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Standing tall
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
-Herman Hesse,Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte.
Surrey Hills
A view of Surrey, looking South from St. Martha’s Hill.
Messing about in boats
Still on an Autumn tack, I thought I’d share some seasonal shots of the different craft that can be found along the Wey Navigation in Weybridge.
Situated on the confluence of the Thames and the Wey, and with the Wey Navigation running through it as well, Weybridge has a lot of watercraft, of all shapes and sizes.
I am mostly content to admire them from the towpath, however.
Of course, there could only ever be one quotation for this post:
Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Late Autumn lingers
Our very late Autumn this year has given so many opportunities to get out with the camera, I’ve hardly been able to keep up with downloading the images! These shots are from my outing last week with Jenifer Bunnett. She found this beautiful set of fishing lakes, Frensham Trout Fisheries, and, apart from a solitary fisherman, we had them to ourselves.
The presence of a waterfall was fortuitous as I had only just the day before taken delivery of my new Lee Filters!
I had a lot of fun experimenting with my five filters: the 105mm circ. polariser, .6 hard grad, .9 soft grad, .9 pro glass and Big Stopper. The good news was that I had remembered all I had learned on the workshop ten days earlier.
The bad news was the circ. polariser created a horrible vignette when I used it with my 16-35mm lens at 16-20mm. Hugely disappointing as that is my lens of choice for landscape work. I was advised to use my 24-105mm on the course so this problem did not come up then. 😦
Dartmoor Six
I had fun putting together this set of moody black and white landscapes taken on Dartmoor on New Year’s Day. I hope you like it.
The little iron church
The tiny, corrugated iron, ‘mission’ church of St. George is in the hamlet of West End, near Esher in Surrey. It was built in 1879 on land given by Queen Victoria so that the poor labourers of the village might be able to worship without the steep, muddy climb into Esher. Despite its temporary nature, the church, which overlooks the cricket green, is currently 134 not out!
Many thanks to my friend, Tony Antoniou, who kindly popped round yesterday to re-calibrate my monitor and at the same time showed me how to get better results from the HDR facility in Photoshop CC. This photo is my first effort using the tool properly. Tony is a talented photographer with a flair for environmental portraits and image manipulation. Do pop over and have a look at his website.
Inevitably green
Clearing out old files, still, I came across some shots of greenfly from May and June and thought they made a set of greedy, green, garden pests. With apologies to all the gardeners out there.
A couple of these shots are as much if not more about the background than the aphids themselves.
They are a little bit pretty seen singly like this? Not convinced? 😉
Over on my Facebook page I am giving away a 2014 calendar to one winner chosen on Monday next week from those who nominate a Surrey beauty spot. Do visit if you’re local. I am planning to compile a list of nominated Surrey locations to photograph in 2014, with a view to making a 2015 calendar from the best images.
The Shed Gallery
Seeing your work exhibited has to be one of the greatest thrills available in photography. Liberated from the hard drive, your images come to life, and take on new meaning as they resonate with the other exhibited images. People actually come to see them, and contemplate them, in real time, and not just because they want you to visit their blog/photostream/FB page/twitter feed. Well hung, a collection of images becomes a body of work. And, let’s face it, exhibiting your own work is just plain cool.
Staging an exhibition is a huge undertaking, and not just in terms of the obvious challenges: deciding on your image criteria (theme, style etc), choosing your best images, getting them printed to an exhibition standard, mounting and framing and making an aesthetically pleasing hanging plan. Obviously, you have to find a venue. Then, depending on your venue, you have to think about publicity, stewardship and pricing (if your work is for sale). As that last point hints, it’s not a cheap project either. Just a little bit of research locally has led me to conclude that a solo exhibition is going to cost well into four figures. And the harsh reality is that most exhibiting photographers fail to sell enough prints even to begin to make a significant dent in all that investment.
Yet, this year I have had the pleasure of having images exhibited in three (soon to be four) prestigious exhibitions. Am I broke now? No, because last Autumn I joined The Shed Gallery. I was on holiday in Lyme Regis, on Dorset’s beautiful Jurassic Coast, when I came across an exhibition at The Malthouse. The images were all printed on aluminium, which gave the exhibition an edgy, current vibe, and worked well in the space. I also liked the way the photography mingled with original pieces of art, paintings and sculptures, giving an added layer of texture and interest. The exhibition was by The Shed Gallery, and I got chatting to one of its owners, Chelsea Davine, herself a talented artist and photographer. The Shed is an online gallery specialising in aluminium prints. There are plenty of ways of selling photography on-line but The Shed offers the added benefit of staging real exhibitions of selected works and also has hanging space in Chelsea’s Barcelona Gallery.
Since joining, I have had my work exhibited in London, Bristol and Lyme, and am delighted to be one of the featured photographers at a second exhibition in Lyme next month. I have more than recouped my membership fee in sales and I have had the pleasure of exhibiting without any of the effort or financial risk; Chelsea and her business partner Ben do all the work! In January, I attended the private view of The Shed’s Albion exhibition, at the Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery under The Tramshed restaurant in trendy Shoreditch. I mingled with celebrities sipping champagne and actually looking at my work! I have also met, either online or in person, some very nice people, and enjoyed some inspirational images.
Sadly, I can’t attend the winter exhibition as I will be in Australia, but if you are in Dorset between 17th December and 6th January, do consider popping into our exhibition. And if you want to know more about The Shed, just pop over to the website and have a look round, visit The Shed’s blog, or feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.
Still Autumn, just…
f/11, 1/25, ISO 100, 16mm, circ. polariser
There is a heavy hint of change in the air. The trees no longer bask in full Autumn glory. Instead, their leaves billow under the wheels of passing vehicles. Twice this week my day has begun with scraping frost from car windows. Staying out to photograph the sunset, my hands and feet became numb from the cold.
f/11, 1/15, ISO100, 16mm, circ. polariser
Perhaps in sympathy, it’s been all change in my digital life this week. I have finally downloaded Photoshop Creative Cloud and Lightroom 5. For photographers there’s a special subscription deal for just under £9 a month. That’s a huge discount, but hurry, it ends on 2nd December. It will take me a while to get to grips with Lightroom as I haven’t used it before but PS CC seems fairly intuitive, not too much of a leap from CS4.
One of the things that’s much improved from CS4 is the HDR facility. The image below is my first attempt. Just three exposures blended by PS CC. It’s certainly light years ahead of what CS4 would have produced but I’m still not sure about it. I had to tweak a lot to get it to look even vaguely natural. Perhaps it’s a good thing I have ordered some ND graduated filters so I can do it in camera instead!
f/16, 1/6, ISO 100, 16mm, circ. polariser
Just to make life even harder, I also upgraded my iMac operating system from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. It seems mostly familiar but for some inexplicable reason I now have to scroll in the opposite direction. Mighty confusing! There’s probably a setting I need to tick somewhere. (Scratches head bemusedly.)
And, just to add to it all, I have finally given up on Redbubble and am working on creating a new website with Photium. More on that soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these further images from my walk last week along the Wey Navigation towpath.
Focused Moments 