This is about the process as much as the results, and the just-for-fun stuff. All photos © Gary Eason unless otherwise noted. Please visit Gary Eason Photography for commercial work, licensing and downloads and further information. 
Selected prints can be purchased through me, or direct for delivery to your own home or office through the Photo4me (UK-based) and the Fine Art America (US) sites.
Winter field, panorama
I'd had this image in mind for weeks and weeks. I love the way the field sweeps down to the woodland here on the outskirts of Penn (we're in Buckinghamshire). All I needed was the right light. And today, I had that too.
For ages it feels like we've been living under a monotonous grey duvet of cloud. Mild enough, I grant you, but depressing all the same.
This morning was different. Sunshine! At one point when I looked out of my study I could also see dark slate grey cloud off in one direction. This combination always means dramatic landscapes, so I grabbed my camera and headed for the countryside - which, where I am, is less than a mile away.
I had to hang around for a while, getting rained on intermittently. But it was so worth the wait, as swathes of brilliant sunshine rolled down the ploughed field and sloshed up against the beeches in Common Wood on my left. Such a beautiful scene.
A brief update, partly arising from my last post. The first buyer of a print of Tree trunks I, which I was writing about in that, is an academic in the USA. So it turns out that the canvas she bought is hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago.
OK it's actually hanging in her office in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago - but that's still a good place to be. She e-mailed me a photo of it there, and wrote: "... your work is officially on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago! And I've gotten lots of compliments."
I'm really pleased that she's pleased. This was sold through my Fine Art America portfolio, by the way.
Separately, I was also sent a mobile phone picture message of another photo of mine hanging on someone's living room wall. She'd been given it as a birthday present and thought it was "lovely". It was an 18in x 12in canvas of this Scottish landscape sold through Photo4me.
I rather like this! Sometimes I get to deal with customers personally. This happened recently for example with a chap in Minnesota, who'd come across a sunset photo on my own website which (by chance) featured a spit of land on which he had owned a lakeside cabin for 10 years.
He had bought a royalty free download - but in a size that was far too small to print it, which is what he was trying to do. Incidentally I think that although the numbers are clear on the digital download page, I may need to spell out what they mean for folk who are not familiar with the notion of uncompressed file sizes or the implications of photo resolutions.
Anonymous
Anyway it all ended well. I refunded his money and worked with him on what he was looking for, which led to his purchasing a canvas through my FAA site.
While it can involve more work, liaising with a customer about precisely what they want is rewarding.
But more often I have no idea even who has bought a picture online. I had a tantalising example of this recently when I made some black and white photos of landmarks in and around the City of London.
This is an ongoing project which includes some colour work - and a number of panoramas; it's hard to display those wider images adequately online, but that's maybe a subject to come back to another day.
I took the shots on a Wednesday, processed them over the next two days and uploaded them to my various outlets on the Friday. By Sunday, only one person had looked at this image of the Heron Tower (right) on my FAA portfolio. And whoever it was bought a 28in x 48in canvas of it!
That's what I call a result - but all I know is that they live in Essex, England. It would be great to know what they liked about it and where it is hanging, all eight square feet of it.
So keep those feedback messages coming please: www.garyeasonphotography.com/contact.
Urgh: I have a streaming cold ....
Of the various images I have sold copies of these past few days, the one above is the one I'm particularly pleased about.
A discerning customer in the US has bought a canvas print of it - and unwittingly becomes the first person to have acquired the first example of a new departure in my photographic work.
With hindsight I can see that I began thinking along these lines (as it were), and working on these photographs, some time ago. They are a convergence of various key ideas:
Two works illustrate the way these thoughts have been developing. The first, Tree Lines I (below), depicts a line of trees in silhouette on the edge of a lake - in fact the sea loch, Loch Linnhe, in the west of Scotland.
Tree lines I, 2011
The scene was virtually monochrome to begin with, as shot; the pattern of light and waves in the foreground water lent itself to an extrusion into lines. I freely acknowledge this as my own response to others’ efforts to scrape or ‘smudge’ elements of a suitable digital image into lateral lines. My own technique is different and I prefer it.
The second work I would identify as central to my thinking is the one at the top of this post, Tree trunks I. I took this, predominantly vertical, representation of a pine wood and distilled it by abstracting a line through it that picks out all the various colours and tones. The natural and abstract images each stand alone quite readily, but work best side-by-side I feel.
The initial abstraction of Tree Trunks was essentially (not entirely) random. I have since pondered taking the image apart, one line of pixels at a time, and rendering each line into a separate abstraction. These could then stand as a series of some 3,000 discrete images (the original is a 3,296 pixel high crop). I may be getting ahead of myself - but I shall make more of these, because I'm fascinated to see what comes out.
Thinking about it, Reeds in the mist (right), which I made a year ago, naturally prefigures all this. It is a figurative image that I especially liked precisely because it is so naturalistically abstract.
Now, I'm no historian of photography or art but even I can understand that other people have been here before. I can see that this might be a form of geometric abstraction in a long line through Mondrian and Bridget Riley, for instance. I don't know how Bridget Riley's work has evolved - I shall find out - but to me it doesn't matter because I got here independently, which is what interests me, or as independently as anyone can who functions in a highly visual world.
All this thinking predated the record-breaking sale of Andreas Gursky's The Rhine II. I did not know that image until it hit the headlines, but I have to say I love it; I find it mesmerising. If you've persevered this far you can probably see why I might.
Pleasing
Talking of sales, which is where this post began, I've just had an unusually good week. It is peculiarly gratifying when people come along, by whatever route, and buy something that you have created - and I am duly grateful.
