Strange Times – Easing Slightly
Lockdown gradually easing, photography still constrained by:
- lack of international travel – planned travel to Poland, Spain and Las Vegas all canceled
- general unease in using public transport – of the very few people in London, many are wearing masks even outside, which makes continuing my multiple exposure project difficult.
Key areas of work included:
- work on Karl Taylor on-line course in advertising photography with three shooting to a brief challenges:
- Apples for cider advert
- Wine Bottle
- Blueberry Muffins (finished image outside this time frame)
- commission to shoot food images for the Som Tam Thai restaurant in Shepherds Bush
- woodland and landscape photography.
Shooting from Home
c. 10 minute exposure – at home – note star trails
The above image is a long exposure shot as a weekly challenge from Karl Taylor Education, the group I was enrolled in as a result of my Tim Flack course having been cancelled/ postponed. Shot shortly after midnight on the 14th June.
Technical Skills Learnt
Gradient Lighting Using Flash, Softbox and Scrim
A lot of the summer was spent shooting indoors tethered using a set-up similar to that on the right.
The scrim creates a softer gradient of light which was good enough for the purposes of lighting my goddaughter’s snakeskin pendant.
Focus staked with gradient backlighting.
This technique is further refined in the following where a new 30x120cm softbox is used to provide soft gradient lighting for the Karl Taylor Wine Bottle Challenge.
Batch Processing in Photoshop
To support my continuing submission of entries to FIAP salons, I created a number of Photoshop actions to run in batch mode that will automatically resize and add a one pixel 50% grey boarder to all open images. The challenge in the above is actually resizing the images given the limited conditional statements provided in photoshop actions. Technique developed on 19th June achieves this with one master action calling one of two intermediate actions, each calling either a landscape or portrait resizing action. This means 5 actions for each given size restriction, but once written, the Master action works for any image of any size or aspect ratio. The fine art flower image below is an example of the use of this action.
Focus Stacking using Zerene Stacker
The above image is a composite of 4 separate exposure: one deliberately blurred background image and a 3-shot focus-stacked image for the flower in the foreground. Focus stacking required to provide full depth of focus throughout the flower. Zerene Stacker was recommended by Andy Sands who is a master of macro photography, and the owner of the Chiswick Camera Centre where I go to get the sensor cleaned on my Sony A99ii.
Mono Woodland/ Landscape Photography
High contrast mono images shot at Stoke Common. The challenge is keeping a simple structure and clean foreground.
Snake
29th August: Dinner time for the pet snake above; about to eat the dead mouse. Shot with a 100mm macro lens and ring flash.
Was criticised for the mouse dominating the image over the snake.
Will hopefully get the opportunity to shoot a lot more of these.
Comparison with previous years
A year ago I was heavily into multiple exposures and looking to create a panel as a possible ARPS submission on the theme of London as viewed by the business traveller. This would have used the multi-exposure images to convey the city’s energy and dynamism. I cannot directly shoot more images for this series as the Coronavirus has meant that London is anything but energetic and dynamic from a business traveller’s perspective, and my development of this technique was covered in my Spring 2020 review.
Two years ago I was just getting into street photography having been on a street walk with Sean Tucker and a course with Simon Ellingworth. Must say, I still like the images shot then.
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