November 2018 – Contribution to my 10,000 Hours Photography
Purpose of Journal
Recording the actual 10,000 hours deliberate practice learning photographic art.
Hours 1,412 to 1,552
30 November 2018
Hour 1,552
Working on the Northern Ireland Post.
29 November 2018
Hours 1,547 to 1,551
An hour shooting in Burnham Beeches; mainly trying to extract semi-abstract images from some of the amazing tree trunks in the park. Made sure I had the camera set up before I left home:
- Adaptor ring on 135mm prime to take Filters
- Polarizer in the bag and ready to go
- Monopod (compromise from tripod and may want to do some semi-controlled ICM)
- ISO 100, manual shutter speed, manual focus, cloudy white balance
- Steady shot, on for the time being.
Followed by an hour sorting and processing in Capture One Pro.
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Faces in trees above.
An hour researching Durdle Door prior to shooting this weekend, including watching the YouTubes:
- DSLR Life – Nigel Bailey: “Landscape and Astro Photography – Long Exposure at Durdle Door“
- Ben Kupor: “Durdle Door – Lulworth Cove – Landscape Photography“
An hour on other YouTubes:
- The Art of Photography: “Abstraction in Photography“
- Bunch of stuff on the new release, version 12, of Capture One Pro.
An hour finalising the day’s images and updating this journal.
28 November 2018
Hours 1,543 to 1,546
Half an hour preparing images for the open section of next weeks “Macro” print competition.
Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour updating a family portrait which we will hang on the wall together with an image of Harley with the Anthony Gormley “Another Place” statues.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Colour Group.
27 November 2018
Hours 1,534 to 1,542
An hour shooting in the mist at Stoke Park, followed by another hour processing the images. Best below:
Two hours reshooting the Pen macro lit by my big Godox AD600 outdoor flash. Getting enough light in macro photography is usually a key issue; not so much with a mega flash even on 1/8th power, ISO 100, f/16. However, still couldn’t persuade Photoshop to blend even 5 layers.
An hour practising my presentation for this evening’s presentation.
An hour selecting and enhancing images for the open section of next weeks “Macro” print competition – PDIs have to be in this evening.
An hours YouTube:
- “John Free shows 86 of his own Photographs” – “All successful images have at least 3 elements of interest.”
- Nigel Danson: “Improve your composition by learning from your bad photos – 5 simple tips”
- Balance
- Separation – each element must be distinct (e.g., avoid overlapping trees if these are the subject of the photograph)
- Focus – remove distractions and visual clutter
- Leading elements – connect parts of the image
- Stickiness – is there enough to keep the viewer coming back?
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: won the Charles Harding cup for my presentation on “My Failed LRPS“.
26 November 2018
Hours 1,528 to 1,533
An hour shooting first light at Stoke Common practising ICM amongst other things.
An hour processing those images.
Two hours writing my 5 minute presentation for the Stoke Poges Photographic Club for tomorrow’s “Charles Harding” competition.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Club – members evening: Roger Wotton and Gill Morgan, both accomplished landscape photographers although Gill was concentrating on her trip to Everest Base-Camp.
25 November 2018
Hours 1,523 to 1,527
Two hours finishing the First Responders image.
An hour working on the focus stacked image, which Photoshop had made a bit of a mess of blending, before concluding that 41 layers is way too many to unpick.
Spent another hour with only one out of 5 of the previous layers (9 in total) and re-blending in Photoshop. Again results not great – very strange behaviour in Photoshop which was also running painfully slowly. Then another hour having restarted my computer and re-selected only 7 shots for blending. More poor results, Photoshop really doesn’t do as good a job as I previously thought. No wonder third party product exist to fill this niche.
24 November 2018
Hours 1,519 to 1,522
Two hours shooting a focus stacked pen nib for next week’s Macro competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club. Configuration:
- 50mm f/1.4 prime lens at f/9.0
- 36+20mm extension tubes which should provide better than 1:1 on a 50mm lens
- tethered to main computer running Capture One Pro 11 (Sony)
- Camera mounted on a 2-way Shoot focus rail on my usual Manfrotto tripod
- 6 second exposure
- 41 separate exposures with the camera moved about a millimetre between shots.
For details of equipment used see My Kit.
Half an hour shooting the Stoke Poges Community First Responders as they were being awarded a cheque at the local Coop. An hour and a half trying to create a worthwhile image by combining the shots I took. Needed to re-shoot Fran’s legs and boots – very difficult getting the orientation the same as in the original image.
- Key lesson: spend more time posing subjects so that you get it right in-camera. It’s much easier that way!
23 November 2018
Hours 1,517 to 1,518
An hour watching Jeff Cabel’s “15 Things You Should Thinks About Every Time You Take a Photo“. Interesting thoughts include:
- Setting up your camera before you leave for a particular shoot, e.g., shooting ParkRun: quality to JPEG, Auto ISO, Expanded Area auto focus, Steady Shot on, Auto White Balance, Aperture priority, Focus mode Auto (initially then remember to switch to Continuous); When shooting creative landscape: Quality RAW, ISO 100, Manual Focus, Manual, Steady Shot Off. White Balance Cloudy/ Sunny (not auto), Manual exposure. Do this at home before setting off.
- Think about the light source and what impact this is going to have on the image. Will it need complementing with flash or reflector.
- What is the subject?
- What is the photo about? What is it trying to say?
- Are there distractions, “visual clutter”, in either the foreground or background.
- What will I have to do in post-processing?
An hour starting the “Photography Northern Ireland” post, and updating this journal.
22 November 2018
Hours 1,512 to 1,516
8am cold and frosty morning: an hour shooting impressionist shots of Stoke Park Club using intentional camera movement.
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Half an hour reviewing the above shots in Capture One Pro and then importing as TIFF into Lightroom
Half an hour updating this journal, mainly with regard to yesterday’s excellent Member Development at the Amersham Photographic Society on Composition.
An hour and a half processing today’s images in photoshop; mainly colour toning and adjusting levels. Then exporting to Flickr and producing jpegs for here and elsewhere. Then half an hour using the jpegs in Twitter and this journal.
An hour finishing and publishing the “One Day Photographing the Tate Modern” post.
21 November 2018
Hours 1,505 to 1,511
An hour updating this journal reviewing and including links to yesterday’s course organisers.
Two hours creating images from yesterday’s exposures, including the triptych in the notes for yesterday below and the diptych immediately below.
An hour writing a draft presentation about my failed LRPS submission for next week’s Charles Harding Competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
An hour updating this journal and associated social media sites.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s member development evening on “Structure & Composition”. Led by Laurie Turner, the first 3/4 of the evening involved analysing successful prints from the club purely in terms of their compositional elements. Laurie defined composition as consisting of:
- Visual Structure, i.e., the “elements” such as leading lines, triangular structures, repeating shapes, etc.
- Tonality; light and dark within the image (the eye is generally guided towards the lighter areas)
- Texture; smooth calm areas vs rough.
The last quarter of the evening involved looking at shots as they were taken in camera and how they could be improved in post-processing, sometimes quite radically. Techniques included:
- Often converting to mono-chrome or muting colours to simplify and image or remove the distraction of strong colours
- Changing the background
- Rotating arches to that the floor became the wall and vice-versa
- Combining multiple images in a street scene to amplify the sense of engagement of the participants. Similar to the technique used by Andreas Gursky in his stock exchange images to amplify the sense of activity.
20 November 2018
Hours 1,495 to 1,504
7 hours on the Leeming and Paterson workshop organised for the members of the Amersham Photographic Society, creating impressionist landscape images. Ted and Morag led five of us from the club on an exclusive workshop to venues arranged by Roger Longdin ARPS and Gill Morgan.
One hour processing images from today’s workshop: importing into Capture One Pro and starting the initial cull (264 to 30).
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Rojer Weightman: “Still life, Vanitas, Allegory, Momento Mori.”
19 November 2018
Hours 1,489 to 1,494
Booked onto the National Trust Food Photography workshop at Osterly House with Ros.
An hour updating this journal as I reflect upon what I learnt yesterday.
An hour watching YouTubes including one by Sean Tucker, that I had watched before, on Colour toning to create your own style.
Two hours working on recent images. Comparing the woodland images that I have taken recently in Langley, with those by Paul Mitchell and my best of Autumn 2018. Note: “Best of Autumn 2018” must be better than “Best of Autumn 2017”.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – presentation my Leeming and Paterson.
