This journal records April’s contribution to my actual ten thousand hours deliberate practice fine art photography apprenticeship.
Hours 3,495 to 3,642
(May 2020)
30th April 2020
Hours 3,638 to 3,642
An hour revising the following image following some positive feedback from Vic Attfield
An hour working with textures – just practicing/ experimenting. Including practice using the pen too and the Bezier practice game.
An hour watching the Karl Taylor Macro Animal/ Nature image review.
An hour attending the RPS Webinar talk by Joe Cornish.
Final hour watching the BBC’s documentary: “David Hockney: Secret Knowledge” where he proves that painters have used lenses to help produce pictures, since about 1420, long before the invention of the camera. which explains how art suddenly improved around that time and artists seem to have “learnt to draw!”
29th April 2020
Hours 3,633 to 3,637
Half an hour updating this journal with reflections on work done yesterday, plus adding a few links were appropriate. An hour shooting textures around the house.
Video of “Shooting Bluebells” by my friend Prakash from the Stoke Poges Photography Club. Other part of half an hour reading the RPS journal.
An hour entering the GRAFIS salon in Montenegro.
Two hours at the Colour Group (APS) virtual meeting.
28th April 2020
Hours 3,635 to 3,632
Half an hour making notes about, and reflecting on, yesterday’s talk on textures. Half an hour reviewing and editing photos from the last couple of days and sending to mentor for feedback.
An hour planning ARPS panel with he following thoughts:
- Study other ARPS panels and dissemble what creates success
- Study people doing similar things, e.g., Peter Steven FRPS
- Write a plan for panel construction and submit to Yin, Chris Palmer and/ or Steve Smith for comment
- Contact Peter and ask for advice.
Two hours applying for a further FIAP salon including finding and processing four potential photo journalism images.
An hour’s YouTube including:
- Art of Photography: “Chasing the Light with Chris Niccolls of DPReview TV” – mutual love in between two YouTubers
- PIXimperfect “Photoshop Plug-in for Selecting Overlays”
- Ties in nicely with the talk by Janey Lazenby yesterday
- http://infinitetexturepanel.com
- Uses “AI” to match and find related textures from a large library
- Good for commercial work
- WARNING (from Janey) use of commercially purchased or free share textures violates the rules of FIAP and therefore club competitions where all images must be entirely created by the author.
27th April 2020
Hours 3,623 to 3,627
First hour updating yesterday’s journal entry with thoughts and reflections on a fairly full day.
Well over two hours completing the painfully complicated process of entering the Plovdiv photo salon in Bulgaria.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society virtual meeting – lecture Janey Lazenby ‘Working with textures’. Notes:
- Textures can be used to:
- Replace backgrounds either fully or partially – in particular can help bring composites together
- Add dimension or character to the subject – in some circumstances may be an alternative to dodging to burning
- A combination of the above.
- Use a shaped brush to create masks:
- Hair brush from Brusheezy good for rough selections around hair
- Cloud shaped brushes more interesting than circular when creating vignettes
26th April 2020
Hours 3,618 to 3,622
An hour and a half watching a video conversation between Karl Taylor and Tim Flack – scant compensation for the course that I should have been on with them at the end of last month.
- New book on birds – shot mainly in the studio
- He concentrates a lots about the flow through the book in terms of the shapes of the images
- Images shot very deliberately
- Finds good specimens by working with people who show birds, has them cleaned or groomed, then tidies things up as necessary in photoshop
- Uses workflow and sharpening techniques from Dan Margulis together with his free photoshop plugins.
An hour and a half YouTube:
- “Picasso and Paper” – a review of the exhibition at the Royal Academy that I visited on the 5th March this year.
- Nigel Danson: “How I improved my Photography – Lightbulb Moments“
- instead of “taking a picture”, “make a picture” which means thinking of the compositional elements in the scene and how these can be arrange aesthetically
- how to use foreground
- tell a story that leads from foreground through the middle ground to the star attraction in the background.
