This Journal records my contribution in August 2019 toward a ten thousand hours of deliberate practice photography apprenticeship.
Hours 2,551 to 2,670
31st August 2019
Hour 2,670
An hour processing the last of the images of the week, i.e., those of Harley shot on the evening of the 26th.
30th August 2019
Hours 2,666 to 2,669
First hour of the day processing the single shot exposures from the Tate Modern and Notting Hill Carnival shot on the 26th and updating this journal.
Two hours planning a potential ARPS panel to meet the RPS’s criteria as below:
- The submission should clearly meet the aims & objectives outlined in your statement of intent
- Photographic style should be consistent, illustrating mood and emotion as appropriate, although with some genres this will be represented by technical excellence (e.g. Medical, Forensic, Scientific).
- The submission should show clear evidence of the photographer’s input and originality in approach
- A high standard of presentation is expected
- Images should be appropriately mounted, and free from marks, blemishes and artefacts
- A high level of understanding of composition, lighting and viewpoints must be demonstrated, with a visual balance (sequence) and style appropriate to the subject
- Personal engagement with the subject should be evident where appropriate
- Images contained in a successful Licentiate application cannot be included in an application for Associate submission.
… and writing a draft Statement of Intent:
“I have never lived in central London, yet most of my working life has required me to travel in; sometime on a daily basis. The city continues to excite me.
My objective with this panel is to use multiple exposure images to represent how London is experienced by commuters and visiting businesspeople. The goal is to capture the inherent dynamism and rhythm of the city, and its ability to energize those that work there.”
Fourth hour creating the flexible Photoshop action that blends variable numbers of images into a multiple exposure.
29th August 2019
Hours 2,664 to 2,665
First hour updating this journal including the creation of the following diptych of images shot on the 26th.
An hour updating potential entries to FIAP salons and organising images in lightroom collections.
28th August 2019
Hours 2,660 to 2,663
Two hours at the Cafe Africa informal meeting of the Amersham Photographic Society.
An hour watching the excellent YouTube from Terry White “How to Automate Adobe Photoshop” including:
- action basics, including button mode (new to me)
- running actions with steps disabled
- actions with dialog boxes
- conditional statements
- batches
- droplets
- generator – automatic creation of graphical assets, e.g., different versions of a graphic containing the same text.
A further hour rewatching parts of the above and planning a more flexible version of the multiple exposure blend action that I wrote yesterday which is restricted to working with 7 images; no more, no less.
27th August 2019
Hours 2,655 to 2,659
First hour combining multiple exposures shot yesterday. Created an action assigned to <shift>F7 to combine 7 multiple exposures.
A further four hours using the above action to create 22 blended multiple exposures from the images shot yesterday.
26th August 2019
Hours 2,649 to 2,654
Two hours in London shooting multiple exposure images, including some establishment shots of the skyline from the viewing platform of the Tate Modern.
An hour at the Olafur Eliasson “In Real Life” exhibition also at the Tate Modern.
An hour shooting at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Half an hour watching YouTubes:
- Sean Tucker: “Is consistency important in my photography?“
- develop a “look” for your images by, amongst other things, colour toning (which I now do)
- if you want to develop a following on Instagram or to sell your services professionally only post one genre of image.
- Nigel Dansen: “Photography is Difficult” where he describes his approach to landscape composition.
Half an hour shooting sunset photos involving Harley around the lake at Black Park.
An hour processing the 226 exposure made today in Capture One.
25th August 2019
Hours 2,646 to 2,648
Three hours selecting and preparing images for the Objective international Salon – it took very nearly an hour to decide on images to enter for the 4 categories. Then lots of time “tinkering” with images prior to submission.
Lots of additional time spent improving my processes for filing and recording my FIAP submissions. However, this does not count towards by 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
24th August 2019
Hours 2,643 to 2,645
First hour creating images for and updating my Instagram Feed.
Second hour creating the following mono version of my “Man with Best Friend” image for the Stoke Poges B/W Street Scene competition that is due shortly.
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Third hour submitting images to the Skyline FIAP Salon as sponsored by Turkish Airlines – conflicting rules about maximum and minimum sizes and files sizes that are difficult to comply with.
23rd August 2019
Hours 2,638 to 2,642
Discovered that a great tit had flown into my study. Tricky to persuade to leave. So took the opportunity to take some shots at close quarters in the meantime.
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An hour updating images shot on the 18th, including the mono version of the Victorian road sweeper below.
An hour processing images of the great tit that flew into my study first thing this morning.
An hour updating this journal.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s annual exhibition.
22nd August 2019
Hours 2,636 to 2,637
An hour updating this journal, particularly concerning my thoughts on Conceptual Photography as started on the 20th.
Source Photographic Review’s YouTubes: “What is conceptual photography”
- Part 1 – featuring John HIlliard
- Part 2 – Lucy Soutter, John Roberts and Sean O’Hagan define conceptual photography as anti-subjective and anti-humanist
- Part 3 – featuring Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s work ‘The Day Nobody Died‘, a critique of embedded photojournalism. Sean O’Hagan is unimpressed with their abuse of access in a war zone.
