March 2018 – Contribution to my 10,000 Hours Photography
Purpose of Journal
382 to 476 of my 10,000 hours deliberate practice learning the Art of Photography.
31 March 2018
Hours 474 to 476
Two hours processing images, with some research on Cordoba Street Photography.
An hour actually doing street photography in Cordoba, Spain.
30 March 2018
Hours 461 to 473
Watched Scott Dumas Capture One Wrokflow YouTube, covering the following tips:
- Linear curve – on import
- Colour selection to masked layer
- quick test: reset/ undo.
Two hours processing images (260) from yesterday evening/ night. Capture One Pro 11 very slow excluding duplicates, and only exclude those still in the capture folder, i.e., not those moved to trash. Must find a more efficient way of importing only the most recent images from a memory card.
Photography of the flamenco show and further night photography.
29 March 2018
Hours 456 to 460
Two hours shooting at the Seville Alcazar and in the street.
One our processing images (200) from the last two days in Capture One Pro 11 – first time this is being used in anger.
Two hours shooting the “processions” in the evening/ night; very dark: ISO 16,0000, no automatic focus or exposure control. Keen to see if anything is salvageable.
28 March 2018
Hours 454 to 455
An hour processing images from yesterday and updating this journal.
An hour’s night shoot of the procession in Seville.
27 March 2018
Hours 448 to 453
Watched the Ted Forbes podcast on “Getting Started FAST with Capture One Pro”.
Two hours at the Tate Modern mainly at the “Picasso 1932” exhibition. Also an exhibition my Martin Parr on the top floor.
An hour’s street photography including shots by the river and Liverpool Street Station below.
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An hour and a half processing images and updating this blog.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Workshop on cropping (only one hour counted towards the 10,000 objective as much of the discussion was already known to me).
26 March 2018
Hours 443 to 447
Half an hour morning shoot at Black Park with beautiful blue sky and orange morning colours.
See image to the right, which is almost exactly what came off the sensor; no cropping, no colour or tone tweeking.
However, further two and a half were spent processing the images below, updating social media and this page.
The following images benefit from early morning light enhanced by the Analogous Orange Colour theme (as defined in my post “Colour Theory – First Learnings”).
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Two takes of the same shot:
Preparation
An hour spent watching the BBC’s “The Art of Spain” episode 1 which exactly covers the region of Spain we are about to visit.
An hour watching the BBC’s preview of the Picasso 1932 exhibition at the Tate Modern that I hope to attend tomorrow.
25 March 2018
Hours 442
Macro work in the garden – new buds of spring.
Challenge: using extension tubes, the image was over exposed, even though it looked fine in the viewfinder during composition. Really not sure why this should have been the case.
24 March 2018
Hours 441
An hour shooting and working on an Andreas Gursky style image. Beginning to realise that these are often a lot harder to achieve than initially thought.
23 March 2018
Hours 439 to 440
Beautiful morning shoot at Burnham Beeches; one hour followed by another processing the images (Lightroom Classic CC – only), then updating this journal.
Images below processed with a purple split complementary colour theme (See: “Colour Theory – First Learnings” post).
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22 March 2018
Hours 437 to 438
An hour working on the Capture One post and another updating pages on this site..
Then lots of time spent fighting with hardware and software trying unsuccessfully to get my a99ii oi tether to either my desktop or laptop computer – but this is time that doesn’t count as dedicated practice in the art of photography. (See: What counts). SPPC committee meeting in the evening but this also doesn’t count.
21 March 2018
Hours 434 to 436
Learning Capture One Pro 11 for Sony and started working on “My Introduction to Capture One Pro Sony 11” post. This is big system, much more powerful than Lightroom. Needed to invest the full
20 March 2018
Hours 430 to 433
An hour updating the journal entry and associated Flickr pages for yesterday.
An hour working with demo version of Capture One Pro.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club, talk my Micki Aston on “Piers of the Realm”. Although this subject didn’t immediately fill me with enthusiasm, Micki is an inspirational speaker and I am chomping at the bit to get to the seaside and shoot some ironwork. Key points Micki made about shot composition include:
- Reflections from pools of water/ wet sane
- Strong leading lines
- Pillars of the pier to frame other landmarke
- Symmetry, particularly for under pier shots.
19 March 2018
Hours 425 to 429
An hour shooting in Hastings Meadow and The Big Field very cold, snow still on the ground and flat light.
Two hours processing some of the minimalist images from yesterday which seem to show promise, and updating this journal.
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Processing images from this morning, (in addition to the horse to the right):
Hastings Meadow
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Both images minimalist in composition.
The Big Field
View from the Third Post through the Seasons Project
What Happened when Harley saw his Friend Thor:
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My Garden
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Capture One
Spent 2 hours learning how to use Capture One as an Alternative to Lightroom Classic CC, apparently improved RAW processing and to allow tethering to my A99ii.
