Where my photos are

My partner and I visited Iceland some years ago now and I spent the whole time running around trying to capture it all, which meant that, for quite a while, I thought that I’d got nothing at all.

I’ve come to realise that photography only ever catches a glimpse of the whole, and in this respect Shoreline does a reasonable job.

This is from a brief trip to Porto during 2018 - it has the sense of life and decay that you get there and in Lisbon - the heat in the flame-orange and the crumbling character of many a building there.

It could also be a satellite shot of the landscape.

During this visit to John Hooton’s Dingle bolt-hole we returned repeatedly to this view where I shot and shot and shot.

I’d have more patience now and maybe only come back with dozens rather than hundreds of photographs - I’m spending more time looking at Live View because I’ve got a better idea of what I’d end up doing in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Overstrand, Norfolk UK in the summer of 2018.

A quick trip up to the coast in and around Cromer, which rarely disappoints.

There are quite a few white layers, gaussian and motion blur layers here and not a little masking - all my favourite wastes of time.

There’s a nod needed to Irene Froy.

The Avenue, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK

I’m quite proud of this - wandering around the college backs it was feeling like one of those trips that end in large amounts of asking myself ‘why did I take this/these?’ and ‘pass the delete button’.

When I looked up to the sky I knew what this image could look like and here it is.

There are some things in nature that beg to be photographed and the Silver Birch has to one of those.

Architectural and elegant, simple and complex.

Which ones to shoot is the key - no point in trying to get them all, you lose the plot in the looking later.

Pastelaria Portuguesa, Warwick, UK

To evoke Lou Reed, there was something perfect about this weekend: a day’s workshop with Irene Froy (“Photoshop My Way”), dinner with friends and then poached eggs on Portuguese bread.

I nipped into the toilet and these flower were caught in the early Sunday light. As the man said, “my favourite camera is the one in my pocket” and I took this with my iPhone.

Several hours of Froy later I had this and, now, so do the cafe owners.

From the Greenwich Observatory, London.

An example of looking elsewhere; anyone who’s been here knows that it’s going to be rammed much of the year (pace Mr Heaton, I know that we are not stuck in traffic but are, ourselves, traffic).

The trick here was to look around.

My take on titles is that they are the author’s opportunity to suggest a possible point of view.

From the lower deck of the Luís I Bridge in Porto local boys leap into the Douro. It’s high enough to be dangerous.

I’m not sure about the story - I was told that they did it as a right of passage - it’s clear that they do it now to extract a Euro or two from the tourists who crowd around the Vila Nova de Gaia bank to take photos.

I saw these two from the deck and took the shot before I knew any of this - I liked the silhouettes.

My title plays on them looking from right to left - looking back in Western literary terms - suggests that they are looking to their past and, if they jump, they will then be looking forward.

But you’d needn’t read this description to get any of this - I just liked the silhouette.

Viking Bay, Broadstairs, Kent, UK

At the south end of the bay and just opposite the Clock Tower is a sea pool, and a marker and a bird - or at least all three were there when I opened the shutter. Not sure if it was raining though.

Norwich University of the Arts, UK

I love visiting galleries and museums - not for what’s on display as much as for the setting and, sometimes, the way visitors engage with what they find.

After a rewarding visit to the 2018 Undergraduate show I spotted a light-fitting and captured the start of this image with my iPhone.

And then I played around in Photoshop until I had this. When I saw it hanging in the exhibition I realised that I should have been brave enough to remove much more of the grey and use more of the white of the paper.

Much is made of the 11th image but there’s precious little advice other than having outside images that look in - maybe you only know it when you see it - the best advice we received was to print out a bunch of postcard size versions and play puzzles with them.

This is how the advisors advised and who was I to argue.

Love Cromer!

Love skies as well although I have to say that I have overdosed a little in the past. This is a classic view from the steps in front of the unlikely-named Hotel de Paris, which I can confirm is well-worth a visit and a stay - there is a whiff of Basil and Sybil about the place.

I spent a long time cleaning up the chewing gum on the splendid compass surround, to such an extent that, in the right light, it seems to bow out of the image.

The best advice I got was probably from Ann Miles when preparing my CPAGB - “go back and do it again”.

