Ok, so I lied…
October 30, 2008
… and Tuesday proved not to be my last photo session before Samhain.
Shoulda guessed of course. Meet up with mate in town Wednesday to discuss arrangements for the 31st and obtain required provisions for same, and of course he brought his new camera along.
Naturally I had my camera bag with me. And… shhh… he also brought his Canon point’n’shoot for girlfriend to play with. Heh heh. We may yet get her into this photo malarky!
Anyway, despite being a totally impromptu session, I ended up taking quite a few pics with which I’m really rather pleased.
It also turned out to be damned cold so I was quite pleased when our trek came to an end!
And as for the inadvertent lying, well, I doubt I’ll lose any sleep over it.
Samhain
October 28, 2008
… or All Hallows Eve, or even Halloween in common parlance.
Briefly put aside “trick or treat”, plastic broomsticks for make-believe witches and funny face masks and let’s be a little serious for a moment.
According to some traditions this is the real end of the year; a time when many things are dead or dying. The start of the long, cold, dark days of winter.
And a time to conjure up and make our peace with the restless spirits. The spirits not just of those departed, but of fears and anxious thoughts that have dogged our steps in the closing year.
A time also to reflect once more on the times we have cherished with loved ones now gone.
So, Samhain; a time for sombre reflection, for confrontation with one’s inner demons. But also for finding ease and peace that we may embark upon our journey through the year-to-come refreshed, having left behind all the mental and emotional baggage that may have been dragging us down.
How fitting then that I should make the focus of what will probably be my last proper photo session of the year (for yes, I’m one of those that hold Samhain to be the year’s end) scenes from Bedford Cemetery.
And as a tribute to the occasion I’ve made a couple of my very rare excursions into black & white, of (appropriately enough) the gatehouse to the Cemetery…
And it seems that even my camera had a sense of the occasion!
I’ve set the GX10 to number files consecutively, from one session to the next. And apparently it resets at 9999. Well, it seems I must have now stacked up a total of 10k shots with it for right in the middle of the Cemetery session the numbering reset to 0001. How entirely appropriate!
The complete Bedford Cemetery set is here.
Today’s mantra
October 23, 2008
Well, my mate’s had his brand new Pentax for all of a week plus now. And the very first day it arrived he was out there taking loadsa shots with it. I know… cos I was with him. Part of the time at least.
And being the good little mate that I am, I’ve been religiously checking his Flickr photostream every day for new uploads.
So what have I found? Nada! Nothing! Nowt! Zero! Zilch! Apart from a handful from that first session we had.
“What’s up?” thinks I. “Has he broken his camera already? Lost it? Or killed his computer again?”
Or, least worrying, maybe he’s just dropped down dead with excitement.
Hmm.
The answer was nothing quite as dramatic, as I discovered when we got together again yesterday.
Apparently he’s taken loads of shots… fast approaching 1k in fact. So where are they all? Still on his memory card!
Seems he’s become so obsessed (understandably perhaps) with pressing the clicky button thing that he’s not left himself any time to actually do anything with the resulting pics.
And of course the more that continues the larger the backlog becomes, with the very distinct possibility that the more the backlog builds up the less will be the inclination to tackle it.
I know that situation. Been there. Done it. Got the tee-shirt.
“Aha” sez I. “Workflow! What you need is self-discipline, method, and workflow!”
There are a couple of very good reasons for this. Well, more than a couple actually, but let’s not get too carried away.
Firstly, a well-structured (and implemented!) workflow goes a helluva long way to avoiding the sorts of backlogs that can seem so intimidating when one finally gets away from the camera and sat in front of the keyboard.
And secondly, and more importantly perhaps, the “feedback” that comes from reviewing one’s sessions in a timely manner can help one to refine one’s photographic skills. In theory, anyway. Or so I’ve found. Sometimes!
To elucidate…
I’ll have (for example) a really great (for which read productive) session in which I’ve captured loads of wonderful images. Or so I think. Based upon the scenes I’ve… um… seen, and reviewing the resulting pics on the camera’s LCD.
But its only when I get those pics off-camera, importing them into Lightroom (or some other photo-editing/processing app) that I realise just how crap most of them actually are.
So, from the metadata, I check the camera settings I’d selected, analyse the scene and the problems, and hopefully come away from the exercise having learned a bit more and with a better idea of what to avoid or do in similar situations in the future.
Case in point was yesterday’s session.
Went out with mate and his camera and collected a load of shots which I genuinely believed were nearly all truly wonderful images. According to the LCD, anyway.
But having processed and uploaded a selection to Flickr I’m… how shall I put it… deeply unimpressed by most of them.
But as a result of the exercise I’ve learned a bit more, and thought of a somewhat different technique to try.
So, the mantra of the day is “Workflow, workflow, workflow”.
