April 2019 – Contribution to my 10,000 Hours Photography
Purpose of Journal
This is the April 2019 page of my Journal which records my actual ten thousand hours deliberate practice learning the art of photography.
Hours 2,043 to 2,160
(May 2019)
30 April 2019
Hour 2,160
An hour shooting a self-portrait using my kitchen as a studio, black reflector as background, two flashes (one reflecting off the white ceiling, the other as a hair light), 135mm prime lens at f4, tethered to my laptop.
Most of the day spent sorting problems with the 18 month time lapse. The FTP server, a2hosting has suffered a major malware attach taking all their servers, including the one used to store all our images, off-line.
Transitioned to a solution whereby the camera communicates with one NAS drive under our direct control, and images are backed up to another geographically remote NAS on a daily basis. Required a site visit to redirect the output from the camera.
Note: time spent resolving the above technical problems does NOT count towards the 10,000 hours of this project.
29 April 2019
Hours 2,157 to 2,159
Two hours updating this journal and associated social media sites with images from last week.
An hour watching Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on Van Gogh, where he is presented as “The founder of Modern Art”.
28 April 2019
Hours 2,154 to 2,156
An hour watching Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on Jacques-Louis David, the most influential French artist at the time of the French Revolution c. 1789. His most influential painting “The Death of Marat” depicts in an idealised form the assassinated writer and revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat.
An hour creating an updated version of the “Impressions of Trees and Snow”, below, which was formerly critiscised for having too much snow. Intend to present the following as a print so that the drop shadow will complement the bevel of the mount board.
An hour working on a presentation about this project for the Amersham Photographic Society in just over two weeks time.
27 April 2019
Hours 2,152 to 2,153
Half an hour shooting a few family members running the Malvern Half Marathon.
An hour and a half working on my draft post “Composition – Thoughts at 2,000 Hours“.
26 April 2019
Hours 2,149 to 2,151
An hour and a half at the Sony Photography Awards Exhibition in Somerset House, London. Half an hour’s street photography in London.
An hour watching Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on Picasso, which concentrates on the creation of Guernica in 1937.
25 April 2019
Hour 2,148
An hour watching Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on Turner. In Schama’s opinion Turner’s “Slavers throwing overboard the dead and the dying, typhoon coming on” is the most important English painting of the 19th Century.
24 April 2019
Hours 2,145 to 2,147
An hour updating this journal with images from the last few days.
An hour watching and reflecting upon Sean Tucker’s YouTube: “Defining a Style for your Photography” in which he suggests the following:
- Look back over your body of work for trends of what is emerging
- Thinks about genres and styles which are most comfortable
- Identify influences from other artists – Sean relates strongly with Edward Hopper in particular his Nighthawks painting (coincidentally no.9 in my top 10 of influential art works when I started this project).
For me:
- My “Review Winten 2018/ 18” post compares the work done during that period with a year previously and shows a clear shift toward the abstract people and city, and away from nature and landscape photography
- Genres and styles – I’m comfortable post processing and find waiting to get absolutely everything right in-camera sometimes a little tedious
- Picasso is the artist I admire the most, together with others involved in the development of cubism, and many of the other more accessible 20th century abstract artists.
An hour watching Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on Rembrandt.
23 April 2019
Hours 2,128 to 2,144
An hour shooting bluebells at Rowley Wood followed my two hours processing including the creation of a number of straight ICM composites. [Still getting used to the Wacom Tablet.]
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An hour watching and following along with the PIXimperfect YouTube: “10 Amazing Photoshop Actions” specifically for portrait retouching:
- Auto Dodge and Burn
- Check layers – very useful for identifying problems that are otherwise difficult to see on a screen, e.g., dust spots or problems with composites
- Low Frequency Retouching – enables specific tones to be edited, e.g., removal f wrinkles from clothes
- Skin softening
- Creative vignette
- with highlights intact
- Creative vignette without highlights
- Selective colour saturation
- Radiance
- Painterly
- Portrait pop
- Sharpen.
Two hours watching the Simon Schama BBC Power of Art documentary on:
- Caravaggio
- Bernini – the sensual/ erotic sculptor who found favour amongst the the popes and cardinals of 17th century Rome.
