Musings In Monochrome - art of BW photography

June freebie prize draw winners

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:04:00 +0000

Two winners this month and one reward for persistence!

And June's Winners are...

Dusty Lens of northmetro.blogspot.com
DidbyGraham of didbygraham.blogspot.com

..and one honorary prize for persistence goes to:

Imac of imac-photosfromthemindseye.blogspot.com

Congratulations you folks!

To let me know which image you'd like to receive, find your favourite one in the Monochrome gallery on my main web site and email me the code and your delivery address.

I'll then prepare your signed, mounted print and pop it in the post.

You could also help me out by filling in a review on the page saying why you want that one. If you click the recommend it button too, you'll vote it up and other peeps will know which above all others you liked.

And it'd be great for you to write a post on your own blog too... ;)

Thanks in advance :) This sort of interaction is very much appreciated (hint, hint to everyone for the July draw!).

Another from the Jazz Fest

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:48:00 +0000

...and finally, from The Steve Tucker All Star Jazz Band...

One of the trumpeters

I love his paisley pattern tie :)

9 hours to go -- June freebie prize draw

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:02:00 +0000

Follower friends and google-connected friends, you've got just 9 hours left (posting was at 15:05 GMT) before the window closes on my June freebie prize draw.

My Hat of Wonder And Hope

Your name goes in if you follow / join and are also my google-connected friend.

More copies of your name go in the hat for each review / rating, recommendation and comment you leave / have left during June.

I suggest you find your favourite images in the galleries on my main web site:

..and review or recommend them. That way, if you win, I know which ones you like and can make sure you get one of those as your prize - a mounted, signed print, ready to frame.

The Kingsize Five cont'd...

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:29:00 +0000

Continuing with the pile, this is the last shot I got of the band.

Singers

I wanted to capture some of the exuberance and energy they displayed on stage and hopefully that's what I managed. The blurry hands of the girls work well for this, but the bloke was moving right to left just too quickly to freeze his features.

Maybe next time I'll remember to set the drive mode to continuous shooting to stand more of chance in getting the shot that works best.

Comments / hints / tips gratefully received

Going through a bunch of unprocessed photos

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:51:00 +0000

I've been going through the pile of unprocessed photos in my digital darkroom. You know, the pile that builds up of the ones that haven't yet inspired you — while more recent ones have and have been dealt with.

Always a danger when you're doing this, though, that your "that's worthy" filter gets fooled — and I think mine has here! ;)

What do you think? More worthy for the recycle bin or...

Barbican Jazz and Blues Festival

This one came from a brief shoot at the Barbican International Jazz and Blues Festival and shows (some of!) the Kingsize Five brass section.

This was the closing session and marked the end of a great ten days of jazz and blues music from all round the world.

Holy Trinity Church - last from the digital darkroom

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:39:00 +0000

This is the last of the shots taken at Holy Trinity Church, Buckfastleigh, Devon.

Eternal Reflection

In this shot, given that it's all about a church and cemetery, I wanted to include an obvious religious icon and turn the viewer's thoughts to reflection on their own mortality.

When all is said and done and your life has run its course, what will your legacy be—other than bones and a tombstone?

As always, comments / thoughts / critiques welcome :)

Fathers Day draw prize winners

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:11:00 +0000

So here are the names of the lucky winners of my Father's Day freebie prize draw. Each wins a signed, mounted print. Well done folks!

And the winners are...

Dan Felstead of WoodAndPixels.blogspot.com wins Abstraction Extraction
Maisy Rocks of MaisyDaisy-MySoCalledLife.blogspot.com wins Teleportation Module
Danilo of SeeTheWorld-Free.blogspot.com wins An Invitation

Dan and Maisy, you both had lots of copies of your names in the Hat Of Wonder And Hope, so your efforts in commenting etc. were rewarded :) Danilo just got lucky! Congratulations to all three of you, well done!

The rest of you, my google-connected friends, good luck for the end of the month draw—remember, another copy of your name goes in the Hat Of Wonder And Hope when you do any of the following:

review my work
vote up an image with the recommend it button
make general comments on my wall
comment on my blog posts

Lots of ways!