Two hours experimenting with lighting – which didn’t work very well at all. Had the idea that if I took a photo of a window from the inside of a house such that the outside was white and all you saw was the outline of the window panes and grilles within that. Then projected this onto a model, one would surely achieve the effect of, Rembrant style lighting, from a high window, with nice natural looking highlights in the model’s eyes. Not at all!
What happens instead is:
- Emulated very harsh light though a window
- Harsh shadows shadows on subject from the window grilles
- Catchlight is just a dot, like the sun.
In retrospect, what I need to do is: project the image of the window onto a suitably positioned white reflector. The light will then be:
- soft and defuse – the reflector will behave like a large softbox
- the catchlight will be the projected image.
“All art is about evoking memories.”
Twyla Tharp
The above quote struck a chord for me. David Baines talks about putting photos in a cultural context where they feed off the common experiences of artist and viewer. Howard Hodgkin uses colour to evoke memories of places and associated emotions.
25th April 2020
Hours 3,612 to 3,617
First hour completing my entry to the Europa 2020 FIAP Salon. The another two hours completing entry for the Georgetown International Salon in Malaysia. Another hour entering the SIP International Salon India.
An hour reading the Rothko book.
An hour working on the images shot at Stoke Common yesterday. Got distracted into reprocessing the following which was shot the July before last:
24th April 2020
Hours 3,604 to 3,611
Two hours shooting at Stoke Common, a little after 6-8am. Followed by an hour’s initial review in Capture One.
One hour revising a few images with the majority of time spent on the following hight-key minimalist seascape trying to get the sky looking more balanced and natural. Used the trick of copying one side to the other with a graduated mask, so that the result becomes exactly symmetrical.
Calm and meditative effect of an empty seascape.
Four hours preparing images for a couple of FIAP salons. Time included rewriting/ adjusting the photoshop actions so that the boarder around the images is just one pixel of 50% grey rather than the previous one pixel black followed by one pixel white, which is a little overpowering and something a lot of judges are picking up on.
23rd April 2020
Hours 3,599 to 3,603
An hour reviewing FIAP catalogues, pondering why my Gaucho images has consistently faired so badly, then coming up with the idea for reviving the Gaucho Barbecue below:
An hour reading “Rothko” and thinking about how his ideas relate to photography. My thoughts:
- Rothko talked about the difference between sheer skill and skill that is linked to spirit, expressiveness and personality
- photography needs a sense of mystery
- The photographer does not control the image in the same way as a painter does. “Happy accidents” occur, situations that are only noticed in post processing. Inevitable unpredictability.
Two hours working through Twyla Tharp’s 33 questions “Your Creative Autobiography”, answers to which I have no intention of making public.
An hour watching “Exhibition on Screen: David Hockney RA” which revisits Hockney’s 2012’s ‘A Bigger Picture’, and ‘82 Portraits and One Still-Life’ from 2016. Then another hour watching: “Lucian Freud the last genius of 20th century Realist painting“.
22nd April 2020
Hours 3,595 to 3,598
An hour and a half reviewing images from Landscape Photographer of the Year and International Landscape photographer of the Year in preparation for another two and a half hours working on my Landscapes of Patagonia book. Resurrecting a few images including the following:
21st April 2020
Hours 3,592 to 3,594
Half an hour writing up notes from yesterday evening’s talk at the APS and researching Sandra Nesbit who I stubbed upon whilst looking for a photographer doing multiple exposure work who I thought TonyNorth said was called “Sandra Bartoken”. Anyway, Sandra Nesbit is doing very interesting abstract work and has written “Ugo Cei’s Annoying Habits of Highly Effective Photographers“:
- Know your camera like the back of your hand
- Practice, practice, practice
& Never stop learning - Go the extra mile – post yourself and keep going when bored, frustrated or otherwise want to stop
- Be a master of post-processing
- Get inspired by your peers [what I’m doing now, I guess.]