An hour perusing a book I have been lent: “Endangered” by Tim Flach, which is quite astonishing and a book I would encourage anyone to buy, borrow or otherwise get to look at. From a photography perspective, Flach produces large, minimalist, often low-key, images either of a single animal, part thereof such as head, or a group that completely fills the frame. This is animal portraiture at its best.
22 April 2019
Hours 2,136 to 2,137
An hour watching the following PIXimperfect YouTube: “How to Set up a Wacom Tablet for Retouching” and practicing using my new Wacom Intuos Tablet; and another hour updating this journal with these recent purchases and cross-referencing some of the exhibitions I’ve been to recently.
21 April 2019
Hours 2,134 to 2,135
An hour early morning shooting in Stoke Common followed by a further hour processing those images.
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20 April 2019
Hours 2,132 to 2,133
An hour updating this journal, adding images from the last week.
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An hour practising with my new Wacom tablet.
19 April 2019
Hours 2,127 to 2,131
An hour working on the following image:
Four hours working on the images from London and Kew Gardens Macro Photography Course.
18 April 2019
Hours 2,120 to 2,126
Five hours processing images from the last couple of days.
Two hours at the Amersham PIC Group – mainly looking at L Panels successful and not. Thoughts:
- Many of the successful panels had some repetition, e.g., pairs of similar shots – one suiting a position to the left of the panel and another to the right
- The “W” and “M” formations works very well
- Print and mount quality are important
- Print the layout page to the same quality as the rest of the images as this shows that you care
- See my posts: “LRPS Advisory Day“, “Failed LRPS Submission” and finally “Successful LRPS Resubmission“
17 April 2019
Hours 2,112 to 2,119
Had notification of my first ever image being accepted into an international salon
6 hours at a Macro Photography workshop at Kew Gardens.
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Top tips:
- Management of light using reflectors
- Outside – shoot contre jour
Watched the YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson: “The most underrated tool for improving your composition”
- The crop tool – helps you subconsciously think about how you are going to adjust the image in post, and make this crop in-camera
- Taking a massive pano of a landscape allows you to experiment with alternative crops later.
- Serge Ramelli: “How to grow Instagram Followers Organically 2019”
- Always post in a consistent style
- Post in 5×4 format – 3 at a time
- Comment on other people’s posts – sensible meaningful comments
- Use hashtags that have between 1,000 and 50,000 associations already.
Two hours Loading to Capture One Pro the 307 images shot over the last two days.
16 April 2019
Hours 2,106 to 2,111
An hour processing images from the last few days.
An hour starting the post “Composition – Thoughts at 2,000 Hours“.
Two hours at the Tate Modern combined with another hour visiting the Franz West and Nan Goldin exhibitions. Plus street photography of the attendees.
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Two new versions of the spiral staircase in the Blavatinik Building below.
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Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – “Critique of the Year” where we looked at 20 images that had been submitted in competition over the last year and discussed how these could have been improved through post-processing. Most would have benefited from better cropping and/ or simplifying in one way or another. A few were considered beyond redemption and the best solution was merely to have taken another shot!
15 April 2019
Hours 2,103 to 2,105
An hour grappling with the transfer of images from Capture One Pro to Lightroom then updating a number of the images.
14 April 2019
Hours 2,199 to 2,102
An hour shooting mainly ICM images at Stoke Common.
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An hour updating this journal with the thoughts and images from previous days.
Two hours processing the 107 images shot this morning culled to 10 including 2 ICM/ straight composites.
13 April 2019
Hours 2,097 to 2,098
Damn those that have said our words before us! 1939, R.G. Collingwood published The Principles of Art in which he posited that “works of art are essentially expressions of emotion.” Not far from my statement that art is “emotional communication” [See my post: “What is Art?“]
Thoughts following an hour watching Dan Hewitt’s “Aesthetics Philosophy of the Arts“.