General learning point – brushes – flow
The flow setting on a brush specifies the percentage of the overall “Opacity” that is applied with each brush stroke over an area of an image. This allows fine addition of the brush up to the maximum opacity. Previously did not know this.
Structure
Capture One has the concept of structure, whereas “Clarity” increases the contrast in the mid-tones, “Structure” increases the contrast as the extremes. This effectively adds edge definition. It is useful to add definition, example given was the stubble in a man’s beard or to sharpen edges in architecture.
18 March 2018
Hours 421 to 424
Half an hour shooting minimalist images in the snow at Gray’s Field at 7:30am.
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The 3 hours at the Photography Show at the NEC. Prakash and I left Stoke Poges at 9am and returned at 7pm. I bought lots of kit including a Benro MAD49C carbon fibre monopod which is super light and definitely long enough. It has been on my list to replace my slightly too short Manfrotto monopod for over a year (see My Kit); some MacWet sports gloves (recommended by Prakash as providing the ability to still control the camera whilst wearing gloves (like golf gloves so unlikely to provide any serious warmth like those recommended by George Mardall from the Black Park Parkrun)). Of which the activities that count towards my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in photography:
- Talk “Entering Photo Competitions can change your life” by Margaret Mitchell, Mike Trow, Nick Dolding, Tim Cornwall
- Talk “Evocative Landscapes” by Karl Holtby
- Talk ” The power of Self-Portraiture” by Laura Zalenga
Tip to implement immediately: Laura shoot with Sony kit – use the Sony remote controller on the iPhone - Gallery Tour by David Hurrn of is “Swaps”, i.e., prints he had swapped with other photographers.
“A good photographer is easily identified by the complete concentration they put into their work.”
“If your’re not up by 5.30am you’re wasting the day; and if you’re not still working by 10pm,why not?”
Although Phase One were not at the show, discussions with people on the Sony and TetherTools stands have convinced me that Capture One is the way to go for shooting tethered with my Sony A99ii. Will apparently also do a better job of RAW conversion than Adobe products.
Half an hour updating this journal.
17 March 2018
417 to 420
Very cold morning snowing heavily as I take Harley for a Walk to Grey’s Field and Hasting’s Meadow – no intention of photography – at least initially. So did not risk taking my camera in such weather, but could not resist taking the shot to the right on my iPhone. Then coming back with the A99ii and 135mm lens. See below
16 March 2018
Hours 417
An hour working on the post: “Winter Images 2017/ 18”.
15 March 2018
Hours 416
2 hours updating this journal and social media sites for yesterday’s entry relating to Tuesday’s images.
Off to get the sensor cleaned on my A99ii at Chiswick Camera Centre (see yesterday’s note about this time not counting towards my 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in photography despite it being a fundamental part of a photographer’s life!)
2 hours at the “Photography, Journalism and Legacy: Phillip Jones Griffiths” presentation at the Barbican.
14 March 2018
Hours 411 to 415
Lots of time spent (wasted) trying to clean the sensor on my Sony A99ii (see My Kit), only to discover that this is effectively impossible or at lest highly discouraged. [According to my definition of “What counts as an hour’s deliberate practice?”, fixing my camera is explicitly excluded, as will be time spent taking it to be professionally cleaned tomorrow!]
Then spent 2 hours processing images from yesterday’s bumper crop shot at Langley Park.
First some trees:
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Then something more abstract:
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Swans:
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Notwithstanding the dismissive expression apparently used in judging circles: ABS (another bloody swan), I think the above look good and benefit from a tight crop and the blue-orange colour theme (now defined as a lightroom preset) as explained in my “Colour Theory – First Learnings” post.
Horse hair in barbed wire:
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Again the above benefit from the blue-orange colour theme discussed in the “Colour Theory – First Learnings” post. Ideally, I would have liked the blues on all three images to match, but this proved beyond me at the moment.
Finally some daffodils
Attempted but not shown due to inadequate quality. I feel that one needs a point of focus within an image, somewhere where the “eye can rest” which must be:
- correctly positioned in the frame
- the obvious dominant feature of the image
- ideally the highest point of contrast
- perfectly in focus.
None of the images taken yesterday met this criteria.
Two hours updating this journal and catching up on social media sites
13 March 2018
Hours 406 to 410
An hour shooting at Langley Park, Buckinghamshire.
Two hours processing images from the morning.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club; Three Nations Competition: SPPC vs clubs from Australia and South Africa. We were soundly beaten last year, and were again this year.
My contributions, in this admittedly tough competition where “the starting point was 16, extra point are added for outstanding factors, and 15 awarded as the bottom mark for entries that don’t make the grade”, were as follows:
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“Interesting and well constructed still life. However, the double line just beneath the glass is distracting.” 15 |
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“The sort of scene you simply cannot walk past without taking a picture. Well executed with the trunk of the tree nearly completely blocking out the rising sun. Mist helps add a sense of mystery, but the area where the tree base and shadow meets the reflection in the water is confusing.” 16 |
12 March 2018
Hours 399 to 405
An hour updating this site with images from yesterday morning.