So I'll end with a photograph I made on a very unpromising morning on the north east coast of England. I had gone to Saltburn by the Sea - which is where I grew up, as it happens - to see what the dawn would be like. Not hugely interesting, in fact, because of the relentless 'grey duvet' that had descended on the landscape and stayed throughout my visit to the area, in September.
But, looked at optimistically, there was a certain liquid charm in the early morning light. I made a few photographs overlooking the shoreline, and a few more half way along Saltburn's pier - just at the line where the limpid little waves began flopping onto the beach.
One of them, looking up the coast towards Teesside's industrial outpourings, has just been bought by somebody - which makes me very happy, because it's a subtle image and I'm glad they appreciated it. I hope they like it when the print arrives. You can find it here in my Photo4me portfolio.
I'm rather pleased with this new photograph of mine showing two cock pheasants knocking seven bells* out of each other.
It was taken in a country lane on the pretty Cowal Peninsula in Argyll & Bute during my recent photographic trip. I came round a corner in the car and there they were, right in the narrow road, squaring up.
I stopped as quickly as I could and first grabbed my D3s. On trips like that I normally have both the Nikon and Olympus ready, one with a 24-70mm zoom on for close and middle shots and the other with the superb 50-200mm Zuiko and 2x teleconverter for as much reach as I can muster in case it's needed (at full stretch it's the full frame equivalent of almost 800mm/f7).
I got off a few shots through the windscreen with the Nikon. Here's the scene:
I then switched to the E3 and took a few more, before carefully opening the driver's door and getting the lens into the angle. It was a very quiet lane and it was safe to stop right where I was. I checked the camera settings, upping the ISO to 1000 which was giving me about 1/500th speed on a fairly wide aperture.
The birds seemed oblivious: eyeballing each other, strutting and circling, occasionally rushing - and then every now and then having a full-blown dust-up. These actual physical encounters were momentary and of course as the shutter fires, you can't see the image briefly.
I was excited when I knew I'd taken a great shot as they both jumped several feet into the air, claws out, wings flapping. Fantastic!
Or not. Imagine my disappointment when I checked afterwards and found this:
As I was pressing the shutter release they had jumped above my framing! Ho hum. You learn something every day.
Still, I did also get the marvellous one above. In fact it's the better image I think, on reflection, because their tussle was so quick - such a blur of fluttering feathers - that it is only in the stilled moment that I could see that one of them had turned completely upside down.
So, maybe fate was looking out for me after all.
- - -
* Where does that expression come from I wonder?
There is something fascinating about the urban periphery. I don't mean shanty towns; in fact I mean the opposite. Instead of people crammed into makeshift habitats, I mean habitats that were fully intended to be peopled, but are not.
I can remember, when I was a boy, exploring in some local woods with our pet dog and coming upon, first, lots of rhodedendron bushes among the woodland, a sign of cultivation, then the back of a big old mansion, all derelict and smashed. Spooky to wander around and peer into. (Years later it was done up and became the Rushpool Hall Hotel, and very splendid it is).
On the Costa Blance in Spain some years ago, I remember driving and walking around an abandoned holiday resort: roads all laid out with drains and lamp posts, but overgrowing with grass. Deserted buildings; an empty swimming pool.
Today I happened to turn down a side road on the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll and Bute, just to see where it went, and stumbled across Polphail. Cordoned off, after a fashion, with temporary site fencing, it was easily visible from a concrete access road along which a public footpath was signposted.
What a weird place. It looked to be fairly modern - 1970s, maybe; concrete-built two-storey accommodation blocks, with all the windows smashed and a few wall-sized graffiti cartoons of people. Spooky as hell - especially when I heard, from within one of the darkened rooms, a deep, guttural, hacking cough.
Signs say bats live there. Apt.
My camera's GPS metadata places it at this lat/long: 55.87047667, -5.30587667. Here's the place on Google's Streetview, although the caravans at the entrance have now been moved some way further back. There are warning signs on the fencing that it is an offence to disturb the bats.
I thought it might have been a holiday home project that had failed. But, searching later, I found that it had been built in the North Sea oil boom as housing for workers who were going to construct concrete rigs in a huge dock excavated nearby. But the rigs never got made so it was never occupied. Here's a BBC News report.
The demolition promised a few years ago clearly has not happened; however, a smart new marina promised in the old dry dock is now up and running, and very swish it looks.
Here's a Scotsman report on the graffiti project, and of course I have some photos on my site. There is a much fuller set of photos on Flickr.
Interesting, turning down side roads.
You probably know that I have a thing about sailing, but my first love was flying. It's just that circumstances over the years made it less accessible. Less accessible but not inaccessible.
I was at John Lewis buying a vacuum cleaner (can I get some product placement dosh here please?) and emerged to the most fantastic late afternoon cloudscape as heavy rain showers rolled across the South Buckinghamshire landscape.
What has this to do with flying? Well, Booker airfield - properly, Wycombe Air Park (EGTB to pilots) - is just around the corner and I figured it would afford an open vista. Which it did, as you can see. The clouds really were something to behold. It is unusual to have a backdrop so dark that you'd think I must have walloped a hefty filter over it. But no, this is unretouched apart from standard tidying up.
The plane taxiing for takeoff, by the way, is a Robin DR 300-180R, a French design made by Avions Pierre Robin. This particular one, registration G-BLGH, is used as a glider "tug" by Booker Gliding Club. In other words it tows sailplanes to altitude then releases them to realise their true function.
I made several photos over a cup of tea at the airfield cafe, then headed along the ridge a little way to the outskirts of Flackwell Heath and contemplated the landscape there. Eventually I made up a panorama of that view too.
