This journal records August 2020’s contribution to my photography apprenticeship through ten thousand hours deliberate practice.
Hours 4,043 to 4,149
31st August
Hours 4,147 to 4,149
Updating the “Restaurant Photography” post for two hours.
An hour further processing a revision of the Snake image following comments from Yin Wong.
30th August
Hours 4,144 to 4,146
Two and a half hour processing images from the last couple of days.
Half an hour updating this journal and associated Flickr site.
29th August
Hour 4,143
An hour shooting by goddaughter’s snake at feeding time.
28th August
Hour 4,142
Half an hour shooting the following:
Half an hour watching: “Caravaggio’s Boy Bitten by a Lizard“.
27th August
Hours 4,136 to 4,141
Two hours Karl Taylor Education webinar: “Working to a Brief – Challenge 3”.
Two hours planning ARPS submission.
Two hours at the virtual PIC group.
26th August
Hours 4,132 to 4,135
An hour watching and writing up the surprisingly useful: SLRLounge “5 Compositional Tips for any Camera, Even Phones!“
- Turn on the grid on you viewfinder – rule of thirds, golden ratio, etc.
- Reflections, hold a phone or ND filter to block out part of the scene whist also acting as a mirror
- Find one person in a landscape to add a sense of story, scale and drama
- Minimalism: exclude lots of stuff to create art and enjoy the negative space
- Look up – e.g., contrast nature with man-made.
All tips relate to the power of an alternative perspective.
Half an hour watching: “Composition in Art“
- Strategies for creating focal points
- The Principles of Design
- Balance – by visual weight (negative space has weight)
- Proportion – crop affects the visual weight of elements
- Movement – how the views eye moves around the image
- Rhythm – repeating motifs
- Harmony – different elements working together
- Unity – same style/ technique across the whole image
- Emphasis – points of focus
- Variety – different shapes/ colours.
Half an hour writing up this journal.
Two hours at the Amersham Colour Group being inspired to go out and take more images.
25th August
Hours 4,130 to 4,131
Two hours editing B&W images from Monday morning’s shoot.
24th August
Hours 4,123 to 4,129
First hour shooting at Stoke Common, taking a slightly different route to usual with a view to finding some Silver Birch compositions, of which there were many.
Next hour culling and editing in Capture One.
An hour speaking with my friend and mentor, Yin Wong.
A further hour processing the morning’s images.
An hour researching multiple exposure images.
Two hours virtual workshop at the APS on composition run by Laurie Taylor.
23rd August
Hours 4,120 to 4,122
Two and a half hours watching and then writing up:
- Waldemar Januszczak’s “Baroque’s Dark Heart“
- B&H “How to have a consistent aesthetic.“
- Travel, food and lifestyle photographer Natasha Lee
- Visual audit
- Create mood boards – gather images from other photographers that you admire and would like to emulate
- Play with pairing and flow
- Prep with shot lists
Half an hour generally updating this journal.
22nd August
Hour 4,119
An hour watching Waldemar Januszczak’s “American Art“.
21st August
Hours 4,116 to 4,118
Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour and a half drafting a post of “Restaurant Photography“.
An hour watching: Waldemar Januszczak’s “Rubens:Too Much for Modern Audiences?“
20th August
Hours 4,113 to 4,115
Two hours entering the ISO2020 FIAP Salon.
An hour updating this journal and social media sites.
19th August
Hours 4,110 to 4,112
Another two hours creating, modifying and generally tinkering with the mono images shot at Stoke Common a couple of days ago.
An hour watching YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson “Composition“
- The Art of Design: “Ilse Crawford – Interior Design“
18th August
Hours 4,107 to 4,109
An hour working on mono versions of some of the silver birch shot at Stoke Common yesterday morning. Half an hour watching a Karl Taylor workshop on editorial food photography.
Another hour and a half creating mono images from the Stoke Common shoot.
17th August
Hours 4,101 to 4,106
Early morning at Stoke Common for an hour, plus another hour culling, cropping and initial processing in Capture One before exporting to Lightroom Classic.