- Share your knowledge
- Be a marketing genius – “Engage” rather than “Market”.
An hour watching “David Claerbout Interview: Virtual Image Making“:
- Still and moving images
- Uses a variety of techniques to scan scenes and create a 3-D model as the basis of an art work
- All works are based on two competing concepts, e.g., silence and screaming
- https://davidclaerbout.com
Half an hour reading “The Suffering of Light” by Alex Webb, book given to me on my birthday.
An hour brushing up on a few tips from PIXimperfect:
- “Mastering Curves in Photoshop“
- “Dodging and Burning“
- Use masked curves layers
- Multiple layers for different areas
- If the colour changes add a Hue Saturation layer clipped to the curves layer below
- Think of “burning wood” which becomes darker.
20th April 2020
Hours 3,586 to 3,591
An hour shooting and processing the following:
Two hours producing various focus-stacked variations of the following image of a tree branch blown down by the wind overnight.
An hour watching YouTubes:
- Antony Gormley: “The Body as a Found Object“
Two hours at the virtual Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture by Tony North: “The art of Macro”
- www.artofmacro.com
- insects and butterflies:
- catch in a butterfly net
- store overnight in a special insect keep-net
- in the morning when it’s cold and the insects are quiescent, arrange on plants (or parts thereof, held in place by a clamp) positioned to provide a good background
- Mushroom and fungi:
- the biggest challenge is finding good specimens that are entirely uneaten
- shoot from a low angle to get a good background and to show the gills
“Story telling capability is more important than the pictorial quality of an image.”
FIAP judging guidelines.
19th April 2020
Hours 3,582 to 3,585
An hour first thing in the morning shooting at Stoke Common. Plus another hour processing those images.
An hour watching YouTubes:
- PIXimperfect: “Matching Skin Tones in Photoshop“
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow, intrinsic motivation, and happiness
An hour shooting and processing focus-stacked macro images of a toy Voltswagen Beetle:
18th April 2020
Hours 3,578 to 3,581
An hour organising some potential composite elements in Lightroom. But got a bit distracted and started working on some older images including the following:
An hour watching the BBC documentary: “Robert Rauschenberg – Pop Art Pioneer“.
Two hours shooting and processing a new grid of images of Harley, this time with a reflector on the grass to prevent the green reflection which had been a problem with previous images. However, I don’t think Harley liked the harsh light, got bored and walked off.
17th April 2020
Hours 3,575 to 3,577
An hour updating this journal, mainly with the notes from the revised memory settings. Some time practicing using these settings, which strike me as a significant improvement. Some time practicing with these new settings [but less than half an hour.]
An hour watching the BBC documentary about Sir Howard Hogkin.
- Famously said that he is not an abstract artist as he paints emotions which are very real
- Influenced by David Hockney.
An hour watching the Capture One Seminar on using “Layers“.
16th April 2020
Hours 3,570 to 3,574
Two hours reshooting and processing images of Harley for another grid picture, without a great deal of success.
Then the shots were out of focus.
Then it started raining.
An hour refining the Memory settings on my camera. First set up on the 25th January 2019 to provide quick access to settings for for Street, Action or Creative (ICM) images. Now set up as:
| Mode | ….. | Normal | ….. | 1 – Street | ….. | 2 – Action | ….. | 3 – ICM |
| ISO | 100 | Auto | Auto | 100 | ||||
| Exposure Control | Manual | Aperture | Aperture | Manual | ||||
| Aperture | f/2.8 – 9.0 | f/ 7.1 | f/ 4.5 | f/ 16 | ||||
| Shutter speed | 1/ 100 – 8,000 | n/ a | n/ a | 1/ 4 sec | ||||
| Focus Mode | AF-S | AF-S | AF-C | MF | ||||
| Focus Area | Flexible Spot | Flexible Spot | Expanded Flex Spot | n/ a | ||||
| Metering Mode | n/ a | Highlight | Multi | n/ a | ||||
| Steady Shot | On | On | On | Off | ||||
| Auto Review | Off | Off | Off | 2 sec | ||||
| White Balance | Shade(?) | AWB | AWB | AWB | ||||
| Quality | RAW | RAW | RAW | RAW | ||||
| Face Recognition | Off | On | On | Off | ||||
| Trigger | Single | Multi | Multi | Single |
The above is a definite improvement. The face recognition is OK but seems to be overridden, or at least highly influenced, by the position of the flexible spot.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s virtual Mono Group. Great images presented, in particular Laurie Turner and Tim ?
