October 2021

This journal records my actual ten thousand hours deliberate practice studying fine art photography.

Hours 5,711 to 5,821

(November 2021)

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31^st October

Hours 5,819 to 5,821

(3h) working on frequency separation techniques for model skin tone.

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30^th October

Hours 5,815 to 5,818

(1h) YouTube:

• PIXimperfect – “Extending an image in Photoshop“
• The Photographers’ Eye – “Spooky Images Photographers Make//Why Do They Haunt Our Dreams?“
• The Art of Photography – “The Photo Book as an Art Form” – creating flow within the book

(1h) Watching Jeffrey Brenzel’s “The Essential Value of a Classic Education”

• 5 marks of a classic:
  1. addresses permanent and universal human concerns
  2. game-changer
  3. influences other great works
  4. respected by experts
  5. challenging yet rewarding
• Classic works pf philosophy throughout history:
  • c. 400bc – Socrates/ Plato/ Aristotle, including Plato’s “The Republic”; each a student of the former (Socrates didn’t write anything down)
  • c 50ad – St Paul, most of the New Testament based largely on the works of Plato and Aristotle
  • 450ad – St Augustine – “The City of God”
  • 1250 – St Thomas Aquinas “Summa Theologica” integrates some newly discovered work of Aristotle
  • 1300 – Dante – “The Divine Comedy”
  • 1517 – Martin Luther “The Ninety-Five Theses” – disruptive and splinters Christianity
  • 1667 – John Milton – “Paradise Lost” – reimagination of Satan
  • 1800 – Soren Kierkegaard – the godfather of existentialism
  • 1900s – Heidegger, Sartre & Nietzsche – the latter trying to undo what he believes to be the disaster Socrates bequeathed to the western civilisation.
• 5 Pay-off from reading the Greats
  • the value of forgotten ideas
  • the value of connections between ideas
  • great books from the past are unburdened by today’s assumptions – primary source of creativity
  • building intellectual muscle power
  • the ability to make better judgement

(½h) updating this journal.

(1½h) working on the Workshop Portraits, in particular using the frequency separation technique that I implemented in a Photoshop Action on 5^th April 2020 now have some improvements to make.

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29^th October

Hours 5,812 to 5,814

(3h) working on the Workshop portraits, including culling from 400 to 12.

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28^th October

Hours 5,803 to 5,811

(5h) Continuous Lighting Portraiture Workshop at the Amersham Photo Studios

(1h) culling images from the 2,000 shot at the workshop down to about 400

(½h) updating this journal

(2½h) Ask Amersham group with presentations:

• Tim Hodges: becoming a professional photographer and how I got the gig at the House of Lords
• Alison Trimbee: Taking photographs for fun
• Brian Ridgley: winning competitions – how to always score more than 17/20 and hopefully more if the judge likes your subject.

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27^th October

Hours 5,797 to 5,802

(4h) working on the Comic Con images from the weekend

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Colour Group.

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26^th October

Hours 5,790 to 5,796

(4h) working on the Comic Con images – pleated with the Broken Swan below.

(1h) YouTube:

• Photographer’s Eye: “How to shoot like a pro” – develop a consistent style
• Sean Tucker: “Get Small and Tell the Truth”
• Contemporary Art Issue: “The Most Famous Painters Today”

(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – external competition: North West Fed against Pinner

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25^th October

Hours 5,782 to 5,789

Misty morning; shot the following on my iPhone whilst out dog walking.

(4h) working on images from ComicCom yesterday.

(1h) updating this journal.

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Rosebowl

(1h) another hour working on the ComicCon images.

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24^th October

Hours 5,779 to 5,781

(3h) intense shooting at Comic Con at the London ExCel centre with my friend and mentor, Yin Wong.

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23^rd October

Hours 5,773 to 5,778

(½h) updating this journal

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22^nd October

Hours 5,770 to 5,772

(½h) transferring files from laptop to main computer

(1½h) sourcing materials for the Karl Taylor Education lay flat ingredients challenge

(1h) rewatching the brief for, and planning the above assignment

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21^st October

Hours 5,767 to 5,769

(1h) shooting, again primarily promenade abstracts, on the beach first thing in the morning

(2h) processing the morning’s images

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20^th October

Hours 5,765 to 5,766

(1h) shooting:

• some potential seascape foreground for my Milky Way image
• bulk of the time – abstracts of the promenade structure from the beach
• finally a quick daybreak seascape.

(1h) processing the promenade abstracts.

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19^th October

Hours 5,763 to 5,764

(½h) shooting moonscapes at 4am.

(1½h) processing images from yesterday and this morning.

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18^th October

Hours 5,760 to 5,762

(1h) processing images from the last couple of days including the following, where the boat was actually shot through the hole in the board by might as well have been a composite as I had to focus stack it to get both foreground and background in focus.

(½h) YouTube from the Photographer’s Eye:

• “How to find new subjects to Photograph“
  • What should I photograph?
  • Exercise take 36 photos of an object that interests you – not dissimilar advice to Boag’s “take 3 photos of anything that you think is worthy of photographing, i.e., find 2 more compositions”
• “3 Photographers from the Letter B“
  • David Bailey
  • Cecil Beaton
  • Larry Burrows

(½h) writing up this journal

(1h) shooting on the beach in the evening.

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17^th October

Hours 5,757 to 5,759

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16^th October

Hours 5,754 to 5,756

(1h) shooting in the rain on the beach in Greece first thing in the morning.

[Camera got very wet and stopped working. Quite worried, and spent much time trying to dry to out.]