And a P.S.: Just noticed that mate has finally got some more shots taken with the Pentax up on his Flickr photostream. Yippee!
Awesome sunrise…
October 20, 2008
…this morning.
Which presented me with a couple of difficulties. Not in deciding whether or not to go outside and snap some pics, or even in deciding what to shoot. But in deciding when to stop shooting!
And the next difficulty, after the session ended, was deciding which of the resulting shots to reject. I really did want to keep and upload to Flickr all of them. Yep… all 65.
But I finally managed to whittle the “keepers” down to 19!
Typical tourist!
October 18, 2008
Following on from my last post… so there was I, down at Brighton Pier, assiduously following the progress of the “Shut ITT” demo, when I happened to glance seaward and thought “Hmm, maybe I can sneak in a coupla non-protest-related shots”. So I did.
A rainy day in Brighton
October 17, 2008
Lunchtime Tuesday last saw me jumping on a train to Brighton. Had to get to a meeting there early evening, preparing for a demo the following day.
Crashed with some like-minded types overnight then up bright and early Wednesday morning.
Well, that’s not strictly accurate… at least as far as being bright goes. For it wasn’t. Quite grey in fact. And wet.
I surfaced about 0730 and went out into the town in search of sustenance. Which I eventually found. By which time I’d realised that the weather didn’t bode well. It was that fine drizzly rain that seems fairly harmless… but spend any time in it at all and before too long you’re soaked to the skin. Great. And it looked like it was settled in for the day (which turned out to be pretty much the case, finally petering out about mid-afternoon).
So this was going to be a first for me… shooting pics of a protest in the rain.
Well, the Canon with the long lens was out for a start, neither lens or camera being in the least weather-resistant. All down to the GX10 then. At least that’s weather-resistant… though not the lens. So I rigged up some sort of protective covering consisting of a plastic bag with a hole punched in the end and a couple of hair bands to secure it at each end.
Seemed to work ok, though I won’t really know ’til I get to use the lens again I s’pose. I’ll be really narked if the lens is ruined though cos its the new Sigma I was using.
Anyway, what I ended up with is a batch of some of the horriblest (horriblest? Surely that can’t be a proper word?) protest pics I’ve ever taken.
In a couple of senses.
Firstly, the event itself was pretty horrible in that it was yet another demonstration of the increasingly heavy-handed policing that seems to have become the norm nowadays.
I don’t want to get too deeply into that here though. After all, this is supposed to be a sort of photoblog rather than an “issues” one, so no doubt I’ll post about this aspect elsewhere. When I finally get the time, that is.
More to the point, the pics themselves are nearly all a bit naff. Dunno whether that was down to the “protective sheath” (hmm… interesting phrase I’ve used there!) I’d cobbled together for the lens, or the weather, or maybe a combination of both. The main problem area seems to be focus… or rather, lack of it. Maybe the plastic was getting in the way of the mechanism a bit. Or maybe the rain was throwing the autofocus off a tad. Oh well. That’s another lesson learned.
The only positive side to this, far as I can see, is that the crappiness of the pics gives them a sort of raw (no pun intended), real-time, “as it happens” sort of feel. Maybe. And of course the blurriness helps to conveniently obscure some of the faces.
Towards the very end of the day, when a few intrepid protesters had established themselves near Brighton Pier, I was at last able to get the Canon and long lens out for a few shots, but by that time the light was already beginning to fade.
Anyway, the event was the “Shut ITT” demo in Brighton, targeting once again the American-owned armaments manufacturer EDO. Background to the event can be found at www.smashedo.org.uk and the full set of pics are here.
Playing catch-up
October 16, 2008
No posts for the past few days cos I’ve been out and away “doing stuff”… about which I shall no doubt post in due course.
But before departing for points southward I did manage to upload a few more pics to Flickr, which session probably merits a few words.
This totally unanticipated session happened cos I went into town on Monday to collect a Skylight filter (for the new Sigma lens… see this post) that my mate had bought for me from a source significantly cheaper than my local camera supplies shop (like two-thirds cheaper!). And I really did want that filter before setting off on my imminent adventure.
And was greeted with some exciting news… yep, I was almost as excited as he!
Apparently he’d been woken real early in the morning by someone hammering on his front door. Seems a brand new camera he’d ordered had arrived!
A Pentax K200D, baby brother to the K20D which is of course the Pentax version of my own Samsung GX20.
Lovely camera it is too… I particularly like the “scenes mode” feature.
Of course, mate could hardly wait to get out there and have a play with it, and I’m always up for an impromptu photo session (naturally I had my own kit with me).
So, once he’d finished work off we scurry down to the river where he promptly started putting his new toy through its paces. Expect to see the results on his Flickr photostream at any moment! In fact, I’m surprised they’re not already up there. Hmm.
And I set about compiling a sort of mini “Autumn Collection”.
