This entry was almost a deep-and-meaningful — I woke up with a start this morning with a deep, poignant phrase repeating itself over and over in my head — but after some reflection, I think I’ll wait for Monday. I need a little more time to turn it over; to taste it. Now if only I could remember the dream that obviously shook me enough to wake me up! Maybe this is what they call a ‘Eureka!’ moment…

So I’m not quite through with the photos from the G! Festival in the Faroes. Yesterday I started with a handful of great photos and today I’ll finish up with some more!

(The beautiful dawn photo is at the end.)

This is Frændur, some kind of ‘Faroese legend’ as far as music goes. They’re from the 80s and totally Faroese — don’t feel bad for never having heard of them!

Hogni again! Looks better full-size, but I think you can appreciate the feeling. I love the illuminated heads of the audience.

I think you’d have a hard time looking more iconic, more anthemic, more festival than this photo. I guess a candle is the new cigarette lighter. The armband was a beautiful bonus!

Better than my original Atlantic Dawn? I’m not sure. It’s beautiful for the rich fruitiness of the red and the highlighted clouds in the bottom left. Of course, my soft spot for pink might be skewing my opinion of it a little… but it is rather beautiful.

After yesterday’s deep and meaningful I had to change things up a bit and be artistic. Have to keep these things in balance lest your brain begins to ooze out of nose. As a result of being artistic, I give you Dancing Light, a series of images taken from an original photograph. You probably recognise it — it’s the photo of the Atlantic Ocean taken while I was at the G! Festival in July. Lights from the rock performance on stage flit and flicker across the deep-azure water. Some light is reflected, some refracted and some just wobbles about lazily. Take a look at the right side of the photo in detail:

Excuse the large size but the detail is vital! It’s important to note that the photo is ’sharp’. None of the ‘waviness’ is caused by a slow exposure — what you see is purely light bouncing and playing amongst the little peaks and troughs of the ocean wave. I could go on forever trying to describe it — there were no cyan lights on stage, but scattered (prismatic) white light and the dark blue sky above causes some beautiful teal waves to cover the entire canvas. Or perhaps how the pinks are interweaving beautifully between each segment, tying it all together. But I should stop there and let you dive into the photo. Find your own favourite bits.

I listed it for sale in my gallery as a set of six, or if you like a specific part, you can buy a single print. But the series is cheaper as a set!

Tomorrow’s blog should feature more thought on the ‘authority of knowledge‘!

Autumn Bursts Forth & Twister

Seb: Hey, guess what, it’s AUTUMN. If last week didn’t make that clear, hopefully this does. I’ve never actually seen chestnuts still clutching onto the tree like this — normally they’re scattered about underneath the tree!

I was actually out to take some photos of the trees themselves — there’s a beautiful avenue of ancient chestnuts nearby which I thought would look good at sunset. We’re talking proper, thousand-year-old gnarled and twisted trees that have been around since England was invaded by the Normans. I’ll upload another one tomorrow, so that you can see what they’re like.

But anyway: I looked up, as I always do, being tall and all, and I spotted some chestnuts glinting in the warm, yellow sunset. That ‘golden hour’ has never been more obvious!

This photo is an attempt at staying true to my ‘landscape soul’, while still catering a little more for those that like interesting detail in their photos. And those that like bokeh, of course.

Abi: The fair has come to town- and when I say fair I mean a selection of rides manned by neanderthals, underscored by a lingering smell of fried onions and a soundtrack limited to dance tunes from the mid 90s.

I rarely take any photos at night, I set out this week with a vague idea of capturing light and movement (maybe some people) with no clear idea of what I was really doing. This is a bit of a departure for me so things can only improve.

When I was at school this fair was something approaching a big deal. It has dwindled in recent years but the sounds and smells are just the same as they always were. Only instead of cider the kids are most probably on Ketamine or something. Probably.

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Sporting a Space Invaders t-shirt, a freshly-shaved beard, and a cashmere deerstalker by my wonderful, more-than-slightly-neurotic but highly-talented hat-making friend Minnie.