We peeked inside the firstsite art museum in Colchester - one of those places with a silly name that you're supposed not to capitalise. Or maybe they just can't write English properly.
Anyway, fabulous space. Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects, probably its most striking external feature is a golden cladding - actually an alloy of copper and aluminium - which catches the light in a lustrous fashion. Inside, the space is essentially a long banana shape - in plan, not unlike a scimitar. The curving wedge of the roof is highlighted - literally - by long strip lights at intervals, as you can see.
This fine, uplifting effect helps to mitigate the ugly outlook at the back of the building - which is primarily over a bus station. The tussle between these two public spaces has been something of a controversy locally.
I offer this photo as a sample, taken before I was told, "You can't take photos in here". Oh dear oh dear. You can however find numerous fine pictures of the place taken by Richard Bryant. All the others I took - whoops what a giveaway - will have to remain secret.
You know how in the autumn you get those photography contests with titles such as "Fall color" (this would be American - it only works in American English).
Anyway I was combing the beach along the East Mersea shore in Essex - really looking for some magic in the light over the polder scheme, which was not forthcoming - and of course the striking feature there, and the reason for the polder scheme, is the erosion of the low cliffs.
So there you have it: my entry for, ahem, fall colour. Sorry.
Autumn brings with it very ambitious plans by Eason Jnr for the next season of productions from VFTheatre, beginning with Frank McGuinness's tough play about Lebanon hostages, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.
I'm very pleased to get the call to provide photos. The shots above used a single bare tungsten light, aiming for a stark look. Photos by me; art direction and poster creation by Joe Oliver Eason.
I like working with actors. They mostly just 'get it' when you ask for a look. OK so do models, but with actors there's an emotional input that goes beyond surface appearance. As should good photos.
Photo: Alice Eason
I have been pondering what to write about the landscapes of the Southwestern United States, or what little I saw of them on my recent flying visit.
My difficulty is that words fail me, because what does come to my mind is the rather scary sense that photographs also failed me. Just how do you convey, in a necessarily small image, something on the scale of the Grand Canyon? Of course I had seen photographs of this wonder, but that's just the point: no photograph can prepare you for the sheer vastness of it - or, therefore, it would seem, bring away a proper sense of it.
We stayed on the higher North Rim, at the only lodge on that side within the national park. From the terrace there, or adjacent trails, you cannot see the bottom - not even of the side canyons it overlooks - because they are so deep. The far side, the more populous South Rim, is some 10 miles away. Between, huge ridges, buttes and pinnacles are ranged across the abyss. Your mind cannot comprehend the scale of it. You can make a photograph of it, or of part of it, I should say - but somehow it feels like a pitifully inadequate representation of what's before you.
So I felt overwhelmed, frankly. At least to begin with. We were there for only a few days. It would easily be possible to spend weeks just gawping at it, not least because it is constantly changing as the light flows across from east to west. In August, in the late afternoon, great thunderstorms would build, sending flashes of lightning into the void as sheets of rain swept through the canyons. A fantastic spectacle that often goes on into the night.
Gradually I began to come to terms with this immensity and to start trying to make sense of it photographically - though of course, as always, the visiting photographer is at the mercy of the available light. Some people spend a week there and never really see a thing because the canyon is shrouded in fog, I was told. In that respect we were lucky, but I was aware that it was not as magical as it might have been. Trips out are constrained by the available time and photographs have to be made, if they are going to be made at all, in less than ideal conditions.
So you work with what you have. You're a tourist; accept it. I made a few images I was pleased with - Mount Hayden picked out in big splodges of slanting afternoon light through fluffy clouds after waiting for their shadows to move on.
On our way back to catch our flight in Las Vegas we traversed Zion Canyon. More magnificent vistas that we really could only crane our necks to see on a whistlestop tour. Driving south, off to our left was the most wonderfully dramatic range of peaks. Imagine the Old Man of Storr on Skye - rightly celebrated as some of Britain's finest scenery. This range had a dozen such pinnacles. Yet it was just another part of the general landscape; I haven't even been able to figure out what it is called.
I take my hat off to those who have been grappling over the years with the attempt to render these spectacles in paint and in photographs. I am also very envious of anyonewith ready access to such scenery. I hope to go back.
Meanwhile ... here on Teesside, where I am this week, there is almost unrelievedly dull, flat, grey light beneath blankets of cloud. Ho hum.
By the time this is published I should be on my way to America for a couple of weeks.
To Minnesota first, to stay in a cabin on an island in a small lake (above). That photo was made a couple of years ago on our first visit. It's not bad quality, as long as you don't look too closely, considering it was on a little Sony A200. (If you do look closely there's some horrid chromatic fringing along the vertical edges!)
Then down to see Lawrence, Kansas, where my partner grew up. And then over to Arizona to stay on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, one of those wonders of the world that I've not been to before.
I won't have a huge amount of time there and let's remember this is purely a holiday, not a series of location shoots. I'd like to hope I might get a chance to make some decent photos while I'm there, but in practice I have already begun thinking about making another trip purely for photographic purposes. Even the most understanding and encouraging companions get a bit fed up when every time they turn round you are way back down the track fiddling with some camera setting or other. Conversely, being on your own gives you all the time you want - subject to the usual constraints of weather and light, which are plenty enough to have to think about.
Well, that and what kit to pack. Why do all airlines have different size and weight restrictions for carry-on and checked baggage?
It can take an age to get through the post-processing workflow when you have other claims on your time - so I'm only now finally getting round to making the most of the photos made in Scotland in early June.
I've cleared the week's workload and gone from having a house full of people to its being more-or-less empty, which gives me the mental space to try to make the most of some of the lovely scenes I encountered.
