A quick trip to Mars, Lancashire
Puddles in a field, New Longton (Click to view larger) A little detour on a trip back from Lancashire earlier in the week found me at the entrance to the field above just as the sun was setting around 6pm. The countryside around these parts is rather flat and uninspiring and it was hard [...]
More from the Lake District
I had intended this post to be a follow on from last Tuesday’s “4 Photography gadgets I couldn’t be without“, and was going to focus on “4 iPhone photography apps that I couldn’t do without”. But I’ve just gone over to the darkside and got myself an Android, and I’m still finding my feet with [...]
Ambleside, the Lake District
Last week I made it up to the Lake District again, and although this time I was up there for less than 24 hours, it proved quite a productive trip. The light on the evening I arrived was good. Not great, [...]
4 Photography gadgets I couldn’t do without
A productive weekend’s shooting up in the Lake District got me thinking about 4 gadgets / tools that no landscape photographer should be without and that I consider to be invaluable to my craft. The first is a right-angle finder. It’s a little gizmo that clips onto my viewfinder and allows me to look perpendicularly [...]
Slideshow presentation
This morning I had to do a 10 minute presentation so I thought I’d share part of it with you today. I’ve had to tweak it a little for the web, including change the music which I feel makes it a little less effective. If you’re viewing over the air, you may want to wait [...]
Do I miss film? Nope….
Digging through my archives I came across this image I made a few years back on my Hasselblad 503. It’s a scan of black and white negative that I developed myself. I miss the tactile nature of the process of developing film. I don’t miss the faff, mess, smell, stinging eyes, and did I mention [...]
Worldwide Photowalk, Manchester
Last weekend was the fourth annual Worldwide Photo Walk and as this was the first year that someone’s taken the initiative and decided to lead one in Manchester, I thought I’d give it a whirl. In fact there wasn’t one, but two this year! A bit like buses, or policemen…. Anyway due to commitments on [...]
Lydiate Lane Farm, Cuerdon, Lancashire
As I was headed up the M6 earlier this week, I decided to come off a couple of junctions earlier than I would normally and see if there was anything that caught my eye. I was specifically looking for old farm machinery and old barns with a particular project in mind. I took a couple [...]
Rhyl beach at dawn
At dawn yesterday morning, I was to be found on the beach at Rhyl in North Wales fully equipped with tripod and coffee flask. Disappointingly the tide was out and there is a whole area of the beach cordoned off for some construction work, so I could only really shoot out to sea or up [...]
The Greyhound, Ashley in the mist
It’s been a rather quiet week for me this week from a shutter actuation point of view, what with overhauling my galleries (check them out here or use the Galleries drop down in the navigation above) and uploading a decades worth of images to the US Electronic Copyright filing service but I did make the [...]
John Ryland’s Library revisited
As part of the reworking through my library I’ve found quite a few images of Manchester that I had initially discarded which looking at now, with a slightly older and more informed taste, I think are most definitely usable photographs. Both of these images were taken inside John Ryland’s Library in Manchester on one of [...]
Revisiting Vietnam
Short and sweet today. I shot my first and dare I say it, last wedding on Sunday which, as it lasted all day, means that my week is already a little out of kilter. I’ve also had hammered home this week the importance of key-wording, captioning and rating images as I go. I’ve had to [...]
Windsor Castle in HDR
Earlier in the summer we had a family jaunt down to Legoland in Windsor, and swung by Windsor Castle on the way back. It was a bright and sunny couple of days, hardly ideal for photography, but you make the best of what you can. Windsor castle and gardens are such a lovely environment that [...]
A glorious afternoon at Old Trafford
The Sunday before last was a glorious afternoon…. The weather was decent, and the prospect of a decent game of football against Arsenal had me in a tip-top frame of mind. I had a little time to spare before the game, and this time instead of heading straight for the boozer, I went armed with [...]
Jenson Button hits Manchester
On bank holiday Monday, the Vodafone McLaren team along with Formula 1 2009 World Champion Jenson Button paid a visit to Manchester and just happened to bring along their 2008 mp4-23 car with them. Several of the main roads in the city centre were closed for Jenson to take his wee motor for a little [...]
Manchester – stitched panorama
A couple of weeks ago I found myself in the car park in the old Great Northern Warehouse accosted by a couple of security guards inquiring as to what I was photographing. Remarkably, they were quite amenable and just left me to get on with what I was doing. That has to be a first. [...]
Variable neutral density filters
Today I thought I’d write a little piece on using variable neutral density filters. These are not to be confused with graduated neutral density filters such as these where the variation of the opacity is fixed and graduated from top to bottom in a linear manner. Variable ND filters generally come in circular form, similar [...]
Like a moth to the setting sun
As I tweeted the other day, once again I found myself in Manchester chasing the setting sun like a moth round a dying light bulb. I arrived I guess probably around 45 minutes before the sun was scheduled to set with nothing specific in mind. I had a loose plan to shoot the tops of [...]
Manchester… once more….
Having found my feet again after my little jaunt to Portugal last week (more images here), I’ve been going back through my images of Manchester that I’d shot so far this year after a request from a client for a particular image. It turns out that I have over 1500 frames still waiting to be [...]
Vilamoura, Portugal
I’ve only been back in Blighty for a few hours, so whilst wading through mountains of dirty laundry and the usual chores on returning from a break away I’ve had little time to focus on much of anything. I did manage to edit a few images on the flight back though and here are a [...]
DIY Black Reflections
Inspired by this post from the Cheap Shot man, Larry Becker, I decided to try and throw my own slant on the process and see where I ended up. So I swung by B&Q, grabbed this Rust-oleum direct to plastic paint, and a large sheet of clear perspex. I think I spent around £25 in [...]
Cheshire Sunset
Last night I headed over to see a client and drop off some images. As usual I had a camera and a couple of lenses in the boot, and as the evening light was becoming increasingly appealing as sunset approached I decided to take a bit of a detour on my way back. I drove [...]
A musing on contrast and change
A couple more images from my most recent trip to Malta. Amazingly I’ve nearly caught up with processing of these – not the greatest turnaround time as they were made nearly 6 weeks ago but as it was a speculative trip and no client on my back desperate for them, I can afford to take [...]
Marsaxlokk, Malta
I spent another hour or so this evening going through some more images from my last trip to Malta. I’ve not managed to edit them all by any means and in fact I seem to have found myself editing them backwards…….. These are from the final day at the market in Marsaxlokk (pronounced Marsha shlock). [...]
