Archive for August, 2007
Light pollution at Hilton Harbour
Thu Aug 16th - 1:56am
I wonder what the people at the end of my street thought if they looked out of their window at midnight and saw me popping a flash at some lobster creels, then standing still for the best part of two minutes, apparently doing nothing. Well here's the answer, a 100-second exposure looking out over the harbour, with the flash fired from behind the creels and over to the left to create some separation between foreground and background. The ambient colour was actually a lot more red than this, I toned it down in Photoshop to make it easier on the eyes.
Click to view it larger, it looks better that way.
Here are a couple of other shots I did before that one. Even in daylight at low tide I don't like going down to the water at this harbour. I think it's the height of the harbour wall which makes the place feel very dangerous to someone who isn't a strong swimmer. But for some reason I decided to walk down there tonight, right down to the water, in almost total darkness as the tide was coming in. First picture is all ambient, second is ambient with a flash fired from over to the right.
Canoe and rainbow
Mon Aug 13th - 1:13am
It might be a canoe or it might be a kayak, I'm never sure, but that's definitely a rainbow. Photo taken on Sunday evening from the end of my garden. I'd just missed the other end of the rainbow and then this end appeared even bigger and bolder. And right on cue, someone in a canoe!
Looking for the eye-catchers
Sun Aug 12th - 2:30am
We had our village gala today which happens at the harbour so most of the events are somehow connected to water: Sandcastle competition, swimming and diving, raft race, etc. I've photographed this event twice before and both times it was great fun but afterwards I felt I could have done more.
So this year I had three goals: Get the shots for the local newspapers, get pictures of as many participants as possible for the village newsletter, and look for something abstract and eye-catching that could — if it's a strong enough image — make its way into one of the nationals. (In this case, aiming for the P&J.)
Here's what I came up with. This first image is from the diving competition, showing an upside-down view of someone's legs which are also reflected in silhouette.
This is a young boy who really wanted to take part in the diving competition but he couldn't quite convince himself to do it. Can't blame him!
And finally this one shows one of the diving-for-plates contestants swimming back to the surface. I'm not 100% sure but I think this might have been the lad who won the competition, which is a stroke of luck as very few of these underwater shots worked. It's so difficult to focus on people while they're beneath the surface.
For any local folks reading, I'll post the usual selection of photos from the day once the papers have had chance to use them.
Three out of three!
Fri Aug 10th - 7:02pm
Completed the hat-trick today with the third pic from the music workshop finding a home on the front page of the Ross-shire Journal.
It's worth mentioning that when I sent this in I made a point of telling them that I'd previously offered it to the P&J but they'd used a different pic. There aren't any 'rules' about this sort of thing but personally I think it's a common courtesy to always let a paper know if you've previously submitted a pic elsewhere.
Honesty = best policy 'n' all that
Tip: Lens cap = incident meter
Thu Aug 9th - 10:10pm
Cameras base their auto-exposure on reflective metering, which is unreliable. Light meters are much more reliable as they use incident metering. Here's a quick-n-easy way to use your camera as a makeshift incident meter.
First of all you will need to know how to use your camera's manual mode, and how to select different metering modes. Flick the camera into manual and select whatever aperture you want to use. Now find something black such as your wallet, an item of clothing or your camera's lens cap.
If you've got a spot meter on your camera then this next step is easy. Simply switch to spot metering, hold your black object in front of whatever you want to photograph, and set your shutter speed to under-expose by 2 stops. Get rid of the black object and take your picture.
If your camera doesn't have spot metering then it might have partial metering which is effectively a less precise spot meter. Use that, just make sure your black object covers at least the middle 10% of the frame. Then it's the same procedure: Under-expose by 2 stops and take your picture.
If you only have full-frame metering then you'll need to make sure you use a black object large enough to cover the whole frame, but keep it far enough away from the camera that you won't cast a shadow on to it.
When you use this technique you're actually using the zone system, and you're showing your camera what zone 3 should look like. Zone 3 is defined as being where dark objects with texture belong. When you spot meter your black object, your camera has no idea if it's black, white or grey, so by default it goes in to zone 5. When you under-expose by 2 stops you place it in zone 3. Then when you take your picture you'll have a correct exposure. If the blacks are in the right zone then everything else must be too.