Early on it’s very easy to think that all the hours you put in working on an image must mean that you’ve got to the end. That’s quite possibly when you need to get started.

The old saying that you have to be ‘in it to win it’ proved its point when I sent three landscapes to Advanced Photography and got one of those ‘congratulation’ emails from editor Will Cheung.

Even better I got to spend an evening and morning with Will and two other winners photographing at Flamborough Head.

A word of warning though - that sky caused some discussion amongst the assessors and more than some anxiety in and around my vicinity.

A winter’s evening walk in and around Norwich - low angle, widish angle, slower shutter and, best of all, wet roads.

There’s a lot of work in this image cleaning, de-cluttering and polishing - I’m not one for straight-out-of-camera.

I love the Humber Bridge - you could see it emerging behind my grandparent’s house In Hessle and it towers over the local foreshore.

The structure is something to behold but its on a massive scale and the when I saw the hooded lad strolling into shot it seemed a good idea to wait and include him.

I was grateful also for the rather bland sky - you can have too much of any good thing.

Well the umbrella’ed figure and the dog are from Edinburgh, the shelter and the sky are in Cromer, the cyclist is from a Home Counties airfield and the seagull flew in from Cornwall.

It sort of hangs together, was fun making and breaks some rules.

This is a very early shot taken at the Edinburgh Fringe - so early that I didn’t realise that this person was one of the many who make some of their income by getting into the dressing up box for our entertainment; maybe that explains the sad demeanour.

Coming back to this tested my PS skills and I’m slowly learning to get a better shot in the first place.

Yes I know - it’s not a great title and I really shouldn’t be reminding myself about Chris De Burgh’s chart-bothering efforts.

Studio portraiture often means that someone else arranges the model, suggests a look and then sets up the lighting. Then we turn up, they assist with camera setting and we open the shutter.

If I brought anything to this it was to imagine her as a character from an old oil painting and get her to turn profile, something that most models wouldn’t let you do - they would really like to get more work and not be seen like this.

So a big thanks to all who set this up, and especially to the model.

This is one of the first shots where I saw what the image could be as I saw the scene and I took the shot without pausing. It was also an early example of realising just what a resource exhibitions and galleries are for people-watching.

I owe a big thank-you to Nick Kendle for looking at my early clean-up efforts and remarking that he would probably take out the door-handles and hinges, which I duly did and then some.

It also taught me the lesson that you can go from silver medal at a PAGB championship to 6/10 within a matter of weeks - beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The perceptive reader may spot that I’m happy to borrow my titles from popular music.

This is a composite built around shots of a dancer, again at the Edinburgh Fringe - her gesture in the original shot suggested the title.

All I needed was someone that she would be signalling to and the Harlequin makes a handy return.

The background is from my catalogue of iPhone texture and odd room shots.

Another grab-shot in a gallery - I hope I manage to anonymise my unwilling subjects sufficiently not to cause concern or embarrassment.

I guess what attracts me is an instant sense of story suggested by the setting and the pose. For me this unhappy is the recipient of unwelcome news via the ever-present mobile phone. She was on her own and sat right at the end of the bench as if unsure she should be there.

It wasn’t a technically accomplished grab-shot - they often aren’t - and I spent a long time cleaning up the museum space (no intended slur on the Museum of Scotland, it’s well-worth a visit).

Ideas for images come from many sources and this was suggested by Sometimes on the James album ‘Laid’. It tells the story of a boy,

“On a flat roof
Leaning against a wall of rain
Aerial held high
Calling "Come on thunder
Come on thunder!"

Clare and I went to Cephalonia for a holiday that definitely wasn’t a photo-holiday but I still had my little Canon compact, just in case. In the early evening of most days we were treated to storm clouds, which I could'n’t resist trying to capture.

The boy, naturally enough for my early days of photography, was a performer out on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. He was helping to sell his show by offering tasters of what an audience would experience if they were willing to pay for a ticket. Ever the trouper his show went on whilst we all gathered under whatever shelter was to hand and avoided the downpour

So, when I needed someone to play the hero of my image I called him up, organised a studio and got my shot.

Of course I didn’t - I cut him out of my record shot, gave him a second out-stretched arm and put him in front of the gathering storm.

