This journal records the detail of my studying photography through 10,000 hours deliberate practice.
Hours 4,925 to 5,075
31st March
Hours 5,069 to 5,074
(1½h) shooting early in the morning at Stoke Common.
(½h) preparing images for this evening’s Amersham Colour Group.
(1h) processing this morning’s images.
(½h) RAC club Astro Photography and inimitable journeys through Southern Africa with Will Goodlet.
(2h) Amersham colour group where the following 3 pictures from me were discussed.
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “Lulworth Cove” | |
 | “Corfe Castle Detail” | |
 | “Swanage Orange Sunrise” |
(½h) writing up this journal.
30th March
Hours 5,063 to 5,068
(1h) updating this journal with notes from yesterday and images from the weekend in Dorset.
(2h) processing the images from Dorset, almost exclusively in Capture One, the exporting to Lightroom for storage, conversion to JPEG, etc.
(1h) reworking the Statement of Intent for a potential A panel
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club “Smoke” and Open:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “Blue Smoke” Held back and preferred to the one below marked first. 20 (second place) | |
 | “A Woman’s Profile” Held back 18 Lovely images but lacks impact. | |
 | “Patagonian Diptych” Held back 19 “One image split into two” [Actually not, although this doesn’t matter.] | |
 | “Ghost of Stoke Common” 15 Where’s the ghost? Nice framing with the silver birch but no point of focus in the background. |
29th March
Hours 5,057 to 5,062
(1h) working on the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post by selecting my top 10 images from this period and creating the following Flickr album.
(3h) collecting the time analysis data from August through December 2020.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture by Paul Mitchell “Creative Vision”. Paul is a graphics designer by training and this presentation is largely about the psychology, and therefore aesthetics, of visual composition.
It’s all about balance, how the elements in the frame relate to each other:
- Reflective symmetry
- Asymmetrical balance
- Rotational symmetry.
Shapes:
- Squares & Rectangles ⇒ Strength and stability
- Circles ⇒ Focus the eye – draw attention
- Triangles ⇒ Dynamic
- Organic shapes ⇒ people, animals, life.
Repetition and Pattern ⇒ Rhythm
- Shoot with a wide-angle lens such that the vanishing point is in the corner of the frame.
Scale ⇒ assigns interest and importance within an image.
- A person, small but recognisably human, shows the vastness of a landscape
- Juxtaposing elements, implies a relationship defined by scale.
Lines:
- Divisional lines – separate design elements, e.g., sheep in a field
- Contour lines – emphasise form, e.g., plough lines on a field, shadows, strata in rocks, or sometimes reflections
- Implied lines – exist only as connections through other elements.
Arc & lines can emphasise the geometry of an image.
28th March
Hours 5,054 to 5,056
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) working on the weekend’s images and moving from my laptop to my iMac.
(1h) Watching and writing up Nigel Danson’s: “3 Photographic Skills you should learn“
- Observation – train your “eye”
- Take time at a location before taking out a camera (see notes for Nigel’s vlog on 29th March 2020)
- Analyse why a scene is good in terms of compositional elements; repeating patterns, etc. (his best ever video watched on 3rd June 2020)
- Understand, identify and seek out colours shapes and textures
- Detail – purposeful placement of elements in a scene.
- Understand Light – constantly think about how this is interacting with a scene
- Constantly improve your editing skills – habits here go a long way to defining your style (see also “7 Editing Skills“).
(1h) Yale University: “Let’s talk about Picasso“.
27th March
Hours 5,052 to 5,053
(1h) shooting sunrise in Swanage
(1h) processing images in Capture One from the last couple of days.
26th March
Hours 5,048 to 5,051
(1h) shooting Lulworth Cove at day break moving on to Stair Hole to capture the following
(1h) culling and processing the shot from the last couple of days in Capture One.
(1h) watching the last lecture in the Yale series on Picasso by John Walsh: “Life and Death“.
(1h) shooting Knowle Hill, but stopping en route at Corfe Castle because the light was so good. Massively regretting the fact that I was just too late to capture the new moon rising over the castle.
25th March
Hours 5,044 to 5,047
(1h) writing up this journal particularly with regard to the meeting with Chris Palmer yesterday.
(1h) shooting Corfe Castle at Sunset.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Club special zoom regarding ARPS applications.