One series I have just posted to my website was made in various locations on a misty morning, in that magical mood when there's no wind and the sun is climbing through a still, silent world of outlines and reflections.
Memo to self: don't forget to look down.
I was in the 'Bear Woods' in Colchester, just for a stroll. I never tire of photographing the trees there. They are a mixture of oak and willow, mostly, whose limbs twist and intertwine in fascinating ways - and of course, being woodland, it has changed with the seasons almost every time you visit.
I was on my way out when I made a conscious effort to study the detail of the wooden plank pathway that has been constructed along the potentially muddy trail, which has a chicken wire matting to reduce its slipperiness.
As I did, I almost stepped on a ladybird, stark red against the grey, weathered timbers.
Deer, Southern Highlands
There are some jaw-dropping images in the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest - and this is not one of them!
Ordinarily I would not consider myself a wildlife photographer at all. However, my attention was drawn by the Landscape GB online magazine to the fact that some categories are about the landscape as much as the animals in it. So I had a quick rummage and submitted some recent photographs.
I returned from my sailing trip to find that the one above had made the 'semi-finals' - that is, the second of the three rounds of judging. So not a complete dud! I was chuffed about that.
It was one of a series made on Rannoch Moor in Scotland during my wet and windy visit there last autumn, using the Olympus E3. I have several which show the deer in much greater close-up, but I felt this better fitted the category theme of animals "in their environment".
I cropped out a distracting patch of rock in the lower left of the frame, but left in the water on the right because I felt it balanced the snow in top left.
UPDATE July 26: I was interested to know the numbers on this so - in the absence of information online - I contacted the competition organisers' press office.
They say they received 40,490 entries in total, from photographers in 95 countries.
As a matter of policy - interestingly - they do not reveal the specific number of entries in each category at different stages of the competition. (I submitted seven in three categories; clearly I suppose one's odds might be improved if you knew which were the less popular categories?).
However, approximately 12,000 images made it to through to the Semi-Finals and 1,000 images went on to Final judging. In other words, as I thought, "semi-finals" is not quite the same as, say, Wimbledon.
Two "commended" images will be unveiled next month, and a further selection on 1 October. The winning images (category and overall winners) will be announced at an awards ceremony on 19 October.
The exhibition of images from the competition opens at the Natural History Museum, London, on Friday 21 October.
So now you know.
The fateful moment when Romeo (right) intervenes in the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio
Hugely enjoyed the opening night of VFDrama's production of Romeo and Juliet at the Beacon Centre in Beaconsfield, Bucks - whose short run ends on Saturday.
An unquestionable highlight is the realism of the fight scenes. I say realism: I don't suppose many of us have any direct experience of sword fighting in the streets, but the energy expended by these young actors is phenomenal.
I know, having been there from day one, how much effort went into choreographing this action - essential, given how potentially dangerous it is. The swords they are using in the main fight sequences, by the way, are from the National Theatre's armoury.
Anyway great fun to photograph too! Nikon D3s with 70-200mm zoom at 1/125th, f4, ISO 6400, tweaked in Lightroom.
Rain and rainbows, Brittany
Very lucky to have enjoyed two weeks' sailing, from southern England over to northern Brittany via the Channel Islands and Iles Chausey - which chiefly accounts for the lack of blog posts recently.
The Brittany coast is a fascinating sailing ground: pretty but fantastically rock-strewn and with an astonishing tidal range - typically more than 10 metres if you can imagine that. In other words when the tide is in it can easily swallow your average house, and then some.
And when it goes out it reveals rocks that are ... bigger than your house. Navigation is more than ever by the numbers.
We had great weather, for the most part: good breezes, and only one day's real rain - but some sharp late afternoon showers in the delightful little town of St-Cast-le-Guildo. This has a very new marina, with excellent facilities - albeit more exposed to (south-) westerlies than you might think from looking at the map.
A five-minute walk away from the boats is a headland, with a huge cannon commemorating some famous battle they did not teach us about in school in England. Ah - probably because it did not go terribly well.
Anyway it has a marvellous view over the Pointe de Saint Cast and other headlands to the north, one with the magnificent Fort Latte, and beyond that, Cap Frehel with its lighthouses.
As the heavy showers went through I huddled in the lee of a convenient large bush atop what was otherwise an exposed bluff, emerging to venture down the slope overlooking the sea to make my photographs.
The clouds were huge, the sun more-or-less broke through - and to cap it all, after about an hour's wait, a stunning rainbow (briefly, to the south, a double one) completed the scene.
I have a number of pictures from this location that needed minimal post-processing. I'm very pleased with them.
We rounded off the day with fresh local seafood and a few pichets de vin rouge.
Pigott's Farm, that is, with the VFDrama gang as they go into final rehearsals for their production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which opens on Thursday.
The main request was for 'family photos' - the Montagues (above), the Capulets (below) and the nobles, and separately our star-cross'd lovers.
I don't normally do wedding shots but that was what it most resembled, except that the producers wanted serious, even fierce faces rather than jolly ones. Stop smiling at the back!
Teeny bit of a challenge fitting them all onto my backdrop but it worked out ok. Lit by three strobes with only minimal softening. It's the harsh glare of publicity ...
Spent a very pleasant morning photographing in a primary school on commission for an organisation that wants to remake all its promotional materials, printed and online.
They had asked my advice about imagery and I recommended they commission a photographer to shoot just what they wanted in a consistent style. I think it's important to keep reminding people of the benefits of this in a world so swamped with stock images they sometimes don't even think of it - or do not realise how competitive the unit costs can be.
The trouble with stock images is that they tend to look like ... stock images. In particular, in my experience, pictures of schools and schoolchildren have a tendency to look mid-Atlantic at best to British eyes.
