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Photographer’s Vision
Just a quick mid-week post to illustrate how a photographer’s vision takes place beyond the camera. There’s the design and concept stage of an image, but this post is more on the execution and processing.
As an example, below you’ll see one of the images from my recent trip to Colonsay which I blogged about earlier in the year
The left image was as it came out of the camera. The right image is the image once I had finished post-processing it.
I knew when I saw the scene how I wanted the final version to look well before I set up the camera to take the shot and I took the picture with my camera set up to suit the post-processing I had in mind.
I was aware I already did this, but the recent photowalk I joined really brought it to my attention and it made me realise how much I think about realising the final shot before I’ve even gone near my camera.
It’s just as well it’s disposable 😉
Photowalk November 2010
I took part yesterday in a London Photowalk hosted by Daniel Davies.
It’s the first time I’ve done a photowalk and the reason I took part in this one was because of an interesting format for the walk.Rather than walking about snapping photos, there were the following restrictions:
1) We were allowed a maximum of 36 exposures during the walk
2) We set the ISO at the beginning and it couldn’t be changed.
3) The display on the back of the camera was taped over so we didn’t know how we were doingWhat made this interesting is that we’re taking the principles of film photography and applying it to the modern technology. By giving us these self imposed restrictions makes us really slow down and really think about our composition before taking the shot.
I knew it would be an adjustment (the last time I shot film was in college), and it was a bit more of an adjustment than I expected. I’m not one to waste shots as it is, but by restricting the exposures to 36 and hiding the display really emphasised this.
At the end of the 2 hour walk I was well under the 36 allowed shots, so I rushed the last few … and it shows.
I took 33 alltogether and we sat in the pub at Tower Bridge (we started at London Bridge) with hot drinks to thaw our frozen fingers while we reviewed the shots on a laptop.If you’re interested in seeing my pictures, then click on either the top image or one of the images below
Squirrel!!!!
I was contacted by one of my favourite clients a month or so ago and asked if I would take some pet pictures of their stunning Pointer breed dogs, mother and daughter Imola and Monza. It’s a bit of a change to the product and car photography I show, but they are great people so I said "sure" 🙂
We discussed the details on what the images were for (a large high-key print/canvas) and I suggested we also did some shots of them just being dogs and playing in the local park as a nice contrast to the posed shots. Everything was set and so we watched the weather and a couple of weeks later the conditions turned to our favour.
I rolled up outside the house with Prabha (girlfriend and pooch fanatic) as my assistant and a 1/2 sized studio setup in the boot. For the ‘studio’ style shots there was just enough room to set up a small backlit background and train, a front light plus a little ‘CallumW special‘ to crisp them up a little 😉
The stage was set.
There’s an old saying never to work with kids or animals, but I have to say that both pooches were extremely well behaved. They were easily transfixed with the promise of biscuits and "coochycoos" from both their owner and Prabha.
Both of them were so well behaved and so adorable, I think Prabha was eyeing one of my bags to see if she could smuggle one of them home (just kidding :))After the formal setup we headed to the park to let them loose.
A short while back I blogged about the JDM Drift cars that I photographed sliding past at speed, but seriously, they have nothing on these guys. Man these dogs are faaaast.
‘meep! meep!’ … blink …. you’ve missed them.
Needless to say there were a few shots where they were flying out of frame before I could track them. So quick … and unpredictable. At least cars follow the track (usually) and are consistent in speed.
These guys … forget it 😀
After a short time (but not before they both went for a swim in the lake) the light began dropping which meant I was struggling to keep the shutter speed up high enough, so we got them to pose for us in a few remaining pools of light to add some variety in style.
We headed back and I packed up my mini studio and we said our farewells.
Both pooches were wiped out from all the running, but you could see they had a great day.If that’s a dog’s life then where do I sign 🙂
A few semi-edited shots below so you can see how adorable they are 🙂
Wildlife on London’s Doorstep
Not much happening at the moment so I thought I’d blog about some commercial photography I did for the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) in mid-July when they were opening a couple of new Hi-Tech Ponds sponsored by Thames Water to add to their park experience.
The 42 hectare London Wetland Centre in Barnes (London) is regarded as the best urban wildlife site in Europe and, as I’d never been before, it was something I was looking forward to.
When the day came it was a scorcher.
The temperature was hovering around 28-30 Celsius which wasn’t ideal when I was carrying around 10kg of equipment on my back and 3kg in my hands, but the scenery in the hot summer sun was stunning.My task was to photograph the opening of the new Interactive Digital Pond as well as their Pond Safari, a remote-controlled underwater camera pond (that water was looking very tempting in that heat).
They were opened by TV wildlife presenter Miranda Krestovnikoff who was great to work with and sharing her love for wildlife with the kids.Following the 2 unveilings I was to take some general scenery images for the WWT to put in their image library which would be used for future advertising, poster, banners etc.
My contact for the day was the very knowledgeable Jamie Wyver and we walked around the park with Jamie showing me the areas of the park which he wanted photographed. We made an efficient team with him getting disclaimer signatures from parents and me getting the shots of the landscape.
At the end of the day the images were given to the WWT to put into their image library for press releases and to Thames Water for their own press releases.
It was a longer day than I expected, but the park was such an amazing place to visit and the time flew by.
Who knew such a jewel sits virtually in the middle of London?
More pics below:
