This journal records the detail of ten thousand hours studying fine art photography.
Hours 5,493 to 5,619
31st August
Hours 5,615 to 5,619
(1h) processing images of Helen Wren who was performing at the Boat Festival.
(2h) processing general Trad photos.
(1h) finishing and publishing the “Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida” review post
(1h) updating this journal which hadn’t been done for several days.
30th August
Hours 5,610 to 5,614
(2h) processing yesterday’s images form the Henley Traditional Boat Festival (the “Trad”).
(1h) shooting, mainly the Led Zeppelin Tribute band, at the Trad in the evening
(2h) processing the evening’s images.
29th August
Hours 5,603 to 5,609
(2h) processing yesterday’s images.
(2h) shooting at the Trad including the following portrait of the oldest couple at the festival:
(2h) processing of the day’s images
(1h) shooting the evening show.
28th August
Hours 5,595 to 5,602
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) working on the “Summer 2021” post
(2½h) shooting at the Henley Traditional Boat Show.
(1h) culling and processing the day’s images.
(½h) YouTube:
(1h) evening shoot, “Henley Trad” (as above)
(½h) astro photography – not well aligned.
(1½h) culling and processing this evening’s images.
27th August
Hours 5,593 to 5,594
(1h) YouTube:
- The National Gallery:
- “Paul Cézanne: The father of modern art” discussion of his ‘Bathers’ painting
- “Jan van Eyck’s self portrait in 10 minutes or less” the importance of his self portrait relative to his more famous Arnolfini Wedding Portrait – essentially that it places him in the same social category as his aristocratic clients – good marketing move
- art History School: “Mary Cassatt: The Life of an Artist” – an American who studied and worked mainly in Paris with the at the end of the 19th Century. Knew many of the leading impressionist and was considered part of the group.
(1h) at the Amersham Photographic Society’s Exhibition party for friends and family, time mainly spend discussing the exhibits with other society members.
26th August
Hours 5,591 to 5,592
(1½h) YouTube – Boston, Museum of fine Art: “A New Look at Impressionism: Millet and the Painters of Barbizon“
(½h) “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post.
25th August
Hours 5,584 to to 5,590
(1h) processing yesterday’s astrophotography images
(1h) updating this journal mainly notes from yesterday’s Cezanne lecture.
(1h) “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society’s 2021 exhibition.
(2h) Amersham Colour Group
24th August
Hours 5,577 to 5,583
(1h) updating the “Summer 2021” post
(1h) updating the “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post
(½h) working on the time-lapse stabilisation Photoshop Action/ Script.
(2h) Amersham Annual Exhibition
(1h) YouTube: “Boston Museum of Fine Arts Lecture – Cezanne: Art and Life“
- The key to artistic success is to work over long timeframes. Cezanne embodied this often working on his canvasses for many years
- School friend with the author Emile Zola
- Zola won prizes for painting and Cezanne for poetry
- Cezanne was a big boy who protected his wimpy friend who once gave him box of apples as a thank you
- Cezanne introduced Zola to the Parisian Impressionist art scene where he defended their works in various freelance newspaper articles
- friends for decades but fell out over Zola’s most famous book, “The Masterpiece”, which features an innovative painter who unable to realise his potential, hangs himself in front of his final painting; Cezanne considered this a thinly disguised commentary of his temperament and talent.
- the lecturer, Alex Danchev, claims that Georges Braque, Picasso and Henri Matisse would all have considered Cezanne to be their major influence and the greatest painter of the 20th Century.
- Matisse bought his first Cezanne painting, whilst an impoverished artist, by paying in instalments and pawning his wife’s wedding ring. He consider the painting to be his “Rock”.
(½h) updating this journal
(1h) practicing astro photography using the SkyTracker Pro. First time I have been able to set this up and align with the North Star.
 | ….. |  |
2 minutes exposure
North Star pretty much central in the image, movement visible in the stars close to the edge of the frame in left image.
23rd August
Hour 5,576
(½h) collating images for the “Summer 2021” post
(½h) updating the following image
22nd August
Hours 5,574 to 5,575
(½h) updating this journal.
(1½h) updating the following almost mono image to tone down the bright area in the bottom right of the image, generally improve the tonality, and correct a few cloning issues in the fur to the left of the eye.
21st August
Hours 5,571 to 5,573
(1h) Starting a “Summer 2021” post
(1h) starting a “Multi-Year Time-Lapse” post.
(1h) You Tube:
- Sean Tucker: “Capturing Intimacy in Photography (featuring Tiffany Roubert)“
- MoMA: “Art with Truth and Soul – Jack Whitten“
- Sotheby’s: “Waris Ahluwalia on Living an Artful Life“
20th August
Hours 5,569 to 5,570
(½h) updating this journal.
(1½h) YouTube:
- Adorama – Pye: “10 Step Guide to Shutter Drag Portraits“
- Portraits of people in the sea with waves lapping around their feet
- Positioning vs the horizon 2/3rds up the images, but probably half way uncrossed to avoid curvature when using a wide-angle lens
- Shoot slightly up at subject
- 0.3-0.5 second shutter speed
- Adorama – Vanessa Joy: “Posing Tips – Women, Men & Couples“
- Arm Angle:
- 90 degrees = powerful
- acute = cute – feminine
- Head tilt:
- men: head to low shoulder
- Stance:
- Men – like they’re “on a skateboard”
- Simulate walking by rocking between front and back feet
- Arm Angle:
- Yale University: “Gregor Quack on Franz Kline’s Portrait of Nijinsky“
19th August
Hours 5,564 to 5,568
(3h) finishing the “Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida” review post, to a point where it is ready for Fran to review.
(1h) watching the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lecture: “Historicism to Art Nouveau: Klimt and Ornament“.
(1h) other YouTube:
- Barbican Centre: “Brut, My Beauty: Jean Dubuffet and Jean-Michel Basquiat“
- Thomas Heaton: “Summer Photography“
- Ted Forbes: “Be Like Bart“
- Pierre Lambert: “Photography in Exotic Locations – Be Prepared“
18th August
Hour 5,563
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) last part of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lecture: “Learning to See: Visual Fundamentals“
17th August
Hours 5,560 to 5,562
(1h) processing yesterday’s images.
(1½h) YouTube
- Astrophotography, main tip: brighten the Milky Way using the ellipse mask in LR/ PS/ C1.
- first hour of, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lecture: “Learning to See: Visual Fundamentals“
(½h) updating this journal.
16th August
Hour 5,559
(½h) shooting at Burnham Beeches
Installing the JSX Launcher Photoshop plugin – shouldn’t have taken this long – but it did and still didn’t help. [On reconsideration, this doesn’t count towards my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice learning the art of photography.]
(½h) culling and processing this morning’s images.
15th August
Hour 5,558
(½h) updating social media with yesterday’s images.
(½h) YouTube: Mads Peter Iversen “7 Terrible Landscape Editing Mistakes” – beyond the obvious:
- Don’t make the sky darker than the foreground it is illuminating – just unnatural
- Remove shadows by cloning onto a new later with the Darken blend mode.
14th August
Hours 5,553 to 5,557
(½h) updating this journal.
(1h) shooting the 1940s event at the Chiltern Open Air Museum.
(3½h) processing the day’s images – developing a consistent style through consistent post-processing, i.e., plain background (where possible), auto-selecting the subject and darkening the background, then some dodge and burn.
13th August
Hour 5,552
(1h) preparing print and PDIs of those prints in various forms for the Amersham 2021 Exhibition.
12th August
Hours 5,547 to 5,551
(1h) updating this journal and associated Flickr site with images from the 1690s History Re-enactment Workshop at the Chiltern Open Air Museum last weekend.
(1h) YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “Interview by “
(1h) learning how to use JavaScript with Photoshop.
(2h) Amersham Mono Group. My contribution below:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | Good portrait. | |
 | Good composition with the eyes very central. Parasol makes a great background. | |
 | Maybe try to balance the tonality across the image, i.e. lighten the left. | |
 | “The best of the lot.” Sense of mystery. Retains interest. |
11th August
Hours 5,542 to 5,546
(½h) updating this journal with notes about stabilising the Time-lapse.
(1½h) JavaScript to save the Reference file – can programmatically control the batch override saveAs command, save to a specific directory/file and the switch back again.
(1h) further mono images for tomorrow’s meeting with the Amersham Mono Group; non-portraits shot at the Chiltern Open Air Museum over the last weekend.
(1h) further learning about the photoshop Document Object Model and how to program it it in JavaScript. See: https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/photoshop/pdfs/photoshop-scripting-guide-2020.pdf
(1h) YouTube:
- The National Gallery: “The unfashionable artist who inspired Van Gogh“
- Mads Peter Iversen: “5 Steps to Creating Moody Landscapes“
- Identify the subject of the image
- Plan to shoot in bad weather (rain or rain clouds)
- Use reflections in the composition
- Hyperfocal focus – c. 1/3 into the frame, use f/16
- Make clouds more dramatic with a black/white gradient from top to horizon with Overlay blend mode. Use the mask to tone down are that are “too much”.
10th August
Hours 5,537 to 5,541
(2h) creating mono versions of the Re-enactment portraits for the Amersham Mono Group meeting this Thursday, plus a frivolous Oil Painting version to amuse the people at the Historic Re-enactment Workshop.