I'm pleased to say they entirely took the point and asked me to shoot in a primary school and a secondary school.
The result was that they got dozens of images of real youngsters in real classrooms of just the sort they wanted, exclusive to themselves. Not only that but by arrangement with the client I am also able to offer a special deal for the schools involved. That's a win win win.
Feedback? - "Thanks for this – the pictures really are marvellous."
Please drop me an e-mail if you'd like to know more.
I was about to start watching Wallander on Saturday evening when I realised the sky outside was glowing as if there were a huge fire.
Venturing out I found it was just the sun doing what it does when it settles beneath the cloud bank after the sort of downpour we'd had.
Nearby, where I know I can rely on getting a view of the western sky if I need to, the fields were dripping wet, the air bright and fresh with that vividness that comes from the clearing effect of a rainstorm.
Oh and yes I got to see Wallander a couple of days later.
Sometimes you find things in photos that you did not realise were there. On review, they grow on you and might even become the focus of the picture, as here.
See the blue rope? No, I didn't at the time either. But there it is, curving like the branch, frayed and broken. Did it snap? Did someone fall? Did they get wet? Were they hurt? Who knows.
I'm not even sure how to crop this, lest it be too obvious. Wide? Or square like this?
Mist, Castle Kilchurn
So I spent most of last week in the west of Scotland with a view to some landscape photography.
I managed to miss the storms that had left trees uprooted, boats overturned and beaches debris strewn.
A walk up through Puck's Glen - dodging the damage to a footbridge - yielded various treasures by way of trunks, leaves and moss, tumbling stream and rocks, as always.
Here's a description of the place on the Walk Highlands website: "Deservedly the most popular short walk in the region, Puck's Glen is a dark and atmospheric defile. A tumbling burn, criss-crossed by bridges, is enclosed by rocky walls heavily hung with mosses and overshadowed by dense trees."
That about nails it, and on one level it is a target-rich environment for photography but I always find it a bit cutesy, somehow.
According to the Forestry Commission the path through the glen was originally constructed by the Younger family at the end of the 19th Century - well, by some of their 40 gardeners, I presume - to lead to a folly on the hill (now in the Benmore Botanic Gardens on the opposite side of the valley).
It is a reminder I suppose that almost everything in the 'wilds' of Scotland is a product of centuries of human intervention.
You could hardly find a more glaring example than on my trip further north in mid-week. I pursued the lonely single-track road through Glen Garry and on to Loch Quoich - reasoning from the map that it should have a good view with a mountainous backdrop. Which it does, though in not very inspiring weather when I got there.
So instead here's an unvarnished truth photo of what makes it a loch, with the largest rockfill type of dam in Scotland:
I have already posted about my gale-blasted washout tour of Skye. It did yield some fairly dramatic images of the frothing water chute variety - but not the mountains I'd intended, which were invisible in the clouds. That cliff waterfall near Kilt Rock is one of the scariest places I have ever been: totally deserted at 7.30 in the morning, with the wind moaning through the safety fence as I leaned over with the camera - a supermarket 'bag for life' (hah!) plastered flat against the railings by the wind and rain providing shelter for the lens . Shudder.
And the weather did perk up eventually. I hugely enjoyed Loch Sunart, with its oak wooded shores, and would want to revisit it when I have more time. The light slanting under the clouds as I returned south via the Lynn of Lorne, silhouetting Castle Stalker, was just fantastic. I made a number of photos of which this is an un-processed sample:
As an aside, though, the local council not only does not facilitate getting a view of this striking 15th Century castle, (made even more famous in the final scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but seems to go out of its way to make it as horrible as possible. You get to this point down a potholed track in the village of Portnacroish that leads to some recycling bins and a disused railway line, alongside a municipal yard containing road mending signs and piles of junk behind a mesh and barbed wire fence. Extraordinary. Contrast this with, say, Eilean Donan at the Kyle of Lochalsh. Most councils would give anything to have such a viewpoint on their patch and lay on signposts, decent access, a car park, visitor centre, tea room and souvenir shop and ... okay, maybe it's better as it is.
I have also contributed a couple of snapshots to the Geograph open source web project, from a walk I made above Loch Eck. Here's one. This is a really useful resource which I found myself turning up time and again when trying to pin down locations in which I'd been making photos. The GPS data from my Nikon natively opens from Lightroom in Google Maps, which I presume is just a default browser response - but those maps are greatly lacking in place names outside urban areas.
Geograph "aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland". So my last photos from the week would be quite useless....
I woke early on Friday and peered out to find the weather forecast had been spot on: fog. I headed up Loch Eck to find some brilliant mist-shrouded reflections of the wooded shores in the completely still water. Further on, past fishing grey herons on the shores of Loch Fyne, another favourite location was quite invisible to begin with. I pulled on my wellies and tramped over the boggy ground to the shore of Loch Awe and could just discern the outline of Castle Kilchurn emerging from the whiteness as the sun began to climb.
I made merry, although a few potential images were marred by the detritus of (sleeping) camping anglers who'd left rods and racks and wading boots strewn along the edge of the loch.
I was conscious of the debate I'd been reading only the previous night on pages printed off from the highly recommended Great British Landscapes site.
In an article (full version requires subscription), photographer Julian Barkway had kicked off a debate about the "wow" factor - you know, over-saturated landcapes and the "awesome capture!" school of Flickr commentary. Julian cited among other examples of images that he admired, at the other extreme, the Mist series by Swiss fine-art photographer Christian Vogt.
"Not so much low contrast as practically no contrast – just shades of pale grey," he wrote.
"I remember being utterly captivated by the emptiness of these images and how brilliantly executed they were."
