April 2018 – Contribution to my 10,000 Hours of Learning the Art of Photography
Journal of dedicated practice: 10,000 hours art photography.
Hours 477 to 601 of my 10,000 hours art photography project.
30 April 2018
Hours 593 to 601
4 hours in the morning shooting a revised version of my “Fire & Ice” image which did well at club level (won the “Contrasts” competition in the 2016/17 season at SPPC. However, was criticised at the inter-club level, see comments from the international.
Today marks 6 months of my 10,000 hour project. So it is refreshing to see that I’m making some progress.
| Original Image | New Image | |
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The new version was shot in exactly the same location, i.e., the fire in my study, using the same materials. However, this time I made the moderately reckless decision to place a sheet of matt black card between the flames and the glass to the next room. This, at the risk of burning the house down, had the effect of cutting out the reflection of the flames. I also positioned the glass further back in the fireplace so that I didn’t see the front of the stainless steel panel, which was the cause of the much complained about, double line at the bottom of the original image.
The image today was shot tethered using Capture One Pro. (To see more about this follow the link below to the post completed this afternoon.) This enabled me to position the elements in the image. Take and review some test shots. Then when ready, light the fire for a few seconds, take a series of shots, turn off fire (to avoid burning the house down). Review images; make adjustments, and repeat if necessary.
3 hours in the afternoon finishing and publishing the “My introduction to Capture One 11 Pro Sony” post and updating the social media channels.
2 hours in the evening playing with off-camera flashes (see my kit) shooting a dandelion seed head below.
29 April 2018
Hours 589 to 592
An hour shooting in Cliveden
An hour practising tethered shooting and processing the images from this morning.
An hour and a half watching the Sony a99ii Tutorial. Top tips:
- When not using the screen, turn it inward towards the camera to protect it
- Depth of field preview button, below the lens on the right hand side of the camera; press this with your little finger of the left hand to see depth of field
- AF/MF button reprogrammed to do eye detection for focus
- The controllable button on the bottom front left of the camera by default does focus mode selection
- Smart tele-convert button reassigned to Focus Magnifier.
Half an hour updating this journal and planning tomorrow.
28 April 2018
Hours 587 to 588
An hour watching the Sky Arts series about Artists in Love on Picasso and Dora Maar.
An hour working on the “My Introduction to Capture One” post.
27 April 2018
Hours 580 to 586
Weather truly uninspiring drizzle this morning, went to Langley Park but did not want to risk damaging my camera by exposing it to the conditions. So walked the hound with only an iPhone to capture any awesome images that presented themselves – they didn’t. Half an hour shooting the rain in the garden on my return,, inc. processing.
Working on the “My Introduction to Capture One” post for 6 hours.
Half an hour watching the Ted Forbes “Photography Interpretation” YouTube.
26 April 2018
Hours 572 to 579
An hour “polishing” the reeds in lake image below and selecting images for next year’s SPPC Competitions.
Six hours finishing off “The First 500 Hours – Review at 5%” post + adding all the social media connections.
An hour reworking the Semana Santa Penitents image in the light of the feedback from the competition on Sunday.
25 April 2018
Hours 569 to 671
Early morning shoot at Stoke Park Club.
Two hours editing and updating this journal. Very pleased with the 3 images of the Repton Bridge uploaded to Instagram. First image below; note, shot contre-jour, no converting to monochrome or other Photoshop jiggery-pokery.
24 April 2018
Hours 564 to 568
All day RPS workshop by Clare Louise at the Amersham Studios on: “The Art of Creative Living”. Theme: how to overcome the obstacles that that prevent us from becoming the best photographers/ human beings we can be.
My take-home message: “be structured and focused in one-hour blocks.”
[Two and a half hours at the the SPPC AGM, but this doesn’t count as deliberate practice in the Art of Photography]
23 April 2018
Hours 561 to 563
Morning shooting the bluebells in Rowley Lane near Black Park.
Two hours processing images and updating this site.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s Creative Living course at the Amersham Studios.
22 April 2018
Hours 554 to 560
An hour early morning shoot at Stoke Common – weather was absolutely lovely; just a little mist before the sun was properly up.
4 hours at the RPS Digital Group meeting in Wokingham, including the Lee Deeley Memorial Trophy PDI Competition.
Presentation on time-lapse photography by Chas Hockin, using kit by Syrp and LRT-Timelapse software. Video by Mortin Rustad: “Norway”.