Here in Castelo De Vide, Portugal is a local indoor market - inside I didn’t like taking people shots when they were frankly right in front of me but just outside I saw this old gent leaving.

Some images don’t work as both exhibition entries (CPAGB) as well as panel entries (LRPS) but this one did.

This also crossed over from my CPAGB to the LRPS and they kept the print as part of their exemplar material. My good friend Hunter Kennedy said that he sees this occasionally when he sits on a PAGB panel.

It was an early, successful use of Irene Froy’s white and soft-blur layers - it’s also a slight composite in that I moved the cyclist into the action from the same general scene.

I’ve done a few studio shoots and they’ve always been both challenging and interesting. I realised early on that I actually prefer the unguarded moment when the model is not posing - technically they yield poorer results as the flash-triggers are off and the ISOs have to be high.

I really struggled with this session and couldn’t think of anything to ask the model to do - I think I fell back on my standard ‘look past my left shoulder’. I nearly gave up on the set of images but happened to zoom in so that only half the face was in frame leaving a lot of messy negative space to the right. Following my tendency to simplify I pretty much removed the whole of the back ground and ran to mono.

It was Clare who suggested colour and I put this back playing on the baby-pink and baby-blue contrast.

One competition judge gave me 11/10 - the image nearly sank my CPAGB.

My attempt a a gnarly, grizzled, ‘this face has seem some life’ street portrait.

I took the main subject with my 70-300 at the World Pipe Band Championships and, as I was leaving, ragged the background nest to the carpark in the Barrowlands are of Glasgow. Back home it seemed obvious that they belonged together. Getting the relative sharpness and contrast was interesting as well as masking around the subject’s eyebrows and lashes.

Funnily enough I saw him a few years later in the same setting and he had definitely seen some more life.

More Edinburgh subjects transported to a Norfolk Skyline.

Sometimes it tales ages to find what I want to do with the elements that I keep being drawn back to.

This feels like a very old image - this and others like it taught me a lot about how to do things in Photoshop and also what not to do. Although I still happily move elements in and out of my images I’m rarely looking for anything as dramatic as I was with this one.

This was more or less the composition that I saw from the north bank of the Thames when I first saw the magnificent Shard. I then took a very long time to sort it out.

I’m drawn to contrasting elements and this worked on a few levels: nature and the built-environment; dark and ominous versus light and shiny; water and sky (which I seem to remember really taxed my nascent Photoshop skills at the time).

This is one of the first shots where I saw what the image could be as I saw the scene and I took the shot without pausing. It was also an early example of realising just was a resource exhibitions and galleries are for people-watching.

I owe a big thank-you to Nick Kendle for looking at my early clean-up efforts and remarking that he would probably take out the door-handles and hinges, which I duly did and then some.

It also taught me the lesson that you can go from silver medal at a PAGB championship to 6/10 within a matter of weeks - beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I’m a big fan of simplicity in an image - maybe that’s becuse I don’t like clutter or maybe it’s because I just can’t organise many elements.

This is from our trip to Broadstairs in 2018 and it’s even simpler than one of these that I showed last year.

Another from 2018 in Kent - what is it about decay that attracts photographers? I’m not particularly a fan of old buildings - I prefer the energy of glass and steel. But I really enjoy the shape of an old boat and texture of dry wood and peeling paint.

I felt particularly lucky to get this lovely old vessel under a sky that seems to mirror the kind of sea that the boat and it’s crew would have worked in.

We’re fortunate to live on an island with relatively easy access to the changing sea.

This is just off Yarmouth when we were due to see a Blood Moon. When it was clear that the mist was going to scotch a lunar view we just sat by the edge of a wonderfully still evening looking east taking long exposure shots of the sea and one of the many Wind Farms we have.

I’m a big fan of these giants - I enjoy the lumbering motion and the elegance of the structure and the thought that they’re giving us power with burning something.

Earlier this year we spent sometime in both Denmark and then Sweden - this image was taken is in Gothenberg.

What struck me as I looked up was the contrast between new and old - they’re not really the same size - it’s that wonderful trick of perspective. I like to leave the verticals to converge because that’s what I see - I’m even happy to accentuate the crazy angles and underline the sense of scale and just how dwarfed I felt.

