This Journal records my photography apprenticeship: ten thousand hours deliberate practice. Or at least those carried out in September 2019.
Hours 2,671 to 2,797
30th September 2019
Hours 2,793 to 2,797
An hour reviewing images from FIAP salons, updating my record of acceptances (currently running at 9 acceptances for 12 salons entered, different images accepted in each).
Two hours finishing processing the multiple exposure images shot at the Tate Modern on the 29th of this month.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s first print competition of the season.
Highlight: Placed 2nd. 1st ever 20 in any competition at Amersham let alone in the Intermediate section to which I have been newly promoted.
29th September 2019
Hour 2,792
Half an hour shooting at pre-dawn, in the terrible weather, at Sandwich Bay.
Half an hour loading these images into Capture One Pro for processing – several focus stacked images.
28th September 2019
Hours 2,791
Half an hour pre-dawn shooting the worm diggers on Sandwich Bay, followed by another half processing those images and updating this journal.
27th September 2019
Hours 2,788 to 2,790
Half an hour shooting on the seashore at dawn followed by half an hour processing those images.
An hour planning this project.
An hour researching Flickr groups for abstract and semi-abstract photography. [Need to do something similar for instagram hashtags].
- Ramblin 2
- Abstract Impressions
- Abstract Photography – no multi-exposures
- Abstract Art
- Abstract and Arty
- Abstract Squared – square format abstract images.
- Abstract Arts
- Multiple Exposure
- Multi Exposure
26th September 2019
Hours 2,783 to 2,787
Half an hour of each:
- shooting on the seashore at dawn,
- updating this journal
- reviewing photography blog sites
- processing this morning’s images.
An hour looking at the work of the modernist painter Otto Dix.
25th September 2019
Hours 2,782
Half an hour shooting on the seashore at dusk and another half hour updating this journal.
24th September 2019
Hours 2,778 to 2,781
Half an hour collecting data for the “Time Analysis ” post and correcting the November 2018 journal page.
Half an hour updating this journal.
An hour watching the Louisiana Channel documentary: “7 Artists on the Life and Work of Marsden Hartley” ( David Hockney, Dana Schutz, Sam McKinniss, Tal R, Shara Hughes, David Salle and Karin Mamma Andersson). I haven’t previously encountered Hartley, late 19th/ early 20th century American realist painter.
Half an hour preparing an image for next week’s print competition at the Amersham Photographic Society.
[Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photography Club which really didn’t count as this was about editing software and there was nothing new to me that advanced my learning of the art of photography.]
23rd September 2019
Hours 2,771 to 2,777
First hour collecting data for the “Time Analysis” post and correcting journal pages as I go along: October 2018.
Two hours processing multiple exposure images from Friday.
Two hours writing a photoshop action that preps images for exporting to social media, in particular Instagram. Then using this to export some of the multiple exposure images I shot on Friday.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Members evening including my presentation on “Shift Pictures.”
22nd September 2019
Hours 2,763 to 2,770
5 hours processing the multiple exposure images shot in London last Friday.
An hour watching YouTubes and updating this journal:
- Nigel Danson: “The 7 hardest part of photography and how to conquer them”
- Composition – Keep it as simple as possible, balance, use a longer lens to isolate a subject
- Lighting – embrace midday light, have preplanned locations for different lighting conditions, shoot one location is all light conditions
- Locations – keep going back to the same location, stay for 4-5 hours moving only between 3/4 places
- Woodland photography – use phone to find compositions, keep going back to the same locations, get out there if it’s foggy
- Time
- Motivation
- Focus & focus stacking
- Photoshop training channel: “Use the luminosity blend mode for better curves adjustment” prevents the colour saturation changing, i.e., either going to grey or crazy saturated if decreasing or increasing contrast. Will use this tip immediately with some of the images I’ve been working on today.
An hour collecting data for the “Time Analysis” post and correcting the journal entries that contain errors.