24th March
Hours 5,039 to 5,043
(1h) updating this journal and the “Winter 2020/21” post of yesterday, and a couple of older season reviews. [Only when a post is published does one see the typos, errors and other areas to change.]
(1h) working on my “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(1h) YouTube:
- Daniel Wretham: “Horton Tower in Rain and Hail“
- Nigel Danson: “Shooting with a 15 Year Old Camera“
(½h) prep for call with Chris Palmer, ensuring that my Lightroom files are all categorised, and more importantly, that I have clear objectives for the session:
- Is this a viable project in it’s current form? or in an adjusted form?
- What category is most appropriate?
- What are my biggest problems, and weakest images?
- Does the Statement of Intent work for the Category?
- Specifically do the flooding images and the who aspect of flooding add any value?
(1h) zoom with Chris Palmer
Overall: “A long way from the required standard”, “in terms of colouration and tonality, the three tiers look as though they were taken by three different photographers”,”some good images, some very weak.”
Statement of Intent, too long and doesn’t fit the needs of any category. What I have at the moment is probably best suited to Landscape, i.e., “photography that illustrates and interprets earth’s habitats”.
By image:
- Good starting image. Sense of isolation of the tree on the left. Works well in a square format. Make more of this in the Statement of Intent.
- Colour balance all over the place and doesn’t match the first, needs more red and a bit of yellow
- Same problem as the last image but otherwise quite strong
- Ditto colour balance, structure OK and again good square
- Too bright, doesn’t match the others. Perhaps Dehaze the auburn bush. Reduce the contrast at the bottom
- Quite good
- Wrong angle – weak image
- OK (ish) for a documentary or perhaps landscape panel
- Weak – “no go”
- Interesting but not wonderful
- Busy, overly contrasty, doesn’t fit with the others – poor
- Interesting but too contrasty but too dark and contrasty – potential if reprocessed
- Nice image, but again too dark and contrasty, reprocess
- Good framing – same problem as last two
- Weak – remove.
The one portrait image in a panel of square shots, “looks odd.” To avoid the monotony of 15 squares, have more than one portrait, or add a panorama.
(½h) drafting a new statement of intent.
23rd March
Hours 5,032 to 5,038
(1h) updating the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(1h) working on the “Smoke” images due to be submitted to the SPPC competition tonight.
(1h) reworking my A panel Statement of Intent in line with the Landscape categorisation: “photography that illustrates and interprets earth’s habitats, from the remotest wilderness to urban environs”.
(1h) creation of the following diptych for the the open section of next week’s competition.
(1h) finishing and publishing the “Winter 2020/21” post.
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – TriNations competitions against clubs in Australia and South
22nd March
Hours 5,026 to 5,031
(1h) working on the “Smoke” images due to be submitted to the SPPC competition tomorrow.
(1h) working on the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post
(2h) YouTube Lecures from Yale University:
- “Painting Techniques from Rembrandt to Vermeer“
- “At Edward Hopper’s Doorstep” – a discussion of the image below
Hopper describe the above as a self-portrait on the basis the following statement. Given this, it become the viewer’s job to interpret what he is saying about himself.
“The beginning and end of all Artistic activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by the means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, recreated, moulded and reconstructed in a personal form and an original manner.”
Johann von Goethe – adapted and carried with him always by Edward Hopper.
TED talk by Cindy Foley: “Teaching art or teaching to think like an artist?” – 3 key habits of creativity:
- Comfort with Ambiguity – not knowing the answer
- Idea Generation – what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “divergent thinking”
- Transdisciplinary Research – learning as much as possible about a topic from different fields to generate alternative perspectives.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Members’ Evening.
21st March
Hours 5,021 to 5,025
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) Creating the revised version of yesterday’s Squished A Panel. This does, as Yin suggested it would, highlight some colour and tonal issues with the panel as a whole.
(1h) Yale Lecture: “Introduction to History Painting” – how stories are told with pictures.
(2h) creating the following versions of the panel in squished and unsquished formats below:
Images 2-4 replaced and tonality adjusted on several of the others.
(½h) updating the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(½h) working on the smoke images, in particular shooting a profile image of Fran.
20th March
Hours 5,013 to 5,020
(½h) updating this journal.