Ted Forbes has a dumbed-down approach to conceptual photography in “How to shoot conceptual photography“, which covers the creation of a series of works, ideally with a surprise at the end. I feel the artists and critics above would roll their eyes.
21st August 2019
Hours 2,630 to 2,635
Following images snapped first thing this morning whilst walking the hound. Currently undecided about whether or nor I like them.
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Two hours at the informal Cafe Africa meeting of the Amersham Photographic Society including getting the following feedback on my reconstruction portraits.
Two hours updating the above portraits.
An hour updating my Instagram feed for the first time in ages.
20th August 2019
Hours 2,625 to 2,629
First hour of the day reading David Bate’s “Art Photography”, reviewing the prints from the Chiltern Open Air Museum shot a few days ago (on the 18th and 10th), and updating this journal.
An hour reviewing the work of Pep Ventosa and Alexey Titarenko the latter, recommended by the former, creates atmospheric cityscapes.
An hour updating the portraits shot on the 12th particularly with the colour dodge and screen techniques to the eyes as used by Sean Tucker in his post processing workflow.
Two hours reading and watching YouTube about conceptual photography:
- the Tate defines Conceptual art as “art for which the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art object. “
- the picture of a darkroom clock on the front of David Bate’s “Art Photography”, “Sixty Seconds of Light” by John Hillard, is conceptual in that the clock is set to one minute which is the time taken to produce that particular image.
- whilst popular in the mid-60’s to mid-70’s apparently few people would now describe themselves as conceptual artists.
19th August 2019
Hours 2,620 to 2,624
First four hours updating this journal and working on yesterday’s images in Capture One Pro.
- 507 exposures made yesterday
- 15 pictures worth exporting to Lightroom
- 5 sent for printing to be discussed with the Amersham Photographic Society’s informal meeting at Cafe Africa on the 21st.
An hour’s YouTube including the excellent: “19 Photoshop tips that you probably don’t know” by PTC, tips include:
- clone scaling and/or rotating using the Clone Source panel available from the Window menu
- “blend if” functionality
- tips for making composites look more credible.
18th August 2019
Hours 2,613 to 2,619
Two and a half hours with Yin Wong shooting the “Ragged Victorians” at the Chiltern Open Air Museum.
Two hours with Michael Turner discussing his work being exhibited at Amersham Studios. His work is part of the Landings annual exhibition from the Contemporary Photography faculty at Falmouth University.
- He also examines the context of the work he is producing, i.e., his influences, who has done similar work before or currently
Half an hour writing up this journal for the last couple of days.
An hour culling and processing the 507 exposures made at the open air museum earlier today.
An hour’s YouTubes:
- SLR Lounge: “3 Tips for creating great multiple exposures“
- combine bokeh created with different focal length lenses
- mix up the colour temperature
- create the subject as a silhouette.
- Serge Ramelli: “How to speed up Lightroom Classic“
- ensure Lightrooms Catalogue is stored on an SSD drive (I don’t as I don’t have SSD on either desktop or laptop computers)
- build embedded previews when importing images
- enable graphics accelerators.
- Shara Hughes: “Changing the Way We See“
17th August 2019
Hours 2,611 to 2,612
Five hours at the Stoke Poges Photography Club’s stand at the Slough Horticultural Show, which equates to about one hour of deliberate practice learning the art of photography through discussions with other members.
YouTube:
- Artist Abraham Cruzvillegas Takes on the Tate Modern
- Mark Denney: “Why every landscape photographer needs a super telephoto“
- Ellen Gallagher: “Painting beyond painting“
16th August 2019
Hour 2,610
An hour YouTube:
- Nigel Danson “Storage” where explains that he has a Synology NAS just like mine, only bigger 🙁
- Jamie Windsor – “How to Stay Creative“
- Mika Rottenberg interview: “Social Surrealism” – weird stuff.
15th August 2019
Hours 2,606 to 2,609
Four hours preparing images and entering the following FIAP salons:
- Society of Photography Malaysia
- Northern Counties (England)
Entered the same sections of both salons: Open Colour, Open Mono and Travel. In particular trying out some of the mono portraits shot at the Black Country Museum on 23rd July
14th August 2019
Hours 2,603 to 2,605
First hour processing the additional images shot in Hastings Meadow and the Big Field on the 12th.
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*** Little bit of success: had two images accepted into the Sunflower International Photography Salon in the Czech Republic. Accepted Images were: Hastings Meadow ICM Diptych & Reuters Plaza. This is the first time I I have had two picture accepted into a Salon.
Two hours preparing images and entering the Malmo International Exhibition 2019.
13th August 2019
Hours 2,601 to 2,602
An hour updating this journal, followed by accidentally deleting everything and lots of time [that doesn’t count towards my 10,000 hours] working out what went wrong and redoing it.