15th April 2020
Hours 3,565 to 3,569
Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour making a first draft of the grid of Harley images. Had to learn about aligning elements in Photoshop.
An hour watching a Photo London interview with Mary McCartney – daughter of Paul and Linda McCartney; music legend and famous photographer, even before she met Paul.
Mary’s style of photography was describes as:
- a combination of William Eggleston, Diane Arbus and Carlos Morino
- images often slightly out of focus – “All about the imperfection” [wabi-sabi aesthetic]
- Hands looking natural – in general people’s hands become tense when they know they are about to be photographed.
Half an hour making the following variation.
An hour watching a documentary about Jackson Pollark.
An hour watching the last part of the APS Impromptu PDI competition. Tip:
- Simplify key-line on PDIs to 1 pixel width and 50% grey, rather than my current 1 pixel black inside 1 pixel white.
14th April 2020
Hours 3,557 to 3,564
An hour shooting in Stoke Common at dawn. Two hours processing those images.
Not my best!
An hour on Skype with my mentor, Yin Wong from the Amersham Photographic Society (APS). We discussed many of my images and some of his. I was particularly inspired by a high-key minimalist composite of his which combined images of a tree, sunset, beach and silhouetted man. All in orange/ red hues. Invoked a sense of isolation, which he intended and I saw immediately. I am inspired to create something similar.
He also suggested that I replicate Belinda Richard’s Pet portraits a 6 x 4 grid of her dog, with a similar version from Harley.
Spent an hour shooting over 70 images of Harley (black dog) on a black background, and another 30 or so of him on a white background. Chose to do this outside to benefit from bright sunlight, but even the slight breeze caused havoc with by background that I had to stabilise with a stand weighted with cushions.
About an hour processing these in Capture One to produces square TIFF exported to Lightroom Classic.
An hour watching YouTubes of:
- Bloomberg Brilliant Ideas: “The Lasting, Vibrant Impact of Michael Craig-Martin“
- Did not recognise the name Craig-Martin although he is almost certainly one of the top 10 most famous and influential British artists alive today
- Works in a Pop-Art style
- Was a mentor to many of the YBA group such as Damian Hurst when they were at art college or otherwise starting out
- Created the much mocked “Oak Tree” which is just a glass, half full of water on a bathroom shelf. “A conceptual work making the very simple point that things are not just what we call them.”
- Serge Ramelli: “Quarantine = Macro Photography“.
An hour watching the first part of yesterday’s impromptu PDI competition from the APS.
13th April 2020
Hours 3,553 to 3,556
An hour updating this journal and associated social media. Half an hour creating a mono quadriptych of the bluebell images shot contra-jour yesterday.
Half an hour processing other images.
Two hours watching YouTubes:
- Sean Tucker: “Why I choose a Slower Pace for my YouTube Videos“
- Documentary: “Henri Matisse“
- Maggi Hambling: “Every Portrait is Like a Love Affair“
12th April 2020
Hours 3,549 to 3,552
An hour shooting bluebells in Rowley Wood. Actually thinking about the landscape photographer’s challenge, as Mellissa Brown said, of finding pearls of abstract art. An hour culling and initially processing in Capture One then exporting to Lightroom Classic.
