This journal records the actual activity in my 10,000 hours deliberate practice photography apprenticeship.
Hours 2,899 to 3,040
30th November 2019
Hour 3,040
An hour starting UIUC Art of Arts Sake’s “A Survey of Fine Art Photography” which could more aptly be named “History of photography through 21, mainly American, practitioners”:
- Gaspard-Felix Tournachon “Nader” (1820 – 1910) celebrity portraiture in-studio and the first aerial photography
- Mathew Brady (1822 – 1896) scenes of the American civil war – first photographer to shoot people outside the studio
- Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868 – 1952) photographer and ethnologist shooting native Americans in the West, but often changed what they wore, etc. to conform with the popular view of the natives
- Lewis Hine (1874 – 1940) Sociologist who use photography as a tool for social change and liberal reform, i.e., abolishing child labour and improving overall working conditions
- Fred (“F”) Holland Day (1864 – 1933) first advocate for photography being considered a fine art. Symbolic Pictorialism art movement which advocates the need for photographic art to be timeless and to represent something deeper than merely contemporary issues. Much use of soft focus.
- Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946) Claimed that photography was equal in artistic status to painting and Sculpture. Originally also a pictorialist and known during his life as the world’s greatest photographer. Then moving into Modernism with deeper, sharper focus and concentration on pictorial elements such as curves, lines, etc.
Married Georgia O’Keefe. - Edward Steichen (1879 – 1973) Technical Artistry. Published the magazine “Camera Work” and opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession or “Gallery 291”. Fashion shoots for Vogue, etc.
- Charles Sheeler (1883 – 1965)/ Paul Strand (1890 – 1976) Urban Modernism.
- Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) Landscape phototographer known for photo manipulation in the darkroom and particularly detailed and nuanced shadows
- Edward Weston (1886 – 1958) semi-abstract still life, e.g., “Pepper No. 30”
- Man Ray (1890 – 1976) contributor to Dada and Surrealists, portrait and fashion photography, and known for “rayographs” which are direct exposure on photographic medium without the use of a lens
- Carl Van Vechten (1880 – 1964)
- Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965) originally a society portrait photographer in San Francisco, more famous for her depression era work: “Migrant Mother” etc. [See my post: “Dorothea Lange and Vanessa Winship“.]
- Diane Arbus (1923 – 1975) documentary photographer working on marginalised communities and other social issues exemplified by “Child with Hand-grenade”. [Visited her exhibition on 13th February 2019.]
- Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) pioneer of street photography and founding member of Magnum Photo
- Lyon
- Minor White (1908 – 1976) major proponent developing the philosophy of photography
- William Klein (1928 – ) ironic photojournalism and fashion photography
- Julius Shulman (1910 – 2009) architectural photography coined the phrase “visual acoustics”
- Cindy Sherman (1954 – ) self-portraiture post-modernism contemporary photography
- Annie Leibovitz (1949 – ) celebrity portraiture, “without doubt the most famous photographer living today”.
29th November 2019
Hour 3,039
An hour working on the “Time Analysis at 3,000 Hours” post.
28th November 2019
Hours 3,034 to 3,038
Two hours processing images From Burnham Beeches.
Two hour selecting, further refining and preparing PDI images for both Amersham and Stoke Poges Competitions in the coming couple of weeks.
An hour updating this journal and associated social media site.
27th November 2019
Hours 3,028 to 3,033
An hour updating this journal mainly with notes from the Jamie Windsor YouTube watched yesterday which contained a lot of material completely new to me about Photoshop.
Two hours at Cafe Africa with the Amersham Photographic Society.
An hour updating images with the suggestions made at the above meeting. Including “15 steps to mastering Vanishing Point in Photoshop.“
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Extension the above image to give the lady in yellow a little more room whilst maintaining the promotions of the rest of the picture required:
- canvas extension from the bottom right corner
- vertically stretching the original image
- filling in new empty left side with Content-Aware fill
- tidying up with cloning/ healing, area on the floor required the use of the Vanishing Point filter, which was reasonably straightforward.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society, Colour Group.
26th November 2019
Hours 3,022 to 3,027
An hour further processing the images from Stoke Common Yesterday.
An hour shooting at Stoke Common.
An hour preparing images to be printed for tomorrow’s meeting at Cafe Africa.
An hour preparing this evening’s presentation.