(1h) finishing processing yesterday’s images in Photoshop, including rewriting the “Remove Green” action which changes the hue of any green and as such removes any suggestion regrowth and renewal.
(1h) working on the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(1h) producing the following squished panel as Yin suggested yesterday
(1h) Yale University 3rd Picasso Lecture: “Cubism and the Human Figure“.
(2h) Shooting “Smoke” shots for the SPPC competition that has to be entered by this Tuesday.
(½h) culling and processing some of the Smoke shots. Ideas to be developed.
(1h) YouTube:
- Sean Tucker: “What I learned about photography projects from Edward S. Curtis”
- The Photographic Eye: “5 Power Words”
- Line – implicit/ explicit, leading lines, etc.
- Shape – 2-D
- Form – 3-D achieved through lighting
- Texture – enriches form
- Colour – controls emotion.
- “Francis Bacon – The Sinister Artist“
19th March
Hours 5,008 to 5,012
(1h) shooting at Stoke Common.
(2h) processing this morning’s images.
(1h) Zoom meeting with Yin Wong, my friend and mentor to discuss progress with my A Panel.
- “Making progress but not there yet”
- The panel needs to work better as a whole, with more consistent colour and tonality
- Image 3, too dark
- Images 11 & 15 (the black swamp pictures) are possibly too similar.
Suggestions:
- Construct a panel with no pace between the images – better develop consistency and overall look
- Make a black cardboard square to aid pre-visualisation of square images
- Attend an RPS assessment as an observer
- Consider submitting as a book rather than a panel
- As for advice on category, e.g., Landscape or visual arts – ensure that I fully understand the criteria against which I will be assessed
- Ask Chris Palmer for advice and maybe submit to the PIC group.
(½h) YouTube: “Jackson Pollock – The revolutionary techniques in Abstract expressionism“.
(½h) updating this journal.
18th March
Hours 5,001 to 5,007
(½h) updating this journal.
(½h) updating the Statement of Intent and emailing yesterday’s updated panel to Yin, Vic and Karl.
(1h) working on the “Winter 2020/ 21” post.
(1h) YouTube: “Lui Haisu, Young Master Of The Chinese Renaissance“
- A young rebel from a wealthy family, opened an art school aged 17, with the goal of teaching both Western and Eastern painting techniques. This included life drawing – considered scandalous at the time
- Travelled to Paris where he enjoyed much success, but was frustrated by the Japanese government’s extravagantly funded exhibitions designed to position them as the premier source of Eastern modern art
- Lived to be nearly 100 years old and still painting despite 3 strokes.
(2h) Karl Taylor Education – critique of members’ business portraits.
(2h) Amersham PIC group – tips for A Panel from Chris Palmer:
- “Make every image count”
- “We are told to assess to the criteria, it doesn’t matter if we like the images or not”
- “Usually the people who are not successful are those that haven’t sought advice.”
17th March
Hours 4,996 to 5,000
(½h) updating this journal.
(2½h) working on images and combinations for a new A panel, plus a revised Statement of Intent, which hint at the bleakness of the middle surrounded by nice abstract images.
(2h) RAC Club – Lecture: “A Year On The Coast” with Justin Minns – focus on East Anglia. Can stay in the Martello Tower through the Landmark Trust.
Top location:
- Brancaster Beach
- Salt Marsh
- Blakeney Point.
16th March
Hours 4,991 to 4,995
(1h) working on the “Winter 2020/ 21” post.
(1h) Yale University Lecture: “Picasso, Spaniard in Paris“.
(1h) working on combining my new images into a panel taking into account recent feedback from both Karl Schrader and Vic Attfield.
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – 3 external competitions taking place simultaneously (we came last in all of them).
15th March
Hours 4,985 to 4,990
(1h) shooting at Stoke Common; particularly a replacement image for the picture Vic Attfield didn’t like.
(2h) processing images shot this morning
(2h) YouTube:
- Thomas Heaton:
- “Panoramic Photography“
- “Look what the storms have done” beach and seascape photography after extreme weather.
- Yale University Lecture: “Picasso, Cubism and Still Life“
(1h) Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture on photoshop techniques
14th March
Hours 4,982 yo 4,984
(1½h) sending my draft A Panel to both Vic Attfield and Karl Schrader, both former members of the RPS distinctions panels.