This technique has much the same strengths and weaknesses as an incident light meter. It won't be fooled by the brightness (or darkness) of the object you want to photograph. But it doesn't work very well for large scenes such as landscapes.
For example, in these two pictures, the lighting across the whole scene is consistent so the overall exposure appears correct:
But in this scene, although the rocks in the foreground are correctly exposed, the metering hasn't taken the background into account so the image appears to be over-exposed. There may be times when this would be exactly the effect you want, but more often than not it won't be.
Music workshop pic in North Star
Thu Aug 9th - 5:54pm
It's been a good week in the newspapers for the Sellers family with Reuben in the P&J on Monday and then Lorelei and Evangeline in the North Star today.
Canon 1D Mk3 auto-focus problems
Thu Aug 9th - 5:22pm
Rob Galbraith has a detailed report on the Canon 1D Mk3 auto-focus problems. Latest news was added today on the last page of the article.
Makes you wonder what Canon is playing at nowadays. First we had the Mk2 producing soft images, an issue that was patched to some extent but only fully resolved with the Mk2-N. Now the Mk3 doesn't focus properly and people are already talking about waiting for the hypothetical Mk3-N before upgrading.
Law does not provide “a press-free zone for children”
Tue Aug 7th - 5:54pm
Did you know that someone can take a photo of your child, without your permission and against your wishes, and sell it to newspapers? No, neither did I. But a judge has struck a double-whammy by making both the press and the law look bad in today's ruling against JK Rowling. From the BBC news report:
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has lost a High Court action seeking to ban the publication of a picture of her son.
The photo showed Rowling pushing David, who was 20 months old at the time, in a buggy on a street in Edinburgh.
The author complained that David's right to privacy had been infringed and sought to prevent future publication.
The judge said the law did not provide celebrities with "a press-free zone for their children in respect of absolutely everything they choose to do".
Roughly 75% of the photos I do for newspapers involve children, and I always need to get releases from parents, which is usually done in advance by the school or event organiser. No release, no picture. So why should it make a difference that the child's parent is a celebrity?
All this child protection stuff used to seem over-protective to me. But thanks to these paparazzi bozos I now agree with it absolutely.
There are thousands, maybe millions of photogs around the world who firmly believe that a parent's right to protect their child outweighs the photog's right to make a living selling pictures. It's obvious that that's how it should be. But it seems that if the parent has a job that sometimes puts them in the public eye, and the photog has had a common courtesy bypass, then the law is quite happy to look the other way and to hell with what's in the kid's best interests.
Conclusion of a masterpiece
Tue Aug 7th - 2:08am
Yeah that's right, I said masterpiece! 
Modesty aside, I really do think this is my finest photograph to date. I've posted it before (here) but that version was, with hindsight, badly processed. This is the full-on 20+ hour processing job ready for printing at A2. Seeing it small on a computer screen can't do it justice. I printed it at 13" x 19" yesterday and it was jaw-droppingly beautiful. I can only imagine how good the A2 print will be.
The goal throughout the processing was subtlety, quite the opposite of how I originally envisioned the picture, and this final version is silky smooth and understated. When I first processed it I wanted to emphasise the dramatic lighting. But I realised that the best way to present this picture is to keep everything subdued and allow its strongest aspect, the composition, to shine through. On screen it doesn't hit you over the head in the same way that the original version did, but on paper it's… dare I say awesome?
And for good measure, here's the final version of the other portrait from the same session. I have to say that I think this picture looks quite poor on screen, and even the A5 test prints looked cheap. But it was processed to look good when viewed as a large print and at 13" x 19" it looks amazing. You don't even want to know how long this one took to process. Heck I don't even want to think about it. Way too long.
Music workshop pic in Press & Journal
Mon Aug 6th - 11:57am
Got my first 'proper' pic in the P&J today. Hurrah! I've had one in before but that was done for a community project so the co-ordinator paid for the pic and then the paper got it for free. This was the first time I've sent a pic on spec and had it used.
It was from a music workshop that I photographed for the organiser. I didn't think I'd got any good newsy-type pics but then this one jumped out of the screen at me. As soon as I saw it I thought it was great P&J material.
As I've mentioned before it's always a good idea to send more than one photo, so I picked out this next one and sent it too. And this is the one they used! I do prefer the one of the girl, and even the boy's mother thought the paper would use that one, but it's worth repeating that if your goal is to get your photos published then you should provide more than one option whenever possible.