An hour YouTube – Jamie Windsor “25 more Hidden Photoshop Tricks and Hacks“. Some of the more interesting below:
- Droplets, i.e., for creating Jpegs for Instagram – must create one of these
- Perspective Crop tool – under the normal crop tool icon
- March font
- Colour replacement brush – cycle through brushes using “<shift>B”
- Layer Panel Options: change Thumbnail Contents to “Layer Bounds”
- Skin Colour toning using the curves tool to remove colour casts:
- Skin colour should be in the following approximate ratio:
- One part Cyan
- Two parts Magenta
- Two and a half parts Yellow.
- Create curves layer, select eyedropper, ensure that the sample size is something like 11 by 11 average (definitely not just single point)
- Change the numbers in the box to march the requirement and everything will change.
- Skin colour should be in the following approximate ratio:
- Vanishing Point (under filter menu) for Cloning
- Displacement map to apply text to folded material
- Perspective Warp – match perspectives when compositing images
- <Shift><Option><Command>C for content aware scale – useful for frames, etc.
- (19:30) Click image to target specific tones on an adjustment curve
- (21:05) Complex selections using calculations
- Uses channels to make better
- Menu: Image->Calculations
- Use one channel over the same channel, e.g., blue over blue
- Invert
- Change blending to add
- <Option><Del> to fill and area with foreground colour
- get rid of greys:
- Brush <Blend>Overlay (white foreground colour) will brush anything under 50% white to 100% white
- Change foreground colour to black, brush dark greys to black.
- Smooth a background:
- Select Subject and expand a bit to ensure that you have everything
- Create a copy of the background in a new layer, add a mask
- de-link the bask from the layer
- apply a heavy Gaussian blur to the image (mask would also blur if linked)
- Warp tool – use protected areas to preserve sections that shouldn’t be changed.
One of the two hours spent at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
25th November 2019
Hours 3,015 to 3,021
An hour first thing, 7:30am, shooting in Stoke Common – overcast and drizzly, but seemed nice light.
An hour YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “To Edit or Not to Edit your Photography? (How far to take your post processing)“
- Elina Brotherus interview: “Demystifying the Image“
- Professor Hines: “5 Priceless Street Photography Tips”
- Use prime lenses – ?? not sure
- Use aperture priority – ?? not sure either
- Shoot any time of day in the city, there is always a good image somewhere
- Find good locations and look for people to move into them
- Pre-visualise how you will edit the image.
Three hours processing images from this morning – quite happy with a couple.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Club – Presentation by Paul Keene FRPS, MFIAP, MPAGB, EFIAP/ D3 (one of only 4 in the country). Super prolific across all genres.
24th November 2019
Hours 3,010 to 3,014
An hour finishing and publishing the “My Failed CPAGB Submission” following a night’s sleep and much reflection. One of the disappointments of the CPAGB process is the lack of feedback. I will endeavour to obtain this, ideally from Chris Palmer, who was one of the judges for the day, particularly with regard to why images, such as the following “Victorian Road Sweeper” gained second place in an Amersham print competition and scored only 19 from the PAGB.
Half an hour uploading images to Instagram.
An hour culling and processing images from the Antony Gormley exhibition earlier this week.
Half an hour processing the rotational multiple exposure image shot on the 19th.
An hour and a half working on the “Time Analysis at 3,000 Hours” post.
Half an hour working on Flickr and adding a bit more to Instagram.
23rd November 2019
Hours 3,004 to 3,009
Three hours at the PAGB award for photographic merit where my submission for a Certificate of merit really didn’t do very well at all.
An hour YouTube and updating this journal, including: Ted Forbes:
- “Level up your Colour Game in Photography” – an arty, non-techy, guide to colour in photography
- “The truth about lens design” – all lenses are compromises. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of yours.
Two hours drafting the post: “My Failed CPAGB Submission.“
22nd November 2019
Hour 3,003
An hour preparing for tomorrow’s CPAGB assessment.
21st November 2019
Hour 3,002
An hour updating this journal.
20th November 2019
Hours 2,999 to 3,001
An hour updating this journal and social media sites.
An hour further refining my infinite bicycle rack image.
An hour preparing prints for Saturday’s CPAGB submission.
19th November 2019
Hours 2,993 to 2,998
Four hours finishing and then publishing the “Dynamic Abstraction Through Multiple Exposure” post.
An hour preparing a presentation for next week’s Charles Harding 12 narrated images competition at the Stoke Poges Photography Club.
An hour of useful time (out of a total of two) at the Stoke Poges Photography Club.
18th November 2019
Hours 2,987 to 2,992
An hour each at the following London Art exhibitions:
- The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery
- Lucian Freud: Self-Portraits at the Royal Academy. Early drawings showed the influence of the cubist artists he is know to have met in Paris in the late ’40s. Particularly in the eyes which are out of scale and simplistically drawn.