The winners now need to email me with their delivery address to claim their prize:

Preparing for my Fathers Day freebie prize draw

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:05:00 +0000

If you've been following my blog you'll have read that I'm holding a draw for Fathers Day, this Sunday in the UK, and there will be three lucky winners.

Prizes have been selected...

I spent this evening hand printing, mounting, signing and bagging the three prize prints. They are:

The three lucky Winners will be drawn from the Hat Of Wonder And Hope on Monday morning. I'll post the names of the winners here right away so they can get in touch with their delivery details.

Winning

A reminder of how to be in with a chance of winning: be a follower of this blog and become my connected friend. That's all there is to it; your name will automatically go in the Hat of Wonder And Hope.

To improve your chance of winning, write a review on one of my photos. Each one will earn you another copy of your name in the Hat.

Other forms of interaction will also influence the number of copies of your name I put in the Hat. Things like voting up a photo with the recommend it button under each, or leaving general comments on the wall or dropping off comments on my blog—will all help :)

Good Luck everyone!

Buckfastleigh shoot—a few more photos

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:30:00 +0000

Here's the next batch out of the digital darkroom from my recent visit to Buckfastleigh, and a continuation of the bones story.

Holy Trinity Church and cemetery

The grave of Thomas and Polly Elizabeth Luckraft on the north side of the church, surrounded by so many weathered and barely readable headstones. I thought the overhanging leaves, as well as helping with the framing, would give a feeling of intrusion into this other-worldly place of rest.

In this shot, I wanted to show the church in context. At the same time, I was hoping to be able to capture something of the former imposing nature of the church, and the fact that today, in ruin, it's rather impotent—almost a metaphor for the decline in the reach of the church in the present-day UK.

After the vandal-started fire that destroyed it, the church has been made safe and services are still held here from time to time. It's strange that without all the trappings of religious dogma, to me it still feels like a holy place, perhaps even more so.

Hopefully, I've captured something of that atmosphere in this shot.

Dem Bones, dem bones...

After a comment on my last post, asking about the finish to the caving dig story...

A bit of background first: A cave close by, called "Joint Mitnor", houses a talus cone (pile of rubble and dirt that fell from above, to you and me) that contains the bones (not fossilised) of bear, elephant, bison, hippopotamus, hyena, rhinocerous, lion... you get the picture. And, remember, this is the UK! [more here]

Bakers Pit, the dig

Ok, so as I said in my last post, we were on a dig in Bakers Pit, part of the same system as Joint Mitnor. The dig was drawn out over a period of around 18 months, visiting every couple of months or so. We'd reached a promising chamber that had what looked like part of a continuation passage, leading up and away at the top of a slope of rich, earthy mud and occasional rocks.

Revealing the way forward

Our approach to the dig in this chamber was to shift the mud and rocks at the bottom of the slope and let gravity do the rest. Then on our next visit we'd repeat the process. And this we did for four or five visits. On our second to last visit, a promising way forward was found at the top of the slope ...but it was all very precarious, and the walls / bedrock wasn't yet exposed.

The bone

And then I found the bone, vertebrae of maybe a deer or something, I thought? Conscious of the need not to disturb what could turn out to be an important archaeological dig site any further, we stopped the dig and left the chamber.

A contact I had in the museum in Plymouth was quite excited and sent the bone away to the British Museum for radio carbon dating.

Radio carbon dating results

About six weeks later, I got a call to go see my contact in the museum—he wouldn't say more over the phone, so I had to curb my excitement.

I hot-footed it there to receive the news, "well, it's recent". Wow! Recent in archaeological terms is maybe 10 or 20,000 years ago, the same sort of age for the bones already found in Joint Mitnor; my thoughts were racing, I could barely contain myself... "human" was what I heard next... fantastic, Iron Age baking utensils had been found at the entrance to the cave (hence its name, Bakers Pit)... "around the nineteen-twenties" came next.

