This journal records my actual Ten Thousand hours of deliberate practice studying photography.
Hours 5,620 to 5,710
30th September
Hours 5,707 to 5,710
(½h) shooting at Stoke Common.
(½h) writing up this journal.
(2h) processing images from yesterday and the previous street shooting trip to London, including the following triptych.
(1h) YouTube:
- Frederik Trovatten: “How to take Photos Like Albert Watson“
- ZaraSpark: “Joan Miro: The Harlequin’s Carnival“
- Mark Thorsby: “Martin Heidegger: Being and Time” – the development of Phenomenology.
29th September
Hours 5,704 to 5,706
(1h) street photography London
(½h) Tate Modern – Sophie Taeuber-Arp exhibition – definitely someone to add to my list of favourite artists.
(½h) Hayward Gallery – revisiting the “Mixing it up – Painting Today” exhibition, also taking some photographs.
(½h) writing up this journal – mainly with regard to the notes from yesterday.
(½h) YouTube:
- Ted Forbes: “Composing a Photograph“
- purpose of the image through visual communication
- analogy with music: structure through patterns delivering predictability
- analysis of the elements of the Henri Cartier-Bresson 1932 decisive moment image “Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare” and suggestion that this displays a surrealist influence
- need to practice to gain the “photographer’s eye”; opportunity meets preparation allows you to exploit the Decisive Moment.
- The National Gallery: “How Botticelli revolutionised portraits“
(Left: sculpture outside the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London)
28th September
Hours 5,700 to 5,703
(1h) updating this website
(1h) YouTube including:
- Simon Baxter & Joe Cornish “Woodland Photography Event” – Opening in summer 2022
- Mads Peter Iversen “3 Skills that will benefit your Landscape Photography“
- create structure in your composition – understand how the structure supports the intention of the image
- previsualisation – explore an area before you shoot it in anticipation of how it may look in different weather. To use Chris Palmer’s terminology this is a pre-audit of the visual elements, or potential elements, of a scene
- learn about meteorology, i.e., predict tomorrow’s weather, circumstances when it is likely to be foggy.
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Edith Ward “J” competition by entries below:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “Jalopy” 17 Generally praised for composition and skin tone of the two subjects. | |
 | “Jurassic Coast” 15 Too bright. Compositionally the line of rocks prevents the viewer from looking past to the top half (back) of the image. Surely there was a better angle to take this from, all the interest is in the sand ripples to the right. | |
 | “Jeremy Irons’ Dog” 15 Very cheeky entry, hardly fits the J subject. Colour balance looks a bit too blue. |
27th September
Hours 5,696 to 5,699
(½h) reviewing the catalogue from the Malmo exhibition, I entered but has not acceptances. Ideas:
- combining straight and ICM images – may work well with some autumnal woodland where there is a dramatic cloud accent in the straight element
- Escher-style image “shadows” composite of people walking between windows of a building with other people looking out.
(1½h) processing images from the last few days.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – first print competition of the season. My entry below:
Judge thought the A3 print was too big for the 40×50 mount, and that the left of the image was perhaps a little too bright. I also don’t think, with the benefit of hindsight, that the title helped; needed to be more positive. Revised version below.
Revised version is better.
26th September
Hours 5,694 to 5,695
(½h) updating this journal and planning today.
(½h) shooting at the Maidenhead Ploughing competition, including a publicity shot for the Thames Valley Heartbeat charity who were doing the first aid.
(1h) editing the day’s photographs.
25th September
Hour 5,693
(1h) catching up with this journal and associated Flickr site for the last few days.
24th September
Hours 5,689 to 5,692
(1h) processing the images from the Langley Night shoot.
(1½h) shooting at the Chiltern Open Air Museum with the Amersham Photographic Society. Great practice using my new Sony A7C.
(1h) selecting and processing images for both Monday’s print competition (Amersham Photographic Society) and Tuesdays Edith Ward “J” (less formal competition with the Stoke Poges Photographic Club).
(½h) initial editing of the images from the Langley – the Blue Hour images seems more attractive that the image shot later.
23rd September
Hours 5,686 to 5,688
(½h) updating this journal with images from the last few days.
(½h) planning a night shoot at Langley Park.
(1h) watching the start of the Karl Taylor Education – Working to a Brief – Assignment 6: flat-lay image of fruit-pie ingredients to be used for various advertising purposes.
(1h) night shoot at Langley Park, trying to get the tree, shot on iPhone yesterday, by moonlight.
22nd September
Hour 5,685
(½h) shooting a still life with my new Sony A7C.
(½h) planning a moon lit shoot of the following tree in Langley Park.
[Lots of time spend working on stabilising the time-lapse footage. Mainly writing JavaScript code and Photoshop Actions and Droplets to align a frame with the last. Major difficulty still being saving two files from one action.]