An hour creating revised versions of the “Thank You” message in the window of the flat above the Coop given Yin’s comments that the flag was too dominant in the previous version and it might benefit from being able to see more of the house.
Minor Success Note:
Good results from the first FIAP salons entered this year Zooming International Circuit India:
- 4 acceptances from Goa, the most I have previously received from a single salon was 2
- 7 acceptances overall
- my “The Scowl” image now has 3 acceptances. I need 5 images with 3 acceptances for the AFIAP.
An hour watching documentaries about Maggi Hambling a British semi-abstract painter/ sculptor. Hambling is not a name I was previously familiar with, but I did recognise her Scallop sculpture on Aldeburgh beach.
11th April 2020
Hours 3,544 to 3,548
An hour updating this journal and associated social media.
Then an hour processing a straight version of the Three Trees at Stoke Common and eventually decided that I liked a mono version the most.
An hour watching the BBC Modern Masters documentary about Andy Warhol.
Two hours shooting and manipulating the following homage to Andy Warhol to be submitted to the Amersham Beyond Group pop-art challenge.
Four channels of the Lab Colour Multiply blend mode – after lots of other manipulation.
10th April 2020
Hours 3,538 to 3,543
An hour at dawn shooting in Stoke Common including some multiple exposures.
Two and a half hours processing the images captured this morning. In some cases making use of my newly found knowledge of luminosity masks.
Half an hour learning about DMAx focus stacking; in particular this allows you to specify what percentage of the image you would like to be out-of-focus and as such create more natural looking images.
Shot during a social distancing compliant visit to the local shop.
An hour watching the PIXimperfect YouTube on the “Clone Tool” new tips:
- Blend modes don’t work when cloning to a new empty layer
- The Clone Tool Panel allows you to flip the source to target or change the angle.
Both points, massively useful given that I use this tool pretty much every day.
An hour watching a documentary about “The Many Faces of William Klein“. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I had previously not heard of William Klein and consequently didn’t include him in my post “Top 100 Photographers of All Time“. Klein was a photographer for Vogue magazine in the ’50s and ’60s and in addition to innovative fashion photography also pioneered street and abstract photography.
9th April 2020
Hours 3,534 to 3,537
An hour re-editing my Scroll image with Zerene Stacker.
Two more hours reshooting tethered to Capture One and stacking in Zerene Stacker. So far Zerene Stacker has proven to be both easy to use and to produce flawless output. The only frustration I have encountered is the seeming inability of Capture One to control the focus of my Sony A99 II with the Zeiss 135 f/1.8 prime lens.
An hour finishing the documentary on Alfred Steiglitz, the pioneering photographer across many genres including portraiture, landscape and abstract; as well as being a promoter of modernist painters as a gallery owner and the first to show many modern European artists in America including Picasso and Matisse.
8th April 2020
Hours 3,530 to 3,533
An hour looking at the work of Alan Schaller (discovered a couple of days ago from the B&H Lecture – terrible public speaker but great photographer and made some interesting points).
Then another hour thinking about my favourite photographers by genre, and creating a spreadsheet, which may form the basis of a future post.
Downloaded Zerene Stacker as recommended by Andy Sands on 31st December last year, and spent an hour learning about the product.
An hour resolving the issue of my Scroll image, produced a couple of days ago, where the JPEG was in Adobe RGB format rather than sRGB. My whole workflow is based on sRGB and the only point of difference I can see with this image was the merging in Photoshop which I initiated this time from within Capture One. Solution not obvious – further investigation necessary.
7th April 2020
Hours 3,525 to 3,529
An hour sunrise shooting at Stoke Common. plus a few shots in my garden. Another hour reviewing, with initial edits in Capture One Pro. All before breakfast.
Two hour revisiting selected images in Capture One, Exporting to Lightroom Classic, editing in photoshop, then updating this journal and social media.