His article has prompted a lot of responses. In one, Philip Eaglesfield put himself resolutely "in the disagree camp".
He added: "I expect to be logged on in a couple of years absorbing a piece about how everyone is lazily and slavishly knocking out derivative versions of the close-ups of Nanven’s boulders, Vogt’s blank mist images and the reflected twigs which currently excite you."
Oh dear, and here was I the very next morning after reading this, knocking out twigs in the mist. Slavishly derivative? No, officer, I just got out of the car and there it was, honest.
In fact as Julian has subsequently been pointing out, he was not arguing for or against any particular style of photography, but for an honest engagement with the landscape. Well, I certainly felt that on Friday in the breathless mist. A great end to the week.
Just while I'm downloading, keywording and backing up: a quick flavour of my time on the Isle of Skye this week. Not much of a view but an awful lot of water.
In this and other locations I had to whip the camera level so as to minimise the raindrops spattering the lens - this being shot straight into a southwesterly gale. It rained - I mean really rained, heavily - for more than 15 hours from Wednesday into Thursday, then drizzled and showered on for much of the rest of the day. The wind was so strong I could hardly stand up.
It was frustrating to be in some of the best scenery the British Isles have to offer and not actually see any of it above about 1,000ft because of the low clouds - and that's a severe limitation in this landscape. But it was also ... characterful. And maybe more typical than those lovely postcard shots. As the woman in the Jac-o-bite Restaurant at Ault A Chruinn, Kyle of Lochalsh, informed a holidaying family: "Oh, you should have been here last week. It only rained once. It began on Monday and ended on Saturday."
Anyway much more to follow about this week.
I am delighted to announce my first public photo book. It is an "as it happened" record of the initial production by the young VFDrama theatre company, the musical Spring Awakening. If you've been following this blog you'll already be familiar with that.
We've had a proof copy which delighted all those who've seen it, and have signed off a final version with minor changes.
In more than 100 colour pages the book, called simply Spring Awakening: Photo Album, charts the course of the production from initial planning through various rehearsals to the final triumphant scene.
It is available to order now from my website at a special introductory price - and with an unrepeatable special offer of one of the original promotional posters for the show, free, for the first few dozen orders.
Putting the book together was, let's say, an interesting process using the sometimes frustrating Booksmart software from Blurb. Having done it once I have a far better sense of how to do it again, and ultimately it was highly enjoyable. So there will be others.
Mike on bike: check out those clouds
I spent a very pleasant few hours on Thursday in the company of my friend Mike Baker, who'd commissioned me to make some cycling photos.
We met at his delightful home close to the river in Kingston, south-west London - having taken the last-minute decision to go ahead in spite of an iffy weather forecast ("heavy rain showers").
Over coffee, I delivered a print of a frosted waterfront scene in Essex that he'd admired.
I explained that he was getting three for the price of one, in effect, because the photo had been made using a bracketing technique - merging three from five exposures taken at different settings to cover the wide light range in the scene.
It had been raining when I'd left home but was much brighter in Kingston - when I arrived, that is. By the time he'd got changed and met me down on the riverside, it had begun raining there too.
We stood for a while eyeing the gathering clouds then decided the better option was to invert our plans and have an early lunch, in hope the weather would clear somewhat. No sooner had we agreed that than a squall hit and the raindrops were bouncing three feet off the road.
Our haven was the Boaters Inn nearby, with an excellent range of beers and fine food. And sure enough, that particular belt of precipitation did pass over.
We set to, Mike making pass after pass in front of the Sea Scouts' boathouse while I fiddled with tripod, flash (strobe) - on a stand, to offset it from the camera - and medium and wide zoom lenses on the Nikon D3s.
Adding to the challenge was the wildly fluctuating light: changing every few seconds as the clouds hustled past in a blustery wind. This meant it might drop by several stops as Mike began a run past me, going from bright high contrast to dull and flat.
I did some straightforward panning runs then switched to wide-angle close-ups. These involve teasing a moment out of a movement, requiring sharp timing in the framing - ideally anyway. In that lies the excitement of the process.
Mike looked incredibly well, I have to say. You can follow his progress against cancer on his special blog, here.
On a whim, I revisited this shot from the car boot sale series I made last weekend. I like this crop; it doesn't quite work but there are internal symmetries.
The gull that seems to be in the car boot is actually targeting litter this side of it, by the way. Now that would have been a photo .... But hey, I won't tell anyone if you don't!
Anyway the photo was a product of seeing a scene and working it to try to get a happy accident, and almost but maybe not quite succeeding. And it has had a little work done on it. That is, apart from cropping overall, I shifted the middle gull a tad to the right and removed an inconvenient bit of shrubbery on the horizon line. It's better for it.
Unlike the one below, which is just as it came out of the camera. I was shooting at ankle level, having asked permission of the dogs' owners ( "Sure," said the man, "though I doubt they'll stay still for you." They did. )
At the time - and even afterwards when I first downloaded and ran through this set of images - I didn't notice the husky in the background - its absolutely riveted alertness being about as far removed as you could get in the dog world from the total sang froid of the bulldogs.
So there you go: a fruit of happenstance, and a fruit that isn't. Discuss.
It is very pleasant down by the River Thames in south-west London, notwithstanding the violent squalls that went through today, disrupting my photo shoot with cyclist Mike Baker (on which more later).
No surprise to see a common tern speculatively fishing alongside the Sea Scouts' boathouse in Kingston.
Just the kind of place you'd expect to find ... Apache attack helicopters?
I knew, from the previous day, that they were in the news. Only tonight did I know that four were being deployed by the UK to Libyan operations - reportedly from somewhere in the Med.