Firstly, disappointment flooded over me... then the realisation hit home! We'd come up underneath the graveyard. Uh-oh! Unintentional desecration, ulp!

Last respects

So out of respect, we made a last visit to the chamber, made peace with the souls we'd inadvertently disturbed and, as we backed out of the very tight crawl that lead to it, we pulled and wedged rocks behind us to form a seal. Time and the slow movement of the settling mud would do the rest. Sleep in peace.

Epilogue

A few years later I was in the Breton Arms pub, where the Plymouth Caving Group used to meet (still do?) and I got talking with them. The subject of the church and Bakers Pit came up and it was then that I found out that the vicar had noticed, first subsidence and then a hole opening up in the cemetery. As he was filling it in from the top, we were apparently digging it out from underneath. Oops!

There you go Dusty Lens, beyond the four people directly involved, the full story for the first time for all to read.

comments on photos / desecration(!) welcomed as usual

Cemetery Corner

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:42:00 +0000

This is the next shot from my visit to Buckfastleigh to make it out of the digital darkroom. I'm still at the church at the top of the hill.

Gravestones like silent sentinels

I've always had a fascination for this particular cemetery. When I used to go caving as a teenager in Bakers Pit, a cave a lot closer by this cemetery than you'd think, I learnt about the local folklore.

The tomb of the local landowner that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write his Hound Of The Baskervilles is in this cemetery and, as locals would have it, the Devils Toe resides on the other side of the hedge, cut off in some epic battle for the souls of the village folk hereabouts.

In the cave, one of the main entrance chambers lies almost directly under the tomb and in the ceiling of the large chamber is a coffin shaped section of limestone. Great for adding a bit of drama for any newbie to a caving expedition!

I must also confess to having been responsible for a large depression opening up in the graveyard. With a mate, we spent around 18 months on a dig in Bakers Pit, pushing some collapsed passages and a chamber at the end of them. As we dug it out from underneath, as I found out a few years later, the vicar had been filling it in from the top. Oops!

There's more to the story about bones and the British Museum but I think we'll close the book at this point!

Comments / critique / feedback welcome as always :)

Gravestones and Ruined Chapel

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:43:00 +0000

I visited Buckfastleigh yesterday, a long over-due visit with my camera. I like the place and its surroundings, having spent many weekends camping there as a youth, pursuing my then hobby of caving.
On this visit I hung around the top of the hill above the village, where the now ruined church stands.

Old Chapel

The lighting was a bit harsh, even in the evening when this was taken. This sort of shot really deserves a blue sky, with some cloud cover to give uneven lighting and ideally some shafts of light.

But it was a cloudless day and this was the best of the four or five I shot of the chapel.

Feedback / comments / critique all welcomed as usual

Boat in Totnes Mill Leat

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:42:00 +0000

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

Fathers Day prize draw

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:05:00 +0000

I'm feeling generous.... I'm having a Fathers Day prize draw where three—yes, three!—lucky names out of the Hat Of Wonder And Hope will win one of my signed, mounted prints.

(Fathers Day here in the UK is on the 3rd Sunday in June, this year on the 21st.)

Here's how you can win

To be in with a chance of winning:

you must be a follower of my blog (or have joined my site)
I have to have accepted a friend request from you, or vice versa
You can send me one by:
- finding my head in the members gadget list
- it's in the rhs column, almost at the top - look for all the heads
- click mine within the members list itself and chose 'add as friend'

You can improve your chance of winning!

Go to my galleries (mono, colour, flora) and rate / review any of my work
For each one that you do, one more copy of your name will go into the Hat Of Wonder And Hope
...and when you do, it'll help us both—your head will be next to what you write.
You do want people to be able to find your blog on my site, yes?

What makes a good rating / review

It's ok to have a review that says 'great!' or 'fab!' but it's so much more helpful in connecting with others if you say how what you're reviewing makes you feel, or what you like (or dislike!) about it. Even suggestions for improvement —'Nice! I really like this one but the horizon's a bit squint to my eye'. You get the picture :)

Maybe it reminds you of something nice or not so nice, or maybe you feel a strong connection to it for some reason. If that's the case say so. I admire and welcome honest opinions that help me see what you get from my work, what appeals, what doesn't.