An hour watching most of a full length documentary about Alfred Stieglitz.
6th April 2020
Hours 3,517 to 3,524
An hour shooting followed by an hour editing the following “Paper” image for the Amersham Beyond group challenge 11.
An hour Skyping with Yin Wong, my mentor from the Amersham Photographic Society; mainly discussing alternative edits for my Gaucho portraits.
Two and a half hours watching photography YouTubes including:
- Nigel Danson – “Blue hour Photography” – inspiring stuff
- PIXimperfect – “The Layer Search Tool in Photoshop“
- PIXimperfect – “Make the Object Selection Tool More Powerful“
- TATE – “Andy Warhol Exhibition“
- B&H Event Space – Alan Schaller: “Find your Photography Niche“
- Major brands want to work with artists not jobbing photographers
- Put out only consistent work.
Two hours on-line lecture from the Amersham Photographic Society: “London Salon 2018 Images”.
Half an hour updating this journal.
5th April 2020
Hours 3,513 to 3,516
An hour and a half producing an entirely new draft of the family album for the trip to South America.
Two and a half hours learning more about Frequency separation, writing my own Photoshop action to do this and retouching the following portrait of Alissia.
4th April 2020
Hours 3,510 to 3,512
Two hours working on the family album for the trip to South America including the gaucho portraits.
An hour learning about the PIXimperfect “PHP Method of Frequency Separation in Photoshop” which looks to provide a powerful skin retouching process.
- Editing to remove blemishes using spot healing tool (probably done in Capture One Pro)
- Edit the Colour layer of the Frequency Separation:
- Patch – remove larger areas of colour difference using the Patch tool
- Heal – use the healing brush to blend away lines
- Polish – use the brush tool: pick up the target colour and paint it where it needs to go.
- Then finish off by:
- Adding highlights to hair
- Removing any stray hairs
- Liquefying where necessary.
3rd April 2020
Hours 3,505 to 3,509
Fours hours making a map for the family album of South America. This included practice using the Pen tool and rewatching the “Everything you need to know about the pen tool” YouTube tutorial.
An hour watching the Capture One Pro Webinar on “Retouching Skin Tones“.
2nd April 2020
Hours 3,500 to 3,504
An hour setting up and shooting the first in the series of shots of the same area of the house at hourly intervals through out the day. This is an Art of Photography Assignment aimed at understanding light.
An hour editing the dog images shot yesterday; and another sending them out for comment, and updating this journal and associated social media sites.
| Image | Image | |
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| 7am | 8am | |
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| 9am | 10am | |
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| 11am | 12 noon | |
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| 1pm | 2pm | |
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| 3pm | 4pm | |
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| 5pm | 6pm | |
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| 7pm | 8pm |
The above images were shot with constant camera settings: 1/60 sec, f/5,6, 800 ISO, 24mm.
An hour watching Karl Taylor videos, in lieu of being in Guensey on his course with Tim Flack.
An hour updating this journal with the above images.
An hour watching the Capture One webinar: “From RAW to Wow“:
- Different styles of Clarity adjustment
- Open the clarity window
- “Classic” = the original which can give white halos if pushed too far
- “Neutral” corrects the above problem to some extent
- “Punch” also increases the saturation – maybe by unto 10%
- “Natural” – the gentlest touch, often the best.
1st April 2020
Hours 3,495 to 3,499
An hour updating this journal including all the new month admin and creating the new style banner above.
Two hours setting up and shooting dog portraits.
The goal was to have Harley lit entirely by the reflection from Fran’s t-shirt and to have her as the catchlight in his eye. To achieve this I pointed my big Godox AD600BM strobe light at Fran, on full power with a back reflector and grid to give as focused a light as possible. This still cast far too much light directly on Harley so I masked this off using a sheet of black mount card putting Harley into complete shadow from the direct light.
An hour reviewing and processing those images.
An hour watching YouTubes including: