasion to go up these steps until I used a car park (Lambhay Hill) for the first time, one which
overlooks the Barbican. My destination was the B-bar for a catch-up with a mate, and to fill up on one of their renowned Thai Noodle Baskets.

Making the capture

Spotting the shot

As soon as I started down those narrow, almost claustrophobic steps, their character began to sink into me. I could see that although the steps were made of granite, they were still showing a definite dip from the wear of countless thousands of feet.

Another quirky thing... because of the curve, you couldn't see if anyone else was coming the other way, until you'd committed and were a few steps down yourself. I imagine that there must have been some tight squeezes as people passed each other down the centuries.

Also, the curve, in shortening your view, added to that closed-in feel—it was definitely a transitional space, a
between-places space, not one to pause in but one to pass through.

Ok, so how to capture that and make the shot?

Making the shot

So having briefly noted this little lot, I got to the bottom of the steps to check how it looked. Perfect. Apart from a pub sign that was padlock-and-chained to the handrail—but that was easily moved to the side, out of frame.

For me this sort of shot requires what is almost a side effect of the HDR  / tone-mapping process,
getting enhanced local contrast. I find that this best reproduces the texture and feel of
stone under bright light.

I also needed the enhaced dynamic range that comes from using HDR (I used 'simple' HDR where the different exposures all come from a single (RAW) shot). This was because the range betwen the bright summer sky and the deep shadow in the corners of the steps was just too much—either the shadows would lose all detail or the highlights, the sky and clouds, would be blown.

Exposure, ISO etc.

f16 1/80th 17mm HDR ISO 200

So with a basic plan in mind I whipped out the camera and checked readings etc. I needed to be at the 17mm end of the zoom to get it all in and use a deep depth of field.

So, with aperture priority set as usual, I rolled it up to f16. That meant, at my usual setting of ISO 100, the shot would have been made at 1/40s.

Much too slow, given that people were up and down the steps all the time. So I pushed the ISO up to 200, (which gave me 1/80s) and waited for a lull in the sudden foot-traffic that always happens when you're finally ready!
It didn't take too long and I made the shot. Actually, I took two or three, choosing different exposure locks from
different parts of the sky. Then I chose the best one to take forward when I got back to base.

Digital darkroom

Pre Photoshop

I pushed the shot through my usual RAW workflow to get it into Photoshop. In short, 3 exposures from RAW, followed by HDR / tone-mapping software to combine the three into one shot.

Photoshop

Once in Photoshop, I cloned away a a small amount of litter on a copy of the background layer and then applied TLR Capture sharpening (and erased any sharpening in the sky—it was already quite noisy). The bw conversion came next, juggling the sliders to get the tonal balance right.

Another little trick I picked up, this time for applying perfect contrast. I create a new curves layer and immediately ok it. Then I change the blend mode to overlay and reduce the layer's opacity to somewhere between 7% and the mid-twenties—whatever suits the image. This time it was 26%.

Then a little dodging and burning to enhance the difference between the mid-tones and highlights of the wall and steps not in shade.

Next I applied a soft light layer and erased away the centre to form a little vignette. I repeated this to get the balance I was after.

A final step to tweak the levels was in order. This was to make sure the darkest parts of the image equated to pure black and the extreme highlights to pure white. It didn't take much and I also shifted the mid-point grey to be a little lighter.

To prep the image for upload I did the usual sharpening, final contrast tweak and image resize. I'll give you that tip on another occasion.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my walkthrough and maybe have found something to inspire you on your explorations.


comments / critique / feedback always welcome :)

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Another from Urban Ugly

This is the shot I promised in my last post, taken from a little further up the creek.

Old ladies of the sea

Final Resting Place

Backing up a few paces and turning over my right shoulder from my previous posting, you see these graceful old ladies of the sea, tied up, abandoned and left to decay.

I guess their final act of service is to provide shelter and a home for all the denizens of the creek, and slowly giving up their nutrients and returning to mud. We like a nice bit of recycling :)


all comments / critique / feedback welcomed

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Waiting for collection

I think this is called "a shot from nothing", borrowing a term from snooker :)

Pallets, Tyre And Junk

Serendipity

I was out with my camera, walking around an interesting area near where I live. I was specifically looking for photo opportunities when I bumped into this scene. The junk was in a backlane beside some small work-yards, stacked and waiting for recycling collection.

I didn't touch any of it — the composition is just as I came across it. What initially drew my eye were the lovely relationships between the elements and their balancing shapes. The pooling of light and the way it fell across the scene was what made the shot for me.

comment / critique / feedback positively encouraged!

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Winter Seafront Stroll

Here's another from my Felixstowe trip that I wanted to share with you.

HDR enhances the sky

Once in the digital darkroom I could see that although the composition was exactly as I wanted, the sky left a bit to be desired. It was a bit washed out and not nearly carrying the drama that I saw in person — eyes are so much better than cameras!

Anyway, I put the shot through my trusty high contrast HDR workflow and it turned out quite peachy. I had to take steps to remove the noise that got introduced (I use noise ninja) and I also had to lighten the dark outline around the light coloured jacket that appeared as a result of the HDR. But no worries, I am very pleased with the end result.

Compositionally, I used and abused the rule of thirds, used lead-in lines and hopefully wrote a story with the way the elements interact. I'll let you be the judge :)

As always, comments, critque, feedback welcomed

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Boat in Totnes Mill Leat

These two shots are fresh out of the digital darkroom but I can't decide right now which one I should run with.