The family resemblance definition of art arose from the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein that a word only has meaning in relation to the set of things to which it relates, e.g., “fruit” relates to the set of things such as apple, pear, etc. It doesn’t, in and of itself, define what a fruit is. Hence the conclusion that a work and only be said to be art through reference to other works of art. [I’m not convinced by this argument: since botany provides is a clear definition of “fruit” and what it means to be a fruit – in the biological rather than urban sense of the word 😉 ]
George Dicky was originally responsible for the Institutional theory of art, popularised by Andy Warhol with “Art is something produced by an artist and sold in art galleries.”
John Dewey: “Feelings aroused by a work of art should not merely be personal but universal in nature.”
Barnett Newman: “Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.”
12 April 2019
Hours 2,091 to 2,096
Two hours updating the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 hours” post.
An hour updating this post with images shot from the previous few days.
An hour finishing Adam Marelli‘s YouTube “Are You Expressing Your Creativity or Just Pressing Buttons?”
An hour adding images to and finally publishing the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post.
An hour watching Nick Turpin’s YouTube: “PoV Museums & Galleries” followed by the start of Dan Hewitt’s “Aesthetics Philosophy of the Arts”
11 April 2019
Hours 2,084 to 2,090
An hour updating the “Diptych, Triptych, Polyptych” post in particular the section on adding value to a picture through combination.
A further hour considering what does value of a picture mean, largely on the basis of the book “Criticizing Photographs” by Terry Barrett. Key questions:
- What is this photo of?
- What is it about?
- What does it mean?
- Into which genre of photography does it fit?
- Is it giving us anything new?
Issues of good composition, image clarity, etc. all centre around the above.
Two hours re-watching the excellent Eileen Rafferty YouTube “Learn the Language of Photography through Critique.” I first discovered Eileen Rafferty on 10th June 2018 and would stongly recommend her B&H sponsored lectures.
Eileen analyses a photograph in terms of:
- Subject – What is the main element of the photo? If it were a film what would be the leading role? Is this clear and free from distractions
- Form – What are the compositional elements: lines, shapes, colours and textures
- Content – What is the meaning of the photo? What idea, emotion or mood is it trying to convey.
Abstract images cab be subject to the same analysis, even though the subject is often simplified or completely obscured.
The process of criticism is one of:
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Does what you see and feel support an intended story or message? If most people think it doesn’t, this is valid feedback that the message is not sufficiently clear.
Similarly, did the choices the photographer made support the story or message?
An hour watching the first half of Adam Marelli’s YouTube “Are You Expressing Your Creativity or Just Pressing Buttons?”
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s Mono group. “When you photograph someone in colour, you photograph their clothes. When you photograph someone in black and white, you photograph their sole.” – Originally, Ted Grant (Canadian photographer).
10 April 2019
Hour 2,083
An hour finishing and publishing the “Diptych, Triptych, Polyptych” post.
9 April 2019
Hours 2,077 to 2,082
Three hours processing Slough images from yesterday – 16 keepers out of 92 exposures; creating the Defibrillator composite; and updating this journal.
Half an hour working on the following Diptych to improve the colour match between the images.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Print Competition: “Shadows/ Silhouettes” and Open. Plus half an hour updating the notes below and the associated Competitions Flickr site.
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Shadows/ Silhouettes 17 Print looked a bit blue. Not a hard silhouette as there is some white in the dog. Quite like the diagonal from bottom left but felt that this was out of focus. |
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Shadows/ Silhouettes 19 Interesting framing and colours. “Should have lost the girls in the shadows that are merely a distraction.” |
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Open 18 Author added to the “Someone else’s art” by positioning the sun in the map. “Perhaps might have been better had the author used a narrower aperture, i.e., f/16 to achieve a starburst effect from the sun coming through the map. |
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Open 18 Given marks for the amusement factor of the subject. However, “woman a bit blocky.” |
8 April 2019
Hours 2,072 to 2,076
An hour shooting in Slough.
An hour processing images from earlier in the week and sorting out the workflow issues identified yesterday. And shooting a Defibrillator in Black Park for use on a web page. So plan to use a combination of a straight image with some ICM to add a sense of action.
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An hour watching YouTubes:
- Nick Turpin: “Street Photo Review” where he assesses a number of images submitted by viewers giving his analysis of what is good and what is not. Including a review of work by Ryan Hardman who is dong a project on Plymouth which is an interesting reference given that I am considering a similar project on the transformation of Slough.