Well, I can confirm that two were strolling thuggishly, chugga chugga chugga chugga, under the threatening clouds over Hampton Court this morning, heading west. Maybe they do that every Thursday morning. I wouldn't know.
Meanwhile here's that tern:
I had so much fun photographing the dragonflies recently that I went back for some more, partly to try to get some of the tantalising angles I had not got before and partly to try a different approach.
I had a loose wish-list in mind along the lines of:
This is how it turned out.
Kit for the day (Android phone picture)
On the previous occasion I had been using the Nikon D3s with the long end of the 70-200mm zoom and x2 teleconverter - giving, if switched to DX format as the camera can, the equivalent reach of a 600mm lens. Taking this to its natural conclusion with the available equipment, this time I took along my Olympus E-3 with 50-200mm zoom and x2 teleconverter - which, with the doubling effect of the Four Thirds sensor, gives an equivalent of 800mm. With a remarkable minimum range of just over a metre (about 4ft) that gives some pulling power.
Also relevant in this sort of consideration - in case anyone is counting - is the way focal lengths shorten at close range, but that's one for another day.
So, armed with that caboodle and plenty of warm sunshine, I made some pictures similar to the previous ones: close-ups of Four-spotted Chasers (heh, get me with the nomenclature). Here's one by way of example.
Libellula quadrimaculata, Four-spotted Chaser, on reed stem
Just out of interest, I've also made a 250-pixel square 100% crop to give a flavour of the sort of detail that the Zuiko lens and E-3 are capable of picking up, seemingly unaffected by having a teleconverter in the train. This was from a range of about two metres (6ft 6in).
So far so good, but what about the wide-angle view?
What I felt was lacking from this kind of image, fascinating though it is, was a sense of context - a scene that would also have enough width and depth to incorporate the pond environment. Hence the "wide-angle lens" on my wish list. So I was also using the D3s and 24-70mm zoom to give me some flexibility in framing.
As for getting a pair coupling in flight, my wish was granted. I was delighted with a short sequence taken at about 29mm of zoom that caught exactly what I'd hoped for - giving a wide shot but with enough detail to be meaningful.
Here's the one I like most in terms of the surroundings:
Dragonflies mating in flight over pond
And (below) a 100% crop again. Incidentally the fact that this shows a smaller portion of the frame - which is itself cropped to a square - shows the difference between Four Thirds and FX formats.
Frustratingly I then lost focus, and I'm still working out the best option to use - varying between manual, single-servo and continuous-servo autofocus and single spot (which I use most of the time) or dynamic area. It's interesting to me that I'm in sports photography territory here because that's not something I normally do.
Still, mustn't be greedy, and overall it felt like a good afternoon's work.
And yet, and yet ... really what I wanted was to get a stupidly close but wide picture of the insects. You might think this is a forlorn prospect by the way because surely the creatures would be scared away. But I have found that if you basically sit still and blend into the scenery, then once they have realised that the big black thing isn't actually going to eat them they become, if anything, quite curious. There was one point when I thought a dragonfly was going to land on or inside the lens hood.
Well, I ran out of time trying and have yet to work out the best way to do it. More patience and more luck, probably. And wading boots.
One that got away
As I was setting out this morning, I noticed the sun highlighting this dog on guard over the street full of refuse sacks. I'll just bet he gives the collectors hell when they turn up, although they probably don't hear him.
This is a test of posting to the blog by e-mail. [EDIT] It arrived and posted immediately, although putting the picture beneath the text, which would not have been my preference. I wonder if there's a way to keyword and categorise remotely? Something to investigate.
I know, this must sometimes seem like the "trees in the breeze" blog. I just love these days though. The movement, the sound, the frisson of risk when it's windy - and thankfully, mindful of the mayhem in foreign parts, rarely more than that here in England.
Visually it's an intriguing challenge for still photography. Shutter speed here is about 1/20th sec. With the surprisingly non-VR 24-70mm f2.8 Nikkor zoom that is about as slow as I want to go, but by a happy coincidence is also what I wanted for the shot.
And that tree in a neighbouring garden in Colchester is just magnificent. Too big really for such an urban setting.
I made a few pictures of this scene, have whittled them down to three, and am torn on which is best because the other two have more bare, stationary branches in them which contrast well with the thrashing leaves. But I like the way the clouds work in this one.
Sunday found me in convoy behind the estimable Dr Kilian Hochstein Mintzel in his 1940s Jeep, to a car boot sale of all things.
It was very windy, and gusty with it, which was making life difficult for those who were trying to ply their wares.
The amount of litter flying around was sad but inevitable - not that the gulls were complaining. It did make for an irresistible image as Kilian’s son Julian scampered over to arrest some airborne boxes.
Visiting a car boot sale makes you realise just how many things there are that you never realised you never needed.
The Jeep of course does not have a boot, but then we weren’t selling - although I imagine the vehicle itself would sell very readily, rusty or not, given the amount of interest it attracts wherever it goes.
I’m delighted to have been asked to be the production photographer again for VFDrama, this time for their forthcoming version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
I got some initial shots on file from the first rehearsals this weekend.
The unlikely venue was Marlow Rowing Club, in a beautiful summery setting alongside the River Thames, hence the exercise equipment - though the way Joe and Greg were going at the sword-fighting practice (or bare metal pole fighting in this case) they were working up an appropriate sweat. This is clearly going to be a high-energy show.
While wandering around the nature reserve in Essex the other day I came across these remnants of an old pier. A little further inland there is a massive concrete wall, with signs of a futile attempt at explosive demolition.
An explanatory notice by the wall indicated that these are remains of a former sand and gravel extraction plant, of which there are a number in this area along the River Colne. What is now a wildlife reserve was once an industrial site.