(½h) updating this journal.
(1h) Capture One YouTube: “Editing Travel and Street” particular attention to the new style brushes.
13th March
Hours 4,980 to 4,981
(2h) processing yesterday’s images and constructing a potential new panel of all square images.
12th March
Hours 4,976 to 4,979
(1½h) daybreak shooting at Stoke Common.
(½h) updating this journal.
(2h) culling and processing this morning’s images in Capture One.
11th March
Hours 4,971 to 4,975
(1h) “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(1h) YouTube:
- Capture One “14.2 New Features“
- View before importing – so that you can decide which images to upload from your camera’s memory card
- Adjustment brushes
- Each brush creates a new adjustment layer, brush size, etc. specific to that layer
- Flow generally low so that the adjustment builds up on the layer
- Standard adjustments: Dodge/ burn, contrast, etc.
- Specialist: Skin redness, Iris enhancement, Blue Sky, etc – perform a number of complementary adjustment on a single layer
- Sean Tucker “Why I took a Break (Dealing with Change and loss)“
(1h) working on a version of my last A Panel but with all square images.
(2h) Amersham Mono group.
10th March
Hours 4,969 to 4,970
(1h) creating a framework for the “5,000 Hours – Half Way” post.
(1h) feedback on potential A Panel by Yin Wong.
Did not feel that the images “worked together”.
- Too many different aspect ratios
- Images left and right of the centre are unbalanced
- Shapes of the top row don’t match with those below.
Try to construct a panel with all square images.
9th March
Hours 4,967 to 4,968
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – competition “Watches/ Clocks” & Open. My images below:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “I want my time with you” 17 Quite artistic treatment. All a bit skew-wife which creates a tension. I enjoy the art of it. | |
 | “Ginger man with Dinosaur Rucksack” 14 I don’t get this at all. Just don’t understand what is supposed to be what. Background too dominant. | |
 | “Bleak Common” 17 Feels like its leaning left. | |
 | “Enticing Forest” 17 Does anybody think this is enticing – foreground ugly, trees block entry to the forest. However, I like it. Lots of mood, a crunchy monochrome would make a great forbidding image – please go play. |
8th March
Hours 4,962 to 4,966
(1h) 6:30am shooting at Stoke Common. Cold, overcast but still morning. Only made 10 exposures.
(2h) processing this morning’s images.
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – speaker: Guy Edwardes – “Seeing the Light”.
7th March
Hour 4,961
(1h) writing a Statement of Intent for the A Panel I’m working on.
6th March
Hours 4,955 to 4,960
Arena/ RPS virtual all day seminar.
(1h) Polina Plotnikova – flowers, dead flowers and ball-joint dolls. Lots of use of diptychs and triptychs to add value to the image.
Doll photography is not about passing them off as real people, more about “suspension of disbelief.”
Main influence, flower photography, is Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865–1932)
(1h) Sue Brown
- Featured in the book “The Coast”
- Recommended Spital Beach – Northumberland
- Intimate landscapes:
- shoot rocks & water with a macro lens to get really close
- control the colour palette in post
- try inversion in Photoshop
- Gentle beach and seascapes:
- start with 1/3 or 1/6 second for waves but experiment
- over expose in-camera and bring it back in post
- further soften with negative clarity.
(1h) Tony Worobiec – “Abandoned on the Plains” – study of abandoned cars and property across the central part of the USA close to the Canadian border. I have ordered his book.
(1h) Tom Way – an early inspiration for me on my 10,000 hour project.
(½h) Focus Group on-line exhibition featuring many of the UK’s top landscape photographers:
- Janie Devine (who was hosting today’s Arena seminar)
- Colin Palfrey
- Robert Heather
- Leigh Preston
- Iain McGowan
- Bill McKnight
- Pete Bamforth
- Nigel Chapman
- John Bradshaw
(½h) updating this journal including notes on the above.
(1h) creating the draft A Panel layout below.
5th March
Hours 4,951 to 4,954
(½h) updating the following image for next month’s Amersham Beyond group addressing last month’s challenge of “Movement”.
Note found that the old colour profile was Adobe RGB (created, I guess straight from Capture One to Photoshop); and when I converted this to the standard sRGB, the image was flattened. So I lost all adjustment layers, etc.
