This journal shows October 2020’s detailed contribution to my fine art photography apprenticeship through ten thousand hours deliberate practice.
Hours 4,273 to 4,405
31st October
Hours 4,403 to 4,405
Half an hour shooting Lulworth Cove at sunrise. Bleak morning. Half an hour processing the meagre pickings in Capture One.
Half an hour planning this evening’s shoot at Kimmeridge.
An hour shooting at Kimmeridge Bay. Unfortunately, high tide prevented some of the composition opportunities; otherwise a good evening.
Apparently a bit of a cliche shot.
Half an hour processing and writing up.
30th October
Hours 4,400 to 4,402
Minor Success Note:
- 9 acceptances in the “Aphrodite” salon, part of the Olympic Photo Circuit.
Previous largest number of acceptances for a single salon was 5 achieved on the 1st May 2020.
Half an hour further processing yesterday’s woodland images.
Half an hour reviewing the “Ecological Trust 2020” salon catalogue, for which I had two images accepted; and the new RPS journal.
An hour preparing for this evening’s shoot.
An hour shooting at Lulworth Cove at sunset. High tide restricted the choice of composition; I couldn’t get to the east of the cove to shoot into the sun. Weather grey and drizzly. Eventually walked west to stair hole where I clambered down the cliffs to take the shot above.
29th October
Hours 4,395 to 4,399
An hour shooting at sunrise, Stoke Common – drizzle.
Mistake: In an attempt to shoot in a more considered manner, I had prepared to use a tripod and have my camera ready to accept filters, most likely the polariser. However, totally flat light meant that a polariser would have made little difference and the lack of lens hood meant that the front of the lens was more exposed to rain drops.
However, some reasonable compositions.
An hour processing the above.
Two hours on the Karl Taylor Webinar: “Water Sculptures” capturing water thrown into a set. Biggest tip:
- Create definition by placing black boards and cloths around the set (mainly behind but always out of shot). The water will reflect and refract the black, giving a sense of shape.
A further hour processing today’s images in Photoshop.
28th October
Hours 4,389 to 4,394
Hour one: Discovered some fantastic Dorset Location Guides by Daniel Wretham lots of detail about areas I plan to shoot as soon as Covid permits.
An hour watching everything on Daniel’s YouTube channel.
An hour and a half talking with my friend and mentor, Yin Wong, manly about the resent Dorset images.
An hour implementing Yin’s post-processing suggestions.
An hour and a half at the Amersham Colour group.
27th October
Hours 4,382 to 4,388
An hour shooting in light drizzle at Stoke Common first thing in the morning – fabulous colours. Two hours processing those images.
An hour revising images from Dorset following comments from Yin Wong.
An hour updating this journal – mainly images and the associated social media.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club (Zoom), lecture by Chris Palmer (from Amersham) “Talking Pictures”.
26th October
Hours 4,376 to 4,381
Two hours working in Photoshop on images shot over the last few days.
An hour and a half watching the YouTubes:
- Star Arts Documentary: “When Pablo became Picasso“
- Sean Tucker: “What I learned about Documentary Photography from Tish Murtha“
- Really spend time, and be with, the people you’re photographing
- Work on projects you know and are close to
- Work on subjects you really care about.
Half an hour planning the next trip to Dorset and potential seascape locations.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society zoom – Lecture by Steve Smith “What Next”.
25th October
Hours 4,370 to 4,375
An hour at dawn shooting Corfe Castle from the West Hill. Good images from lower down the hill where it is possible to get the castle silhouetted/ isolated against the sky. Calm morning.
Climbed to the top of the hill, and it started to rain, hail and gale. Wind so strong I thought it would topple my tripod. Got a couple of images mainly just to practice shooting in the rain.
Rain Torrential; Gale force wind & Hail.
An hour watching the following YouTubes from Nigel Danson:
- “Best Photography Conditions Every – Don’t make this Mistake” – don’t keep changing location. work a single location
- “7 Simple Composition Tips for Woodland Photography“
- Avoid distracting skyline – fog or shoot lower
- Ensure that the foliage at the bottom of the frame is interesting, but not too distraction; ideally leading the eye into the frame
- Avoid crossing tree trucks – physically move left or right to achieve this – a small movement of the camera can make a big difference
- Look for contrasts: colours, tone, shapes or textures
- Find a central character around which the composition can be built
- Patch of light that the eye can rest on
- Shoot into the sun when the sun is low
Four hours editing images from the last 3 days. First culling from 131 to 16, first adjustments in Capture One Pro then final adjustments in Photoshop.