Two people presented successful LRPS and ARPS panels. Learning points as follows:
- An Advisory Day is definitely a good idea (I have my LRPS Advisory Day set for June)
- Layout of the panel is an art unto itself
- All mounts must be identical, framing of images and orientation of the mounts must be symetrical
- Overall symmetry is something to be aimed at
- Darker, heavier images should be at the bottom; lighter images float above
- The category of ARPS seems to be critical.
The standard of competition entries was predictably higher than for the Stoke Poges Photographic Club; comments on my entries below:
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Difficult to tell how much is real. Looks as though items have been placed on an artificial background. Background over-powers the people and the swinging ball. Ideally would have like to see some separation between the ball and the group of people behind it. |
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“It is a shame about his shoes” surprising comment from the judge who thought “these are not consistent with the religious robes.” He liked the colour theme but thought it looked unnatural particularly with regard to the people in the background. Overall, too blue. Also a shame that I had partially cut off the 4th penitent, back-left, who might have been better completely excluded. |
At least two hours processing images and updating this site in the evening.
21 April 2018
Hours 552 to 553
An hour processing yesterday’s Drifting images and uploading to social media.
A quiet hour listening to classical music and reading Edward Burtynsky’s: Essential Elements.
A few minutes shooting in Gray’s Field whilst walking the faithful hound (right).
20 April 2018
Hours 551
Morning shoot in Hastings Meadow and The Big Field Stoke Poges; half an hour plus half an hour processing.
Half an hour shooting the professional drift drivers showing off after our “Introduction to Drifting” class. Slow shutter speed, 1/15s
Half an hour processing the morning images and sorting through the 600 car shots.
[Note: finished reading “Picasso: A Biography” by Patrick O’Brian and have started “Photography (The Key Concepts)” by David Bate which is a fairly academic treatise on the philosophy of photography as an art form.]
19 April 2018
Hours 541 to 550
Heavy day on Photoshop; many panoramas created and much general editing of images pre-processed in Capture One (and possibly prematurely exported to Lightroom).
Morning working on the images from Semana Santa. Pleased with the following which needed quite a lot of help sharpening the eyes and removing distractions.
Afternoon working on the Grenada images
Started working on the “First 500 Hours – Review at 5%” post
Two hours in the evening gently listening to classical music and devouring John Pawson’s “Specturm” that was given to me for Christmas; very minimalist and by definition abstract.
An hour watching the Capture One YouTube Webinar: “Architecture with Paul Reiffer,”
Key learning points, mainly lens correction:
- Use Defraction Correction especially for wide lenses at small appertures, i.e., 35mm at f/11 or smaller
- Keystone correction, default is 80% correction which gives a more natural look
- Set colour temperature to 2600-3400 for night shots
- Clarity helps add detail but beyond 30-40% can start to look strange.
Sean Tucker: “My Street Photography Philosophy”
Identify great street scenes and wait for people to walk into them.
His hero: Fan Ho – Black and White Street Photography – a great discovery.
18 April 2018
Hours 537 to 540
One hour morning shoot at Burnham Beeches with some new dog photography.
Two hours processing (Capture One, Photoshop, Lightroom, export to JPEG and social media).
An hour updating this journal.
17 April 2018
Hours 530 to 536
Some images from the garden.
Created the “Variations on Liverpool Street Station” series shot on 27 March 2018. These were processed using the Colour Theme Lightroom presets developed following my “Colour Theory – First Learnings” post
Submitted two entries for the RPS DPI competition on Sunday:
- Human Skittles at the Tate Modern
- Semana Santa Penitents
Sorted images from Seville and Cordoba.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: lecture by Alan Colegrave. Take home message: “Street photography must tell a story.”
16 April 2018
Hours 524 to 529
Morning shoot at Langley Park; one hour plus another processing.
An hour watching the Ted Forbes YouTube: Artist Series including:
- Keith Carter
- Pedro Meyer
- Kaurdes Grobet
Succeeded in getting the auto import into Lightroom Classic CC to work so that the workflow between Capture One and Lightroom is a tad closer.
15 April 2018
Hours 522 to 523
Updated some images from Spain including the Chinaberry tree below.
14 April 2018
Hours 519 to 521
Working on the “Four Strangers in Seville” image as a contribution to the “First 500 Hours Top 10.”
Learning points with masks:
- To copy a mask from one layer to another: Alt drag
- To apply multiple masks to a layer (I needed to select certain elements and then apply a gradient filter), group the layer and then apply a mask to the group. Note groups can be nested.
Two hours watching the “Adventurers of Modern Art.”