(I guess this is my very first product endorsement… chrikee…)

Enjoying my new 50mm lens an awful lot. It’s good to be taking portraits again and messing around with only available light (this one’s shot at f/2.2, for the photographers out there — pretty sharp, eh!) There are some other shots that you’ll see from this afternoon — some dorky ones — just I don’t have time to go through them now — I have to go out.

Until tomorrow… and Dushku Day…!

More photos from the weekend! Sorry it’s a bit late in the day now, but hopefully a few of you will get a chance to see these!

These are a little cuter than the last, mainly because there’s an adorable girl in pink involved.

I love the light in the two darker at-dusk photos too — and this is my favourite ‘kid with balloons’ photo.

Tomorrow… a photographic TMI… (it’s an experiment!)

[Lots of pretty photos if you just scroll down. But there's only 400 words or so, if you fancy it.]

The last couple of months have seen me trying to use my 50mm and 100mm lenses a lot more. I don’t know why — probably because I used my landscape lens almost exclusively for the first half of the year. I guess you can get bored of one particular style of art, if you do it enough and don’t mix things up?

For those of you that aren’t photographers, a little lesson on lens ’sizes’: your natural eyesight is about equivalent to the view arc/angle of a 50mm lens — i.e. the photos that were taken with a 50mm lens look most like you would see with your own eyes. We call the 50mm the ‘normal lens‘.

If you go wider than 50mm you approach ‘wide-angle’ and ‘landscape’ lenses. At 35mm things still look fairly normal, but towards 15-20mm things become very ’stretched’ or distorted, because you are trying to focus almost 180 degrees of view onto a flat plane.

If you go narrower into the telescopic range — anything over 80mm — the field of view shrinks to just a few degrees. Telescopic photos feel very ‘condensed’, or even just ‘dense’ or ‘thick’. It’s all an effect of the light, and quite hard to explain — but just remember that depending on what kind of lens you use, you can get a very different feeling in the photo. There’s a reason portraits are taken with 50 or 80mm lenses. If you ever see a portrait that feels ‘weird’ it’s usually because they’ve been shot with a weird lens (alien-head is a classic example, if shot from above with a landscape lens)

Anyway, after shooting lots of very compressed and tight photos (at least by my standards, as I’m a landscape kiddie really) with the 50 and 100mm lenses, I whipped my landscape lens out (which is 16mm!) and headed into the countryside to take some photos. If you’ve seen yesterday’s 11 of 52, you’ve already seen one of the photos in this set, but I’ve included it for a sense of completeness. The whole set will eventually find its way to my online gallery, if you wish to buy a print (or two). In my humble opinion, I think the entire set would look rather spectacular on YOUR wall.

Without further ado: It was Autumn, the last few leaves barely clinging to the boughs. It was sunset and there were actually pretty clouds for once. I think the results speak for themselves. I bet you had no idea England could be so pretty but without being GREEN. So, with hints of orange, russet and pinky hues, I give you Tuesday’s Landscape Photogasm (#1).

Note: Titles or extra details can be found by hovering over each image.

That’s all for this week. Tomorrow… hm, I’m not sure yet. Oh, and if you’re interested in buying a print of one of these, let me know — I will be offering some kind of Christmas/Festive Season discount soon, so I might as well start it with your purchase…!

Photos! Of PEOPLE!

They, the victims, probably didn’t know at the time that they were going to end up on my blog, but, well… I’m not going to give you their names, and they’re all pretty people, so… it should be OK! One of them will likely be a celebrity in a year or two, so hopefully, when that occurs, I’ll be able to make a little money from the photos…

This week’s been pretty crazy. Again, the weather has been shit, so the photography has been hard work. Yesterday’s ‘Mad Mexican‘ had to be done with studio lights and reflectors, something I’m not very comfortable with. But I have to learn, so perhaps it’s good that England is currently the Land of Eternal Twilight. (Seriously, I woke up at 11am yesterday and it was actually DARK… ugh.)