Started work on the Images from Winter 2017/ 18 post:
- selected my favourite Winter Images from the period
- created structure.
Ted Forbes YouTube on Food Photography particularly featuring Edward Weston and Irving Penn’s shots in black and white.
Two hours watching the BBC “Modern Masters” documentaries on Picasso and Andy Warhol.
11 March 2018
Hours 397 to 398
Half hour shooting in Burnham Beeches in the morning then an hour and a half editing later in the day, plus updating this journal.
The semi abstract right was produced from the following RAW image:
A little bit of cropping, filling in the gaps and removing “edge clutter”, but the main processing was the application of the Analogous Orange colour theme as describes in my Colour Theory post. Note, I have all these colour themes implmentes as Lightroom Classic CC Presets where their effect is easily previewed by just mousing over the preset and observing the effect in the preview window above.
Experiment with using Grey Card in the Field
The following images show the before and after effect of changing the white balance to that suggested by the white balance set by using the Grey-Card , as in the image below them.
I feel that the camera’s, automatically adjusted white balance produces a more aesthetically pleasing image than that manually adjusted with the use of the grey card.
Maybe the colour shown by the grey card is affected by the light reflected onto it. But maybe this is a matter of aesthetic choice and the optimal value is a matter of personal judgement, somewhere between the two extremes.
I also find the white balance adjustment tool in Lightroom Classic CC to be overly sensitive, i.e., small changes, that are difficult to control, have a big impact.
10 March 2018
Hours 396
Retrieved images from France via Lightroom CC and added to main Lightroom Classic CC catalog.
9 March 2018
Hours 395
Processing images from earlier in the week using Lightroom CC. Still not a huge fan of this vs Lightroom Classic CC; whinging covered in previous post.
Booked myself and sister-in-law, Lesley, onto “The Photography Show” at the NEC Birmingham, weekend after next.
8 March 2018
Hours 394
Some morning photography in Les Houche.
Updating this journal.
7 March 2018
Hours 393
Some photography in the evening, then updating this journal.
6 March 2018
Hours 392
Early morning photographs
An hour writing the “Why the Definition of Macro is Ridiculous in the Digital Age” Techno-Rant for the “First Attempts at Macro Photography” post.
Could not attend the “Moonlight/ Nighttime” competition at the Stoke Poges Photo Club – wot with me being in Les Houche and everything. However, my entries scored as follows:
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Judge obviously not impressed. Whilst the movement in Harley’s tail is good, the lack of definition in the other dog’s face is a real problem. Also the moon could do with being toned down slightly to show better definition. 16 |
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The blue sea and sky are beautiful, but the orange of the lights on the shore are just too much. 17 |
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This was the winning image in the Advanced Open category; piping Prakash’s “Sunset through the Iceberg” to the post. 20. |
Congratulations to Rojer Weightman and Prakash Sivarajan for their winning images in the “Moonlight/ Nighttime” Advanced set subject with “Moon Light Bay” and “Aurora Borealis” respectively.
5 March 2018
Hours 390 to 391
Unhappy time grappling with Lightroom Classic CC crashing on my Laptop as I try to process the images shot over the last couple of days.
Two hours working on my “First Attempts at Macro Photography” post.
4 March 2018
Hours 389
Couple of snowy semi-abstracts including the one below.
3 March 2018
Hours 388
An hour shooting in Hastings Meadow then an addition to my “Third Post on the Big Field” project, right.
Last of the snow but some interesting minimalist/ abstracts.
2 March 2018
Hours 386 to 387
An hour working on yesterday’s, initially uninspiring, image of Fran and Harley in the Snow at Langley Park. Conversion to Black&White rescued the garish colours Fran was wearing; I tried various of the presets in Lightroom and then made adjustment on top of that, including increasing the whites and shadows, and some local adjustments to Fran & Harley. Extending to a square format in Photoshop added some foreground, “for them to move into.” Content Aware Fill, did a great job extending the canvas in a believable way.
1 March 2018
Hours 382 to 385
First off, no point going out first thing this morning as it was snowing heavily with flat light. Snow is exciting, as it so rarely happens in the UK, but you can only photograph it when it stops. I know that last statement is fundamentally untrue, but it was my excuse for not going out this morning.
Showed Fran my Picture within a Picture at Cliveden image from yesterday and was surprised by her lack of enthusiasm. So I resolved to do a better job.
A few minutes out shooting Fran and Harley in the Snow at Langley Park – very cold.
Note the image to the right was taken on the 1st but processed and converted to B&W on the 2nd.
Booked myself onto the RPS Distinctions (Licentiate) Advisory Day for the 23rd June. The goal is to at least apply for a Licentiateship by the end of the year.
Watched the Ted Forbes YouTubes on Abstraction and Conceptual Photography (both highly recommended).