The First Rule of Post Processing

Preamble and a bit of a rant
People often ask photographers if they Post Process (that is, use a computer to alter their images). I find this a bit of a nonsense question - if you use a digital camera, you are using ac omputer to see an image. Nowadays the computer does the same as the lab did in the days of film ie it takes the negative (your RAW file) and turns it into a print (or a digital image to look at on a computer -usually a jpg). Even if you don't use a computer the camera turns its code into a jpg and makes choices on your behalf about contrast and saturation etc. So, we all post process, consciously or unconsciously. The question should really be "How much do you post process?". Personally my answer is that I take out movable objects (like litter and cars) but not immovable objects (like trees and buildings). Everything else I do, are simple developing decisions that mirror a traditional chemical lab darkroom. My PC is my darkroom.

Now, the blog post... HOW do you post process?

Which is a difficult question to answer with a mouthful of bacon and brie ciabatta. Every now and then I have lunch with a togging pal (we'll call him David, as that's his name) and we shoot the breeze on just about every aspect of photography you can think of.

Today's lunch , aside from being very tasty, covered film photography, shooting with instamatics to gauge your non digital skill levels, reprocity failure, chromatic aberration (the purple fringey things) and the value of motion blur in dynamic images. Oh yes, and how to digitally enhance dog fur. Interesting and varied chats we have.

Then David, who is a purist, but is starting to grasp the Lightroom nettle, asked about my (is it really?) 8 years of Photoshop experience. He asked how to process images. Talk about an open question! But at that point I was being careful not to spill gorgonzola and broccoli soup down my front and replied in a fairly non committal manner - a sort of soup filtered grunt. But it's a good question and post ciabatta and soup and post my day job office hours, I've had time to consider. And the answer is another question (or at least starts that way). The real question is "WHY do you post process" - only by asking that, can you decide HOW you will do it.

Landscapes are my passion (David likes to photograph lumps of metal birling round a wee road, I don't really know why) so I'll tell you why I typically post process a scenic image. Simply, I want to give the 2 dimensional image the same 3 dimensional feeling that I got when I took it. This means it needs something that a print or screen can't give - depth. I need to optically provide the depth of miles on a canvas that's microns thick. I've drawn a wee diagram to illustrate how ( I like diagrams even more than bacon and brie - I guess I'm a visual learner). 

I trained as a designer, so have had a tiny grounding in painting and drawing, which comes in very handy here. One of the things that you learn when you paint is that close items have very different properties to distant objects. First off, they are more vibrant, clearer and with more contrast. Now that doesn't mean you should go nuts and over saturate the foreground, but a subtle effect is to raise the saturation a little and then concentrate on the background which you can mute a little, maybe even let it fall out of focus a bit. Overall you get a subtle, but effective, feeling of depth.. 

Here's an example (finished image at the bottom of this post) - click on it to see it larger, but the explanation is... really sharp, colourful high contrast limpits and seaweed (yes it actually was that colour - I haven't exaggerated it), an interesting fairly sharp but muted middle-ground and a softer less contrasty background that happens to be quite interesting too (so the viewer looks from front to back. You might notice that I even ensured there was a "visual path" from limpits to castle, using the contrast between sea weed and dark grey rock) - lots of depth!  Note that the sharpness and it's "fall off " were achieved "in-camera", but it would be just as easy (easier?) to do this in post processing. To improve the picture it needs some emotion or a story too, but unfortunately there was no ravenous seagull handy that I could persuade to engage in a life or death struggle with the limpits. I guess lapping water may have been a more mundane "story" though.

I'll not get too technical here but the basics are as follows - if you need advice, feel free to mail me at PhotoForMyWall@gmail.com. 

To locally change  the saturation, you can mask the rest of the image and boost saturation, or select the bit you want and saturate it. Or increase vibrance. Or lift the exposure and increase the contrast a bit. Combine this with a few other wee tricks and your landscapes can really start to pop! The point is though, that there are many ways to increase depth, and within Photoshop there are a gazillion ways of doing any particular effect. So "how do you Photoshop?". Well decide what you want to do, look up You Tube, read Scott Kelby's books, ask friends, there are many ways. But answer that first question quickly, "why process?", ...before the soup goes cold.

The Best Way to Improve?

So you can take a decent photograph, but how do you move up a level?

There is one single thing that can really improve your photography - here it is. Good quality, honest feedback.

But be warned if you take offence, make excuses, find yourself saying "ah, but that's because", or if you think people don't know what they are talking about, you won't benefit from this. Every bit of feedback is valid if it's honest because photography is about 2 things
1) whether you like your image;
2) whether others like your image.
I'm guessing if you are letting others see them, then you've nailed the first of these. The hard one though is getting others to see an image they way you saw it.

Every picture we take, we are invested in to some degree - because it was difficult conditions, we had to walk a long way, we were in danger when taking it, it carries memories and emotions. And so, instantly we cease to be able to remain objective.