An hour refining and practicing my presentation for the Amersham Photographic Society tomorrow evening.
Remembered my insight: “Subjectivity is a lack of confidence on the part of the evaluator.“
21st September 2019
Hours 2,759 to 2,762
Two hours processing multiple exposure images shot yesterday.
An hour watching the Capture One webinar covering:
- luminosity masks
- healing and clone layers
- radial masks and other new features of Capture One Pro 12.
A further hour working on the multiple exposure images.
20th September 2019
Hours 2,756 to 2,858
An hour investigating other photographers who have done similar multiple exposure projects to the one I am proposing as an ARPS panel.
- Pep Ventosa: “Street Rhythms” mixing images originally captured on the web. Some images contain sharp single shot areas of focus for the eye to rest; others do not
- Robert Friel: “View from a train – ARPS panel” (I met Robert on the Paul Mitchell Woodland Photography course in Burnham Beeches on 30th October 2018). Images shot on an old iPhone6 on his way into London on a daily basis.
- Alan Collins: “Home town – ARPS Panel” multiple exposure images of a small English town. Like Ventosa, sometimes but not always containing sharp single shot elements on which the eye can rest.
Two hours shooting in London: potential exposures for my fractured images project.
19th September 2019
Hours 2,754 to 2,755
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society’s PIC sub-group looking at successful panels from members submitted over the summer.
18th September 2019
Hour 2,753
Made a first move to transition completely to Apple hardware by buying a 13″ MacBook Pro with the intention of also buying a 27″ desktop. Installed Capture One Pro 12 for Sony.
Spent one hour of qualifying time on watching the Capture One Webinar on Colour Toning.
17th September 2019
Hours 2,750 to 2,752
An hour reading through past journals for my time analysis post.
Noticed that on 28th June 2018 I had inadvertently added 100 hours to my time completed. Need to go back and change all journal pages since then. Time that doesn’t count as learning the art of photography but better than I find this now than later.
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club: “H” competition:
| Image | ….. | Comment |
 | 14 Judge really didn’t get the joke that the person in the image had been composited in (obviously rather well!). | |
 | 19 Praised for composition and sharpness. crisised for lead showing and the projector over exposed the are on his front. |
16th September 2019
Hours 2,743 to 2,749
An hour processing the second card full of images shot at Whipsnade last Friday; culled 275 to 8 which are worth working on. Another hour processing those images and exporting the whole lot to Lightroom making a Flickr folder, etc.
Two hours preparing 17 files for printing, i.e., extending by 3% all round, so that they can be displayed at my talk to the Amersham Photographic Society next week.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society: PDI competition. My first entries into competition as an Intermediate.
An hour updating this journal and associated social media, mainly with the above notes from this evening’s competition.
15th September 2019
Hours 2,737 to 2,742
Four hours at the RPS Thames Valley DIG: Guy Edwards: “Seeing the Light” inspirational natural and landscape images. Top tips include:
- Add mist/ rain using a pre-pressurized spray can
- Use artificial light LED or flash to enhance the scene – multiple sources
- Long spikes on tripod for stability
- Use pebbles or twigs to move flowers into the same focal plane
- Calibrate long lenses using the LensAlign tool
- Shoot birds in either direct frontal light or direct back light; never side light
- Cover distracting elements in leaves
- Use the HDR feature in lightroom; shoot upto 7 images with 1 1/3 stops of exposure difference to cope with high contrast scenes – use neutral density filters to create the exposure differentials between frames when shooting long exposures or at other times when the exposure time needs to remain constant
- For reflective symmetry get the lens as close as possible to the source of the reflection
- Cull wildlife shots made with the motordrive by looking at the thumbnails only.
Top venues:
- Costa Rica
- Botswana
- The Outer Hebrides.
Essential kit:
- Bean bags
- Powerful torch
- Astro mount (SkyTracker only for long exposure night photos).
Two hours completing submissions for the Photo Nature and fotogenius FIAP salons.