But yeah, crazy: money is starting to roll in. Photography and writing work is continuing its slow but incessant dribble. Job offers and the like. Out-reaches from the tech and games sectors. It’s still early days, and I did think this would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen quite so quickly. Oh well. Certainly not going to complain…

This week’s photos come from a crazy school fair. Unlike most school fairs that occur at the peak of summer, this one’s in the winter. I don’t know why. Probably so that you can partake in the delight of roasted chestnuts and listen to the deep, throbbing lull of the tuba around the camp fire (really). My mother lured me to it by promising that people would be prancing around in weird outfits and there would be mad-sights a-plenty. But… alas… there weren’t. Just normal-looking people going about doing normal things, like… talking… and eating food.

There was a fun little event however, where literally hundreds of children made gingerbread houses. You paid a few pounds and got given a bag of gingerbread slices, a pot of white icing and a cup of candies. You then had 20 minutes to fashion a house of gingerbread and tacky, ’structural’ icing before you were man-handled out by harried-looking staff. The rooms (there were 3!) were then prepared for the next batch of keen gingerbread architects extraordinaire.

So I took photos of the gingerbread houses, the making of, and the frivolity that ensued. And I also snuck in a photo of a really cute child. Here we go:

All natural light/straight out of the camera, incidentally. The opposing windows made it rather hard to get a good photo actually. Lots and lots of reflected red/yellow light from the furniture/curtains/cakes — fun!

(I couldn’t resist the opportunity to have ’shooting’ and ‘gasm’ in the same sentence. I can’t really call it a ‘meteorgasm’ for obvious reasons. Say it out loud… go on… Loud enough for anyone nearby to overhear you.)

Bit of a smorgasbord of photos this week. It’s winter, so everything happens really quickly — when the sun’s out, it’s beautiful, but five minutes later it can be dismal and grey and rainy. The sun is setting at 3:50pm or something crazy — when you wake up between 12 and 1pm, that makes the apparent length of days very short. Fortunately I have these blog-writing sessions to add structure to my life, otherwise I might hibernate or something…

I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye again, almost non-stop. I think it’s turning into some kind of addiction, some kind of need – I haven’t put a song on ‘repeat’ since I was 16, but I must’ve listened to ‘Please Stay‘ 25 times in the last few days. It has only avoided tonight’s playlist because I’ve discovered another great album by Gaye called Here, My Dear. But I digress…  as I alluded to yesterday, I should have a (dare I say it) photo shoot with a cute girl at the end of the week. Little does she know just how easy these photos are going to be, because she’s stupendously beautiful and photogenic. But hey, I need the confidence-boost, the ego-stroking, so that in the future I can take photos of ugly people!

Big mish-mash of photos today then: the meteor shower of December 12-14 (Geminids), an ‘out-take’ from 52 weeks, and a couple of ‘geometric experiments’.  I’ve been trying to catch meteors for a few years now, but it’s hard here in south England. Lots of light pollution (I have an airport very close by). Then there’s the matter of clouds and full moons and all that jazz — this year was meant to be the best ever for Geminid sightings, but I was still hampered by cloud and sub-zero temperatures.

Yes, I stood outside for about three hours, and all I got was three photos. I couldn’t feel my toes for about two hours after I came back inside (it was the coldest night of the year so far… brr! ice on my boots!) They’re not even that great photos, but I’ve included a couple in today’s Shooting Stargasm.

The geometric photos are just… experiments. I liked the light, and I’m fast learning that I should just TAKE PHOTOS when there’s any kind of light to be had, otherwise I might not get another chance before another Tuesday Photogasm comes around. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that I might be a very good ‘available light’ photographer. It’s dawning on me that this may indeed be the case… (buy my photos, because I have a nagging sensation that they’ll double in price by this time next year).

Enjoy the photos! Think of me freezing my rapidly-gangrenous nuts outside just for the art.

As always, hover over each image for specific notes.

(Admire Canis Major on the far left! Two stars of Orion’s Belt are just visible)

Phew! That was a rather eclectic mix. Now I’m going to shave off my Hitler beard and think of something disturbing for Thursday.

