March 2019 – Contribution to my 10,000 Hours Photography
This Journal records my actual 10,000 hours learning fine art photography as carried out in March 2019.
Hour 1,927 to 2,042
31 March 2019
Hours 2,041 to 2,042
An hour adding images and links to this journal.
An hour collating and processing entries for the Cheltenham International Salon, 5th September 2019. Entries in 3 of the 5 sections:
- Colour
- Monochrome
- Creative.
30 March 2019
Hours 2,039 to 2,040
Two hours drafting a new post “Diptychs, Triptychs and Polyptychs”.
29 March 2019
Hour 2,038
An hour working on my “Diptychs, Triptychs, Polyptychs” presentation for the Amersham Beyond group next week.
28 March 2019
Hours 2,032 to 2,037
Three hours finishing the “Successful LRPS Resubmission” post, including updating all the associated social media sites.
An hour watching YouTubes:
Serge Ramelli: “10 Tips to Becoming a Professional Fine Art Photographer” – list reduced to key elements:
- Find a personal project you can work on, and build a body of work around
- Learn from what everybody else has done in this area before
- Find styles you like and reverse engineer them to produce similar images
- Publish on Instagram and Google+ (the latter only as it helps SEO with Google Image searches)
- When you have a body of work you are proud of:
- First contact all the photography magazines and get published
- Then contact galleries and book publishers.
Ted Forbes – The Art of Photography: “The Establishing Shot” timely reminder of the importance of first impressions. Fits in neatly with my “Second Stage Culling” process in the “Second Revision: Worksflow after 2,000 hours” post and the comments by Janey Davine last Sunday.
An hour watching:
An hour writing the “Diptych, Triptych, Polyptych” presentation for next weeks presentation to the Amersham Beyond sub-group of the APS.
27 March 2019
Hours 2,029 to 2,031
Half an hour shooting ICM images in Burnham Beeches; half an hour updating this journal.
Send the images from an architectural shoot I did for W.G. Carter in Oxford on 9th August last year to their architect who works on the project, David Godliman, who is a very fine photographer himself.
An hour creating the Flickr Album: “Successful LRPS Resubmission“.
An hour creating the following images, right and below. I like the way the blur seems to curve outwards towards the corners at the bottom of the images, thus making it clear that it wasn’t added post-production using Photoshop’s motion blur filter.
26 March 2019
Hours 2,027 to 2,028
An hour drafting the post “My Successful LRPS Resubmission“.
Another hour updating the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post – particularly with regard to categorising images during the Second Stage Culling in line with the groupings suggested by Janey Devine FRPS last Sunday and colour coding to work in both Lightroom and Capture One Pro.
25 March 2019
Hours 2,023 to 2,026
An hour and a half updating this journal and planning the Diptych presentation for the APS Amersham Beyond presentation next week.
Half an hour watching the Sean Tucker YouTube: “My Daily Bag for Photography and Filmmaking“.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – PDI competition, no entries personally.
24 March 2019
Hours 2,017 to 2,022
Five hours at the RPS Thames Valley DIG: Janey Davine FRPS – Documentary Photography – “Celebrating British Life Today”.
3 keys to a successful series of documentary photographs:
- Images that tell a story on their own
- Images with impact
- Variety (use of different lenses, etc.)
5 different types of image, almost mandatory to include all 5:
- Establishing shot – sets the scene for the entire series
- Portraits
- People at work – groups of people involved in the activity being covered
- Detail
- “The Decisive Moment” – something different, e.g., a long exposure, something a little bit abstract.
An hour updating this journal.
23 March 2019
Hours 2,014 to 2,016
An hour updating this journal with images shot and processed over the last few days.
An hour organising the images from Les Crosets.
An hour producing HDRs; struggling to see any value in HDR Pro as used by Adobe.
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22 March 2019
Hours 2,011 to 2,013
Three hours processing the snow images from Les Crosets, and other images shot locally including creating the following ICM/ straight merges image.
21 March 2019
Hours 2,004 to 2,010
An hour reading the “What is Art?” and “The Intentional Fallacy” chapters of the “50 Philosophy Ideas” book by Ben Dupre. Three perspectives as to what is art are presented.
