After a number of absent years I have decided to get out some more and upload more work. This blog will also get a make-over. Deforestation - quite a dramatic and interesting subject.

Large Format

17/02/09 - Firstly I would like to apologise for being too lazy to upload shots from my trip away, I will post them soon.

I finally used Large Format - the negative is 5x4" - BIG. I went to Beecraigs country park and over the period of about 2 hours i shot 2 subjects. I processed and scanned them.

Thank god for snow..

02/02/09 - I woke up to quite a fair bit of snow.. so i headed out as soon as i could, I love shooting in snow - its dead good.

I was only out for an hour or so but the weather changes were incredible. blue sky and white puffy clouds to blizzards with very low visibility, you cant predict it at all. I only photographed local areas, but it was surreal to see paths, plants, grass all blend into one another.

One of my photographs is in the style of Michael Kenna who is one of my favourite photographers - most of his work is very minimalistic in that he has a snow scene with a small area of woodland, or a telegraph pole to break up the emptiness. His work is incredibly technical and i wish i was able to create photographs with in film like he does.

Forth Rail Bridge...

01/02/09 - Yes.. out again on the same day! went to photograph the rail bridge from north Queensferry at night. These bridges are getting a bit boring, but i was really excited about doing some night shots. As usual... absolutely freezing and windy... You can't really go to the same place and get different shots so me and Tom got fairly similar shots, i had a slightly wider lens and managed to get an impressive amount of the bridge in.

Howden House 2

01/02/09 - I was kicking around the house bored. For a while i wanted to re photograph howden house with my new 28mm lens. So i waited for a horribly dull stormy day and made my move. When i was walking there i was bombarded with hail.. great. It was on and off for a while and i decided to stick it out - and out of no where, the sun came splitting through the trees - success. I am really happy with the outcome, moody and intense is what i wanted, and finally got!

Almondell Country Park

25/01/09 - Me and Tom went to Almondell Country Park. It was nice to get some fresh air.. it seemed to help the hangover. This weekend has been really busy, casino, party, pubs... so it was great to be able to spend some time photographing at Almondell.

Ive kept 2 of the 3 images in colour, which is becoming a rare sight.

High Key Portraiture..

19/01/09 - More College work, We were photographing Charlie for our 'High Key' portrait. She is fun to work with and a good laugh. She brought along Keith to do all the written work (model release forms...) and to carry the bags!

Myself, Tom and Marion all got shots we are happy with, which is always good. I have posted a few as well as a shot showing the amount of lighting involved.

Another cold morning...

18/01/09 - Apologies to Tom for sleeping in this morning. We went to Photograph some Aeroplanes and then went to the Forth Bridges. It was a nice light however the wind was pretty intense and it was bitterly cold. I got a few decent shots...

I have a shoot with Charlie tomorrow for college work so I will post that soon, Peace and Jam.

The end of a long week...

16/01/09 - I was invited to join Tom and Simon for a cup of coffee. I don't 'do' hot drinks so had a nice bottle of overpriced orange juice (with bits)

Before our meeting me and tom went for a quick shoot to pass the time, we went to Corston farm and got extremely cold and windswept. It is quite high up and you get a really good view of Livingston. You can see the shopping outlets, st johns, Howden park, my street - its great. I got a shot for college and then we stopped off at the old brick bridge that leads from howden to mid calder. I managed to get down the steep embankment without a fall, and got a shot of the bridge that I am quite happy with.

what a busy week.......

Peace and Protest

15/01/09 - Tom was photographing a demonstration at Bristo Square in Edinburgh for the Agency - The Protest was against Israel attacking Palestine so it was quite a political matter and I went along to get some experience of photographing such an event and to also see how some of the other photographers worked.

I soon realised you need to be very fast acting and good at running.

Here are a few of the shots showing the protesters.




'End the Siege of Gaza'

Wrap up Warm...

14/01/09 - After about 30 minutes of college I was already dying to go out and shoot. The weather was interesting....... it was cold, and there was a haze, but the sun was out and lighting up buildings, it was a very nice morning. Me and Tom went to the Reservoir in Eliburn. To my disappointment it appears houses are being built extremely close to it and there were workmen everywhere. But the water had frozen over and the sun was hitting the trees around the reservoir.

I converted my shot to black and white because there wasn't much colour in the original, and me being me pretty much convert everything to black and white.

El Guapo..

11/01/09 - Today i was doing some promotional photographs for a local band called El Guapo (soon to change tho i beleive)

I managed to wake up fairly hangover free after about 5 hours sleep only to hear the rain battering against the window and to see the trees facing horizontal, not the fairytale white puffy clouds i was hoping for.

I was lucky to have Tom and Keith assist me with my shoot, holding up the flashguns and giving me general advice and banter. I decided to go back to the old brick works in Pumpherston as it is a brilliant location.

I decided to stick to the 'normal' band type photographs (drummer at the back) and i am really pleased with the results. I cross-processed all of my images and apart from minor level adjustments and cropping haven't gone OTT with photoshop.

I also treated tom and keith to a mcdonalds as a thanks - i really appreciate your help guys!

Fine Art..

10/01/09 - Hungover and stuck in the house because of the rain i thought i would do some more fine art type photography.