I think this week I’ve taken more photos than any other period in my life — other than when I’m travelling of course, but it’s not really comparative. When I travel, my camera’s nearly always out — this week was my first taste of what being a working photographer might actually feel like.

The whole ooh-I’ll-just-grab-my-camera thing was obviously aided in the most part by the snow we’re currently experiencing. And the winter sun… my God, the winter sun. I assume the spectacle of the low-angle sun has something to do with our latitude — we’re fairly far north here, so in the winter, when it’s late, the sun hits the sky at a very slight angle. The colours, the pastel hue, the glorious gorgeousness that results… well, just wait and see.

Then, after that, we have the pretty girl that I’ve mentioned a couple of times. I finally turned my hand to available light portraiture, and God it’s fun, and really, really hard. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to try it! (Photography’s a bit easy, y’see, so I yearn for anything that can spice it up a little!) I’ve taken a few photos of people in situ over the years, mostly family and very close friends, but never a proper session — just me, my camera, and her. When I arrived she hadn’t even got dressed, or done her make-up. So we chatted. I had some idea of how the patter would go. I’m good with people; charismatic, good at instilling reassurance, safety. But this was my first time, so I really had no idea what the frack to do. I kind of knew what was expected of me, a bit like sex in that regard, but I had no idea what she would do, or how it would actually play out. How about this? ‘Er, yeah! More of that!’ How about if I do something like…? <click> Props? Shall we try props? Smoking? <snap> Change of outfit? ‘Sure, I’ll just make some tea…’

And so it went. If I was using my film camera, I would’ve churned through quite a few reels. 2 hours passed way too quickly; and not once did I say ‘yeah baby, yeah!’ despite the temptation. I think I got very lucky with the model; I’ve been thinking about making her my muse. Every artist needs a muse, right?

An eclectic mix of photos follows, but I believe you will find every single one of them both delicious and easy on the eye. Each image has some notes attached; just hover over them.

(Yes, the pink you see on the horizon was even more beautiful in real life. Are you jealous?)

(I’ve been working on my black/white conversion, as you can see.)

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This is just a small sample — I surprised myself with just how many good photos there were from just two hours of chatting, faffing and photographing. There’s a couple more (my favourites) up on Facebook, and I’ll probably throw some up on Flickr over the rest of the week.

I guess the obvious question is: who wants to pay me for a PHOTO SESSION?! In the comfort of your own home! You make the pretty (?) while I make the tea!

Out with the Old & Puddle of ink

Abi: I have to admit, the days immediately following New Year always make me laugh to myself. It never ceases to amuse me how suddenly, we are all expected to snap back into shape, like whippets after the festive season and then spend the rest of January feeling bad about it.

The New Year is also an opportunity to clear out, replace and take stock of the things that perhaps no longer feel right to us. Like Children, we outgrow our toys as our lives become busier and our worlds expand.

I saw this heap of bin bags outside the charity shop on my way into the city. By the looks of things, someone had had a damn good rummage through as they were all open like this when I found them. It made me a little sad to see that someone had so obviously outgrown the things that perhaps a year before had given them such joy only to be replaced by something better, newer, more expensive.

And if that is not a metaphor for life, I don’t know what is.

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Seb: You have to try and guess what it is!

So, a few days ago, on New Year’s Eve, it was a full moon. It was actually a blue moon — the second moon in a calendar month — AND… get this… there was also a partial lunar eclipse. If you’re a landscape photographer and itching to do more night-time photography, such conditions are more than enough to a photographer like me, er, aroused

… (if I didn’t think my sister could see this, I’d insert a whole paragraph about the physical excitement photography elicits in me) ..

But get this, the moon was TOO HIGH IN THE SKY. So it was basically impossible to do anything with. Bah.

This photo was taken about 3 minutes before Big Ben tolled in the new year. It’s more of a proof of concept than anything else. I took photos like this back at college, when I was 16. I want to do some more!

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Clicking either image will send you to Flickr, where comments, notes and tags abound.