- “The Eye of the Beholder”: Realists (or objectivists) hold that beauty is a real property that an object may possess. However, anti-realists (or subjectivists) hold that beauty relies upon the viewers interpretation of the object.
- “The Institutional Theory”: in effect art is what the qualified experts say is art.
- “Family Resemblance”: a theory which dodges the question of what is art by suggesting that, although it cannot be defined precisely, it is like other things that have previously been agreed to be art.
The intentional fallacy deals with the separation of art from the artist and asks such questions as:
- Is a work of art still good even if it was created by an evil person?
- Is an exact copy of an artwork as good as the original?
An hour shooting at Stoke Common
An hour working on the following diptych of surfers shot whilst in Jersey.
An hour processing images from Stoke Common, including the following composite straight/ ICM, which I might submit into the Stoke Poges Photographic Club’s forthcoming “Into the Woods” competition.
An hour reading “Photographers on Photography, How the Masters See, Think & Shoot“.
Two hours at the Amersham PIC Group.
20 March 2019
Hours 2,002 to 2,003
An hour updating this journal, mainly with events from yesterday.
A few minutes shooting Doggy Photos at Burnham Beeches. Then the rest of an hour starting to plan the a “Diptych, Triptych, …, Polyptych” presentation for the Amersham Beyond subgroup of the APS.
[Lots of time taken up by preparing for and attending the Stoke Poges Photography Club committee meeting. However, this does not count as deliberate practice learning the art of photography, and is therefore not included towards my 10,000 hours.]
19 March 2019
Hours 1,997 to 2,001
Half an hour updating this journal
Two and a half hours, of time that counts, at the “Photography Show” at the NEC
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: PDI Competition: “Sports” and Open
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Ace Held back – 19 Liked the way the audience are muted yet still visible. Dynamic framing, even the advertising logo contributes to the image. |
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Impressions of Trees and Snow 17 Enjoying the trees but possibly too much snow. |
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Marina After Dusk 16 Felt that there should have been more detail in the shadows. [Note this is my most successful image ever in terms of Instagram likes.} |
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Reflections at the Tate Modern 17 Felt that man with red bag didn’t do the image any favours. Otherwise quite interesting. |
18 March 2019
Hours 1,992 to 1,996
Two hours working on the Les Crosets images in Capture One. In particular defining a Snow Curve user-preset; a super steep S-curve, which dramatically increases the contrast in the upper quarter of the register, emphasising tonal differences in the bright whites. In other words, stops patches of snow looking just like blocks of white.
[Technique first experimented with last week.]
An hour importing the 3 star images into Lightroom Classic CC and doing the “Lightroom Admin” associated with a new import.
An hour implementing the idea of the 13th March, to make the Sand Abstracts from Jersey almost monochrome.
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Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society; Members’ evening: “Desert Island Pics” – 6 members showed up to 8 of their own prints that they would take with them to a desert island.
17 March 2019
Hours 1,990 to 1,991
Half an hour shooting the following image of the church at Les Crosets, plus an hour and a half uploading to Capture One, processing, transferring to main computer and importing into the Master Catalogue as per the draft “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 hours” post [prior to this being changed not to ever use Catalogs], and updating this journal.
16 March 2019
Hours 1,988 to 1,989
Half an hour shooting in beautiful morning light by the brook in Les Crosets, plus an hour and a half processing those images.
15 March 2019
Hours 1,986 to 1,987
Half an hour shooting in Les Crosets, very early in the morning, very bad weather. Half an hour shooting a portrait in the Spa under the Thallasotherapy waterfall. Followed by an hour processing those images.
14 March 2019
Hours 1,983 to 1,985
An hour shooting in the snow of Les Crosets first thing in the morning including uploading these images to Capture One and starting the culling/ processing.
A further two hours processing these snow images, in particular using an extreme and localized curves adjustment to maximize contrast across the whites only, and consequently revealing detail in the snow as follows:
13 March 2019
Hours 1,979 to 1,982
Half an hour shooting pre-dawn in the snow at Les Crosets then an hour and a half culling, processing and updating this journal.