(2h) processing the images of the morning. Good but not worth the damage to the camera.

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15^th October

Hour 5,753

(½h) processing a couple of images shot yesterday and this morning.

(½h) reviewing images from 2 years ago and other seascapes.

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14^th October

Hours 5,751 to 5,752

(2h) updating this journal and the “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post.

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13^th October

Hours 5,749 to 5,750

(½h) writing up yesterday’s fine art architectural photography lecture.

(1½h) processing images from the weekend, updating the “Death and Rebirth” image below, and preparing entries for next Tuesday’s “Energy/ Energetic” competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.

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New Image (More contrast in the Snakeskin)		Old image

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12^th October

Hours 5,745 to 5,748

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11^th October

Hours 5,740 to 5,744

(2h) processing images from the weekend.

(1h) updating this journal.

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – PDI competition my entries below.

Image	…..	Comments
		“Death and Rebirth” 18 Interesting and intriguing image. Perhaps add more contrast to the snake as some detail is being lost.
		“Watching You” 16 Dominant element is somebody else’s art. Interest is in the right hand fifth where the viewer of the painting has a strange mask on. Contrast with my analysis on the 6th.

10^th October

Hours 5,736 to 5,739

(½h) shooting first thing in the morning

(½h) visiting the Ashmolean Museum including the “Dante: The Invention of Celebrity” exhibition which features art inspired by the Devine Comedy.

(3h) processing the weekend’s images

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9^th October

Hours 5,733 to 5,735

(½h) shooting near Wantage

(1½h) shooting Border Morris Dancers at a small gathering in Wantage town centre.

(1h) reviewing and editing the day’s images

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8^th October

Hours 5,728 to 5,732

(1h) shooting at Stoke Common – trying to get better versions of image 7 & 9 for my woodland A panel.

(1½h) processing today’s images plus creating the following displacement image in response to feedback from yesterday’s Amersham Beyond meeting.

(½h) updating this journal.

(1½h) attending the “Tokyo Art and Photography” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

(½h) shooting in the Ashmolean

 

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7^th October

Hours 5,726 to 5,727

(1h) processing images for forthcoming club competitions, mainly finding 2 PDIs for next week’s APS comp.

(1h) creating the following analysis which was encouraged by Martin Patten’s presentation on Monday of this week.

• structurally:
  • yellow of woman’s hat mirrors the splash of yellow in the main picture which is probably the dominant area
  • the black rectangle, top right, balances the precise rectangle of the main picture; and with the smaller picture below it makes for a pleasing trio
  • dynamic lines in the walls supporting the pictures help keep the viewer in the image
  • three levels of human abstract: the 3 women visiting the gallery, the family group within the main picture and the mother and child painting within a painting
• meaning:
  • subjects’ gaze directs the viewer around the image: mother & child in insert to family on sofa in main picture to woman in foreground to couple in background to the abstract on the wall left
  • the scratched out girl in the main picture suggests the oppression of girls in black families.  This is supported by the dominant gaze of the father and the mothers’ caring for children.  Yet the fact that we have three women visiting the gallery is a more optimistic sign of independence.

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6^th October

Hours 5,723 to 5,725

(½h) updating this journal.

(1½h) Cafe Africa meeting with in Amersham. Spent lots of time speaking with Vic Attfield who persuaded me to enter my original A panel. However, Chris Palmer’s view is that several images are not up to the required standard. Vic like the concept and the story. Perhaps need to shoot some replacements for the weaker images.

Vic has made over 100 exhibition scale prints since the start of lockdown; capturing much of his older work. We discussed a number of smaller versions of these prints. Edward Western famously said “there are pictures everywhere. It’s just a matter of seeing and organising thinks.” Vic is the undoubted master.

(1h) YouTube including the following:

• The Photographic Eye: “The Amazing Photography of Harry Callahan” – street and abstract photography
• Louisiana Channel: “Pulling Birds out of the Sky” – a series of poor quality BOAS images where the subject is often completely out of focus, collectively create an interesting work
• Gregory Quack: “Mark Rothko’s ‘Unititled’” in fact a comparison between the following two paintings made just a few years apart:

 

• Gregory Quack: “Franz Kline’s ‘Portrait of Nikinsky’” – a discussion of how Kline moved from figurative work like this portrait to the bold, monochrome, almost calligraphic images for which he is better known
• Sotheby’s:
  • “The Striking Colours of Richter’s Abstract Series“
  • “Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Untitled (Red Warrior), 1982’” – an iconic contemporary image inspired by the classical masters
  • “Richard Hambleton: The Godfather of Street Art“
• Tate:
  • “Celeste on Salvador Dali, surrealism and artistic inspiration“
  • “Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain: Fly in League with the Night“

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5^th October

Hours 5,721 to 5,722

(1h) YouTube including:

• Nigel Danson: “Shutter Speed for Seascape Photography“
• Epoch Philosophy: “Martin Heidegger: Being and Time“

(1h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club.

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4^th October

Hours 5,717 to 5,720

(½h) updating this journal.

(1½h) crating images for this Thursday’s Beyond Group meeting, including the following on the subject of texture.

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture by Martin Patten, Chair of the Chiltern Association of Camera Clubs, “Why we take photos”

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3^rd October

Hour 5,716

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) processing images from the weekend.

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2^nd October

Hour 5,715

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1^st October

Hours 5,711 to 5,714

(1h) updating this journal, including all the new month admin with new banner, etc.

(3h) processing images from the last few days.

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(September 2021)