Here is an image I am fairly proud of - it was a grab shot, street scene, outside my comfort zone and style, taken in really difficult lighting, on the spur of the moment, while reacting very quickly to a changing scene. And I was very pleased with it! I was seduced by the edge lighting by a setting sun , the architecture, the subject and how clever I had been spotting this, and being able to react to it in time. But, it never does well in competitions and I didn't know why.

By getting strangers to tell us about our images, we finally start to see what is strong and what is weak in our images, and only by doing that do we learn. But it's not easy to get people to be open and honest - generally people don't want to hurt our feelings. It was for this reason that I started a group within the New York Institute of Photography's forums called "Rhino Hide" - for those with thick skin ie you didn't need to worry about offence being taken - all members were aware of what was coming at them and critics could let RIP! The only rules were that you had to post your own work too, you had to say at least ONE positive thing and some  constructive things, and you had to back up your opinions with reasons. The group was surprisingly popular (although with the passage of time it seems to have ceased to be public and has also softened up a bit now).

Where do you get good critique, if you don't want to start up a group? Well, here are a few thoughts:
1) Enter competitions where feedback is given (not just a score) - camera clubs are good for this.
2) Post images online (but it's hard to get comments that go beyond "nice", so choose where you post carefully
3) Join forums for industry peers - I am a member of a few linked in groups - you can get some great feedback there if you just ask people what is wrong with an image, not if they like it.
4) Take your images to a gallery or a pro togger and ask their advice on how to improve.
5) and of course, send me a message, I'm happy to tell you my opinion - I'm honest but gentle!

The key to this is to respect everyone's opinion, ask for their advice, consider the responses in an emotionally detached way and then, and this is key, make a decision on whether to take advice or reject it - you cannot please everyone and it is still YOUR image.

Here is the result of feedback that I got on LinkedIn for the Urban Florist - I was advised to crop out the foreground, remove the pillar growing out his head, make him less shadowy, boost the brightness of the plants he is carrying and reduce the brightness of the road. The florist needed to be bigger in the frame too. There was other advice too, but this was the stuff that hit a chord with me when I considered it objectively. I don't "remove" items in Photoshop, it's against my personal code, but I certainly could make that pillar a little darker and remove the contrast of it from it's surroundings, which has the same effect without compromising the integrity of the image.

What do you think, did all this improve the image? I think so (or I wouldn't have done it - the feedback is there to be taken or ignored) . I'm grateful for the feedback, the image is hanging in my living room, I'm invested in the memory of taking it, but by listening without taking offense or being overly protective of my image, I now have a stronger picture, and I have learned a few things to consider for next time.

The Landscape Toggers App Toolkit

I'm often asked how I manage to be so lucky, getting on location at the right times of day to capture nice light or interesting weather. There are a couple of factors in this - one is blind luck (which is the single most important thing for a photographer to have - but you CAN make your own!), another is being prepared with
the right equipment in the bag, ready and waiting. But mostly, getting good light and all the other elements of a landscape photograph line up, comes down to planning. I actually enjoy planning. I'm a list writing, bullet pointing, checklist ticking sort of guy. And I love maps.  So this post is about the tools I use to carry out my planning.

1) Subject - what to take. Well, I'm a landscaper, specialising in coasts. So I need a dramatic stage, preferably with something arrestingly exciting in the middle of it, like a lighthouse, a sea stack, or the promise of wildlife. Sometimes the stage itself is enough, if the light and the weather are exceptional . 
You can always look at Flickr or 500px to see what others are photographing but, to find your "own" locations, there is no better tool I know of than Google Earth , which you can use on your PC or tablet. The iPad App is great and I spend many a happy hour browsing on it. Best of all you can see photographs of the locations actually on the maps if a bit of coastline looks promising.

 2) Composition. Yup, before I even know where I'm going, this is being thought about. Nearly every bit of land in the UK has been photographed and posted to the internet. Once I know where I am going, I google it, look up flickr or 500px or PBASE or other photographers web sites and try to see it from every angle possible. And all these sites have iPad apps too! I start to get ideas of what worked well for others, what suits my vision and my style the best, and I try to work out what would make the images better or would put my "stamp" on it.  If I can't imagine taking a better picture than I've seen on the internet I generally abandon that location and look for another - there's little point in just copying an image. So how do you improve on what you find on the net? As well as the angle of approach and composition, I consider weather, time of day/time of year, exposure length, exposing to the left or the right, tide for seascapes. And guess what, there are apps and sites to help with all of these too!

3) The weather. There are so many apps that tell you the weather, wherever you are in the world. The key though is to consult a few of these and try to find some sort of concensus - it's amazing how often they differ. When the align, that's the best chance you have. I use the Met Office's app and a number of others, but a really important one if you are going u into the mountains is the Mountain Weather Information Service (MWIS) . Mountain weather can be very different to weather at more inhabitable altitudes and this is a great site. I also tend to check webcams  - there are more and more of these. A good example is the web cam at the Kings House, which looks out across the Buachaille and lets you see if there is a clear road to get there, but still enough snow on the mountains for good images.