21st September
Hours 5,678 to 5,684
(½h) saw a new potential crop for my “Descending Waterloo Bridge” image as a new version of “Hoodie Descending a Staircase” with greater emphasis on the architecture of the bridge. I think the version below hints at the angles, curves and general form of the bridge whilst simplifying the top edge which previously competed for attention.
(½h) updating this journal.
(1h) at the Tate Britain Paula Rego exhibition – interesting as a figurative painter of issues ranging from the subjugation of women under the facist regime when she was growing up in Portugal, the dark side of nursery rhymes and their portrayal of women, and her own relationship with her husband as he was dying of MS.
“War” image opposite was inspired by a newspaper photograph of civilian casualties of a bomb in Basra, Iraq, featuring a mother carrying a baby. The figures have mask-like rabid heads and the discarded child’s toy on the ground make the horror more intense. This figure bottom right apparently relates to the artist’s teacher, in the act of saving a group of refugees.
(1h) at the rest of the Tate Britain including the newly relocated Rothko Seagram Murals installation. My feeling on this is that it is a shame it has become a thoroughfare rather than a destination room as it was at the Tate Modern.
(2h) learning about my new Sony A7C which was delivered today.
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – “Me and my Camera” members’ session. Set up the memory setting on the new camera – broadly similar to those of the A99ii. Also the customised menu with the key element of switching between human and animal face detection which is important for the focus tracking feature.
20th September
Hours 5,673 to 5,677
(½h) updating Flickr for the images from last week
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) practicing using the Adobe Colour Wheel – if nothing else, this could improve my monthly banners
(1½h) finding and preparing images for next season’s club competitions, particularly next week’s print competition at Amersham.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture by Roger Hance FRPS covered a range of genres giving tips as follows:
- shoot birds at ground level from a low angle yourself – particularly effective in snow
- put props next to a bird feeder that the birds can land on whilst “queuing for the feeder”
- shoot fungi as though it’s a still life – move elements around it to achieve the best composition
- when shooting landscapes in very flat light, concentrate on the details in the scene rather than the whole vista
19th September
Hours 5,671 to 5,672
(1h) creating a new version of my most awarded image “Hoodie Descending the South Bank” this time with more emphasis on the Art Deco architecture of that end of Waterloo Bridge.
(1h) YouTube:
- Nigel Danson: “24mm vs 200mm Photography Challenge” – Nigel and James Popsys compete to take a Landscape photo using these extreme lenses in the hills of Wales.
- Art History School: “10 Amazing Facts about Henri Rousseau“
- Art History School: “Ferdinand Hodler: The Life of an Artist” – Swiss landscape painting and depictions of ordinary rural workers – images used on Swiss bank notes
- “Surrealist Art – Joan Miró“
18th September
Hours 5,669 to 5,670
(1h) processing images from the South Bank including the new version of the “Shopping on the South Bank” image below.
(1h) YouTube:
- BioGraphics: “Pablo Picasso: The Public Art and Private Life of the Maestro” – a non-reverential look at the life of Picasso including his controlling relationship with women.
17th September
Hours 5,665 to 5,668
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) researching Rodin in preparation for visiting the EY exhibition at the Tate Modern and the “Today’s painting” at the Heywood Gallery, both to be visited later today.
(½h) Tate Modern EY Exhibition: Rodin
(½h) rest of the Tate Modern
(½h) Haywood Gallery: “Today’s Painting” some interesting new artists:
(½h) street photography on the South Bank.
(1h) processing the results of the day’s photos.
16th September
Hours 5,662 to 5,664
(1h) preparing images for the Stoke Poges Photographic Society’s – Edith Ward “J” Competition.
(1h) processing Monday’s images from Stoke Common, particularly lots of close-ups of bark patterns.
(1h) YouTube:
- WTF?: “An Introduction to Marxism and Culture” – interaction between elements of a society’s superstructure (laws, religion, science, education and particularly culture) with the economic base
- Art History School: “The Story Grant Wood’s American Gothic“
15th September
Hours 5,657 to 5,661
(½h) writing up notes from yesterday.
(½h) experimenting with the Color Lookup adjustment layer demonstrated by Ken yesterday evening to create the image below.
(2h) creating Flickr Albums for the Northumberland images shot last week.
(1h) working on the following LAB colour experiment with an image from a couple of weeks ago.
 |  | |
| Original | No Luminosity | |
| ….. | ||
 |  | |
| No B Channel | No A Channel |
(1h) YouTube:
- Simon Baxter: “Autumn Woodland Photography – Be Prepared“
- Art History School: “Stanley Spencer: The Life of an Artist“
- National Gallery of Australia: “Matisse & Picasso” – their shared connection to the work of Cezanne, differing perspectives and friendship/ rivalry
- PiXimperfect: “Sharpen without halos in Photoshop”:
- Create two sharpening layers – using whatever technique you like
- Change one to Darken blend mode and the other to Lighten. One layer will contain the darkening side of the line (usually inoffensive) and the other the lightening side (where the halos tend to appear
- Mask both and simply remove any annoying halos.