18 November 2018
Hours 1,484 to 1,488
An hour shooting at Langley Park
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Three hours at the Thames Valley DIG subgroup of the RPS: Tracy Willis “Open your mind with Composites”.
Photoshop tips:
- Clipping mask, so that an adjustment layer applies only to the layer immediately below it
- Steam, created from clouds
- Wacom Tablet, for fine control “throw your mouse away”
- Rotate the image when working on it to better suit the physiology of your hand
- Colour code layers so that it’s obvious which relate to which elements in the final image
- Shadows, created on multiple new layers, much darker then use blend mode: “soft light”, and reduce the opacity. Create a much darker “grounding shadow” underneath the subject which remove the effect that they are floating above the ground.
- Create water:
- Draw black and white lines on a new, 8-bit layer
- Filter gallery: “Chrome” creates the metallic/ watery look (only works in 8-bit mode)
- Blend mode: “Soft Light” to preserve some detail below/ behind the water
- Use Free Transform to stretch into place.
An hour watching the following inspirational YouTubes:
- Sean Tucker: “Embrace your shadows – A Lesson for Light and Life”
- “Its the shadow that sculpt the light in an image”
- “In life you really only learn or develop in the dark periods when things are going badly.”
- Andrew Price at the Blender Conference 2016: “7 Habits of Highly Effective Artists” – this struck a chord with me as one of my all time favourite books is “7 Habits of HIghly Effective People” by Stephen Covey (see “About Me/ Other than Photography“).
- Daily Work – do a little every day as “everyday always trumps short intense spurts”. Particularly happy with this as, as of today, I have managed to do at least an hour of what counts every day since starting the project on 1st November 2017.
- Volume not Perfection – don’t always obsess about the finishing touches, most of the personal development and advancement occurs in the first 60% of the time spent producing a work.
- Steal – Always be on the lookout for work you love and replicate this. The route to originality is to copy a multitude of people. Keep a Pintrest account of works you love.
- Conscious Learning – Practice on its own is not good enough. Deliberate practice involves concentrating upon improvements of what has gone before.
- Rest – Sometimes, often, usually, work benefits from having been left alone for 6 weeks and then revisited with fresh eyes.
- Get Feedback – Ask for feedback – but really listen to it. (I am much better at the former than the later!)
- Create what you Love – do the work that you feel motivates you and you’re good at, even if it is always “the same old thing”.
17 November 2018
Hours 1,481 to 1,483
An hour reading the RPS PortfolioTwo
An hour updating my Flickr sire Tagging images etc.
An hour discovering new photographers on Flickr including:
- Marcus Lerh – urban photography with a muted colour palette
- Ludwik Pluta – contemporary portraits, landscapes and urban.
16 November 2018
Hours 1,477 to 1,480
An hour and a half shooting in Burnham Beeches taking the opportunity to go to the places I can’t usually go to when I’m simultaneously walking the dog (complicated on-lead rules). This meant I could revisit some of the areas we went to on the course with Paul Mitchell at the end of last month.
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An hour and a half processing images from the morning at the last few days.
An hour creating the Saachii Triptych from the visit on the 4th October.
15 November 2018
Hours 1,474 to 1,476
Half an hour shooting in Gray’s Field followed by two and a half an hours processing Brick Lane Images updating this journal and social media sites.
14 November 2018
Hours 1,468 to 1,473
An hour and a half shooting at Stoke Park. Another hour and a half processing those images and updating this journal, particularly with regard to yesterday’s competition.
Two hours working on Tate Images.
One hour watching photographic YouTubes.
13 November 2018
Hours 1,461 to 1,467
An hour and a half shooting at Burnham Beeches, (accidentally shooting jpeg – again, grrrr_). Half an hour culling and processing in Capture One Pro the exporting to Lightroom.
Three hours working on the “One Day Photographing the Tate” post.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – PDI Competition: “Planes, Boats and Trains”.
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17 Not quite sharp or sufficiently high contrast. Bigger problem: light area bottom right which draws the eye away from the main subject |
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16 “Too much bland sky” and “too bright on side of boat.” Uninteresting. |
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18 Generally admired the sunburst “filter” (actually just a small aperture). Liked the way the sun moves along the diagonal between the three images. Seagull in the second image is a nice touch. |
12 November 2018
Hours 1,455 to 1,460
An hour drafting a “One Day Photographing the Tate” post.