24th October
Hours 4,368 to 4,369
An hour shooting, mainly long exposure seascapes, at Studlands first thing in the morning.
(Old Harry Stacks in Background)
Half an hour planning this afternoon and evening. Half an hour failed shoot at Dancing Ledge; weather conditions so extreme I didn’t even get the camera out of the bag.
23rd October
Hours 4,364 to 4,367
An hour shooting at dawn in Wareham.
Half an hour shooting at Durdle Door from the coastal path, timed to get the sun behind the arch.
Half an hour shooting on the pier at Swanage, in particular a long exposure of the old pier, cliched though it is.
Half an hour shooting Corfe Castle from the East Hill – very difficult to access and I’m not entirely sure it was worth the effort.
Half an hour writing up this journal.
Total of an hour planning.
22nd October
Hours 4,360 to 4,363
An hour and a half shooting long exposure seascapes at Durdle Door. Met Colin Jarvis who was running as workshop there – we discussed his lecture to the Amersham Photographic Society on 13 July 2020.
Two hours at the second half of David Newton’s lecture on light.
Half an hour updating this journal.
21st October
Hours 4,355 to 4,359
Two hours planning photoshoots in Dorset.
Two hours speaking with my friend and mentor Yin Wong; about my AFIAP submission and his forthcoming presentation to the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
An hour practicing using my LEE filters and Pluto Trigger long exposure timer.
20th October
Hours 4,351 to 4,354
An hour and a half watching the Karl Taylor Education “Shooting Pack Shots” which is about having a simple and effective lighting set-up that can be quickly adapted for a range of products. Basics:
- Light from the back to the front; so background first
- Do not over expose the background in a high key image as this will cause flare
- Use the largest possible light modifiers even with small products to achieve even lighting
- Light a low ceiling for lay-flat images
- Ensure that you get separation from the background
- Use a polarising filter to control reflections.
Half an hour writing up this journal.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – PDI competition my images below:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “Toast Quintessemtially British” 16 Probably taken through a shop window. [Probably was]. | |
 | “Forking Minimal” 17 Well shot but would have increased drama if more diagonal. | |
 | “Iced Triptych” 20 All positive comments. Liked the individual images; well arranged and overall construction giving the sense of a double mount praised. |
19th October
Hours 4,348 to 4,350
An hour processing images from the last couple of days.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture on the theory of light by David Newton (one of two lectures). Remember that David ran the course on Speedlite photography at Amersham Studios on 3rd July 2019.
“If you’ve seen the picture in the viewfinder, you’ve missed it.”
Dave Newton quoting an unnamed source on the importance of pre-visualisation.
Other notes:
- Use a torch to paint the foreground of a long exposure night scene
- Create a ratio of artificial/ ambient light for more natural looking images
- Get exposure right in-camera: lightening an under exposed image is the primary cause of image noise.
18th October
Hours 4,345 to 4,347
An hour at dawn shooting at Stoke Common followed by another two processing.
17th October
Hours 4,341 to 4,344
Two hours further post processing images shot at Stoke Common Yesterday.
An hour and a half watching the Karl Taylor Education Professional Car Photography video shooting a Mercedes AMG. Cove wall studio, mobile ceiling, two movable white walls, 9 lights, polariser, and the wheels shot separately and comped in.
Half an hour writing up.
16th October
Hours 4,339 to 4,340
An hour shooting at Stoke Common plus a further hour processing.
15th October
Hours 4,335 to 4,338
An hour working on further Inkpen Biomorphic abstracts.
An hour preparing for and then two hours attending the Amersham Pic group where my revised multiple-exposure images of London were discussed.
- Image with structure worked better
- “Keep experimenting!”
14th October
Hours 4,331 to 4,334
An hour writing to Steve Smith, FRPS and co-leader of the Amersham PIC Group, about my potential ARPS project.
An hour processing images from yesterday’s painting with light workshop with the Stoke Poges Photographic Club and uploading on the Facebook page.