4) The light. There's really only one app I'm aware of that fits the bill perfectly - the Photographers Ephemeris. Sadly no longer available on a PC, it has gone wholly mobile on Android or Apple devices,  and is no longer free. It's about a fiver, but totally worth it. This is the key landscape photographers tool. It lets you find anywhere in the world and stick a pin in it. It then tells you the direction of sun and moonlight at any given time at that particular location and you can plan shoots for any time in the future. It's simply an amazing app and to me, indispensable.  It'll save you a lot of wasted journeys and will get you in position at the right time. As you can tell, I like it.

If you'd like a free app that just simply tells you sunrise and sunset times I use "Sunrise Sunset Free" from the Apple App Store. The nice thing about this app is that it also tells you when there will be pre-dawn light and post-sunset light - the "blue hour". All very useful when trying to work out how obscenely early you will have to wake up and get going. I use these two apps in conjunction with Google maps which tells me how long a journey will take to get on location My best tip here is to get there early. If you arrive int he dark, it will ALWAYS take you longer to find your composition and get set up than you expect.

5) Tides. OK, this is a serious one - you might get good shots with this but more importantly this can keep you safe if you use it right. If you take shots at the coast, you will at some point end up with wet feet, but what you don't want is to be stranded on a rock or in a cave. Much badness. Always check the tide, especially if you are going to arrive or leave in the dark - it's so easy to focus through the lens and not notice that you are being cut off, while you fiddle with apertures and filters. There are warnings on tides at many popular locations, but for the remote ones use an app. There are lots of these too, but the one I use and have found to be reliable is the TidesPlanner app. It does what it says on the tin.

This picture on the right, shows a shot that is only available a) when the tide is on the way in, b) when the tide is at this height, at dawn, and c) when the dawn is over mountains to the left (just out of shot) - A lot of patient repeat visits to remote locations can be avoided by using these apps in combination with each other.

6) Depth of Field - yep there's even an app for this. You may have heard of hyperfocal depth of field - basically for every aperture setting and camera combination, there is a particular distance at which you can focus at that will maximise the depth of field - so sometimes you can actually get a better quality of detail on your image at f/8 than you would have at f/22. All you have to do is find the hyperfocal distance (the point where you should focus).

There are really complex formulae for finding this, and there are tables you can print, so long as you know the crop factor of your sensor (still with me?)...or... you can use an app which will work it out for you. I use avs-soft.com's iDof Calculator eg it tells me that with my 24mm lens, so long as I focus 2.5 metres away, then any foreground as close as 124cm will be in focus and so will everything to the horizon - wonderful! Everything in focus, no lens diffraction from using too small an aperture, and 1 minute taken to look it up.  And if you are uncertain if it's working or not, just hit the DoF button on your camera to check it out.

This picture  looks sharp enough doesn't it? It was taken in relatively low light and I wanted to "freeze" the spray of the sea against the rocks but I also wanted it to be sharp front to back, from about 2 metres away. So  I needed to maximise the light getting into the camera. Up went the ISO to ISO 800 (anything higher would have been too grainy on my old 40D camera). But it was still far too slow. By making the aperture larger from f/22 to f/9, I was able to squeeze out a 1/40s shutter speed and get the shot I was after.

There are lots of great apps out there - I am not affiliated to any of the apps and programs mentioned above and don't take responsibility for their accuracy - I just use them a lot. I've used others, but these are the ones I prefer. If you have any that you use, why not share them here on this page.

Time flies - and beating the low inspiration barrier

November 2012. Seriously? I can't believe it's been so long since I last blogged - so much has happened since last I put fingertip to keyboard, which is why my posts are so sparse I suppose... Life has settled down for a little while at least though, so once more into the breach!

At what point do you say, yep, I really have the hang of photography now? Does anyone reading this think they can say that? If so, please post a link, we want to see great images! Personally I think you never stop learning at this, and if you've stopped learning... well, what would be the point in continuing to make images? Hopefully I've learned a lot over the last 18 months, I'll try to share some.

In the rather grey and somewhat boring winter of 2012/2013 skies were bland, my own get up and go had got up and went and inspiration was at an all time low. I had to get out of the slump. I needed to see things in a different way that I could transfer into a photograph. First stop, the easiest and probably the all too common method, was to buy new kit. I went and bought the rather amazing Canon G1X. Expensive but it beats an SLR from the point of view that I can carry it everywhere, it can practically see in the dark at high ISO, it generates bigger images than my DSLR and  the noise reduction blasts my 40D out of the water. Best of all (I didn't know this it the time) the accompanying basic software was hugely advanced on what I had done previously - even my older images that had failed to make the grade were rescuable! If you're thinking of getting one... do it! And lesson #1 - If you have old software, update it!

The second approach to beating the dulls, was to start taking pictures of different subjects - I opted for some urban and industrial landscapes. Still not my first love, but a great way of spending some quality relaxing photography time without needing a trip to the Highlands. I am often in Edinburgh city centre and there is a wealth of great architecture on offer. With the exception of the chimney, all of the images here are taken with that a little G1X . In addition to this blog I also started to run a facebook page where I post an image almost every day - and the image above of the Edinburgh skyline and saltire cross, was one of the first with my little Canon, taken on the way home one evening,  got  over 10,000 hits in a week! Lesson # 2 - always take a camera with you (I know it's old but it's true!).