14th September 2019
Hours 2,732 to 2,736
Five hours working on the images shot at Whipsnade Yesterday. Culled the images on the first (of two) full cards from over 800 images to 10.
 Tiger Longwing | ….. |  Indian Leafwing butterfly |
 Trio of flamingos |  Head shot of white rhino |
13th September 2019
Hours 2,726 to 2,731
Two hours working on prints to accompany my presentation on the 23rd.
Four hours with Yin Wong at Whipsnade zoo shooting over 1,000 frames, and hopefully capturing a couple of good images.
12th September 2019
Hours 2,720 to 2,725
Four hours preparing images for the Photo Nature 2019 salon including selecting, and in some cases slightly reworking, some images shot in the Galapagos Islands prior to the start of this project.
Two hours with the Amersham Photographic Society Mono group.
11th September 2019
Hours 2,715 to 2,719
Two hours at the Amersham Cafe Africa coffee meeting.
Three hours working on a presentation about my multiple exposure images for the Amersham Photographic Society on the 23rd.
10th September 2019
Hours 2,708 to 2,714
An hour shooting and processing the following image for inclusion in next week’s “H” competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club.
Four hours processing the rest of the images from last week
Two hours at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Camera Basics,
9th September 2019
Hours 2,702 to 2,707
First hour updating this journal mainly with references to Mavis CW from yesterday’s YouTube, plus planning a revision of my top 100 photographers post.
Two hours processing multiple exposure images shot last week using the script I wrote yesterday, and comparing these with the standard Pep Ventosa approach, and experimenting with alternative blend modes. See below:
 Standard Pep Ventosa style blend | ….. |  My alternate blend modes |
 My finished version |  Interesting alternative Colour Dodge |
Another hour processing further images from last week.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society – Talk by Rod Bird “What do photos mean?” Interesting comment on the psychological association of shapes in an image:
- rectangles/ squares – sense of solidity and permanence
- circles or ovals – calm
- triangles – dynamism
- straight lines – lead the eye aggressively and directly
- curved lines – calmly lead the eye in a slow and gentle manner.
8th September 2019
Hours 2,698 to 2,701
First two hours finishing and publishing the “Review of Summer 2019” post.
[Wrote a neat JavaScript Script to automate my multiple exposure processing in Photoshop. This script is better than the action I wrote previously as it:
- has no limit to the number of layers to be processed
- allows layers to be excluded merely my making them invisible.
Key documents:
Watched an hour of YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson: “The power of colour in landscape photography – creating your style” where he discusses the power of a limited colour palette analogous and complementary colours. This is a useful reminder of the work I covered in my early post “Colour Theory – First Learnings” and perhaps a nudge that I need to revisit this area.
- Sean Tucker: “Street Photography with Film – featuring Mavis CW” Mavis CW is a high contrast Black & White Street Photographer working in London Paris and New York. I recognised some of her images from the London Street Photography exhibition I attended on 23rd July 2018.
An hour shooting and processing images of runners at the Denbies Half Marathon.
7th September 2019
Hour 2,697
An hour writing up the “Review of Summer 2019” post, including creating the Flickr Folder and updating this journal.
6th September 2019
Hour 2,696
Watched an amazing Photoshop Training Channel YouTube “How to make smooth cutouts using vector masks” which included tips on:
- Using the select and mask feature
- Refining separate sections of the selection
- Converting a raster selection to a vector path (standard mask to a vector mask)
- Creating greater clarity by using the dodge (lighten) and burn (darken) tools on masks but operating only on the highlight/ shadows respectively.
[Most of the day was spent learning about writing Photoshop Scripts in JavaScript.]
5th September 2019
Hours 2,691 to 2,695
Early breakfast meeting in London with the Forum Club including a presentation by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the renowned Austrian art historian and director of the Leopold museum, on early 20th century Viennese art: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, et al.