- Antony Gormley – Retrospective also at the RA.
An hour updating this journal.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – particularly interested in the studio set-up demonstrated by Chrissy; plain matt black background enables a greater depth of field, i.e., f/7.1 to f/9. One key light plus a reflector, perhaps a hairlight. Black reflector to give a more dramatic look.
17th November 2019
Hours 2,982 to 2,986
Four hours at the RPS DIG Thames Valley: Hugh Milsom FRPS & Pat Broad ARPS, and Peter Milsom EFIAP talking about landscape and sports photography respectively.
I am reminded of the following quote from my “Composition – thoughts at 2,000 hours” post:
“In every landscape should reside jewels of abstract art waiting to be discovered”
Melissa Brown
An hour updating this journal and tweaking some of the images from London Zoo.
16th November 2019
Hours 2,977 to 2,981
An hour reviewing the work of the week and updating this journal.
Two hours processing images shot at London Zoo on the 14th. a bit more culling (54 to 32), lots of adjustment in Capture One Pro, then exporting to Lightroom. [export and auto-import now working fine.]
An hour adding images to this journal and updating the Flickr site.
An hour YouTube, including:
- “Photoshop 2020 problems and Solutions” – mainly solved by changing or resetting your preferences or waiting for the next bug-fix release
- Ted Forbes “Heinrich Kuhn” early pictorials photographer who pioneered the use of colour.
- Agnes Martin: “Beauty is in Your Mind“, a rose held behind someone’s back so that you can no longer see it is still beautiful.
In music people accept pure emotion. In the visual arts, they demand explanation.
Agnes Martin
15th November 2019
Hours 2,974 to 2,976
Three hours processing images shot at the Zoo yesterday, including culling from 658 to 54.
14th November 2019
Hours 2,968 to 2.973
Five hours shooting at London Zoo with Yin Wong of the Amersham Photographic Society.
An hour watching “Abstract Artists in their own Words” which explores the varied works of British artists including:
- Barbara Hepworth – I visited her studio in St Ives (before the start of this project)
- Bridget Riley – exhibition visited on the 7th last week
- Sir Anthony Caro – had an exhibition this year at Cliveden where his art was largely unappreciated by National Trust members and used as a climbing frame by children. The video shows his defence of the £15,000 sculpture commissioned by a West London University and subsequently used as a bicycle rack by its students
- Victor Pasmore – sculptor and architect whose work includes the “Apollo Pavillion” that the residents of the local council estate complained about and youths vandalised
- John Hoyland – abstract painter.
13th November 2019
Hours 2,963 to 2,967
Two hours at Cafe Africa with the Amersham Photographic Society.
- this week’s compositions where there is a clear point of focus were generally preferred
- It was suggested that I try a vertical movement, e.g., combining images shot from several floors of a building or multi-story carpark.
Half an hour watching the YouTube about
Half an hour updating this journal, mainly with notes from yesterday’s competition at Stoke Poges Photographic Club (a much less happy experience than my success of Monday at Amersham).
Two hours watching YouTubes about art and Artists I have recently seen exhibited or are planning to seen soon:
- Bridget Riley in Conversation with Sir John Leighton – I visited the exhibition at the Haywood Gallery on 7th (last week)
- “The case for conceptual art” – left me unconvinced. “The idea is more important than the finished art piece” – hmmm, perhaps. However, Joseph Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” which features: chair, photograph of the same chair and a written description of the same chair; is art only by reference to the institutional theory, i.e., acceptance by the Artworld. Therefore, exposed to he “emperor’s new clothes” counterargument.
- “Lucian Freud, a Painted Life” – long detailed documentary; preparation for his exhibition that I’m planning to visit on the 18th.
12th November 2019
Hours 2,958 to 2,962
Half an hour updating this journal with self-congratulatory remarks about last night’s print competition at Amersham Photographic Society.
Half an hour updating the Infinite Bicycle Rack image as below. In hindsight, this was prematurely entered into competition and I like this version much more.
Half an hour preparing prints for tomorrow’s meeting at Cafe Africa.
An hour’s YouTube:
- Pierre Lambert: “5 minute night street photography challenge in Tokyo“
- Ted Forbes: “What Adobe told me …” all about the AI developments in the product, particularly the section of the best images from a “spray and pray” shoot
- Matt Kloskowski: “What’s new in Photoshop 2020 for Photographers”
- Option select layer to auto zoom into that element
- Select Subject tools
- Much more control over the content aware fill feature so that you can choose what areas to build from
- “Close Others” command to close all the files other than the one being worked on – potentially good for speeding up operations whilst making multiple exposure images.
