Becoming Emotionally Attached To A Photograph

An East Coast Beach With Moon

Now that I’ve redesigned my website I’ve started to go back through my (digital) photo catalogue to create some new galleries. The image to the right is one of my 300D shots from 2004 (iso 400, f11, 1/320s). This is an image I keep returning to time and again. Each time I try a little change here and a little change there. I try editing in Lightroom, Aperture and Photoshop. I try colour and black and white and, in this version, a blue & sepia split tone.

I think on any objective assessment I’m wasting my time with this image. Let’s face it, it’s not that good. It has some interesting features, such as the groyne leading out to sea, a pretty much full moon and the groyne and moon sort of balancing each other in the frame. But, in reality, there’s too much lost space in the middle, the moon is too far into the corner, the beach & sea too close to the bottom, the foreground is too dark (pushed in this version creating artefacts), the focus isn’t sharp and the overall image is flat and grainy. Oh, and I don’t even know where it was taken. It’s somewhere on England’s east coast, probably between Scarborough and Skegness.

So why do I keep going back to it, when in reality I know I’m not going to be able to turn it into a picture I’m proud of. I think it’s because, despite all it’s short comings, I do have an emotional attachment to it. In this case it has nothing to do with the trip I was on or the circumstances at the time. No, in this case it is because it was the first opportunity I had with my first digital SLR to take more than a snap. I saw the moon, saw the lead ins, tried to compose for the scene’s obvious potential and took a few shots. Could it have been done better? Yes, absolutely, although I suspect this was as good as it got for me at the time. And that’s just it, regardless of where I feel my photography is now, I’m proud of this image, warts and all, and I’m sure I’ll keep going back to it!

Early HDR Photos at Holy Island

This is the first article in a occasional series I’ll be running looking at some of my early attempts at various photographic techniques. In September 2005 Kim & I were at one of our favourite photo locations, England’s north east coast (the bit between north Newcastle and the Scottish border).

The image below (Canon 300D, ISO100, 32mm, 1/6s, f29) is a shot of one of the old fishing boats on Holy Island with Lindisfarne Castle in the background. There are several in this harbour in various states of disrepair. I was quite close to the boat when I took the shot so even at f29 the immediate foreground and background are not in focus. These are aren’t the only technical failings either I’m sure you’ll agree!

Boat on Holy Island - Original

But, even though it had plenty of technical issues I still quite liked the shot, so I decided to post-process it using an HDR technique, using Photomatix. I’d not set out with this intention so I didn’t have multiple actual exposures to play with so I created -1 and +1 stop virtual images in Lightroom and used these for the HDR image.

Boat on Holy Island - HDR

The processing has had a noticeable effect to:

deepened the blue (unrealistically) in the sky and bringing out some of the faint cloud structure
increase the local contrast to give certain areas more definition, eg on the water and around the flowers
increase brightness in the shadow areas of the boat and shaded grass

Looking back now I think I over-processed the image. It suffers from banding and quite serious halo effects. Also, it’s getting to the point of looking quite artificial, almost like painting. At the time though it did leave me impressed with the possibilities that HDR offered and what could be achieved with practise and more attention to detail.

Fujifilm X-Pro1

Earlier in the week I commented on mirrors in the current crop of professional cameras and how I see them as a connection with the past rather than the future.

Well, CES 2012 is here and the mirror-less market just seems to keep getting more interesting. Much has already been written about the previously announced Sony NEX-7 (see here if you want an overview), but the big news (for me) at CES was the Fujifilm X-Pro1.

Apart from the X-Pro1 looking great, it also has some interesting features:

Large (APS-C) 16MP CMOS sensor
No low pass filter, but a sensor structure that tries to achieve the same aim. Nett effect that it will hopefully improve image quality
A viewfinder that you can switch between electronic and optical modes without taking it from your eye
Support to be provided for (Leica) M-Mount lenses

DP Review have a preview on their site, but I’ll be looking forward to knowing what the actual image quality and shutter lag is like. If they get these right at a reasonable price I think Nikon and Canon may have to up their game a little!

Buachaille Etive Mor At Night

For those of you that haven’t been, Rannoch Moor is a fantastic photography location; if the weather is on your side of course, this is western Scotland after all! In the east there are picturesque small lochs, in the centre an open expanse of “wilderness” and in the west the mountains that surround Glen Coe. At this edge of moor, towering over entrance to Glen Coe, is Buachaille Etive Mor.

Kim and I spent a few days based in Glen Coe in Feb of 2010. The images below are a small selection of night exposures taken in the shadow of the Bauchaille.

The first image was taken from a small lay-by at the side of the Glen Etive road, looking west towards the iconic face of Buachaille Etive Mor. It had snowed quite recently and the road was only really passible with a 4×4, which lucky we were driving. The image is a 10 second exposure at f10, taken after sunset at about 18:30, on a 5D Mk I. It was pretty cold that night with quite a bit of cloud and wind. Much of the evening was spent clearing ice off our lens and warming batteries up to get a few more minutes of life out of them!

Buachaille Etive Mor 1

The next image was taken a few days later, a little further down the Glen Etive road. There is a small bridge with a parking spot next to it. From there follow the river west for the best vantage points. It was taken on Kim’s infrared converted 20D and then converted to black & white. It’s a 342 second exposure at f10. As you can see from the foreground, we weren’t the first people there after the snow fall.

Buachaille Etive Mor 2

The third and final image in this set was taken at roughly the same spot as the second, but this time facing away from the Buachaille towards Sron na Creise. I used Kim’s 20D again for this 600 second f10 shot. It’s been quite harshly post processed to give it what I hope is an aged look. I’ve tried to add to this with a bit of toning.