You probably know yourself that feedback is the very air that artists breath, and I'm no different, hehe!

You could also click the 'recommend it' button of the works you like, even if you don't review them. That'll help those most recommended bubble up to the top. So if you do that as well, double thanks :)

The Draw...

I'll make the draw on Fathers Day and let the three winners know right away so they can let their dad's know that they have an extra special gift on the way!

Good luck to all!

May prize draw posted...

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:13:00 +0000

I'm just back from the Post Office—the winner of my May freebie prize draw, Char, should receive her mounted fine art print within the next week.

Well done for winning, Char!
___________________

If you want to win the next one:

you must be a follower of my blog (or have joined my site)
I have to have accepted a friend request from you (or you to have accepted one from me)
—send one by finding my head in the members gadget list, click it and chose 'add as friend'

You can improve your chance of winning:

Go to my galleries (mono, colour, flora) and rate / review any of my work
For each one that you do, one more copy of your name will go into the Hat Of Wonder And Hope

If you do this, it'll help me a lot, especially if your review doesn't just say "Great!" or similar. A sentence or two on how the piece makes you feel or what it reminds you of would be just fantastic!

And, of course, you get Kudos too because your 'head' will be against the review and people then get the link to your blog. Bonus!

May Freebie Prize Draw Winner

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:22:00 +0000

Here are the results of my May freebie prize draw.

And the winner is...

Lucky Char, who writes the Ramblins blog. I'll get in touch to get delivery details and then it's off to the post office :)

Char will receive a signed mounted print of Final Resting Place.

Make sure your name goes in the hat... You have to be a follower of this blog and a friend. If we're not already friends, send me a friend request. I follow my own blog just so you can see my head to do this.

That's all you have to do, but if you want more copies of your name to go in the Hat Of Wonder And Hope, I'll put an extra one in for each rating / review you make of my work on my main site

Good luck for June!

RAW, HDR and related resources

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:45:00 +0000

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 :)

A global conversation on B&W Photography

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:48:00 +0000

I'm really excited by this new "web element" that Google has introduced and have added it to my blog already

Wot is a Global Conversation?

It's explained very well in the Learn More link within the gadget - a quick summary is that anyone who uses the same conversation topic for the gadget / element on their blog or site, will automatically join in to the global conversation already taking place on that topic.

And the cool thing is that, if you blog about it like I have here, people who use Google and other readers can join in right within the reader itself... Excellent :)

Here's the conversation that I've just started, the first in the world on the topic BW Photography ! All you "black and whiter"s, do join in - and embed the gadget in your site to meme the conversation :) Let's get the ball rolling! [NB The gadget you get to embed isn't specific to my site, there's no hidden links or other reference to it]

Comments welcome as always... will you put it on your site? Same topic as mine?

Some photo basics

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:36:00 +0000

I'm sure this doesn't apply to you! But on lots of blogs I follow I see photos that could be so much better if they followed the simplest of rules when shooting them.

Squint uprights and horizons

Make sure horizons are straight -- this is really, really important with shots over water. If you forget this, you end up with what I like to call "downhill water". It doesn't occur in nature, which is what makes it jump out at you. (It's a shame 'cuz water skiing would be so much easier on downhill water!)

The same sort of thing applies to uprights. If they're not -- and they should be, then it just jumps out at you as wrong.

So remember, when you're taking a shot, just before you press the button, check the horizon and uprights. It only takes a second and your shots will start to look better right away. So you will remember, won't you! NB That's me planting an instruction in your subconscious to help you along :)

Telegraph pole hats

By this I mean anything which intrudes onto or across your subject. Sure, we've all seen shots where a pole seems to be growing out of someone's head but there's also the ones where a stray branch or boat aerial sticks up, sort of cutting the shot in two.

Easy enough to sort out with a step or two this way or that.

Shoot from eye-level

Theirs, not yours!