An hour Skyping with my friend and mentor, Yin Wong. Time spent discussing the images I have shot recently what’s good, what’s not, and how these might be improved, plus some ideas for animal photography.
Then an hour re-editing my Ageing Lilies image above and the tress from Stoke Common below.
An hour watching Art of Design: “Christoph Niemann: Illustration” who is a fabulous animator/ cartoonist in the style of Roy Lichtenstein or Jeff Koons. Generally clever, fun stuff.
An hour watching the Sony sponsored, B&H: “50 States by Tony Gale“. Top tips for under visited states:
- Utah – Bryce Canyon
- Wyoming
- New Mexico
- Islands off the South of California (nobody goes there)
- Washington State
Top city destinations (most to see within 4-5 hours drive):
- Salt Lake City
- Las Vagas – Zion National Park, Valley of Fire National Park, Death Valley
16th August
Hours 4,095 to 4,100
An hour updating social media associated with the Big Truck images shot yesterday and “The First 4,000 Hours – Review at 40%” post.
Inspiring quote found on Thomas Peck’s website:
“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
Ansel Adams
Two hours updating journal pages as I complete my time analysis spreadsheet. My adding-up is woeful, but apart from the tedium of completing the spreadsheet, reviewing past months is a very interesting process and something I should do more of.
An hour YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “Clients and Pricing“
- “10 Life lessons from Friedrich Nietzsche (Existentialism)“
- Be a harmonious totality – balance structure with creativity, embrace both
- Avoid having a reactive life, i.e., Be Proactive
- Avoid holding resentment towards others
- Don’t blindly follow the Masters – learn and then develop from them
- Find your Why – Start with the end in mind
- Suffering can make you stronger
- Avoid being just “busy” – put first thinks first
- Live dangerously
- Become a Superhuman – leave humanity in a better place as a result of your efforts
- Happiness is the way you approach your goals
Two further hours finishing the “The First 4,000 Hours – Review at 40%” post.
15th August
Hours 4,093 to 4,094
An hour working on “The First 4,000 Hours – Review at 40%” post, mainly inserting the top images.
An hour total shooting and processing images from a Big Truck driving experience I attended today.
14th August
Hours 4,090 to 4,092
An hour updating this journal. Two hours working on the following composite.
13th August
Hour 4,089
Half an hour watching “Top 14 Portrait Poses” for female models followed by another half hour working on the ARPS project.
12th August
Hours 4,083 to 4,088
An hour shooting on Stoke Common; lovely misty early morning.
An hour and a half culling and initially processing images in Capture One Pro, then exporting both these and the best of yesterday’s to Lightroom.
An hour and a half editing in Photoshop.
An hour watching a YouTub on “Hard and Soft Studio Light” shooting a female model – I don’t particularly like Daniel Norton’s super-informal, live streaming presentation style.
An hour rewriting a Statement of Intent and selecting images for a potential ARPS application.
11th August
Hours 4,079 to 4,082
Half an hour shooting at Stoke Common, plus another half culling and initially processing in Capture One Pro.
Half an hour reviewing, updating, fixing typos, etc. in the journal for March 2019.
An hour and a half, possibly re-watching, Thomas Werner’s excellent “The Business of Fine Art Photography.“
An hour creating new versions of the Ageing Lilies shot on the 7th.
10th August
Hours 4,074 to 4,078
Two hours processing images from Windsor Castle, mainly cloning and colour toning.
An hour rewatching the Nigel Danson excellent video on “7 Photography Mistakes I see all the time” which translates into a really useful guide/ checklist for landscape composition. Also, the video on “adding to, subtracting from and intersecting selections in photoshop” top tip:
- <command><del> to fill a selection with the foreground colour
An hour finishing and publishing the “Tethered Workflow using Capture One Pro (Sony)“.
An hour working on the “First 4,000 Hours – Review at 40%” post.
9th August
Hours 4,072 to 4,073
Half an hour shooting in Windsor Castle where the East Terrace garden was open to the public for the first time. An hour processing those images.