13 April 2018
Hours 514 to 518
An hour catching up with the addition of images to this journal and associated social media.
Short shoot at Black Park including the following:
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An hour refining images for next week’s RPS PDI competition including the radical version of the “Human Skiitles at the Tate” Image right.
Three hours watching the “Adventurers of Modern Art.”
12 April 2018
Hours 509 to 513
Two hours at the Picasso 1932 exhibition again, this time with the audio guide
An hour watching the BBC2 documentary “David Hurn: A Life in Pictures” – made me feel somewhat privileged to have met him at the Photography Show at the NEC on 18th March this year,
An hour watching the ITV4 documentary: “Cinema through the eye of Magnum”
An hour watching the Sky Arts: “Adventurers of Modern Art”.
11 April 2018
Hours 506 to 508
Half an hour taking an early addition to the View from the Third Post series of shots in the Big Field.
A lot of time struggling with workflow getting Capture One TIF images automatically imported into Lightroom Classic CC – so far to no avail.
Updating this journal.
10 April 2018
Hours 500 to 505
Started working on the “El Nino Graffiti in Grenada Andalusia Spain” post following our time out there.
Some sorting of images from Spain.
Two hours reworking the “Human Skittles at the Tate Modern” image by separating out all the elements. Then using motion blur to make the background carpet more even, sharpening up the ball, adding motion blue to that and the string, and recombining.
Two hours at the SPPC – PDI competition: “The a Churchyard” and Open
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Set Subject Won joint first place, 20/20. Commended for good handling of the snow, technically. Strong composition with the church positioned between the two shrubs and a nice clean background. |
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15/20 Poor sky. Colour too uniform throughout the image to hold the interest of the viewer. |
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17/20 Criticised for the blade of grass being too close to the iguana’s eye. [Not said, but no obvious catchlight either.] |
Congratulations to both Prakash Sivarajan and Ken Grant for their top performances this evening.
This was the last competition of the year, and by my reckoning Ken and Prakash have knocked me into third place.
9 April 2018
Hours 498 to 499
Booked 2 RPS coursed for later in the year including:
- The Art of Creative Living – Creating a Personal Blueprint for Success
- Street Photography – Spitalfields Market
8 April 2018
Hours 496 to 497
An hour working on an image in Capture One and then outputting all (320) images created in Spain to TIFF format for transfer to the Lightroom catalogue on my main desktop. One issue is the file size at an average of 232mb per image, I had to free up some space on my laptop’s hard-drive.
Then: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pablo-picasso-1767/where-does-inspiration-come
Planning activities and workshops to attend whilst reading the RPS journal.
7 April 2018
Hours 494 to 495
An hour editing the the “Human Skittles at the Tate Modern” below:
An hour watching YouTube video on using both Capture One and Lightroom Classic CC in a photography workflow.
6 April 2018
Hours 492 to 493
Shooting in the Alhambra Palace gardens, Grenada street art, then some editing at the airport.
5 April 2018
Hours 491
[Time rounded up] One hour; shooting + editing yesterday’s images + completing this journal entry.
4 April 2018
Hours 487 to 490
Few morning shots from the balcony of our hotel room overlooking Granada, Spain.
An hours photographing the work of El Nino, the famous graffiti artist from Grenada.
Two hours night photography at the Alhambra Palace.
3 April 2018
Hours 485 to 486
Morning street photography in Cordoba, not least taking a shot to fill in the gap in the graffito panorama below.
This was a difficult graffito to photography due to its size and the fact that trees, bus shelters and other obstacles prevented it from being taken in a single shot. However, Photoshop’s Merge to Panorama function is great. The outcome was somewhat thinner at one end than the other, i.e., giving an unwanted sense of perspective. So I corrected for this using the Adaptive Wide Angle Lens filter.
2 April 2018
Hours 483 to 484
An hour and a bit early morning street photography in Cordoba followed by a further hour processing before breakfast. In particular trying to get the big graffito from by the river stitched together. Re-shot this morning when there were no people about – still not a trivial task as it involve standing in the road to keep a constant distance from the wall, and although pedestrians are relatively rare at that time in the morning, cars are abundant.
1 April 2018
Hours 477 to 482
An hour shooting before first light in Cordoba, Spain, followed by an hour processing the 114 images taken last night and this morning. All before the rest of my party got up for breakfast.
A couple of hours of street photography during the day including some interesting graffiti followed by another two hour processing images including selecting and further processing the 30 from Cordoba, plus three graffiti images.