Also thought that my Sand Abstracts from Jersey might be better as monochromes to avoid the nasty yellow hues. [Idea implemented on the 18th March.]
An hour watching: BBC Documentary: “History of Art in 3 Colours, Episode 1: Gold“. Gold represents both the:
- Material- demonstrating the wealth, power and status
- Immaterial – representing the spiritual power of gold – reflecting candle light unlike any other material.
Gustav Klimt applied gold in hundreds of different forms and using hundreds of different techniques in The Kiss (his most famous work, often considered the last word on love) and other paintings in an attempt to restore the spiritual association of gold increasingly being lost in the material world.
Another hour spend on the following topics:
Mike Browne: “How to See Photos and Compositions” his mantra: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Top tips:
- Practice looking from different angles
- Think about the geometry of the image
- Try to achieve different backgrounds
- Be aware of the edges of the frame.
Capture One: “Creating a Catalog“, in particular use of Collections and Albums, and updating the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post accordingly. [The use of Catalogs was eventually abandoned in favour of exclusive use of Sessions for simplicity and transparency. As PhaseOne admitted at the NEC on the 8th April, Catalogs are currently less functional than Lightroom.]
12 March 2019
Hours 1,976 to 1,978
Half an hour shooting pre-dawn, plus another half updating this journal and adding cross references to the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post, plus a further hour updating this post.
Third hour watching the YouTubes:
- Sean Tucker: “The Things we can’t Control (A Lesson from the Stoics)“. Premise is to differentiate between the following three types of situations and to worry only about the first:
- Things we can directly control, i.e., what we thing, say and do
- Things we can influence
- Things over which we have no control.
- “Paul Cezanne – Three Colours“
11 March 2019
Hours 1,971 to 1,975
Two hours finishing and publishing the “Review Winter 2018/ 19” post, and updating this journal with the images from Jersey shot and processed over the last few days.
An hour working on the following Seaweed Diptych:
An hour watching the Art of Photography YouTube on Journalistic Ethics which relates rather more the the writing of a blog (such as this one) rather than photography per se. Key messages:
- Cite and check references
- Publish redactions for any mistakes.
An hour working on the post “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours“.
10 March 2019
Hours 1,968 to 1,970
Three hours culling and processing images from Jersey. Following the guidelines of the revised workflow post (still in production at this time); uploading to Lightroom Classic CC before final editing, colour toning, adding vignette where applicable and a final curves layer in Photoshop. Then exporting to JPEG, for use in the journal, facebook, twitter and Instagram, and directly creating a new album in Flickr.
9 March 2019
Hours 1,966 to 1,967
Half an hour shooting mainly abstracts of seaweed and patterns in the sand that look like trees on St Brelade’s Bay beach in Jersey plus another half uploading to Capture One images from today and yesterday.
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An hour transferring to the Master Catalogue on the main computer and further culling to get the number of images down to a target of 20 – currently at 31 out of 242 exposures made.
8 March 2019
Hours 1,962 to 1,965
Pre-dawn shoot on the beach of St Brelade’s Bay for an hour plus another hour processing those images back at the hotel and updating this journal.
An hour and a half working on the “Review Winter 2018/ 19” post. Half an hour shooting in St Helier and the Hospital museum in the War Tunnels.
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7 March 2019
Hours 1,958 to 1,961
First hour started drafting a “Review Winter 2018/ 19” post. An hour shooting surfers on the beach in Jersey, plus two hours processing those images.
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6 March 2019
Hours 1,950 to 1,957
An hour updating this journal, with thoughts from yesterday’s meeting of the Stoke Poges Photographic Club, and the images of Hastings Meadow taken on Monday.
Two hours populating this journal with images from Anglesey.
An hour watching Art of Photography reviews:
Another hour updating the “Top 100 Photographers of all Time” post to adjust for the omission of the above, which particularly in the case of Newman was a major oversight.
Two hours selecting the top 10 images from Winter 2018/19 and uploading to this site so that I can start writing that post.