Two hours watching and writing up the Karl Taylor Education recorded live workshop on cake photography. Special lights used for:
- glaze on the top of the cake
- “gobo” shadows on the background, cut out of cardboard to look like light coming through a window
- a hard light in front of the middle of a large softbox key light, to combine soft and hard light. “Make it look as though the sun were perhaps just peeking through a bit of cloud.
Compositionally:
- all objects point into the image
- the horizon is at an angle to create a dynamic tension
- all backgrounds and plate are a neutral grey to make the key elements stand out
- empty space is filled with a few out of focus berries to avoid those areas becoming too dominant.
13th October
Hours 4,328 to 4,330
An hour YouTube:
- Waldemar Januszczak’s “Shocking Story behind Van Gogh’s Self Portrait“
- “Photographing Margaret Thatcher – Peter Marlow (Magnum)“
Half an hour re-editing and preparing some of the older images for next week’s “Cutlery and Kitchen Utensils” competition.
An hour and a half at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club, workshop on Painting with Light.
12th October
Hours 4,322 to 4,327
Half an hour researching image ideas to shot for entry into the Stoke Poges Photographic Club’s “Cutlery and Kitchen Utensils” competition due for submission tomorrow.
An hour producing the following abstract from the Inkpen images, including watching the “5 split toning techniques” YouTube.
An hour and a half preparing prints and completing the rest of the submission for the Capodimontre Small Prints FIAP Salon organised by Unlimited Photo Montenegro.
An hour shooting followed by another hour processing the following image for the “Cutlery and Kitchen Utensils” competition. Converted to B&W and then blue/yellow colour toned using the curves technique learnt this morning.
Two hours at the virtual Amersham Photographic Society – PDI competition. My entries below:
| Image | ….. | Comments |
 | “Tiger Longwing” 19 and Commended Positive comments only: – In close – Sharp everywhere – Good background. | |
 | “Coronavirus Nighthawks” 18 “Something a little bit different – good street photography.” |
11th October
Hours 4,320 to 4,321
An hour entering the Luxembourg International FIAP Salon. This also required writing a set of Photoshop actions to process images sized 1920×1200 (more or less a copy of the standard action set processing 1920×1080 images).
Half an hour shooting and then half an hour processing some autumnal images of the village.
10th October
Hours 4,315 to 4,319
Half an hour updating this journal and associated Flickr site.
Two and a half hours looking for further Inkpen Mystery images and creating the following impressionistic and abstract images.
Two hours entering the FIAP Desire Circuit in Serbia and the Olympic circuit in Greece.
9th October
Hours 4,309 to 4,314
Two hours preparing images for next week’s PDI competition at Amersham and for printing my CPAGB submission. This included writing a new Photoshop action that extends prints by 1% so that there is a little bit of overlap when they are mounted.
An hour watching the Waldemar Januszczak YouTube documentary “The History of Sculpted Women“.
An hour writing up this journal and researching the new artists discovered yesterday:
- Arshile Gorky – Abstract Expressionist, Armenian-American
- Hilla von Rebay – Abstract artist, co-founder (with Peggy Guggenheim) and first director of the Guggenheim museum.
Two hours entering the FIAP Camera Obscura Circuit with several new images.
8th October
Hours 4,303 to 4,308
First hour updating this journal and associated social media, mainly with regard to the Inkpen abstracts.
Two hours preparing and submitting images for FIAP salons.
An hour watching the second half of the Karl Taylor recorded live egg shoot. Create drama in the image by:
- simplistic composition
- severe angles in the image
- lighting that both guides the eye and emphasises the shape and angles in the image.
An hour watching the Perspectives YouTube of “Exploring America’s Most Famous Art“.
Two hours at the Amersham Mono Group.
7th October
Hours 4,299 to 4,302
An hour creating the following abstract from an image captured as part of my long term time-lapse project for WG Carter.
Sent the above to Laurie Turner for comment which came back very positive: “an image I could imagine putting up on my wall at home.”
An hour watching the first half of the Karl Taylor “Egg Photography Challenge” recorded live show.
- Sessions Color Calculator used to find complementary or split complementary colours.
Two hours creating further versions of images similar to the above and colouring.
6th October
Hours 4,294 to 3,298
An hour further processing the Iced Flower images I shot yesterday, and then creating the following triptych.