I mentioned this in a recent posting and it fits in nicely here, too. Whenever we're connecting with someone we don't feel natural about it unless we're at their eye-level.

Think about it... If you see someone stopping for more than lust a quick hello when they spot a friend at a table, what's the chances they'll hunker down as they speak? If someone's talking baby-talk (to a baby!), they'll get down to their eye level.

And so photos should be taken from the eye level of your subject. Kiddies playing on the floor, get down on one knee, babies crawling? Then get down on your tummy. You get the added bonus that, as you come into their field of view, they start connecting with you and you'll find your photos will take on that added atmosphere.

The same of course goes for pets, too, whether action or portrait.

Subject in the centre

Just don't! Unless it's a group photo, you know, friends, wedding....

Your subject is always doing something, within their immediate surrounds, even if it's only daydreaming and looking off into the middle distance. To convey that feeling place your subject off to one side (away from where they're looking, if that applies) or up, or down but not centre, please!

Imagine a game of oxo, or maybe a dolls house with 9 equal-sized rooms. Wherever the lines are, wherever the interior walls are, place your subject, the horizon, that nice tree, their eyes, whatever.

For even more impact in your shot place it on one of the points where two lines (walls) cross. PS This is known as the "rule of thirds".

Finally, short and sweet...

Rules are there to be broken. The only reason for having them is so that you think about it before you break them. Get used to them and then happy breaking!

As always, comments, additions, thoughts, denials -- all welcome :)

RAW setting / file type explained

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:02:00 +0000

One of my followers, Gail (thanks for the question Gail) asked about RAW and I said I would answer it in my next post. So here goes -- note that I keep mentioning jpeg but the same pretty much applies to tiff (an option on some cameras), too.

In short

A RAW file records the output of all the tiny cells on your camera's sensor when the shot was captured, with each cell producing a brightness value for the amount of red, blue and green light falling on it.

In a sense, it's much the same for film cameras. When you take a shot, what's on the film? Just the chemical gel, with some of the light-sensitive chemicals changed by their reaction to the red, blue and green light falling on them. You then take the film to be processed to produce a negative -- a one way process.

Without RAW, your camera immediately converts the sensor output to jpeg, before storing it on your memory card -- a one way process. And because the sensor captures far more information than can be stored in jpeg format, a lot is discarded during the conversion.

What is the extra information that is lost?

The range from dark to bright recorded by the sensor is much wider than can be held in a jpeg; in a RAW file, it's like you have 7 different exposures in one, from -3 stops to +3 stops. Say you took the shot at 100 ASA, f8, 1/100s, then most digital cameras' sensors will capture the equivalent of f22, f16, f11, f8, f5.6, f4, f2.8 all in one RAW file.

Of course, with a jpeg, it records things at just one exposure setting, the one you (or the camera) set when you took the shot.

What other practical things does a RAW file allow you to do?

White Balance

This is real useful. You see, another thing that conversion fixes in stone is the "white balance". Unless you remembered to set it correctly, shots taken indoors or under street lamps can end up with a horrid yellow or blue colour cast. But with RAW you get to play with the white balance (also called colour temperature), try it this way, try it that, to see what works best for the shot.

Sharpening

Even when perfectly focused, all sensors produce a slightly unsharp image and your camera, in converting to jpeg, applies a standard amount of sharpening. Well, you guessed, a RAW file doesn't have any sharpening applied, it's something you get a chance to play with once it reaches your pc.

Downside to shooting in RAW

The size of a RAW file is much bigger than jpeg and therefore fills up your memory card much quicker, and also takes longer to save to it. It also means it takes longer for you to end up with a finished image, as you have to make all the decisions (after playing around!) rather than the camera making them for you at the time of the shot.

To sum up

RAW is like an exposed but unprocessed film.
Shooting in RAW leaves all the important decisions to you and, maybe most importantly, gives you a lot of flexibility to correct exposure and white balance where the camera (or you!) gets it wrong.