  

Time Flies

It's been a while since I last blogged, so I thought I'd share some images from my travels during the last the last few months. In May I made a sort of photographic pilgrimage. Most landscape photographers in Scotland have a sort of hit list of the key spots - there's The Buchaille Etive Mor at Glencoe (I went there in October 2010 with rather damp esults - must go back!), Skye with Elgol and Storr and the Quiraing (was there in July 2011 - I really ought to post those pics) and there's Loch Ard and that oft snapped boathouse. In may this year I finally visited Loch Ard - I saw the boatshed, but the light was singularly uninteresting - one to go back to in the depth of winter I think... Shot of the day ended up being a close up of a flower! Some landscape photographer I am!

June saw a trip to New Lanark Mill - always a great place for a day of photography - lots of opportunity for some steam punk images. I got a few pleasing shots but nothing to set the world alight. These were the days of good weather, dappled sunlight and wandering about in shorts T-Shirt and with a camera on my back. I got along to Dalkeith Country Park while the main attraction (The Adventure Playground) was cloosed, leaving me in peace to get some snaps of the old buildings. I particularly liked the old Orangerie. I hear people saying they can't wait for it to be restored next year as it could be lovely - but I prefer it in it's ruined state - loads of atmosphere and you can picture the gentry meeting on the lawns next to the Orangerie for Tiffin. splendid.

July was Summer Holiday month and what a photography bonanza I had high in the Austrian Alps. My third visit there but my first with an SLR. What a fantastic place to be  - there is nothing better than hiking the Alpine tops, camera in hand! I'm sure I'll be back again one day.

August was a blur - I never got out with the camera at all - too many pressures at work and of course I was still processing the thousands of pictures I took in the Alps.

By September I had itchy feet -  wanted to get hiking again, so Oscar and I drove out west and went for a bit of a hike along Glen Loin. It was fairly featureless from a landscape photography point of view, but Oscar enjoyed it and got into all sorts of mischief. Here he is, on leash due to the cows around the corner and looking innocent, hoping I'll drop a bit of my sandwich.

Which brings us up to date. October sees the clocks going back and heralds a time of year when dawn and dusk aren't at such insociable hours.  But it also is a time for terribly cold hands and batteries that drain faster than usual. A tip I once got about that is to keep your spare batteries NOT in your bag but under your oxters (Scots for armpits). I think that's a little extreme and a bit nasty - I keep them in my trouser pockets or in an inside pocket of my jacket.

Every Year the MacD's take an annual trip to the Trossachs at this time of year - first stop loch Lubnaig in search of great foliage and glassy reflections. Followed by a quick nod to Rob Roys grave and a family hike around Loch Voil, picking the wild blackberries and having a well wrapped up ((us not the food) picnic.

This year Lubnaig was choppy and unfortunately most of the yellowed autumnal leaves fell off withing a week of turning, so we missed the full effect. Still, the mark of a good photographer is finding something from nothing and making images from what's available.  There are two schools of thought for Landscapers - preparation is everything or adaptability is the key. Personally I think it's a bit of both.  For the shot below, I prepped by knowing my location, the weather conditions I like, the seasonal effects, where to park, where to walk to, I'd talked to people who had been there before who could tell me what the leaves were looking like and off I went. But I got there and despite all my prep - none of the conditions were quite right - so add a splash of adaptability and I ended up with a shot I really like that still gets the colours and the feel for the place. 

Who Wins these Competitions?

So, following on from my last post (several months ago!!!!), I did not win the Outdoor Photographer of the Year competition. But, I WAS shortlisted so that is a great achievement for me. I was in the midst of feeling rather pleased with myself when lo and behold I got ANOTHER email, this time from The Scottish Nature Awards - I've been shortlisted again. So another nervy wait.

I'm enjoying entering these competitions. I get to put myself up against my peers and I'm doing well, it's a great confidence boost!

But who wins these? A silly question perhaps as most competitions are very open about the winner - or are they? A great example is Georg Karbus - Outdoor Photographer of the Year last Year and a category winner this year - check out his great website.

But I have started asking myself about the motivation organisations have for running competitions and I have to tell you there are some very shady practices going on in the world of photography!

Most reputable competitions are run to promote the organisation and drum up interest in it. Others are altruistic and are done to promote better photography. For instance I recently entered a small local competition run by Halfords - free to enter and the best images got some freebies. I got a pleasing wee 3rd place with an image I trawled off my hard drive and won a free service for my bike (I love getting these wee free things, even if I don't REALLY need them). Halfords got some photographers to come through the doors and a bit of local press and I got a freebie - win win!

Others run competitions you have to pay to enter (read the small print very carefully!!!). I look at these with great suspicion but if the cost is low and there are obvious administrative costs (like prize money and admin), I will pay a small fee that is worth the publicity for me should I do well. Outdoor Photographer, the Scottish Nature Awards are good examples. Others are the National Open Exhibitions where not for profit organisations put in a power of work to promote photography in the UK.