The light was particaulrly helpful on that day - details in the sky but good enough to help capture the contrasting details and stucture.

Not that you’d know it but this is in Spain - Malaga - where they have a rather eccentric museum to cars and fashion.

I wasn’t feeling very inspired - some of the shiney details and surfaces of the cars were rather lovely, if a little difficult to capture.

And then there was this odd juxtaposition - who new that a legendary member of the American automotive industry had been reduced to maintaining the small boys room?

This is what becomes of messing about with a camera., or forgetting to update settings to suit a changing light.

The Catedral de la Encarnación de Málaga is a splendid building and looked doubly-so in the late-evening light. Late-evening light is also a little darker and needs more ISO or a slower shutter speed. What I got was blur.

So, to quote Brian Eno, I “honour[ed] accident… as hidden intention” and pushed further in that direction.

I emphasised the verticality of the building and smeared the fellow-tourists into ghostly figures - if an old cathedral can’t attract or harbour the spectral then what building can.

In Cordoba there you’ll find La Mezquita, a quite extraordinary buidling, which I believe houses another later interloper from a rival culture.

To be honest I was rather overcome by the place (or was it dehydration) and so wandered around playing with longer exposures.

I guess this is a variation of trying to represent something through a peculiar detail or possibly an atmosphere.

I could see that my efforts were accentuating the orange tones of the walls and arches and when the chap with the turquoise shirt walked into view I must admit to having stalked him a little until the basis of this images appeared - or was it that he was becoming irked by my camera.

This one took a fair amount of tidying up in PS and not a little direction from the good folk of First Monday.

Our last evening in Malage found us back down the waterfront enjoying the late, warm light,

Once again (and this may becoming a theme) I forgot to keep an eye on the changing light levels. I was far more interested in the young lad practising his bike-skills. Having already watch one hop and skip down the stone steps I cursed myself for letting it happen whilst I had my camera by my side. I casually kept an eye on his wanderings noy wanting to alert him to my interest and when he headed back to the steps I lifted my camera and tracked him over the edge.

I’m sure that the pin-sharp, fast-shutter version of this would have been a good shot. But I’m very happy that my shutter-speed was still set for the stronger light of earlier.

As one of the visitors to the exhibition said, “the image wouldn’t work without the boat”.

Given that I have reduced the boat to not much more than a few white pixels that’s a gratifying thought - thanks Tanya.

This is a detail from our trip to Dingle a few years ago.

If I were looking at this from under my judge’s cap I’d praise the simple composition, the diagonal that separates the contrasting blue and orange tones, and the retained detail in the blurred water.

You don’t need a big shot to give you an idea of what was happening.

It’s just struck me that you don’t need a setting sun to get the sense of what light can be doing as it plays across a set of receding hills.

This is an early shot for me (2012) and taken on our return later in the day to Castlerigg. The stones themselves are a fine subject and were benefitting from low side-light but then I looked north west and saw this.

I have flattened out the details and emphasised the graphic nature of the image - I remember taking a long time to decide on a crop that encapsulated the scene and balanced the shapes.

A variant on the scene above with added tree silhouette - makes a lovely print on Permajet Art Silk (and no, sadly, I’m not sponsored by them, or by Canon or Espon or Lee Filters…)

This image won me one of a crop of club trophies some years ago and somebody liked it so much in the exhibition that they bought it - wonderful to think of it having a resonance with someone else and it hanging on a wall somewhere.

It’s a highly polished version of the orginal image but, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, we make images as much as take them.

If you’re interested in what I did get in touch and I’ll tell you :)

What happens when you’ve just discovered layers in PS and are dying to try it out? Find two contrasting images and play.

Add a few years into the mix and it may just jump out as worthy of a print, frame and mount for your exhibition.

I love the care and attention that these stallholders appear to be giving to their produce - it’s a bit cheeky to highlight the Nutella but, hey, it’s right there in the frame and whichever way I cropped this I couldn’t keep the activity and lose the jar.

In the midst of the to-and-fro of a station I noticed these two greeting each other. I tried a square crop to focus on the subjects but, ultimately, I think including some of the context underscores the privacy of the moment.