As usual, your comments and questions are welcome :)

Introspective ...Hay303 Stacks

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Hay303 Stacks

A shot of the fields alongside the A303 near Stonehenge,
just after hay making. Wiltshire, 2008.

Composing and making the capture

I had seen the landscape dotted with these obelisk-like haystacks over a regular journey I make. On this particular occasion the light was right, so I kept on diving off the road down farm tracks and entrances to fields, whenever it looked like there was half a chance of a shot.

I'd not long passed Stonehenge, heading west, when I got lucky with this and another shot. [Hint: note how you "make" your own luck by giving the good lady chance to smile on your efforts!]

Placing the horizon low for airiness

The rolling hills and low clouds with the clear sky above made the scene light and airy, and I knew to capture that feeling, I'd need to put the horizon low in the frame. The rule of thirds suggests that the horizon line should go about one third of the way up in a shot like this, but I wanted more emphasis, so placed it even lower.

Three's the charm

The eye tends automatically to "zone in" to odd-numbered groups, giving them power in a shot. The scene in front of me wouldn't play ball and insisted on four haystacks, but again I was lucky in that three went nicely on the skyline with one below it.

Exposure, ISO etc.

I always keep my Canon EFS 17-85mm IS USM mounted on the camera and again it was perfect for the shot. The day was beautifully bright, so I checked the ISO was set to 100. For maximum depth of field, I set to f9, giving a shutter speed of 1/320s. As I was shooting across the road with the view often blocked by the frequent lorries that were passing, the fast shutter speed would only help. I focus- / exposure-locked around a third of the way in to ensure front-to-back sharpness before recomposing and dropping the shot into the box.

In the digital darkroom

HDR

I never have the camera set to anything other than RAW, a pre-requisite for the sort of HDR treatment I intended for this shot. I went overboard and, using RAWShooter Essentials 2006 (now a part of PhotoShop LightRoom), made 12 separate exposures from the one shot. I did this, anxious to get as much texture in the clouds and razed crops as possible. I brought them together using Dynamic-Photo HDR before moving to PhotoShop.

PhotoShop

Again, fairly standard for my workflow, I applied a bit of TLR capture sharpening first, converted to mono using the black and white filter and judicial use of the channel mixer sliders. While adjusting the sliders, I kept an eye on the interplay between sky and ground but couldn't quite achieve a conversion that convinced me. I ended up treating the sky as a separate conversion on another layer.

A tweak on the curves to increase the contrast and a slight adjustment to the levels to deepen the shadows and lift the highlights a bit and that was it.

Any comments or questions, fire away :)

May Free Prize Draw

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:55:00 +0000

This month's prize draw date is approaching - 31st May. Last month's winner, Muza Chan, was delighted with her mounted fine art print of Knot A Rope Knot

How do I get a chance of winning?

All you have to do is be a follower of my blog / member of my website AND we must be mutual friends. Not my friend yet? Send me an invite!

How do I improve my chances of winning?

Get over to my black and white gallery and review and rate some of my work. Every time during this month that you write a considered comment (and give a star rating), one more copy of your name goes in the hat!

It's that simple :)

When is the winner to be announced?

I'll hold the draw after midnight (GMT) on 31st May and get in touch with the winner. As soon as we've made contact, I'll post the winner's name here.

Good Luck!

Useful tip for remembering photo facts

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:06:00 +0000

If you're on holiday, touring or just out and about taking shots of interesting places or objects, make it easy on yourself later.

Snap the information board

If there is an information board, or even just date markings, take a quick snap of it (and check the image on your camera to make sure you can read the text). That way, it'll be there to hand in the same place on your pc as your treasured photos when you need it for your blog, flickr, deviantart or your own photo portfolio.

Go on, you know it makes sense :)

Last of the Pomeranian shots

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:19:00 +0000

I finally found some time to process the last of the successful shots taken the other day of a friends' pomeranians.

Hamish and Bonnie

Mum, Bonnie, was exhausted after spending a manic 30 minutes or so training her puppies and, heck, what a racket they all made!