Portrait merits

With the portrait version, attention is sharply on the boat. The ladder is falling into shot, giving access from the ...well, we cant quite see from where, although a visual clue is there. The light catching the weeds on the right gives what I think is a nice touch of additional interest.

Landscape merits

Much more context appears in this version and there's the additional macro contrast between neatly tended potted plants and the sludge of the leat. The other thing I like about this is the cascade of "weeds" along the top right of the leat wall and the way the sunlight was catching them. There's some lovely tones there as a result.

Over to you...

So which one would you choose?

All comments / suggestions welcome

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RAW, HDR and related resources

Since my post about RAW there's been a lot of interest and a number of questions have been thrown up. So this post gives links to and discusses resources that answer them and that I've found useful.

Expose so you bias the histogram to the right

...but without blowing the highlights.

In the full article from The Luminous Landscape, you'll read that most of the available levels of brightness that come out of a sensor's cell get allocated to the right hand side of the histogram, only a few to the left and a middling amount to the middle.

It's essential that you get this point because when you do you'll realise that the right hand side of the histogram is where you get most sensitivity to differences in shades and the left hand side the least.

Note that for HDR this means that you'll need more exposures for the shadows than the highlights to get the same number of shades (tones) in each.

The Luminous Landscape have also got a useful link to an article on understanding histograms.

Work in 16 bits for as long as possible

The topic of bit depth is covered in a quite digestible way here.

I only convert to 8 bits at the end of my workflow, when moving to jpeg:

• I save my final file while it's still 16 bits so I can go back to it later, when needed
  
• Then I convert to 8bit, do some final touch-ups such as noise removal and sharpening suited for the uses I'll put the jpeg to,
• Then it's a save as, using jpeg as the file type.

Downloads and other links

Rawshooter Essentials

I still use Rawshooter for working with RAW, whether for preparing multiple exposures for my HDR workflow or the single 16bit TIFF ready for the Photoshop part of my workflow. It supports my Canon 350D's RAW files. If you do use it, it's vital

Before you download it, consider some things first. The company and software was bought by Adobe in 2006 and incorporated in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop (see a tutorial on using their Camera RAW plug-in). Rawshooter doesn't support a lot of cameras released since the buyout, including Canon’s 5D, 40D, 450D/Digital Rebel XSi, and 400D/Digital Rebel XTi; and Nikon’s D40, D40x, D60, D80, D3, and D300. Download it here.

Noise Ninja

I use Picturecode's Noise Ninja to correct the noise I get in HDR work when I wasn't able / didn't(!) follow the advice in the article above... There's a free version but it only works on 8bit images, so useful only as a final step when converting to jpeg. Download here

DynamicPhoto HDR

I haven't tried Photomatix, though many swear by it. My own preference is DPHDR. Download here. The page gives a great explanation of where HDR is useful and what it does.

Video tutorial

I've put together a tutorial showing the processing from RAW to finished HDR image. It's twenty minutes long but don't let that put you off -- lots of people have said how they found it easy to follow and understand :) See it here.

The image used is one from my Urban Decay, Lost Spaces and Industrial Ugliness photo essay.

RAW explained in more detail

For those who want a more detailed explanation of how RAW works (rather than what it does for you, as I covered) read this.



That's all for this post. As usual comments, additional info, opposing views(!) are all welcome :)

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Another hotel shot

I hummed and hawed about uploading this image, being worried about any possible copyright infringement of the hotel's logo. However, it's incidental to the shot and is partially obscured so I'm fairly comfortable about it.
I really like this shot - it took a lot of walking around the grounds of the hotel to find the pov that worked best and then for the sky conditions to be right. It's lucky I was staying there during the week for a few months!

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Catching up on the DDR backlog

Another take during a recent stay at a hotel near Heathrow. I was attracted by the cobweb shapes made by the windows when viewed from this angle.

It could be thought of as giving a nod in the direction of man-made stuff replacing / squeezing out nature.

It took a little while for the sky to improve to what I thought would work out in the hdr / tone mapping and I'm pleased with the overall result.

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Another for Urban Ugliness vol II

This is one I took a few weeks back that I finally managed to push through the DDR. I've called it Rubble To Be. The general decay of the building appealed to me - roof tiles gone with just the skeletal frame remaining but there was something missing...

After a wander around, I found the complementary element to the shot that I was looking for - the pile of stones and beams up against the building.

It seemed to me that it was "winding up" the decaying building - almost taunting it by implying that very soon, it too would just be rubble.

I often do that, paint a little story inside my head, imagining the conversation that might be taking place if the objects were animate. Ok, so maybe I'm a little nuts ;)

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Four more from the DDR

Managed to push another four images through the digital darkroom. I used HDR on two and treated the others normally.

It's difficult to choose a favourite, so I'll put up two. Stella Maris is beside the RNLI shop on the Barbican and Great Cabin Architecture is the front of the Tourist Information Centre, a couple of doors down.

It's not often you'll see me do colour shots in this phase of my photography, but Stella Maris was so close to mono and I liked the effect of the blues and the flowers.

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HDR Mission - Dig Camera Mag

I submitted a whole bunch of my HDR shots, many from my Urban Ugliness photo essay, to the mag's reader's mission for March.

Maybe I'll get my second appearance in the Mag... here's hoping :)

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