An hour shooting in London, both general street and multiple exposure from the viewing gallery of the Tate Modern.
Two hours sitting in the members’ lounge of the Tate Modern writing a first draft of “Review of Summer 2019“.
Half an hour updating my Photography MOST document (Mission Objectives Strategy Tactics).
Half an hour watching, then writing about, the YouTube from the Photoshop Training Channel about “Separating Subjects from the background“. Top tips include:
- Make two new layers: the first containing just the subject and the second the background minus the subject
- Photoshop’s Sensei AI capability will automatically select the subject, cut out to make the first layer
- Expand the selection by 3 pixels before using content aware fill to remove the subject from the background in the second layer.
[Started processing the 134 exposures shot this morning. However, seem to have accidentally deleted my blend multiple exposure action written at the end of last month. Rather than processing these images manually (heaven forfend) or recreating the previous action with all its limitations, I have resolved to do the job properly and write a script. This involved downloading the Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CC and honing my currently non-existent JavaScript skills.]
4th September 2019
Hours 2,686 to 2,690
An hour, first thing in the morning shooting at Stoke Common; particularly looking for some seasonal woodland images.
Two hours at Cafe Africa with the Amersham Photographic Society getting extensive feedback on my images.
| Original Image | ….. | Comment | ….. | Revised Image |
 | Bottom half adds little to the image as a whole |  | ||
 | Too much sky. Horizon on the half way mark which is uncomfortable. |  | ||
 | River too bright and distracting. |  | ||
 | Poor composition – recrop. Simpler image is more interesting. |  | ||
 | Sky detracts of the image. |  |
An hour updating portfolio images based on the above feedback.
An hour processing images from this morning and updating this journal.
3rd September 2019
Hours 2,682 to 2,685
An hour, first thing in the morning, shooting in Langley Park.
An hour finishing preparing and dispatching for printing images for discussion with the Cafe Africa group in Amersham on Wednesday.
An hour uploading and updating this journal with the 40 images of skys over Hastings Meadow as shot yesterday.
An hour watching YouTubes:
- Nigel Danson: “Regaining your creative Mojo in Photography“
- on the strength of the recommendation in the above video I rewatched Jamie Windsor’s “5 tips to stay creative“
- Serge Ramelli’s Interview with Joel Grimes: “Want to be a successful photographer?” with his tips to making it as a professional which boil down to:
- sales, marketing, persistence and overcoming rejection
- the importance of doing at least 50 self assignment shoots per year to build a portfolio that you love and keeps you at the leading edge of the art
- work fearsomely hard, absolutely perfect your style and technique
- have one year and five year plans.
[Can’t count the two hours at the Stoke Poges photography club, as this was largely social and/or administrative in my capacity as the club’s treasurer.]
2nd September 2019
Hours 2,673 to 2,681
One and a half hours shooting the monthly 40 shots of skys over Hastings Meadow as below.
| West | ….. | North | ….. | East | ….. | South |
 |  |  |  | |||
| 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | 7am 16mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | 7am 35mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | 10am 16mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | 10am 35mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | 1pm 16mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | 1pm 35mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | 4pm 16mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | 4pm 35mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | 7pm 16mm f/9 | |||
 |  |  |  | |||
| 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 | 7pm 35mm f/9 |
An hour selecting images for the Summer 2019 post.
Another hour testing and debugging the Multiple Exposure photoshop action; now fairly confident that it works for combining upto 25 exposures.
Three hours editing images for discussion with the Amersham Cafe Africa crew on Wednesday, including trying to write a photoshop action to present these images. Currently very frustrated by the limitations of the Conditional action capabilities. Instead wrote 4 separate actions to cope with landscape/ portrait more/less than a 3:2 aspect ratio.
Two hours at the Amersham Photographic Society.
Half an hour updating this journal.
1st September 2019
Hours 2,671 to 2,672
Updating this journal with the new block style for this month.
Second hour debugging my multiple exposure photoshop action.