My original idea was to have a wooden chopping board and an apple cropped to a square image and put into black and white. After a while of shooting i wasn't getting what i wanted and replaced with apple with a pair of scissors, something i have shot before in a similar manner. I decided to add a ball of string to give the shot more points of interest. I got the shot i wanted, but didn't like the ball of string, so it was back to the drawing board.

Eventually i though of cutting string and placing it next to the scissors and BINGO! it creates a nice balance and its exactly what i was looking for.

I used a small desk lamp to light the subject, to make the light a little softer i had the lamp facing away from the subject and held white paper in front of the light to reflect it. I had a bit of hassle trying to photograph and hold the paper but i guess thats just another great element of being a photographer.




1 - This is the camera on the tripod after i removed the centre column and put it in upside down. This allows me to have the camera facing directly down to the floor.

2 - This is the subject, sitting on a stool, there is about a 1 foot gap between the subject and the camera.

3 - This is the desk lamp facing away from the camera and subject. When shooting the image i had the other lights in the room turned off allowing me to control the lighting on the subject.

4 - This shows where i held the paper to reflect back onto the subject.

Looking through my camera on Live Mode;

Dull.. but interesting

07/01/09 - Second post of this year and i am a lot happier with these photographs. After a little while at college seeing folks and chatting to lecturers me and Tom headed out to Beecraigs country park to make the most of the mist. We both generally enjoyed shooting in the cold dull sunless conditions and felt like we were getting images not too dis-similar to Michael Kenna, a favourite photographer of mine.

I was shooting using a tripod of course, using a Cokin ( me and tom had a good laugh at the name) Graduated Density filter to keep the sky from burning out. It was a brilliant filter and i really see the benefit to using it as it creates a more even exposure.

I spent a bit of time turning the flat dull images into black and white photographs using my extended photoshop editing tools and managed to get results that i am very happy with.

Like my last upload i am hoping to use these image as part of my composition project, and failing that i might use a few in my portfolio. On some of the photographs i added a slight warm tone after desaturating the images.





I couldn't decide which crop i preferred so i included both.

Dull..

05/01/09 - First post of 2009, not particularly interesting, just some composition stuff for college. We have to produce 12 composition shots, 12 cafe culture shots and 12 architecture shots for a block and i will post up bits and bobs as i ago as well as posting personal stuff.

I decided to convert these to black and white simply because it was a horrible dull day and the light was pretty minging. These photographs were taken at south queensferry (you can only tell from the first image showing reflections of the rail bridge)

I thought it would be cool to not show photographs of the bridges as it gets a bit boring, or so i have been told by a certain college lecturer.

Low Key Portrait

19/12/08 - Today Me Tom and Sian booked Keith in to do some portraiture. Whilst suffering a major hang over i managed to get a part of my current portraiture module done. Using 1 Light to the right hand side of the subject I managed to get the shots i need. I decided to Cross-Process this shot because i feel it really works with the image, I like the mood of the image.

14/12/08 - I went to visit my family at the borders on Sunday. On the way I came across some brilliant (and grey) Scenes. I decided to use my new Photoshop techniques and convert these photographs into black and white using a channel mixer. I cropped the second image because it really suited it. Because of the dull cloudy day I had to push the cameras ISO to around 1000, this means i get a lot of grain but there is nothing wrong with that, especially in a black and white photograph.

Photoshop Techniques

15/12/08 - This evening has been very educational. Whilst browsing the web for tips on cross-processing my digital files in photoshop CS2 I came across a website ( www.thelightsrightstudio.com ) that offer free Photoshop Actions. These actions are very simple to use and allow you to edit photographs using weird and wonderfull techniques. There is a cross-processing action which allows you to replicate a technique used by colour negative/slide photographers who would deliberately process the film in the wrong chemicals to get extreme colours and weird effects. I also downloaded a plugin that allows me to convert colour photographs into black and white using filters to darken/lighten certain colours in the film when converting to black and white, the site even offers an action that replicates orthochromatic film ( thinking of Tom here ).

So i have decided to mess about with a selection of the effects on a portrait of my friend Colette from earlier this year.



The first image is the original, the second has been Cross Processed



The 3rd image has been converted with a Yellow and Green Filter, The 4th image has been converted using Infrared.



The 5th image has been converted to look like Orthochromatic film. The final image is the same as the 3rd image only with Split Toning.

30/11/08 - Today was a very cold frosty day, and with the right light can produce some spectacular conditions. I wasn't really in the mood for traveling far so i went to Howden Park - more for some practice in working with the sun setting. I took a number of photographs but theres only a few that i liked. One being this shot looking up the park with howden house obscured behind trees, and the second photograph is more of a fine art piece, looking at a leave and frosty grass.

Shoot with Charlie

9/11/08 - today was fantastic! Me and Tom went for a shoot with Charlie and the company of colin (monkey) it was chuffin cold but still a good laugh and a very productive session. This was my first experience with a Model and i was very impressed, i didn't actually have to direct charlie, she is full of charisma and poses (along with a suitcase and about 15 outfits) hopefully i will be able to work with her again in the near future.

It was great to see Tom at work and to assist him as well as getting a few snaps in myself. I have selected a handfull of the shots i like and will possibly use a few in my portfolio.

Today we were back at Pumpherston, which used to be a brick factory apparantly.