Three hours processing images for the above post.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – print competition for Intermediate and Advanced.
11 November 2018
Hours 1,451 to 1,454
An hour shooting at Burnham Beeches.
An hour watching the BBC Documentary “Turning the Art World Inside Out” which discusses “Outsider Artists”, i.e., those who live outside of the art establishment, often due to mental illness or severe physical infirmity, yet have developed a unique artistic style.
An hour at the Windsor Contemporary Art Fare. I spoke at length to all three of the photographers exhibiting. Was not overwhelmed.
An hour processing this mornings images and updating this journal.
10 November 2018
Hours 1448 to 1,450
One hour shooting the Black Park Parkrun followed by two hours processing the images.
Used a small step ladder to achieve a better angle over the runners which worked well at the start (see below) but was impractical later in the race.
9 November 2018
Hour 1,447
An hour planning this project using business school SWOT and 7-S techniques.
8 November 2018
Hours 1,443 to 1,445
Half an hour updating this journal, then half an hour researching the photographic exhibitions in London to visit later today.
- Wildlife photographer of the year
- Huxley-Parlour: “Masters of Photography”
- Flowers – Edward Burtynsky: “The Human Signature”
- The Photographer’s Gallery – Vasantha Yoganathan: “A Myth of Two Souls”
Reworked the Faces of Spitalfields Market image from:
To:
An hour and a half at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in the Natural history museum.
Half an hour at the V&A Photography exhibition.
7 November 2018
Hours 1,440 to 1,442
Three hours processing images from Spitalfields Market including lots of colour toning, plus an hour updating this journal.
6 November 2018
Hours 1,435 to 1,439
Half an hour in Gray’s Field taking minimalist dawn images followed by an hour and a half disappointingly deleting most of them for insufficient depth of focus. The following two are the best of a bad bunch.
An hour preparing images for next week’s competition including last minute edits to a few.
An hour updating this journal, below, with the images taken yesterday.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic club helping to lead the workshop on Macro Photography.
5 November 2018
Hours 1,429 to 1,434
An hour and a quarter shooting Hastings Meadow sky from all compass directions 16mm and 35mm at 6am, 9am, 12 noon, 3pm and 6pm.
| 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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| 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | 12 noon 16mm f/9 | |||
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| 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 35mm f/9 | 12 noon 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 |
Three quarters of an hour processing those images.
Two hours processing images from Norther Ireland, including at least an hour colour balancing the following Diptych.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society –
4 November 2018
Hours 1,425 to 1,428
Four hours on a photo walk in Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane with the Amersham Photographic Society.
Images from Brick Lane.
3 November 2018
Hours 1,423 to 1,424
An hour updating social media sites with the backlog of images.
An hour planning for tomorrow’s photo walk with the Amersham Photographic Society to Spitalfields Market and Brick Lane; and updating this journal.
2 November 2018
Hours 1,418 to 1,422
An hour updating this journal, selecting and sending the following two images to Paul Mitchell for critique following the Woodland Photography Workshop earlier this week.
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Hour reading “The Big Photo EZine“, thanks to Kevin Day for posting this on the members page of the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
Hour reading the first ever edition of the RPS’s Landscape magazine, published today.
An hour watching YouTube including “Photography Motivation! The best of John Free“.
Hour updating the backlog of images to social media sites.
1 November 2018
Hours: 1,412 to 1,417
Conscious that today is the one year anniversary of starting this project I headed over to Hastings Meadow at 7am, much as I did a year ago. Only this time I spent the first hour of my day attempting to shoot “Holga style” as defined by Ted Forbes (see notes from Yesterday).
An hour using Capture One Pro for further culling and refining the Burnham Beeches images shot with Paul Mitchell earlier in the week.
An hour updating this journal including all the new month stuff.
An hour processing the Holga-style images taken earlier in the day.
Two hours editing the Woodland Course photos in Photoshop and uploading to social media.
Social media stats, one year and 1,500 hours on:
Instagram followers: 70
Facebook page followers: 0
Flickr followers: 7
Twitter Followers: 3
Blog comments: 2