Half an hour watching and writing up Nigel Danson’s “7 mistakes I see all the time”:
- Unbalanced images – big tip here: draw diagonals through the dominant elements – check that nothing is too dominant
- Weak foreground
- Foreground drop-off – foreground doesn’t integrate with the mid-/background
- No compelling element – “nowhere for the eye to rest”
- Wrong light – shot at the wrong time of day, or wrong conditions
- Too complicated – image messy – seek simplicity
- Untidy edges or corners.
8th August
Hours 4,068 to 4,071
Half an hour updating this journal, mainly notes from yesterday’s retouching workshop, and creating the following version of the image taken at Claremont Gardens a couple of days ago.
An hour watching the second half of the Karl Taylor retouching workshop. Karl uses two levels of sharpening, both using the unsharp mask:
- Sharpen details: usually 1-4 pixels – applied in selected areas;
- Overall sharpening at a low amount with high settings: 20, 40.
Need to experiment with these.
Half an hour writing up and addressing lack of knowledge regarding how to add or subtract from selections:
- <shift> add to selection
- <option> delete from selection
- <shift>+<option> intersect selections.
Two hours entering the Belgian Circuit.
7th August
Hours 4,062 to 4,067
An hour shooting at Stoke Common from about 7am, plus another hour processing in Capture One and exporting to Lightroom Classic.
An hour processing in photoshop, updating social medial and updating this journal.
An hour shooting, then another hour processing a vase of ageing lilies.
An hour watching the first half of the Karl Taylor workshop on retouching a car shoot. Photoshop tips:
- <shift><click> mask to quickly toggle it on/off
- “\” mask preview toggle
- <command>H to hide selection – disable the marching ants.
Clone large areas where there is a gradient of colour and/ or tone, e.g., the background in the Porsche shoot:
- copy area to a new layer
- sample and paint using an averaged sample, softer brush; blend with brush of a lower opacity
- blur layer using either or both Gaussian blur, motion blur
- add 2% noise to make it look natural and to avoid banding.
6th August
Hours 4,060 to 4,061
Half an hour updating this journal and adding yesterday’s top images to my Stoke Common Flickr album.
An hour working on the “Tethered Workflow using Capture One Pro (Sony)” post.
Half an hour total, shooting and processing a handful of images from Claremont Gardens.
5th August
Hours 4,056 to 4,059
Half an hour shooting mainly ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) images at Stoke Common. Followed by half an hour culling (from 124 images to 10), processing in Capture One, then exporting to Lightroom Classic.
Two hours preparing images for the Lanterna Magica Small Prints FIAP salon in Denmark, which included writing a Photoshop action and droplet to automatically create the A4 sized and formatted JPEGs with at least 1cm of white boarder regardless of the aspect ratio of the original image [there are 4 permutations].
An hour processing this morning’s images in Photoshop, primarily colour grading the ICM images.
4th August
Hours 4,054 to 4,055
Half an hour updating this journal. Half an hour posting the Ham House images from Sunday on Facebook.
An hour watching the Capture One Workshop on “Portrait Editing“.
3rd August
Hours 4,049 to 4,053
Half an hour shooting at Stoke Common. Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour processing images from yesterday. An hour processing this morning’s images including the above ICM which is stretched into a 1×2 aspect ratio and colour toned using my standard photoshop action. I quite like it and am giving it time for consideration.
An hour’s YouTube including:
- Terry White masterclass: “Product photography with flash“
- “The colours of Piet Mondrian“
An hour working on social media including creating a Facebook album of the Som Tam images.
2th August
Hours 4,046 to 4,048
An hour and a half working on the Social media and updating this journal.
Half an hour shooting at Ham house.
An hour watching photography YouTubes including:
- Art of Photography: “Review of the new Sony A7S III“
- Sean Tucker: “Passion vs Profession“.
1st August 2020
Hours 4,043 to 4,045
An hour updating this journal, including all the new month admin and adding images to the July page.
An hour watching YouTubes about food photography and creating instagram images.
An hour working on the social media format for the Som Tam images.