- Ted Forbes: “Why it’s important to print your work” explaining the benefits of different paper types
- Sean Tucker: “My Portrait Lighting Kit (feat. the Godox AD200)” and as it turned out the Godox TT685S (which I have – see My Kit)
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society, print competition General and Advanced. I did not have any entries, but the general section was dominated by Nature images, many of which the judge was surprised were not from the Advanced group.
7 April 2019
Hours 2,068 to 2,071
An hour processing images from the Tate.
Have noticed a problem with my workflow in that the RAW files from the camera are not being transferred to the hard disk on the main computer, with the implication that a lot of RAW files will have been lost as I delete them from the Camera’s memory card. Now thinking that an annual Master Session might be more appropriate than a Master Catalogue. Even the staff on the PhaseOne stand at the Photography Show at the NEC on the 18th March said that “Catalogs still have some way to go” and agreed with me that Lightroom is currently more functional.
Plan to update the draft revised workflow document tomorrow.
An hour and a half watching the Episode Two (“The Effect“) and Three (“The Utopia“) of the Bauhaus.
6 April 2019
Hour 2,067
An hour processing images from Thursday; primarily those shot at the Tate Modern.
5 April 2019
Hours 2,064 to 2,066
Half an hour updating this journal with activities from the last couple of days.
Two and a half hours processing the 134 images shot Yesterday, including the creation of the following multiple exposure images.
4 April 2019
Hours 2,056 to 2,063
An hour visiting the Martin Parr exhibition at the National Portrait Museum. This has given me a new appreciation for Parr’s work. I am not a fan of the Snapshop Aesthetic with which he has been most recently identified. However, this exhibition was focused on his documentary work, covering the lives of British people; both working class and “the Establishment”; at home and abroad.
Trying to analyse why I like his images:
- Clear subjects that jump out from the background
- Clean and simple compositions
- Lighting that supports the above objectives.
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Half an hour shooting the Brexit protest outside the Houses of Parliament.
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Half an hour visiting the “Travel Photographer of the Year” exhibition on the Southbank.
An hour general London Street Photography.
An hour in the Tate Modern revisiting favourite spots
Half an hour watching the first YouTube in the series concerning the Bauhaus movement, “The Code“.
Two and a half hours at the Amersham Beyond group including giving my presentation about Diptychs and Triptychs.
Little tips:
- Use a half-soft brush for cloning to reduce the muddyness that an overly soft brush introduces
- ALT+Tab allows you to switch between windows on a PC.
3 April 2019
Hours 2,052 to 2,055
Two hours preparing images for next week’s print competitions at both Stoke Poges and Amersham clubs.
An hour watching and pondering the YouTube: “Why Street Photography” with Nick Turpin in which he asks the question: “What are you trying to achieve with your photography?”
- For him the documentary aspect is very important. In particular the creation of a historical record.
- For me less so. I’m more interested in the aesthetics.
An hour processing last night’s smoke images.
2 April 2019
Hours 2,048 to 2,051
An hour processing yesterday’s images and updating this journal.
an hour watching YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson: “Mastering Photography | Nature or Nurture? + Tips that helped me” [More support for the role of deliberate practice.]
- Learn about the effect of light on images
- Study the best photographers. In particular understand why their images are good. “If you can explain to someone why the photo is good, you can learn a lot about it”
- “POV London Street Photography with Nick Turpin“
- Elizabeth Peyton: “Faces Contain Their Time”
- Jamie Windsor: “Chiaroscuro – The Dynamic Range Mistake“
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photography Club – Workshop: Photographing Smoke.
1 April 2019
Hours 2,043 to 2,047
One and a half hours shooting the first Monday of the month series of images at Hastings Meadow below.
| West | ….. | North | ….. | East | ….. | South |
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| 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 |
Half an hour updating this journal with the usual new month admin.
An hour preparing this journal for the images shot during the day.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Guest speaker: Leigh Preston FRPS inspirational speaker with many good images including 9 image polyptychs of Santorini. Subject of his talk was creating a personal style through photographic vision.