Permajet have produced a test pack containing my favourite papers if you want to give them a try. The pack contains 11 x A4 sheets of; Photo Lustre 310 (3), Titanium Lustre 280 (3), FB Gold Silk 315 (2), FB Distinction 310 (2). It costs £6.75. People attending my printing workshop get a pack free (& an A3 mounted print).
About a year ago I decided that I needed to develop my photography further than just taking images and entering competitions - it was already beginning to feel like it wouldn’t be enough to keep me fully focussed.
For several years in my 30s I worked in training and it’s a period in my life that still holds fond memories - helping people develop is a great feeling. So I decided I’d do the same with my photography and adopted the strapline “Decoding the Image Puzzle” . That’s my objective - to show how I plan, shoot & process my images. Lectures, workshops, behind the scenes videos, processing tutorials are all part of this. I have no end game in sight, I’m certainly not trying to develop a business, but I’m finding this new angle to my photography is really keeping me engaged. No longer is it enough to just get the shot because now I need to think about how I’ll demonstrate the process to others. I’ve received lots of help myself over the last 5 years so if I can help anyone else, however small the contribution, that will be reward enough.
Anyway, enough of my rambling - here’s my YouTube Channel - this is my main outlet for showing how I go about things. If you subscribe you’ll get notifications whenever I post new videos.
Yesterday I was back in the pool for the very first shoot of a brand new project which I’m calling Water Dance. The idea is to try to create the impression of a model standing on water, using high speed flash to capture water droplets which she / he will either kick up themselves - or we might throw it at them! As with any new shoot in the pool the technicalities of the set-up gobble up shoot time. We were there for 3 hours & only got 30 minutes shoot time, but I’m used to this based on my experience of shooting the Serenity project. Here’s a little video showing you the set-up & one of the first trial images. All the flashes are battery powered so there’s no chance we’ll electrocute our model! I’ll post the development of the project, including all the highs & lows, here as I go along. I love projects as a way of focussing the mind to create a vision, but I’ll admit they always frighten me too, because after all this effort we might fail (it’s happened before). Nevertheless, it’s still really exciting to be back in the pool.
I did my third platform diving shoot at Ponds Forge last Saturday. This is the most technical shoot I’ve organised to date & involves me triggering 4 remote flashes from 70m away in the stands. I shoot at 1/2500s to freeze the water droplets so I need to use High Speed Sync for the flashes. I’m an engineer by background so if I’m honest the technical side fascinates me - I think I almost get as much pleasure from sorting out the technical issues as I do from taking the photographs! Anyway, all went well. Massive thanks to the girls & boys (& parents) of Sheffield Diving Club.
Sport is my favourite photographic genre and I’ve really enjoyed putting this new lecture together. It covers tennis, whitewater canoeing, horse jumping, athletics, squash, boxing & speedskating plus brief details on nine other sports that I’ve found don’t suit me (photographically that is). It’s a roadmap of how I’ve got the ‘in’, technical issues, camera settings and some processing examples. It seemed to go down pretty well, I certainly enjoyed delivering it. More details here.
If you’re interested in how I process my images you might want to take a look at a 12 minute video I’ve added to my YouTube channel. I take you step by step through the Photoshop layers in working up the image below, plus some of my thinking behind why I processed it that way.
The 170kg Lift
