Head for the hills

Based enviably close to the Lake District,  I wasn’t sure if Stewart Smith‘s web site was a hiking blog as there’s lots about climbing half a dozen fells before breakfast and camping at 2500 feet while his excellent photographs seem to be most easily accessed by clicking links in the tag cloud.

 … principally concerned with catching the fleeting and dramatic light that can play across the crags and ridges of the mountains at the extreme ends of the day; light that is capable of transforming an already enthralling scene into something remarkable and almost surreally beautiful.

The interpretation is of an almost primal landscape devoid of human intrusion, the Lake District mountains as they have been for thousands of years and will continue to be for thousands more.

Not a lot of black and white but I do like this view of the Langdales.

Peter Hogan

Peter Hogan seems to be a black and white guy – at least, calling his site MonochromePhotography,com is a pretty good clue.

No doubt I enjoyed his site the more for its having a decent number of Lake District scenes, like this one from near Ashness Gate on Derwentwater.

I suspect they’re quite a lot better than they appear from the rather soft versions on the site.

Alex Nail

Alex Nail's Pavey Ark from Blea Rigg

I’ve been stuck indoors recording a tutorial about Photoshop’s wonderful Mixer Brush for the last few days. Fun though it was, it took me a while to get to grips with Camtasia and much longer to become at all happy with the sound of my own voice. Combining a vaguely-Mancunian nasal drone with my background asthma doesn’t lift my confidence, so maybe next time I’ll pretend I’m John Cooper Clarke and give Photoshop the full Beasely Street treatment?

Anyway, stuck inside when we’ve had a couple of light snowfalls has given me itchy feet, even more so when I know there’s been snow up in the Lakes and when I see this gorgeous shot from the Langdales by Alex Nail. There aren’t nearly enough Lake District shots on his site, but this one alone is worth a visit.

Passing away

Today’s helping of black and white goodness is Elin Hoyland‘s reportage work, particularly her Brothers series which I think I first noticed in a magazine somewhere. If I remember – because her site doesn’t contain much info – it depicted two Norwegian brothers on a remote farm and I still find it an incredibly sad set of pictures:

As Harald said, they chopped wood, carried wood and burned wood. At least twice a day, they also fed wild birds in the twenty bird boxes that they monitored. Their days followed a predictable and comforting routine. In their free time they each listened to a radio or read the local paper. In the 1960s they had rented a TV for a one month trial but returned it after deciding that it took up too much time. Little changed from year to year, though Mathias once said that changes were happening the whole time and it would probably end up with them getting an inside toilet with running water.

Also see here wonderful sand-dune rally in Qatar.

John Gravett

I’ve decided that each day this month I’ll try to link to web sites featuring great black and white work, so today it’s a nice coincidence that this morning I saw that John Gravett of Lakeland Photographic Holidays has a new site.

This scene is somewhere between Blea Tarn and Little Langdale and is just one of many pictures that has me itching to get back up there.

Last Days of the Arctic

I know I’ve linked to Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson before, but yesterday I came across his Last Days of the Arctic series. Well worth a browse.

Also see here where he includes some colour pictures from the same book.

Via

The Knebworth gig

If you’re in the UK, and if unlike me you occasionally watch ITV even when there’s no football, you may have experienced  last night’s season-opening episode of Midsomer Murders. This police drama was stretched out over 2 hours of prime time with ad breaks for ice cream, just when winter’s at its coldest this year, and for a bowel cancer charity. I don’t belittle that charity’s value, but times must be tough in commercial TV land if they’re scheduling ads telling you to go looking for “blood in your poo” at peak viewing times.

If you did see it, you may noticed the central starring role played by the historical re-enactors. This was the filming at Knebworth House that I mentioned in this post back in November. It was a fun day, and you don’t really see in this panorama how much smoke they generated – just imagine the tubes running all the way across the front of the building and all the way behind me. It was wonderful for photography – and perhaps a shame they didn’t use them throughout the filming…. Just not my kind of telly.

Stefano Orazzini

Stefano Orazzini is an Italian photographer who mainly seems to do the kind of long exposure black and white stuff that’s been in vogue for a few years. There are lots of really excellent images on his site and for a bit more information see this interview:

I can’t tell the exact reason why I chose black and white as a means of expression. Every day we are bombarded with colors: television, advertising, traffic, supermarkets … The black and white photography for me is like a trip back in time and a way to escape from this world. Perhaps because 90% of contemporary photographers use color and I don’t like to follow the trendy styles of the moment. Or because it allows you to direct the viewer’s gaze on the subject, the message of black and white is stronger and more direct. Also it allows me to follow the entire imaging process: from capture, to the development of the negative and the printing. Finally, I think that a black and white photograph is timeless and never gets boring.

I couldn’t agree more. Ha ragione!