Half an hour sorting candidate ARPS images.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photography Club – PDI competition: “Candid” and Open.
| Image | ….. | Judge’s Comments |
 | Dodgy Dealings in Brick Lane 16 The judge felt that this concentrated more on the graffito than the people who were the subject of the candid shot. | |
 | Child Playing with Artificial Pet 16 Very strange lighting | |
 | Almost a Diptych at the Barbican – Open section 15 Has almost nothing to recommend it. Shutter speed too slow so that the people on the right are blurred. |
11th November 2019
Hours 2,953 to 2,957
First hour and a half finishing processing the multiple exposure images shot last week; including rewriting the Photoshop action.
An hour YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “The Importance of Retreat“
- “The Forger’s Masterclass – Georges Braque” 3 artists learn to pain in the early cubist style of Georges Braque.
- Ignore all perspective
- Trick to access composition – turn the canvas upside-down. Also applicable to photography.
Half an hour preparing prints for this evening’s competition.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Print competition
| Entry | ….. | Judge’s Comments |
 | The Infinite Bicycle Rack of Abstract Expressionism. “I noticed this image immediately when I went to preview the entries as it had a crowd of people around it discussing it.” Creative and lots of positives, but would have been better with just a single point of focus rather than the 2 red areas that currently demand attention, and don’t like the boarder. 16 (actually the average score for the evening). | |
 | Hoodie Descending a Staircase on the Southbank *** 20 and First Place *** Creative, well composed and great colour palette. |
10th November 2019
Hours 2,948 to 2,952
First hour finishing adding images, mainly from Kefalonia, to the October Journal page.
An hour YouTube:
- National Gallery – “Caravaggio: His life and style in three paintings“
- Rachel Cusk Interview: “You Can Live the Wrong Life”
- Desire and discipline are massively important in building a body of work, i.e., success as an artist
- Study the canon of art
- concentrate on the volume or work to be achieved every day.
Two hours updating the Flickr site, adding images to groups etc. and updating journal pages associated with the night multiple exposures shot on the 31st October.
An hour processing the images shot in London earlier this week. [My photoshop Action and Script does not seem to have fared well in the upgrade to Photoshop 2020; some reworking required.]
9th November 2019
Hours 2,943 to 2,947
An hour shooting Black Park parkrun 545 followed by 2 hours culling, processing and uploading those images.
Two hours creating alternative versions of the multiple exposure images shot in London on the afternoon/ evening of 31st October and discussed at Cafe Africa three days ago.
8th November 2019
Hours 2,940 to 2,942
First half hour updating the “Dynamic Abstraction through Multiple-Exposure” post started yesterday and updating this journal.
Half an hour watching the PiXimperfect, “Top 20 Features and Updates Explained from Photoshop 2020“. Lots of exciting stuff around selections, particularly enabling subjects to be removed from backgrounds more easily.
Two hours doing the final tweaks to my CPAGB images then preping for print together with the next Monday’s images for the Amersham Photographic Society where there were some problems with the Jpegs I had produced previously.
7th November 2019
Hours 2,933 to 2,939
Half an hour shooting multiple exposure along the Southbank and in the Tate. Mainly images I have made before but using this experience to create something better; hopefully.
Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour starting the “Dynamic Abstraction through Multiple-Exposure” post about using multiple exposure photography to create a dynamic and multi-dimensional image.
An hour working on the “Time Analysis” post.
An hour reviewing the work of Peter Stevens FRPS, whose recent successful fellowship panel was noticed by my friend and fellow member of the Stoke Poges Photographic Club, Neil Griffin ARPS. Observations about Peter’s images include:
- Concentration on the experience of tourists visiting the major sites vs my objective to show how the city is used by business people
- Clean composition
- Generally strong photographic principles such as vertical verticals in architecture, etc.
- Limited number of exposures to retain detail
- Consistent and generally muted toning and colour pallet across the panel.
An hour at the Bridget Riley exhibition at the Southbank Centre. Interesting development of themes using limited colours and shapes. Many paintings appear to be 3 dimensional and/ or moving, which made me think about the biology of perception.
Two hours at the Amersham Beyond meeting.
6th November 2019
Hours 2,928 to 2,932
An hour processing the sky images shot yesterday and updating this journal.