An hour watching an excellent YouTube by Nigel Danson on 7 rules of composition:
- Edges – watch for distractions around the frame of the image
- Route through the picture – ensure the eye has a path from the foreground, through midground to the backgrounds
- Simplicity – think about how you might crop the image in post and then do it in-camera
- Resting point – somewhere for the eye to rest
- Separation – making separate subjects separate adds strength to the image
- Space – allow the subject “room to breath” – negative space to add drama to an image
- Balance – don’t allow one element, e.g., the foreground, to overpower the rest of the image.
Described in the context of landscape photography, but works for everything.
12th August 2019
Hours 2,596 to 2,600
One and a half hours shooting the monthly skys over Hastings Meadow series, plus another half hour writing up.
[A long time spent learning to create reusable blocks in WordPress Gutenberg; whilst this will help my overall efficiency, it does not count towards my 10,000 hours deliberate practice learning the art of photography.]
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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 |
An hour processing images from the Tudor Reenactment.
An hour reading David Bate’s “Art Photography” producing the following insights:
- Pictorialism leaves the viewer of the image with the challenge of interpreting it
- Whereas “documentary” means artless; “documentary style” implies an interpretation added by the photographer.
An hour YouTube:
11th August 2019
Hour 2,595
Early morning review, culling and processing of the 200 images shot at the Tudor Court reenactment yesterday.
10th August 2019
Hours 2,592 to 2,594
An hour shooting the Tudor Court Reenactment at the Chiltern Open Air Museum.
Two hours processing images shot in London on the 8th.
9th August 2019
Hours 2,587 to 2,591
First hour updating this journal with comments from the mono group last night, and making the suggested adjustments to the images.
Four hours culling and processing images shot in London yesterday including a number of multiple exposures.
8th August 2019
Hours 2,578 to 2,586
Two hours processing images from the Windsor photo walk on the 6th, and exporting from Capture One Pro to Lightroom, then to Flickr and updating this journal.
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Two and a half hours at the following exhibitions in London:
One and a half hour street and urban landscape photography in London making exposures that will hopefully produce images for my current project.
An hour collecting date for my analysis of time so far post.
Two hours with the Amersham Photographic Society’s mono group; presenting revised versions of the images first discussed yesterday.
| Original Image | ….. | Revised Image | ….. | Comments |
 |  | Print seems darker than the original – losing some of the tonal range. Lacks context – could be anywhere – no clue as to the 1920 setting. | ||
 |  | Beard now much better. | ||
 | Highlights in the background toned down. | |||
 |  | Hair cut very 2019 rather than 1919, so doesn’t convince as a period portrait. Background needs darkening [done in the revised image]. |
All prints need to be larger, i.e., 10×15 inches, rather than 8×12 which is the size of the revised images.
7th August 2019
Hours 2,572 to 2,577
Two hours meeting with the Amersham Photographic Society, in Cafe Africa, getting encouraging and useful feedback on both my multiple exposures and monochrome portraits shot at the Black Country Museum on 23rd July.
An hour updating the monochrome images in the light of this mornings comments, and sending for reprinting so that I can take them to tomorrow’s monochrome sub-group meeting at Amersham.
Two hours creating variants of my multiple exposure images in the light of this morning’s suggestions.
An hour processing yesterday’s images from the Stoke Poges Photography Club’s photo walk in Windsor.
6th August 2019
Hours 2,570 to 2,571
First hour creating images for and updating my Instagram feed and watching the YouTube interview with the documentary photographer Lauren Greenfield about her work relating excessive materialist aspiration with the American Dream.
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 | Images shot with the Stoke Poges Photography Club on photo walk in Windsor. |  | ||
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One hour on a photo walk in Windsor with the Stoke Poges photographic Club.
5th August 2019
Hours 2,565 to 2,569
Updating the the Kings Cross impressionistic image to ensure greater detail in the highlights. In the end this meant toning down the curve that I had previously added in photoshop to increase the contrast. Seems like I had over done it.
Two hours organising images for a potential ARPS panel based on multiple exposure composites of London.
Two hours watching:
- FStoppers Critique the Community Architecture Shots
- A bunch of other photography YouTube from Nigel Danson and other.
4th August 2019
Hours 2,563 to 2,564
First hour working on the “Informal CPAGB Advisory Day” post.
Second hour preparing images for printing to be taken to the Amersham coffee meeting on Wednesday.
3rd August 2019
Hours 2,560 to 2,562
Two hours updating some of the candidate images for my CPAGB Submission in November of this year.
An hour working on my “CPAGB Advisory Day” post, including adding the above images.
2nd August 2019
Hours 2,556 to 2,559
An hour working on the monochrome images shot at the Black Country Museum.
An hour creating and adding images to this new journal page.
Two hours working on revising images which are potential candidates for my CPAGB submission and updating the draft post.
1st August 2019
Hours 2,551 to 2,555
Two hours processing and adding images to the July Journal
One hour working on the CPAGB post. [Lots of time spent getting to grips with the new WordPress Guttenberg editor but this does not count towards my 10,000 hour project.]
Two hours working on black and white portraits from the Black Country Museum.
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