Quite interesting to watch her chasing them and nipping their ankles, something to do with herding instincts being encouraged with practical demonstrations, I think.

This was taken during a lull in training. I'm not sure where Willow was but here's Hamish saying something like "Come on mum, that was great fun, let's play some more!".

It would have been even better if I'd got more of Bonnie's head in the shot but they were hard at it again before I could recompose. That said, I do like the softness in the image of Hamish and the way Bonnie's coat came out.

Shooting pets without a studio setup

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:38:00 +0000

On second thoughts, I'm not so sure that's a good post title - still I'm a photographer so peeps should know that I don't imply I'm killing them!

Anyway, this is aimed at folks who don't have a studio or expensive studio lighting or, if you're like me and you're an opportunist photographer, you don't go everywhere armed with tripod, reflectors or any form of lighting other than a flash gun.

All you'll need -- a camera, a flash gun and an off-camera flash cable ( because you won't be wanting the flash mounted on the camera). And if your camera supports it, shoot in RAW mode for maximum exposure flexibility.

So how do you make the shot when the situation arises? Well here's one I made, following all the suggestions below.

Finished shot

This is how the shot of Bonnie, a Pomeranian, turned out. I'm pleased with the composition, the lighting, the texture of her fur and the sharp focus on her eyes. I did get a little softness, caused by movement blur, but it's at an acceptable level to my eye.

Tips to make the shot

Spend time getting to know and befriending the subject

They must be relaxed with both you and your camera (and the fill-in flash if you need to use it).

When they're relaxed with you, their inner character comes through and it's a a look that the owner will identify with.

So have the camera round your neck and stroke and talk to the pet. It's rather easy with our four-legged friends but needs a different approach with pet birds.

I'm not focusing on birds in this post, but I will say this about gaining a bird's confidence and befriending it. With birds, instead of stroking, you can offer food, talking to the bird gently and quietly the whole time. When the bird comes to take the food, blow very gently at the top of the neck and behind where you'd imagine the ear to be. Do this against the lie of the feathers, so your warm breath gently penetrates to the skin. They'll be a little unsure at first but will get to like it real quick.

Natural Lighting

Go for low ambient lighting, ideally on a bright day with light coming through a window and falling obliquely on the subject, but leaving the rest of the room quite dark. This will give shape and form to the animal's head and body and nice areas of highlight and shadow. It will also provide good texture in the animals coat.

I'll talk about fill-in flash below.

Background

Make sure the background is uncluttered. If they have a favourite dark blanket, then pose them on that. If not, use one you've taken with you (very unlikely in my case!) or get one from the owner. Obviously if it's the pet's favourite, it'll feel much more at ease on that, familiar smells etc.

Composition

Well, with no tripod you'll be hand-holding the camera. Unless you're an absolute whiz with a tripod, this gives you a lot more flexibility -- you'll be able to focus your energies on composition rather than have to keep moving a tripod around.

Think about whether you want just a head shot or whether and how much of the body to include. Make sure the animal isn't looking directly at the camera but off into the middle distance -- and make sure there's enough 'space' for it to look into.

Get down to their eye level. In our day-to-day lives, those who we're 'connecting' with are at our eye-level -- we're not looking down at them and we're not looking up to them. So to get this same connection in your photos, you have to be at their eye-level.

Drawing the viewer's attention where you want it to be. You can do this in many different ways. Positioning that point on one of the rule-of-thirds intersections is one. Another is by choosing a low depth of field -- or how much of the shot is in focus -- and then focusing your camera on the point where you want their attention. With a small aperture number, anywhere further away or closer than that point will then be blurry.

And where should that point of focus be? The eyes of course, as they're the doorway to the soul and will be where most of the character of the pet comes through. And it's ok if the nose isn't sharply in focus as that brings attention back to the eyes.

Fill-in Flash

With all this low light I'm recommending, you're going to be hard pushed to achieve a fast enough shutter speed to prevent blurring a) because the camera is hand-held and b) because the pet naturally moves, even if it's just a slight turn of the head.

Fill-in flash to the rescue - but never when mounted on your camera.