Two hours at Cafe Africa with the Amersham Photographic Society.
- Several comments on my multiple exposure images shot in London on the afternoon/ evening of 31st October – generally need to be lightened
- Yin suggested that I lay 4×5 inch prints on the floor for easier overall viewing of an ARPS panel
- My idea building upon this is to construct a scale replica of the display stand.
An hour and a half’s YouTube including:
- Nick Turpin: “Street Photography in Trieste“
- “Raphael, the apprentice years“
Half an hour updating this journal.
5th November 2019
Hours 2,919 to 2,927
Monthly shoot of the Skys above Hasting Meadow as below (2 hours shooting).
| West | ….. | North | ….. | East | ….. | South |
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| 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 |
An hour watching: Marcus du Sautoy lecture on AI focusing on insight and creativity. Conclusion that AI is a tool that will eventually be able to extend art of all genres beyond what is currently possible. Du Sautoy believed that artists should embrace this technology as a means of producing more and better work than would otherwise be possible.
Creativity: novel, surprising, and with value.
Margaret Boden
[Seem to have solved my problem with Lightroom Classic CC not importing TIFF files: for some reason, if I change the byte order to “Microsoft PC” my Lightroom (running on a brand new iMac) sees the files and works fine. If they are in “Mac” byte order it refuses to recognise that they are TIF files.]
An hour importing into Lightroom all the multiple exposure images I have created over the last week.
An hour processing Jpegs for printing for next week’s print competition at the Amersham Photographic Society. This included some colour toning of the images.
An hour finishing processing in Capture One Pro the images I shot yesterday at Burnham Beeches and a few days ago at Stoke Common.
An hour producing versions of Jpegs for prints to take to tomorrows’s meeting at Cafe Africa with the Amersham Photographic Society.
[My photoshop action for doing this automatically has overwritten the original files, grrrrr. Which means I’m going to have to recover or recreate the originals. Bit of a backup test!]
An hour updating last month’s journal with images from Kefalonia.
One hour of the two spent at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: Workshop – Colour. Discussion of sRGB vs aRGB or ProRGB colour spaces. The later only useful for printing and one can rarely tell the difference anyway.
4th November 2019
Hours 2,913 to 2,918
An hour and a half shooting in Burnham Beeches.
An hour culling and processing both the images shot today and those shot on the 1st at Stoke Common.
Half an hour PLearn: “File Formats in Photoshop EXPLAINED (TIFF, GIF, PSB, & More)“.
An hour watching: “The Renaissance – the Age of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci“.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – North West Fed (Ealing, Hemel Hempstead & APS), Round 3.
3rd November 2019
Hour 2,912
An hour creating the following Triptych and updating my Facebook page with a new album from Kefalonia.
2nd November 2019
Hours 2,907 to 2,911
Two hours processing the last of the multiple exposure shot in London on the afternoon/ evening of 31st October.
An hour learning about and practicing variable flash compensation. Set in the menu of the camera (on my Sony a99ii) when using TTL flash. It was previously under exposing as this was set to -0.3EV.
An hour finding images, to submit next week, for the forthcoming Candid PDI competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
[The photoshoot with Princess Alexandra, schedules for next Tuesday, i.e., 3 days time, has been cancelled.]
An hour watching “Picasso and Braque go to the Movies” in which Martin Scorsese and others discuss how Picasso and Braque worked closely together in the creation of cubism, often producing almost identical work, and how they were influenced by the technological developments of the early 20th Century.
1st November 2019
Hours 2,899 to 2,906
An hour shooting in Stoke Common looking for potential compositions for the “Autumnal Colours” competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
One and a half hours processing multiple exposure images shot yesterday. See variants below combining 3, 5, 7 and 13 of the same base exposures.
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Half an hour updating this journal, including all the new month stuff (also updating the “New Month WordPress Journal Workflow” post).
An hour watching an writing about the following YouTubes:
- Nick Turpin: “Streep Photography in a Suburban Town”
- Shooting in Croydon, fewer people means more time
- Uses a high ISO, e.g., 3200 with f/7.2. 1/500 Sec, 50mm lens
- Ted Forbes: “The Ultimate PHOTO EDITING Setup!! Studio Tour 2019”
- Uses a combination of Capture One, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for the same reasons as I do. (See: “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours“)
- However, more extensive use of mobile applications such as Lightroom CC.
Two further hours processing multiple exposure images shot yesterday.
Two hours practicing shooting a studio set-up utilising just about all the lights I own, and camera tethered to my new MacBook Pro.