An hour working on Instagram.
5 March 2019
Hours 1,943 to 1,949
First hour colour processing and colour toning the last 4 images from Anglesey, including adding the Colour Toning action F6 (zero Green/ Magenta) to the set defined on the 3rd March. Lots of lens spot removal which should have been done in the RAW processing stage in Capture One Pro using a temporary curves tool make these more apparent – updated the “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post accordingly.
Two hours updating the workflow post above.
An hour preparing images for the SPPC “Sports” competition in two weeks time.
An hour watching:
- Capture One Webinar: “Organising your Catalogue“
- Sean Tucker: “Getting Started in Documentary and Conflict Photography (feat. Ondrej Vachek)“
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Workshop: Silhouettes and Shadows.
Points from discussions:
- Photoshop’s Blend if functionality is very effective for removing skys from around complicated objects such as trees
- The new Content Aware Fill enables you to exclude area to be considered in the cloning operation
- Blurb is a provider of photo books, including layflat, which integrates with Lightroom, so all design work can be done from there.
4 March 2019
Hours 1,936 to 1,942
Up at 5.30am to start the monthly 6, 9, 12, 3, 6 shots of Hastings Meadow below (an hour and a quarter shooting plus three quarters processing).
| West | ….. | North | ….. | East | ….. | South |
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| 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | 6am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | 6am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | 9am 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | 9am 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 12noon 16mm f/9 | 12noon 16mm f/9 | 12noon 16mm f/9 | 12noon 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 12noon 35mm f/9 | 12noon 35mm f/9 | 12noon 35mm f/9 | 12noon 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | 3pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | 3pm 35mm f/9 | |||
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| 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | 6pm 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 | 6pm 35mm f/9 |
Two hours colour toning and processing images from Anglesey.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Guest Speaker: Jeremy Walker “Portraits & Landscapes”. Thoughts and observations below:
- Uses a lot of 1×3 panorama format images – sometimes stitched together, other times just cropped
- Doesn’t bother doing his own printing
- For portrait shots outside, light only using one or two reflectors. Square reflectors are better than circular ones, as they create a more pleasing catchlight.
3 March 2019
Hours 1,931 to 1,935
First hour of the day: set the computer importing the Anglesey session into the Master Catalogue; and me reading the new RPS Journal, including planning some of the courses and lectures I want to attend.
Hours 2&3 reducing the short list of 74 images to 29 for Anglesey a target of <=30 x three star “keepers”.
Moving an item to the Catalog trash in Capture One does not alter the physical location of the item. This means that my idea of storing only active items on the main computer drive, and all trashed one star images stored on the network drive (for access only should RAW +/- 1 image be required), is impossible.
Hours 4&5 importing images to Lightroom Classic CC, and processing and colour toning in Photoshop. This included creating actions F4 and F5 below out of the list of currently user defined actions below:
- F2 – fills a selection, slightly extended and feathered, with content aware material – useful for creating more space around a picture when printing
- F3 – expands the canvas of a picture to 102% in both dimensions, selects the extension, and content aware fills by calling F2 – creates room around an image to allow for the overlap when printing
- F4 – adds a Color Balance adjustment layer with the shadows set to warmer colours and the highlights to colder – Colour Toning Warm
- F5 – adds a Color Balance adjustment layer with the shadows set to cooler colours and the highlights to warmer – Colour Toning Cool
- F6 – neutralise/ zero the Green/ Magenta slider for all Highlights, Midtones and Shadows for the above Color Balance adjustments [only works on Warm tones
2 March 2019
Hour 1,930
Transferring the 846 images shot in Anglesey from my Laptop to main computer, importing into the main Capture One Catalog and updating the the draft “Second Revision: Workflow at 2,000 Hours” post to reflect this process.
1 March 2019
Hours 1,927 to 1,929
An hour shooting on Penon Beach, Anglesey from about 7am – misty morning creating some interesting light opportunities over the Menai Strait.
An hour loading images into Capture One, and doing new month changes to this journal. Another hour processing, reviewing and further culling images from the week.