One day I’ll go

Great series of images of the annual Shetland Islands festival Up Helly Aa. I know it’s only a modern recreation – dating from 1881 – but like la Tomatina or some of these southern Italian Easter parades, it’s one event I’d just love to see.

Encore B&W

Rather like expectant parents holding in their hands the ultrascan of their new baby and showing off the little snap to anyone prepared to humour them, I thought I’d show the cover of the 2^nd edition of my Advanced Digital B&W Photography. While I completed the rewrite before Christmas and have already seen the proposed cover, it was only this morning that I wanted to see when it would be delivered. It looks like it’s May in the UK and US and afterwards in a number of translations.

When the original book was released five years ago, I’m proud to say that it notched up a few firsts. I was lucky to be writing at such an opportune time and to have distinguished some new developments which I felt would change the best way to work. So it was the first book on digital B&W:

• To cover Lightroom
• Ditto for Aperture
• Photoshop’s B&W adjustment filter
• Photoshop smart objects for a B&W workflow

This time round, it’s not as much of a turning point for us B&W workers. Instead we’re in a period where those changes have become established, Silver Efex Pro has fleshed out, and where some of the old problems of colour casts have been countered by printers with more inks or just been accepted as par for the course. I can’t see mobile apps like Nik’s Snapseed or Adobe’s Revel (ex Carousel) as much more than a way for people to gain some appreciation of B&W – healthy though that must be. So in the second edition:

• Most of the new content is Lightroom.
• A lot of new content is on Silver Efex Pro

Of course, if you do ever want to experiment with your pictures you can always hit V in Lightroom and it will show them in colour. Thankfully hitting V (or Undo) will make them look right again. Why bother with colour?

More than a year in the planning

Probably more than a year ago I decided I must have a Lee Big Stopper, a 10 stop neutral density filter. It wasn’t an impulse buy though because none of their UK  stockists had any available, and lead times were estimated at 3 months. But as often as not waiting times nowadays seem just a sly way to deliver sooner than promised and so “delight” the customer. So I placed an order and waited. Then more than 3 months had passed – and so in a self righteous fit I cancelled that order. If this vendor couldn’t get their act together, I’d order it from someone else. Of course, the same happened again. Months went by and there was no sign of the filter, and I impatiently cancelled that order too. By now Lee’s web site acknowledged production delays and said they simply didn’t know when the situation would improve. I’d also contacted them directly, and while their reply wasn’t encouraging at least it seemed open and honest. So for a third (or was it a fourth?) time I decided to order one, this time from Speedgraphic, and this time I was going to wait – no matter how long it took. As the whole summer passed by, and then my big autumn trip to the Lake District, still there was no sign of the Big Stopper, and by early December I was growing impatient again. As before, Lee replied promptly but with the same discouraging “not able to offer any accurate availability dates” message and spoke of problems with suppliers (which wasn’t a good thing to say to someone who had spent time working in corporate recovery). Speedgraphic seemed equally powerless, and once more I seriously thought of cancelling, ordering a similar filter from B&W, and moving on. And then, one week later, just before Christmas, my Big Stopper arrived.

Since then I’ve either been too busy to get out and use it, or the weather didn’t want to cooperate – clear blue skies are not Big Stopper weather – but finally Monday’s forecast promised a decent mix of sun and cloud. Going right back to when I first tried to get my hands on the filter, one location I’d mentally shortlisted was the isolated church at Fairfield on Romney Marsh. Since then I’d got the Photographer’s Ephemeris app on the iPad and bookmarked the location, and over the weekend I’d checked the sunrise and sunset times. So you might say that the picture was a year in the planning – or even longer if you include seeing Fay Godwin’s well-known picture. [From what I've read, the church was the only building left standing when the rest of the village faded away]

And where is all this leading? Well, for all that patience and planning and an hour and a half’s drive – I’d forgotten to charge up my camera’s batteries and I only had 45% left in the one in the body. Minute-long exposures really drain the D700′s power, so after about 30 pictures here and then at Dungeness, that was it.

My conclusion? By all means make those grand plans, pursue them for a year or more if you have to – but just don’t forget the little details. When you get them wrong, they will really spoil your day!

Search and Replace plug-in – version 1.35 coming

If you use my Search and Replace Lightroom plug-in, I’m currently updating it. So if there’s something you want, now’s a good time to ask.

The benefits of New Year detox?

Common sense has prevailed and Adobe have phased in the change in their Creative Suite upgrade policy. As John Nack writes in New upgrade options for CS3 and CS4 customers “The whole story is clumsy” but:

I’m pleased to say that Adobe has announced a new introductory upgrade offerfor customers using CS3/CS4:

• The old deal: If you were on CS4 or earlier at the time CS6 shipped, getting a subscription would be the only way to upgrade to CS6.
• The new deal: If you’re on CS3 or CS4 when CS6 ships, you’ll have until the end of 2012 to upgrade to CS6.  You can of course choose a subscription option, and we think you’ll want to.
• Bottom line: During 2012, you don’t have to buy CS5 just to buy CS6.