You're really using the flash for two purposes, one to freeze any movement (of the pet or your hand-held camera) and the other, to provide a light source that sculpts the features of the pet, head and body. This is why the flash mustn't be camera-mounted -- because sculpting light has to fall obliquely across the subject.

Don't be afraid to take plenty of shots, trying bounced light shots, if circumstances allow, or just by holding the flash at different angles and distances from the subject. The low ambient light will prevent harsh shadows, even if you point the flash fairly directly at the subject and from quite close.

And all this can be a tall order, holding a heavy-ish camera in one hand and a flash in the other, while still holding the camera steady enough that you don't get motion blur. Still, no one promised easy :)

Once in the Digital Darkroom

Just a quick covering of this area as I've covered this to enough depth in the postings about Hamish and Willow, Bonnie's pups.

What you're trying to do in the digi darkroom is to enhance the lighting, texture and composition.

So in a nutshell, here's the techniques used; pretty standard workflow for me:

TLR Capture sharpening
Copy of background layer for a touch of dodging the highlights and burning the mid-tones -- this to help the light sculpting and texture of the fur
Convert to mono via the b/w filter and adjust colour sliders to get best conversion
A v. slight increase in contrast: add a curves layer, unmodified, changed blending mode to overlay and backed off opacity to 9% -- btw, this is a brilliant technique for applying contrast
Add a levels layer and give it a nudge to ensure I've got tones from deep black to pure white
Add a subtle vignette to help bring attention to her face: new layer filled with black, change blend mode to soft light, use softest eraser (about 2/3rds size of image) and erase from corners to Bonnie's face, change layer opacity to around 50%
Save, flatten layers, convert to jpeg, add a slight touch of sharpening using the unsharp mask
Save as new file and upload to here.

Your turn

Well, if you find this useful I'd love to see your results. Drop off your links in the comments. If you've got any tips of your own that you want to pass on or to help me improve, please feel free :)

Learning, learning, every day a school day!

One more from the jazz & blues fest

mark@highton-ridley.co.uk (Highton-Ridley) — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:50:00 +0000

Sylvia's hair and feather clip looked stunning. I wanted to make a candid shot so didn't want to draw attention to myself - a long lens came to the rescue.

I hope I've done her and the shot justice :)

Feather Fascinators are chic

I had no idea what those feather things were called until I did some searching on the web.

Why am I not surprised to find that feathers are the new chic for Spring 09? Trust our continental friend to show the way!

Anyway, I made the shot of the natural pose I wanted, showing off those cascading, glorious brunette locks and the beautiful feathers she had chosen.

In the digital darkroom

The bw conversion

I was fairly careful in the treatment of this shot. Sylvia was wearing a red coat and the bw conversion I needed to use for the rest of the shot was making the red too dark -- as processing continued I was losing the shape and texture of that area.

There are a few ways to deal with this. Before conversion you can change the red hues of that area to something that works best when using the settings needed for the rest.

Alternatively, if you're too far down your processing when it becomes obvious this is the case, as I was, you can select the offending area with the lasso and a smallish feathering, and then change the saturation (using a saturation layer) of the range of colours that need it (within the selection). Fine tune the result by backing off the opacity of the layer.

Other tweaks

I did the usual slight contrast adjustment using curves, a nudge on the levels and a soft-light vignette.

Dodging and burning

I created a duplicate of the background layer to do some dodging (lightning) of the highlights. When I was happy that I'd done justice to the hair and the feathers, dodge-wise, I copied that layer so I could do the burning (darkening) on the new layer. That way, if I messed up the burning, I'd be able to delete just that layer and not lose the previous one where I did the dodging.

I burnt the mid-tones, often in the areas where the dodging had brought the mid-tones too close to the highlights, providing richer tones for those areas.

Finishing Touches

As part of the conversion to jpg, in preparation for web upload, I flattened all my layers, used a tad of unsharp mask and gave the contrast a very slight boost using a little known technique for contrast on the macro scale. (A tip I'll write up on another day.)