(3h) stabilising the time-lapse. Technique and challenges as follows:
- use a Droplet to sequentially process the images; opening photoshop aligning with a reference image, saving to the Aligned Images folder, then updating the reference
- needed to use the Trim command to trim the aligned image to the size of the reference. Otherwise, the auto-align-layers command increases the size of the canvas to accommodate both images, giving you a bigger image than you started with
- updating the reference is an issue as the Droplet needs the “Override SaveAs Command” enabled to work properly and this prevents a separate, specific writing of the new image as the reference for the next. Will try writing a script to do this update.
9th August
Hours 5,532 to 5,536
(3h) processing yesterday’s reenactment portraits.
(1h) time-lapse.
(1h) social media and sending images to the Historic Re-enactment Workshop and the Chiltern Open Air Museum, including the fun image below.
8th August
Hours 5,523 to 5,531
(3h) processing yesterdays reenactment portraits including producing reasonably sized JPEG of the best and transferring to my Mac Photo folder so that I can share them with the actors and organisers when I meet them later today.
(2h) shooting the reenactment at the Chiltern Open Air Museum again – slightly different location handset of actors. Yin was there for the last quarter/ half hour.
(4h) culling and processing today’s images.
7th August
Hours 5,518 to 5,522
(3h) shooting the 1690s reenactment at the Chiltern Open Air Museum with my friend and mentor Yin Wong.
(2h) processing images from the above.
6th August
Hours 5,516 to 5,517
(1h) processing the sirloin ciabatta image from yesterday evening.
(1h) collating the W G Carter time-lapse images and planning techniques for stabilisation.
5th August
Hours 5,510 to 5,515
(½h) updating the following image from Easter Island, balancing the left and right moai in terms of brightness.
(4h) processing 8 further images from Stoke Common in LAB colour refining the Photoshop action and aiming to achieve consistency in tonality and aesthetic.
(½h) YouTube:
- Nigel Danson: “3 Composition Tips“
- balance foreground, mid-ground and background
- watch the edges of the frame, and remove unwanted elements in general
- beware that things change during set-up.
(1h) setting up and shooting my scrummy steak sandwich – using ideas from the recent Karl Taylor webinar on burger photography.
4th August
Hours 5,505 to 5,509
(3h) processing and experimenting with LAB colour combination of yesterday’s images.
- Use a combination of the Info tab and the Colour Sampler tool, to track the B channel value of an area of white in the image. Make this constant across all images about -4 (slightly blue) seems to work well
- Instead of removing all information from the A Chanel (magenta to green) with a flat curves adjustment layer, change the opacity of this adjustment layer to 75-90%, so that a little bit of muted variation is retained
- Darken the base of the images.
(2h) responding to a comment on my “Tethered Workflow using Capture One Pro (Sony)” post about my suggestion that one could you Live View with the Capture Pilot ap. Much time spent trying and researching, concluded that I couldn’t either, so replied to that effect and updated the post.
3rd August
Hours 5,500 to 5,504
(1h) shooting at Stoke Common.
(½h) further tinkering with yesterday’s images.
(½h) updating this journal.
(1h) Karl Taylor Webinar: “Shell Series: Imitating Golden Hour in the Studio”
- Scallop shell on sand
- shoot directly from over head
- blow sand, either by mouth or with a hairdryer, to get a natural beach effect
- one main P70 light source with grid and yellow gel, low over the sand to show the undulation and the ridges in the shell
- Use a series of shiny concaved golden card reflectors to create interesting warm light
- Have the main emphasis bounced back onto the point of the shell, as the hero element.
(2h) processing this morning’s images including the following, serendipitously shot, which is being sent to Yin Wong for comment as to applicability for submission to the Nature section of a FIAP salon.
2nd August
Hours 5,495 to 5,499
(1h) Updating the following almost mono woodland image from yesterday.
(1h) YouTube:
- Tu Hongtao on Cy Twombly: “Image of Uncertainty“
- Twombly famously never explained his works
- Clearly had lots of influences, from poetry, etc.
- He preferred the post-structuralist position that it’s the viewers job to bring their own interpretation.
- Anthony Morganti: “Linear Profiles: the new rage in photography” all RAW processing software makes adjustment for specific camera makes and models. This video claims that some photographers get better results when working with the data as it comes directly off the sensor!
(3h) processing 5 more images and developing a Photoshop Action for the style I’m developing.
1st August
Hours 5,493 to 5,494
(1h) updating this journal, including all the new month admin.
(1h) further development of the new aesthetic for woodland photography developed at the end of last month and processing a further 4 images.