Ten Thousand Hours Photography

10,000 Hours Deliberate Practice Learning the Art of Photography

Learning Architectural Photography

First Commercial Assignment – Learning Architectural Photography

Arguably the best way of learning architectural photography, is to actually do it.  The scariest way of learning architectural photography is to get paid for a real assignment.  I achieved the later through a friend who runs a building company specialising in high-end residential property.  Some commercial properties, but mainly multi-mi££ion “Grand Designs” style contemporary new-build or conversions.

House at twilight learning architectural photography
Practice image with alternative sky added – looking warm and welcoming in the early evening – a long way from Grand Designs but good for practicing the techniques.

Back in January when I was “shooting the shoot” for the Larsen Syndicate, one of the guns explained that he wasn’t particularly happy with the photographers he had used in the past, and we discussed the possibility of me doing some work for him.  He insisted that he would pay me; a good idea all round, but nothing happened for 7 months.  Then I received a phone call asking if I might like to photograph a house they had worked on.  This turned into two houses, and the promise of other work including more properties, a company shoot and a time lapse of a major project.  All before I had actually done anything.

Having never shot houses before, I had to learn fast.  I purchased an FStoppers on-line course from Mike Kelley and set about practising on my own home, as above.

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Post Processing Workflow Revision

hours 50 to 800

First Revision: Processing Workflow

My first “Post-Processing Workflow” post was in November 2017 after 0-50 hours of my 10,000 hour project: Learning the Art of Photography.  Since then I have completed over 700 further hours of deliberate practice and have adopted a Capture One Lightroom and Photoshop workflow as follows:

  1. For RAW conversion, image selection and initial processing I start with Capture One Pro 11 (for Sony) – See post: “My Introduction to Capture One Pro Sony 11“
  2. Tethered Capture whenever possible
  3. Star-based image scoring system
  4. Capture One Styles and Presets
  5. Transfer of Selected Images to Lightroom Classic CC for
    • further manipulation in Photoshop
    • export as a JPEG and to social media channels
    • filing and long term storage
  6. Selected RAW files stored in the “Selects” folder – one big folder but sorted by date.

 

As with most, if not all, of the processes being developed through my 10,000 hour learning project, this is a work-in-progress, and if you have any suggestions or comments I would be grateful to hear from you.  Please either leave comments in the box below or connect with me through the social media channel of your choice, right.

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My Introduction to Capture One Pro Sony 11

Capture One Initial Reaction

My first impression of Capture One 11 Pro for Sony is based on about a month’s usage and a lot of time watching YouTube tutorials.

Capture One Pro Screenshot
Levels Adjustment

First off, Capture One is a “big boy’s tool”, and at first glance appears much more complex than Lightroom Classic CC let alone the simplified and web-friendly Lightroom CC.  It clearly has tethered operation for studio shooting right at its core and is designed to meet the needs of the professional fashion and beauty photographers who will buy the 100 megapixel Phase One cameras.

Big wins for me so far are:

  1. It allows me to shoot tethered with my Sony A99ii (Lightroom only supports Nikon & Canon).  In fact Phase One (maker of Capture One) seems to have a generally more healthy relationship with Sony than Adobe does, which rather pleasantly results in a much lower price point for Sony users
  2. It doesn’t crash my current ageing laptop with anything like the regularity that Lightroom Classic CC does
  3. It is impressively quick and doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by the A99ii’s 85MB RAW files, which are small by comparison with the files produced by the Phaase One medium format camera the software was built for.

Coming from a background of using Adobe products on a daily basis, Capture One seems to have more in common with Photoshop than it does Lightroom, in particular the use of layers and output in TIFF format.

My current hero, Ted Forbes speaks highly of Capture One vs Lightroom. which alone means it is worth a look, in my opinion.

 

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First Attempt at Macro Photography

Learning Macro Photography

Macro photography promises to fulfill one of the objectives of photography as an art form: to see the world in a new way; to show the viewer something new and interesting.

Single snowdrop stem
Snowdrop – close up – but technically not macro.

 

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Dog Phototography – First Attempts

Man and Dog in Black Park
Self portrait with Harley

Initial Thoughts on Dog Photography

My lovely dog Harley joins me on 90% of my daily photographic outings.  We combine his exercise with my deliberate practice of the art of photography, which means that Harley is amongst that small set of dogs that understands the command: “Get out of shot”.

When the scene would benefit aesthetically from a man in a bright red ski jacket positioned on the thirds, I have learned that a dog for him to be walking, justifies his presence artistically, and in any case is impossible to avoid.  Increasingly, Harley is becoming the subject of my images, and I am learning the challenges of photographing a very black and very white dog.  He will “stay” and look in my direction when called, and we are currently working on his looking interested whilst doing so.

Controversial Photo
WET N SANDY N RARING TO GO by Andy Smith (won Best Print 2017 in the advanced section of the Stoke Poges Photographic Club).

Although many of my images are labelled something like, “Collie in Woods”, the canine aficionado will spot that Harley’s no pedigree.  He was a rescue from Battersea Dogs Home where be was billed as a “Sprollie”, i.e., half springer, half collie which is apparently a very fashionable cross.  Subsequent DNA analysis revealed that he’s actually only 3/8 collie, a quarter greyhound a quarter saluki and one eight “undetermined”, politley a “lurcher”, less politely “mongral”.  In any case delightful.

This is definitely a post that I expect to revisit in the future. So, if you have any ideas or thoughts, please post comments below.

To see more posts on other photographic topics, or to follow my learning progress, please like or follow me on the social media channel of your choice to the right.

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