But there are others out there that fall in to two categories I find very distasteful. Ones that charge a lot of money per image entered - really what is the justification for that? It's just a get rich quick scheme by the organisers. And ones that may be free but claim the right to use all images entered for a variety of purposes, not just connected to the competition.

Recently Visit Scotland started a competition up. If I entered, they would be able to use my images free of charge, pass them on to third parties and use them perpetually. I would retain a worthless copyright. and that's just for entering. They have had thousands of entries already and must have a rather large stock photography collection by now. I find this disappointing, I would love to support the promotion of Scotland, but suddenly I felt like I was going to be exploited. I know a number of photographers feel the same way, but at the end of the day, I guess it is down to us as photographers to check the fine print and only enter if we feel that the incentive justifies the cost. I won't be entering... There is a very good article on this at the Scottish Photographers website.

So that's my message today - check the fine print. You can spend thousands of pounds on equipment and travel, put in hours and hours of effort and even take physical risks to get a good shot but there are plenty people out there who want to take your results for little effort, without paying you and to use for their own gain. Always read the Ts and Cs!

Competition Updates

So a quick update on the competitions I've been entering - I DID enter Outdoor Photographer of the Year, in the "Waters Edge" category. I put in three images - Bowfiddle Sunrise plus the Duncansby stacks and Lubnaig Reflections. It cost £5 but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I was delighted when a week later I got an email telling me that I had been shortlisted in my category! Of course that is a hugely pleasing achievement as the competition is taken seriously by many very talented photographers, but of course to win... that would really be something. I'm crossing my fingers -the winners will be notified next week!!!

Wish me luck!

Seeking Inspiration?

Has success gone to my head? Having won the monthly Guardian competition, I thought why not enter a few more competitions?
Normally I only enter free comps as I feel the ones that charge are a little like playing the lottery, only instead of being "idiot tax" it's "vanity tax". But... it dawned on me that the comps that charge will only attract very serious photographers. In other words, pay an entry fee to play against the big boys. So, I found the Outdoor Photographer of the Year competition and decided to enter for £5. Looking at the past winners I was thinking "mmhmm, uhuh, yup, there's nothing there I coudn't do". Then... I spotted George Karbus's image - woah!!!! That's a cracker (the gannet underwater), but maybe a one off? Nope, clicking on his link (at the foot of this page, under "Inspiration"), he has many images that blow my socks off. What a photographer! His landscapes are fantastic but his in-the-water shots are breath taking! Go on, have a look.

Good aren't they? So did you just look at them or did you study them. The best way I have found to improve my photography is not to copy other photographers but to study their images and ask myself "why is that a great shot?", "what has the photographer done to make me go WOW!". With George it's the highly unusual subject matters, it's the popping colours, the dramatic angles, the clever techiques (slow exposures and great light for the landscapes, fast shutter speeds for the wildlife and water), it's the taking of images underwater which most of us just don't have the equipment for, it's getting eye contact from the animals he photographs and his ability to either show the creatures in their habitats or satisfy our curiousity by getting in close to animals we rarely see. And of course it's his amazing ability to compose a shot in a dynamic and constantly moving environment. All food for thought - now I just need to see how I can get those themes into my own photography!
Here are a few examples of when I have managed this to some degree - though usually not consciously! No where near as good as George's but they show you can adopt themes without necessarily changing your own style.

Ah...Sweet Success

I love winning competitions. Sometimes I win local competitions, sometimes online competitions with small entries. No matter how small the competition, I love the feeling that someone has looked at a collection of images and then decided "yes, that's the one I like".

Art is so subjective and when you create it in a vacuum, it gets very easy to start feeling that maybe your work is only appealing to yourself. I love that I can create an image that inspires other photographers or is simply enjoyed by someone other than myself, but unless I win competitions, I stop believing that my photography has value. Definitely a mental weakness on my part - lack of self esteem, a need for validation, lack of confidence or a background that valued academic achievement above artistic creativity? Pick any of them..., but that's how I feel.

Readers will remember (maybe) that last October I braved snow and gales and holidayed in Portknockie on the Banffshire coast, primarily to photograph the Bowfiddle Rock. One of the images I made then has turned out to be quite successful. This 'un in fact. It won a competition at my local camera club and was described by the judge as "how to take a landscape photograph". He was a professional and he couldn't fault it. That made me feel great as I LOVE landscapes. So, I thought, why not see if this does well in other competitions - I entered it in the Scotland From the Roadside Forum monthly competition (a tiny competition) and it won! It gave me more self belief. Last week I entered it into the Guardians travel compeition "Been There", just to see if there was achance it could get into the short list. guess what? That's right, it won!!!!! The prize is a £200 voucher for a high qulaity photoprint site (I sense a canvas coming my way) and it puts me in the a group of 12 that will be judged at the end of the year to choose a winner who will go on a photo safari in South Africa! Very, very exciting - wish me luck! But for me, actually the biggest prize of all was the fact that someone chose my image over all the rest - It makes the early mornings and late evenings worth it!