(1h) selecting a first XV for a potential A panel, in 3 set of 5 for each tier.
(1h) selecting processing and sending my images for the TriNations completion for the SPPC.
(1½h) selecting images for my RPS A panel, done in three groups, by tier of panel such that:
- T1: High key images
- T2: Detail shots
- T3: Low key images.
4th March
Hours 4,945 to 4,950
(1h) updating this journal, mainly with regard to notes from yesterday’s lecture on Arshile Gorky.
(1h) finishing processing yesterday’s images from Stoke Common.
(1h) selecting processing and sending a selection of recent images to my mentor, Yin Wong.
(1h) Frontline Club – webinar “Most Influential Photographs Every Taken”. The power of photography comes partly from the fact that we process visual imagery faster than words. Hence the impact of the most important photographs.
(2h) Amersham Beyond, next Challenge, #22: Nostalgia. Memory of the past, combine several elements.
3rd March
Hours 4,939 to 4,944
(1h) shooting Stoke Common foggy morning despite later start than usual.
(1h) selecting and processing images for next week’s Stoke Poges Photographic Club competition.
(1h) working on the “Winter 2020/ 21” post, including reviewing last month’s journal.
(2h) YouTubes on Arshile Gorky:
- “Without Gorky” film by Cosima Spender, granddaughter, about the time leading up to the artist’s suicide in 1948
- “Art, life and legacy” lecture by Saskia Spender, also granddaughter and president of the Arshile Gorky Foundation.
Notes about Arshile Gorky (1904-1948):
- Known as “The last figurative painter and the first abstract expressionist”
- Troubled personality:
- Original name: Vostanik Manoug Adoian
- 1920, left Armenia as a result of the Turkish-Armenian War, death march and genocide, that resulted in his mother starving to death
- Reinvented himself in America taking the name of the Russian poet Maxim Gorky, and the forename Arshile which support a fiction of Georgian nobility
- He had a poor relationship with women including his wife who was aged 19 when he married her aged 37-40 (uncertainty about his date of birth); nicknamed her “Mougouch”, a name he had previously given to a cat
- 1946, diagnosed with rectal cancer and suffered a colostomy, and two years later his neck was broken, leaving his painting arm temporarily paralysed, as a result of a car crash (driven by his art dealer whilst they were both drunk).
- Worked incredibly hard:
- Early in his career we worked in the style of Cezanne, Matise and Picasso
- Friends with New York art set:
- Willem de Kooning – close friend, both foreigners living in New York
- Andre Breton, referred to Gorky as a “surrealist”, his highest complement.
(1h) processing this morning’s images.
2nd March
Hours 4,932 to 4,938
(2h) “Winter 2020/ 21” post, reviewing the constituent 3 months and updating those pages as I go.
(1h) Masters of Photography YouTube: “Scarlet Page“
- primarily famous as a music photographer (daughter of Jimmy Page)
- also shoots the leaving photos of 4-year-olds at the local pre-school
- in lockdown did a project of her friends’ children with their comfort toys
- self funded project “Resonators” two year quest for the world’s greatest guitarists.
(1h) YouTube:
- TED: “The 1-minute secret to forming a new habit | Christine Carter“
- key requirement for improvement is not to beat yourself up over being poor or average at something, but to know that if you practice you’ll improve
- the goal is not to be better than other people but to be better than you were previously
- keep on with small improvements everyday.
- Daniel Wretham: “Epic Fail“
- Nigel Bailey: “Autumn Woodland Photography“
(1h) finishing processing Monday’s images in Photoshop.
(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Water Droplet Workshop.
1st March
Hours 4,925 to 4,931
(1½h) shooting at Stoke Common
(1h) updating this journal including all the end of year admin.
(2h) processing this morning’s images.
(½h) watching and writing up Ted Forbes: “4 Essential Lessons Learned as a Photographer” tip from the greats:
- Keith Carter: “take the shot, you have the rest of your life to work out what it means.”
- Graciela Iturbide: “know people and build trust before even attempting to take their picture”
- Laura Wilson: “To be good you have to be obsessive. There will be lots of people who don’t want you to succeed. The driver has to come from you.”
- John Free: “force yourself to take the difficult shot; easy isn’t worth anything. Your brain doesn’t want you to be a photographer, you have to work at it and keep pushing.”
(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Members Evening.