14th September
Hours 5,652 to 5,656
(3h) processing versions of the Northumberland images in various formats:
- Square images (done previously)
- Long and Thin
- Further Mixed images
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Ken Grant was demonstrating how he processed imaged to achieve extreme simplification and/ or a fantasy feel. The later making use of the Day to Night which is actually the NightFromDay.CUBE profile from the Color Lookup adjustment layer.
13th September
Hours 5,648 to 5,651
(1h) shooting at Stoke Common
(1h) processing and selection best images from trip to Northumberland
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – PDI Competition – no skin in the game due to not being at the previous session and general lack of organisation on my part.
12th September
Hours 5,646 to 5,647
(½h) updating this journal, mainly notes from yesterday’s YouTubes.
(½h) shooting at Denbies Vineyard where the Bachunal Half Marathon was being run.
(1h) YouTube: “The Mystery Of Beauty: What Makes Something Aesthetically Pleasing?“
- Explores the evolutionary aspects of beauty, i.e., how beauty can provide a selective advantage in Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, both in correlating with survival (healthy people are considered better looking) and for attracting a mate, e.g., the reason male peacocks have such feathers
- 20th Century art is defined as post-freudian, attempts to express psychological aspects including the subconscious.
11th September
Hours 5,644 to 5,645
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) processing the following “joiner” style image.
(1h) YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “Empathy in Documentary Photography (feat. Jim Mortram)” – key message is to build an honest long term relationship with your subject(s) before shooting them
- Pierre T. Lambert: “3 Photography mistakes to stop now“
- Don’t obsess about always shooting in manual mode, sometimes its important to the more reactive. His recommendation is to shoot occasionally in aperture priority mode – my solution is the memory setting on my camera to do just this; M1: settings for quickly shooting portraits or still subject, M2: moving subjects; M3: ICM.
- Spend a little more time reviewing shots at the shooting stage to make sure you have them as good as possible whilst you can still do something about it. Similar to Yin Wong’s mantra “how can I make this photo better?”
- Engage subject in conversation before shooting them. Jim Mortam’s philosophy above is a more extreme version of this. JM’s opinion was that the street photographer’s approach of chat and snap, or just snap is vulgar.
- Thomas Heaton: Shooting the Lake District from his camerawomen van.
10th September
Hour 5,643
(½h) shooting in Wark, Northumberland.
[Long drive home.]
(½h) transferring images from the last week to my main computer for further processing.
9th September
Hours 5,641 to 5,642
(1h) processing yesterday evening’s astro images. Sadly, the scope wasn’t properly aligned. So some star trails.
(5 minutes exposure but with a slight misalignment of the scope)
(1h) assembling an attempt at a Wark Joiner – must have only one layer of images with sky.
8th September
Hours 5,637 to 5,640
(½h) shooting in Wark.
(½h) updating this journal including producing a new version of yesterday’s astrophotography.
(1h) shooting birds of prey at the Kielder Water Birds of Prey Centre.
(1h) processing the day’s images.
(1h) astrophotography. Trying to align the scope with the North Star, looking 55 degrees upward is uncomfortable to the point of being practically impossible. In hindsight, one needs to have the tripod on its lowest setting and lie on the floor next to it. Needs more practice.
7th September
Hours 5,634 to 5,636
(1h) shooting in Northumberland: first thing in the morning, then middle of the day.
(1h) processing today’s images.
(1h) astrophotography, managing to capture the following image of the milky way.
6th September
Hour 5,633
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) planning our forthcoming trip to Northumberland, especial the Astro Photography opportunities.
5th September
Hours 5,630 to 5,632
(1h) shooting at Stoke Common.
(1½h) YouTube:
- Ted Forbes: “What is Visual Signature” – largely developing a style based on the same focal length of lens.
- Perspective: “The Mystery Of Beauty: What Makes Something Aesthetically Pleasing?“
- The role of beauty in the natural selection part of evolution, e.g., why peacocks have feathers that confer no advantage other than to look impressive to the ladies
- Modern art has nothing to do with beauty.
(½h) processing this morning’s images in Capture One.
4th September
Hour 5,629
(1h) writing the “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post.
3rd September
Hours 5,627 to 5,628
(1h) creating Facebook albums for Day and Night photos from last weekend’s Thames Traditional Boat Festival.
(1h) updating this journal.
2nd September
Hour 5,626
(1h) managing social media for the Thames Traditional Boat Festival images shot over the last weekend.
1st September
Hours 5,620 to 5,625
(1h) updating this journal, including all the new month admin with newly styled banner graphic.
(5h) finalising the images for the Thames Traditional Boat Festival