If you like it too, it's for sale as a limited edition at my sales site PhotoForMyWall.com.

I always like to finish these blog entries with a lesson learned. I guess this one is that you have to be in it to win it. And although I believe that art really is art so long as the creator of it feels it is, it also doesn't hurt to put it "out there" and get a virtual pat on the back.

Dedication, that's all you Need... and Luck

After many years of thinking about a trip up to the top Northern Coast of mainland Scotland, I bit the bullet this year and got it organised. It's been a hell of a few months - we've had illness in the family, my job was made redundant, I had to go for interviews and then (thankfully) start a new job and the only thing that has kept me going was that I WOULD, no matter what, get up north and explore a coast I've never been to.

So, I booked a hire car (didn't want to thrash MY car) and 3 B&B's and off I set. We were just finishing the hottest April since records began and the heather was spontaneously bursting into flames. The police had warned people not to travel to Assynt (one of my destinations) but I was going, regardless. I booked a Friday and Monday off work and googled for every photographic opportunity I could find.

Friday came. And the heavens opened. A bit miserable, I went for the car and off I set. Six and a half hours non stop driving to John o'Groats and my determination paid off. the rain stopped and the sun came out! First stop Duncansby Head to see the often missed stacks. But, it was windy and a bit hazey and I couldn't do my slow exposure twilight shot. I snapped a few composition testers and waited for a sunset that hadn't come by 10:30pm. as I walked back I noticed the roosting puffins that i had missed on the way out. It was nearly dark but ramping up to ISO 1600 and snapped my first ever puffins. They would be grainy shots, but so what - puffins!!!! I resolved to return in the morning for sunrise and drove the half hour back to the hotel.

At the car park for the lighthouse I couldn't resist an HDR shot of it. I just had to time the rotation of the light... In the end this looked very nice in colour with the twilight sky, but with strong contrasts I think the mono version is better.



I awoke at 3:30am (yes, I know!) and bundled myself into the car. The pavement was damp and it had been raining but it was dark and dry now, so off I set. Arriving at Duncansby Head lighthouse at 4am, I grabbed the tripod and camera bag and walked ontot he grassy headland. As the rain started again. I stood in the rain for an hour watching the sunrise ermm... watching the black night become grey day. By 5:30am I was soaked, my camera was still stowed in the dry bag and the wind was getting wild. Dispiritedly I trudged back to the car, miserable and cursing my luck. I climbed into the back of the VW polo and curled up under a rug to sleep. No other option than curling really, in a Polo.

After 2 hours I awoke to the wind rocked car and the sound of a rainstorm battering the roof and gave up. Maybe the weather would be better along the coast...

I drove to Thurso and stopped at the Tesco. I needed breakfast and they had a cafe. One giant bacon roll and a latte later the world was looking better. the woman on the counter told me that the forecast was for a dry afternoon. I walked to the car and the rain had stopped - I jumped in the car and set off for the far North East!

So I didn't get my shot of Dumncansby Stacks, but later with a bit of Photoshop Magic I was able to give one of the test composition shots a bit of punch to get a dramatic image in greyscale.



So the lesson from all of this? Yes, a bacon butty and a latte will fix anything.

No, no, no - the lesson I learned is that even when the conditions seem hopeless, compose well and snap away, images can be saved in post processing. There is no such thing as a wasted trip - enjoy being outdoors, take what you can and scout for the next time you're going that way.

A Treemendous Subject

What is a good subject? Something that grabs your attention, it stands out, it's interesting to look at and is big enough in the frame for the viewer to see the detail. Trees fit the bill, from blossom details, to bark texture and twisted interesting shapes. I love photographing them and I have posted a selection at my website, PhotoForMyWall.com.

Most people see, well..., just a tree. As a photographer you need to tell the trees story, have it set a scene, draw attention to it's life, how it affects it's surroundings. Once you start thinking of a tree as a living entity, you can starts to interpret it in an interesting way.

I have a set of images I took in a woodland that was terribly regimented and straight. The trees form and avenue, they get ravaged by deer sharpening their antlers and they grow beside rocks that have sat immobile for centuries. I try to think of the story of these trees, the shapes they form and I try to interpret them artistically. Here they are.

Out for a walk in the Borders I noticed a dry stone wall enclosing a wood. To me they looked like corralled ents, stretching ther limbs out to freedom. They are vaguely threatening, massive and held back by such a low wall, dark forms, densely packed. OK it's a bit "out there" but I think you need to use your imagination if you are going to try to make an interesting image. i'm not saying taht anyone else will see the ents, but so long as I, as the photographer do, some of that interest may be created and others can interpret it in their own way.

So what about just creating a pretty scene? Does it have to tell a story. Well, it can do both. Here is an image I took on a trip into the Bathgate hills last summer - it shows the warmth of the evening, and it tells a story at least to me. It reminds me of quite times alone in the hills, a place where I am happy and it reminds me now, in the depth of winter, how it felt to have the sun shine on my face. The story is a memory to me and hopefully it imparts an emotional response in others.

Ooo..ooo..Snow..Snow!