The new Lightroom site

Tomorrow is generally regarded as Lightroom’s 6th birthday – the anniversary of when the 1.0 beta for Mac was released. So I had been planning to announce Lightroom Solutions, but somehow it sneaked out early….

I’ve always preferred to have a single site, as there’s only one of me, but for a year or two I’ve wanted to post more Lightroom content. At least, I’d like to think some people may be interested in reading more, and there was a range of material I have been writing that never made it onto this blog. I get a decent number of emails asking for advice, for instance, or there are 4-5 web forums where I’ll answer questions on Lightroom-related topics ranging from beginner tips to more obscure but interesting topics. Apart from my posts being scattered around various forums, I’m also still wary of how forum owners can treat others’ freely-contributed writing as theirs to sell (I refer to the old Rob Galbraith forum going to a subscription-based service). Consolidating the various emails and posts here would swamp this site, however, and an entirely separate site would allow me to structure it in a way that’s more helpful for those only interested in Lightroom.

A lot of the good Lightroom names are already taken – quite a few merely redirecting to existing sites – but I registered  Lightroom Solutions in the middle of last year. “Solutions” is, I know, a bit of a cliché and I could trot out all sorts of guff about wanting to offer solutions, not questions. But there is a grain of truth there, because I do think that too much Lightroom advice is along the line of “anything goes”. People don’t need to be told there are three ways to do black and white with Lightroom, and that they’re all equal. Some ways are simply more equal than others, and what’s needed is clarity.

• Want to write for Lightroom Solutions? Let me know.
• The WordPress theme is one I wrote from the ground up. Tell me if you find problems.

Blea expectations

Blea Tarn by Colin S Bell

You’d be forgiven for thinking this site has recently become fixated with the Lake District in general and Blea Tarn in particular. You would be right, as I have felt rather that way since the two weeks I spent up there in November and especially since the morning when I had the place entirely to myself.

That day it all came together – after an hour’s drive I was there for dawn, rolling mists and autumn colours reflected in the tarn’s still surface – and apart from a single dog walker it was all mine, mine, and not another photographer in sight. Funnily enough, once the fog eventually lifted and the breeze picked up, I moved on to nearby Slater’s Bridge and did immediately walk into a pack of 10 photographers with LPS’s John Gravett. John had first introduced me to the tarn’s photographic potential and often takes his guests there, so that morning I’d been a lot luckier than I’d thought. Much as I can be sociable, and know I can  remove other photographers afterwards by pretending they’re dust spots, I am more of a lone hunter and it was a rare privilege to have the place all to myself.

Since then I’ve been itching to get back. Each time I go to the tarn I explore two or perhaps three angles, move on after two or three hours, feeling the shot’s in the bag – and then kick myself for not having spent the whole day there. Next time I’ll take sandwiches and try not to heed the Drunken Duck’s siren call calling me for a lunchtime pint.

For a small area, it’s got so many alternative viewpoints and I was struck by Colin S Bell‘s one here – not least that before sunrise he managed to resist the temptation to set up his tripod down by the tarn’s edges. Lots more on his site.

Painted landscapes

These are all photographs I’ve taken in my beloved Lake District over the last few years and reworked with a new effect which I found pretty addictive but can’t disclose, not yet anyway. You may of course say it should remain that way, but I rather liked the results and it is my party….

As usual they are being served from my SlideShowPro Director content management system, but I recently heard that they have discontinued the Slidepress plug-in (why is explained here). So instead I am using their Publish mechanism, copying code from Director and pasting it in WordPress. I’m not sure it’s totally reliable and WordPress has a habit of correcting – or rather deleting – the code.

Adam Burton

Adam Burton‘s Lake District pictures contained some lovely angles on Blea Tarn. And while here he’s talking about the Langdales in general, I rather feel his comment could apply to this one little spot.

This iconic location is probably my favourite part of the Lake District.  As long as the weather plays along, a photographer could easily spend a week and more photographing the Langdales and never get bored.

Paired-up

Mark Laita’s Created Equal is a series of portraits of American stereotypes. Each image would be interesting-enough in its own right but becomes more fascinating by its being paired with a contrasting type. So a Mormon polygamist family is juxtaposed with a pimp and his harem.

In America, the chasm between rich and poor is growing, the clash between conservatives and liberals is strengthening, and even good and evil seem more polarized than ever before. At the heart of this collection of portraits is my desire to remind us that we were all equal, until our environment, circumstances or fate molded and weathered us into whom we have become.

Via

John Parminter

Having recently spent a couple of weeks up in the Lake District, I obviously can’t get enough of the region and was thinking abou