I guess if you have a sharp knife in your hand you would pay carefull attention. There’s a line in one of Clive James’ memoirs where he notes that an Italian family cafe’s profitability could depend on the ripeness or otherwise of a solitarity tomato.

Certainly I’m an advocate of ‘waste-not-want-not’ and I guess that applies to fingers as well as ingredients.

It’s not really about the lovely tray of Portuguese custard tarts but I am partial - I’d like to say that, after getting the shot, I bought a pie but maybe I didn’t want to interupt the phone call.

Hmm - I played around with this a lot and can’t now think why I went mono - as I recall the reds and greens of this image were quite pleasing. There are times when judging when I query the photographer’s choice of mono for what should be a colourful scene - maybe this one slipped through on that count.

I guess we can’t escape news these days - personal or universal, good or bad - it tends to follow us into every moment if we let it.

This could have been a tighter crop but I included the clip and fabric as it says something about the temporary, adapted nature of the stalls - I hope that this couple are still there but it’s quite possible that someone else is now offering something else in a different configuration of elements.

Frankly I couldn’t think of a title for this but wanted to include it anyway. It’s close cropped but the shot doesn’t include whoever the main subject is responding to. Sometimes it’s what we don’t see as well as (or maybe rather than) what we do that hooks us in.

I love the play of light in this shot - it’s tempting/expected to deal with backgound highlights that can seen as distractions but, in scenes like these, they can explain how and where the light comes from.

It may be an old adage but it’s as true as it ever was.

I used a open aperture to pick out the stallholder and her attention to detail - everything else receeds quite nicely.

The crop also picks out the almost circular nature of her motion - carefully moving the half-wrap into place alonside it’s companion. We don’t get to see the end result - just the implied care being taken.

Another shot where what caught my eye was the precision of movement involved here - this assembly of sausages isn’t being thrown together.

Although the shot was taken quickly it took time during this visit for me to get into the rhythm of events - the choreography if you like - and spot what was likely to happen.

It then takes time to think about the presentation of the image - something that comes with having done it many times before and usually fail.

From the far side of the street I saw this moment evolving. It’s a sequence of stills that I didn’t capture but this was the moment when the story (or at least my version of it) is there.

Two people together but really rather apart. One expression we can see and one that we can’t - body language that only we can read and a relationship that isn’t clear. It’s the sort of image that I can look at again and again so, for me, it’s a successful one.

This is pretty much the first image I ever made of something moving at speed. Gaining a track-side position from which to shoot the action also taught me just how fast the riders are pushing their bikes.

My image folder from that day is a testament to how long it took me to get up to speed but also, once I did, it shows that I managed to take away most of that very thing I wanted to show. I ended up with a series of reasonable but definitely static motorbikes.

This image shows what can happen when you forget to update your settings.

I was walking in a well-lit area in early evening just seeing what there was to photograph so I chose Aperture Priority and got a series of technically proficient but dull images.

I spotted this cyclist practicising his tracks and thought I might get something interesting. Not wanting to put him off I strolled toward the steps and kept him in my peripheral vision.

As he moved toward the steps I brought up my camera and caught him just as he went over the edge. What I hadn’t done was to check my settings to compensate for the darker conditions here. The camera had faithfully prioritised aperture and opened the shutter for longer.

What I got was what I wanted.

This is a young lad showing off his bike skills at Silverstone hoping that one of the teams will decide that he’s a clear replacement for when Lewis Hamilton hangs up his removable steering wheel.

It’s an ok shot but I wanted to create a sense of the energy going into his wheelie so I’ve been playing with Motion Blur layers in PS.

There are a number of these shots on my Cromer ICM page - it’s another step on my exploration of the Indecisive Moment.

This is a well-known haunt for photographers - there’s something about tunnels and stairs that atracts us and it’s popularity means that we all try to do different with it. I. had spent some time at the bottom virtually lying on my back to get the whole thing in from underneath.

Having exhausted that option I thought I moved further up and waited for someone to walk through my frame. You can’t really use a tripod here but the stair rail helped.

Then it’s just a case of setting an appropriate exposure time and waiting.