"Hooray, the snow is here!", I thought a couple of weeks ago, which in hindsight seems a tad masochistic. It snowed, and snowed here in Central Scotland, we got the deepest snow in decades and all traffic and transport cmae to a standstill for about 10 days.

Beautiful it was though! Wonderful for landscape photography (if I could have travelled past the end of my street). When the snow falls, landscapes that were previously cluttered and busy are wonderfully simplified. Shapes become apparent and colour is removed from the scene -you have to think about your landscapes in an entirely different way. However, good lessons are learned, we should always to try to see the simplified compositions and then work to make them simple in the frame. Last year I took this image (I'm sure I've shared it before). It was of a rather boring scene that became full of simplicity and balance once the snow fell - and it's won or done well in several competitions to back that up.

But shooting in the snow is not easy - modern camears that work out exposures for you get muddled by all the white and underexpose terribly. This is because cameras try to balance every image to 18% grey and when all the scene is white, anything other than white becomes very dark . This is a very simplistic explanation but trust me, auto focus gets it wrong in the snow. You need to lengthen your exposure times from that which the camera tells you (which seems back to front to my mind) - but by how much? Well there are three methods I know of, here they are:

1) Buy an 18% grey photographers card and take your exposure from that. It reflects 18% grey back to your camear in whatever lighting you are in and should equalise your exposure nicely. Personally I find this a bit of a faff (ie too fiddly).

2) Take the picture but note what your cameras reading is. Then take it again with a higher ISO, larger aperture or slower shutter speed. Review in the viewfinders histogram (note that looking at the display will be difficult as you are outdoors in bright reflected light, so the histogram is essential). repeat, untill you happen upon the correct exposure. It's hit or miss and can take some time to get it right. Which is a bother if the snow fox has tun off by the time you get the exposure right.

3) This is my favourite. Because it's easy. And I'm a lazy person. Set your camera to spot focus. zoom in (or go close to), a subject that is in the same light as your target, fill the frame with this and take an exposure reading off it. so if you have a person to photograph, you can take a reading from your own hand, so long as both are in the same light. Dial that setting into the camera on manual and start snapping away. It works a treat, you don't have to think or take anything with you and your exposure will beperfect every time.

Of course you can cheat a bit too. Take it in RAW and you can adjust it on the PC afterwards. but try to get it as close as possible in camera - it will save you work and it will avoid you bringing noise into the image.

Here's an image of young Oscar closing in on his prey (the treat in my hand) - he's moving at high speed and I needed to be quick. The only way to do this was to have set the exposure in advance. I had zoomed in on his fur earlier on our walk and noted the exposure reading and set them in the camera. It worked well and let me adjust for a high shutter speed (by raising the ISO as I sped up the shutter speed or by widening the aperture)

Finally, sometimes it's fun to play with the electric lights of winter or the "incorrect" settings of your camera. I took this (fairly uninspiring compositionally) image, with just the default camera settings, but see how the blue tint of evening on snow and the yellow tint of the sodium lights gave me a fantastic lighting contrast of orange and blue (jsut like CSI Miami does in nearly every frame - had you noticed that? Even carrot-top Horatio Cane nearly always wears blue to fit into the shows colour schemes.)

Photography in the snow can be challenging with lighting and exposure and even getting to your subjects but it can also be very rewarding and reshapes the landscape. Thsi last image is of a churned up muddy field near my house that normally has absolutely no focal point or interest (in my view) - snow and lighting makes all the difference.

Everyone should have a pet.

As I was growing up I had, goldfish (one from a fair that lived 14 years), pigeons (they decided to adopt us and stayed for years) and eventually a hamster (a mutant from a genetics engineering lab experiment that went wrong I think - it was 2 or 3 times the size it should have been),... but I always wanted a dog.

Earlier this year we bought Oscar, the Soft Coated Irish Wheaten Terrier. A bundle of fluffy fur, from which occassionally a long thin pink tongue emerges and proceeds to soak your fingers. We had never had a dog before and were nervous that we wouldn't be able to look after him as well as we hoped, that he would wreck the house and that he would terrorise the children. Our youngest is 6 and we worried she was too young for a medium sized dog with enormous fangs and sharp scimiter like claws. But... we needn't have worried, they have become great friends and can often be seen, cuddling in the hall in greeting every morning, mini MacD with her arms out, Oscar on his hind legs resting his head on her shoulder. Neither prepared to let the other one go. This is the sight that greeted me yesterday as she chilled out watching some TV before our slap up weekend breakfast. So long as Oscar thinks he is human I think we should be OK. I'm just concerened that Daughter No.3 starts to think she's a puppy!

It's not a great photograph, it was snapped with a little point and shoot but it IS a great subject and it reminds me to use photography to record memories. It's not always about the art.

So if you are a dog lover, here are a few more images of Oscar Mild, and more importantly for me, a few memories of some happy walks we've had together lately (some of these were taken by daughter number one, she's getting quite good at the togging!).