An hour preparing notes for my contribution to this evening’s Stoke Poges Photographic Club workshop on composition, facilitated by Laurie Turner of APS. Image discussed is my “Swimming Pool in the Rain”, an old image which recently won the bronze medal in the Danish Lanterna Magica small prints salon.
An hour selecting images for the SPPC external competitions.
Two hours at the SPPC workshop on composition.
5th October
Hours 4,287 to 4,293
An hour shooting frozen flowers/ fruit.
Two hours watching and taking notes on the following YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson: “7 Tips for Autumn Photography“
- Colour in composition:
- Autumn naturally provides analogous colour combinations of orange through to yellowy-green
- Look also for complementary colour opportunities, particularly orange/ blue
- Colour can help add depth to an image as warm colours tend to jump forward and cool ones, drop back
- Can help thing out in post with the HSL slider
- Greys and Negative Space: the goal of image making is simplicity and contrast.
- Autumn is not just about trees: look at how large blocks of the landscape work together, e.g., lakes and mountains, or whole hillsides against a background and/or sky
- Don’t forget to look for details:
- Look down
- Find compositions of a single leaf in water on or pebbles
- A backlit leaf on a tree
- Know how to use light in a scene: Use a polariser to enhance colours
- Timing is crucial: The same scene will look different tomorrow or next week. Different light and weather conditions, but also the season will have moved on the colour of the flora will have changed
- Spend more time finding a composition: Keep to the workflow (see notes on 17th September):
- Audit elements to include/ exclude
- Find potential compositions with phone (squint eyes, turn phone upside/down)
- Rough position with DSLR hand-held, then set up tripod
- Consider what could be improved and find at least two further variants of the same subject.
- Colour in composition:
- Capture One: “Exposure & Contrast“
- In the Exposure panel the sliders behave intelliegently:
- The Contrast slider changes contrast in a way that is half way between a Luma S curve and an RGB S curve
- The Saturation slider behaves more like the Vibrance slider in Lightroom: doesn’t boost areas that are already saturated, and is gentle with skin tones
- Clarity:
- one can see how clarity affects contrast in the mid-range, it also does different things such as alter/increase saturation
- different clarity modes behave differently, e.g., punch adds more saturations. Neutral – strongly recommended for most situations
- Structure: specifically about edge definition.
- General tips:
- Holding the shift key causes changes to apply to all open images
- In the Advanced Colour editor “+” opens a larger panel of colour-wheel colours than one gets in the basic panel
- In the Exposure panel the sliders behave intelliegently:
An hour processing the morning’s ice shots.
Another hour watching YouTubes including:
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture Sam Gregory “More than an Image”. Key ideas:
- Concepts of Solos, Songs and Albums:
- Solos are the objectives of an image, the key photographic elements and how these fit together to achieve the objective
- Songs, the individual images which must stand on their own
- Albums, the group of images held together with a consistent theme and style.
- Use ICM with waterfall and other moving objects.
Photography is a creative treatment of actuality”
Sam Gregory
Aesthetic pleasure is not to be taken lightly, it’s very important for the spirit and therefore the health.”
Robert Bateman – Canadian Artist and naturalist.
Influences:
4th October
Hours 4,282 to 4,286
An hour shooting and then processing images of a friend running the London 2020 Virtual Marathon.
An hour studying the images of Chris Palmer (FRPS and member of Amersham), in particular his woodland images from Stoke Common with the goal of either picking up ideas or blatant plagiarism.
Two hours shooting a revised version of the Blueberry Muffin Challenge #3 from Karl Taylor Education; followed by just one hour processing.
3rd October
Hours 4,280 to 4,281
Two hours working through images for next week’s Composition Workshop for the Stoke Poges Photography Club.
2nd October
Hours 4,277 to 4,379
First hour updating this journal, mainly with updates to the associated Flickr site.
Two hours creating further versions of the Waterloo Nighthawks images and discussing these with both Yin Wong and Laurie Turner. Both preferred the simplified straight photo to the diptych/ triptych version which Laurie describes as “too conceptual”.
1st October
Hours 4,273 to 4,276
An hour and a half creating the net version of the Waterloo Nighthawks image below following the feedback from the Amersham Colour Group last night.
An hour and a half watching the Karl Taylor Education workshop showing how to “properly execute” Challenge #3: Blueberry Muffins.
An hour updating this journal, including all the new month admin and the feedback I received on my Blueberry Muffin attempt.