This is a photography blog however, not just Oscars vanity page, so i should talk a little about pet photography here. The key thing in Pet photography, to my mind, is not so much exposure, focus and composition, (although of course they are important), but rather, character. The character of an animal must come out in a pet image otherwise it;'s just a picture of an animal, rather tahn a family member. With Oscar, these images have shown his love for the outdoors, the exuberance he greets every walk with and his love of water (at least I hope they do), lying on the sofa with daughter No.3, it aslo shows his soft side, that he is comfortable in our family environment and that he is a well adjusted wee pooch. I think that is more important than the slightly dodgy focus and lighting in that shot.

How do you capture all this - the answer lies in getting down to eye level, catching the dog in candid moments doing what he loves best and (in most cases) getting eye contact. Altogether like photographing humans really!

Quoting Success

It's been a successful few weeks. First of all I won the "Photo of the Month" at one of the biggest Scotland focussed online forums (Scotland by the Roadside) , next I received a request from my employer to use one of my images on their internal literature (Lubnaig Reflections) (alas, unpaid) and then I got my first critique back from my NYIP correspondence course and was told that I had been given a merit award for my echinacea flower image - an honour that is only given to less than one in one thousand course work submissions. I was pleased with some of the images I made this month and posted them on my website (PhotoForMyWall.com) which has experienced a 40% growth in traffic this month.

Now none of this sound momentous, but it doesn't have to be. I am trying to build momentum through small successes hoping this will lead to greater things. The learned 18th century dramatist and politician, Joseph Addison, who contributed to the direction of the Tatler and the Spectator periodicals, once said "If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counsellor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius". In other words keep trying, learn from experience and believe in yourself. Trying to make a name for yourself in an artistic field, especially one so over subscribed as photography, requires great self-belief and perseverance. To be a success you need to be happy with your own work but you also have to bend to the dictates of fashion and ensure others are admire your work on their own terms.

Above all, you need to get your work out there and be seen. There are many great photographers who's images are stored on hard drives or in cupboards and equally there are many very successful photographers whose images remain average but grace the pages of magazines that each and every one of us reads regularly. These photographers are the guys with a name, the editors "go-to guy", the guy with a reputation for reliability even if not for flair. As Woody Allan said "Eighty percent of success is showing up." and he wasn't wrong. If you consider that a big chunk of photographic success comes down to luck (either in being in the right place at the right time to make the image, or in getting your work noticed by the right people), that only leaves a tiny percentage to attribute success to talent and skill. So my take on this is that you need to put your work forward all the time to satisfy Woody, and pitch it in the right way to give Lady Luck a hand. I may or may not have talent and skill, depending on your perception, but I'll have a damn good try at getting what I have got, noticed.

But these minor triumphs are not enough, after all American author Christian Nestell Bovee stated that "Small successes suffice for small souls" and while it sounds harsh, it's a valuable lesson. If you want to be great at what you do, you need to aim high. So my next steps are what? I continue to enter as many competitions as I can, to learn from the masters and to promote my work in the hope that those with similar tastes stumble across it. The other day I had the pleasure of chatting with Peter Paterson FRPS EFIAP MPAGB ie a very qualified gentleman and picked his brains on aspects of photography that have had me stumped for while. For the second time in a year I was told by a luminarie that my basic technique is essentially the same as theirs, but the minor differences in technique are where their quality really shines through. I continue to learn from them. To treat each failure as an opportunity for learning and growing and each success, as an opportunity for learning and growing.

So, having gained my successes in the last few weeks, I keep in mind that "Success is full of promise till a man gets it; and then it is last year's nest from which the birds have flown." - Henry Ward Beecher (politician, clergyman, social reformer and abolitionist) and I keep my eyes open for the next success to build upon the last one. Which leads me to my final quote, reminding us of the importance of taking one step at a time and enjoying the journey. While it is unattributed, it is as valid as these others, "Do not let big ambitions overshadow small successes."

Portknockie's Other Rock

I felt pretty defeated about my night shoot, so next day I went out to cheer myself up. Oscar and I went for a climb down to the shore at Quineland to see the amusingly called "Shitten Craig". I can only guess at the name - it is a rock that has been turned white by the sea birds guano and is called in the guidebooks "White Craig". The more colourful name seems to be the local variant. Not as unusual as Bow Fiddle Rock, Shitten Craig is still a striking lump of stone. Huge, triangular like a sharks fin, white and covered in sea birds, the waves crash and break on it protecting the Portknockie natural harbour at Quineland . In the area a Quine is Doric for a girl, so I assume this was where the women worked at mending nets, gutting fish etc. I think only a lunatic would go out to sea around that wild coast so maybe it is appropriate that young lads are called "Loons". Oscar louped about the area and although he had great fun lying in the rock pools and climbing the cliffs, thankfully he stayed out of the big waves while I took a series of shots of the jagged coast. I got a few good ones as well, there is something about water, rocks and a lack of people that makes photography great fun.

What did I learn on this shoot - the local tourist attraction may not always be the most photogenic, explore the quiet places and when a 3 stone dog runs over a grassy area, it doesn't mean that a 15 stone man can do the same without getting ankle deep in the bog.