Driving away later, I went along a single carriageway road with passing places - seemingly newly-surfaced. It went through a very odd piece of landscape with earth piled on either side. When I parked and looked over one of these ramparts, I found present day extraction going on, with a mechanical digger shovelling sand into a hopper feeding a conveyor belt that headed away into the distance.
Dragonfly lifting off after drinking in flight from a pond
Let’s say at once I’m not a wildlife photographer. But I do like wildlife. And, visiting the nature reserve at Fingringhoe Wick, it would be only - natural - to have a camera along and stick something longish on the front of it. In this case the Nikon D3s with 70-200mm zoom and 2x converter.
For seabirds - for the most part, forget it, unless you’ve got a lens that’s currently out of my reach. Pleasant enough sitting in a hide watching the shoreline on such a balmy spring day - although a bit boring, I’m told by a regular. Winter is where the action is in Essex, with thousands of migrant visitors. But photographically, something of an overstretch for me.
However, back from the shore at a freshwater pond, other flying things present a different challenge: dragonflies are tantalisingly within reach. And this is where you could go mad trying to ‘capture’ them. I quickly learnt:
Combine these last two and you are in with a chance. Even so, photographing them ‘on the fly’ is not easy, so I was quite pleased to get anything at all.
Aren’t they fabulous? Incidentally if anyone can tell me what type they are I’d be grateful. [EDIT: Libellula quadrimaculata or Four-spotted Chaser, thank you Mrs Diemoz.]
And these …? (and what are they up to?)
Ah! I think these two are Pyrrhosoma nymphula, the Large Red Damselfly. I have now discovered the British Dragonfly Society. I should have known.
A Saturday stroll through the Misbourne Valley: targeted for obliteration by the HS2 rail line.
OK I exaggerate. Targeted for a huge tunnel entrance in fact, as part of the London to Birmingham white elephant. Personally I prefer the landscape as it is, notwithstanding the existing dual carriageway road and a twin track rail line.
The locals - who enjoy some of the most gorgeous housing in England - are not happy.
We lay in a field of long grass and watched a red kite swooping on baby rabbits. Of course I only had the little PEN with me and totally the wrong lens for these sort of wildlife antics.
Pottering about in West Mersea, I happened to be walking right next to the RNLI inshore lifeboat station when its alarm sounded.
Men came running from the adjacent boat park and went inside. The front door rolled up, and the twin outboard engines were cranked upwards as the boat in its launch cradle was backed down the ramp by its big-wheeled tractor. Into the water and away - I reckon, within four minutes from the shout. I don’t know what their target is but as a sailor I was impressed.
It was such a glorious afternoon that it seemed incongruous that someone should be in difficulty out at sea, though of course all sorts of accidents can happen. I asked two men who had remained at the boathouse where the lifeboat had gone to.
“Boat sinking,” one said. “Off old Tollesbury pier.” I know no more for now.
The lifeboat’s name by the way is City of Bradford V (quite a mouthful for a RIB). It bears the number B-753.
In Dad’s Taxi back to Pigott’s Farm, where auditions are being held for VFDrama’s next escapade: Romeo and Juliet.
Pigott’s is famous in amateur music circles, I learn, for its music camps, which date back many years and were brought to the farm by the late father of the present owner. I came across an obituary of him that was published in The Independent in 1997.
It’s a delightful place and one can see how it inspires music, painting, indeed a general focus on whatever artistic endeavour is in hand.
Going, going ….
So, back to that trip I made to Wiltshire last week, through those vivid yellow fields of oilseed rape.
I was there to shoot portraits of five-month-old Sam, whose parents had baulked at the quality-to-cost ratio of a certain high street chain operation.
We had two sessions interrupted by a nap (for Sam) and lunch outdoors in the sunshine for the grown-ups. He was very obliging even though he did have a tendency sloooowly
to topple
over
sideways
when unpropped.
Everyone was pleased with the outcome. So that was a good day out.
I’m going to revisit something I posted a little over a month ago mentioning the renowned education journalist and former BBC correspondent Mike Baker.
I photographed him, in passing, as he was chairing an event I was at. He looked the very picture of health, charm and bonhomie.
Well, he wasn’t. Now that he himself has gone public with it, I can say that - although none of us knew at the time - Mike, who has never smoked and always kept very fit, running and cycling, was about to be diagnosed with lung cancer when these pictures were taken.
You wouldn’t wish such a condition on anyone, obviously - but good grief, Mike Baker?! Everyone who knows and loves him (and they are many) is shocked and wishes him the very best as he goes into treatment - which I must say he seems to be tackling with all the courage, intelligence, thoroughness and indeed self-deprecating humour (what can chemo do to his hair that nature wasn’t already?) that make him the splendid person he is.
A year ago I was also ending a long and far less distinguished career with the BBC (latterly also as an education correspondent) to seize the very lucky opportunity to spend more time with those I love and doing the things I love. Mike’s predicament is one of those cold wet slaps in the face that remind us why that is always the right thing to do.
Shot through my study window - which, I know, could do with a clean and is like sticking a jam jar over the end of the 70-200 - but it’s early, I’m in my dressing gown! Lovely light and a frisky breeze catching the neighbours’ silver birch tree.
In the afternoon, the bamboo was also in motion:
OK, I cracked and finally got around to mowing the lawn too. Found the cat’s missing collar in the long grass. Birds safe.
Otherwise it was a day spent mostly processing hundreds of performance photos from Spring Awakening. I love Lightroom. These are going onto Flickr for the kids, but not publicly at present. Most of them anyway:
Joe Eason as Moritz Stiefel, which is a great theatrical part
For this week’s third landscape shot I revisited a corner of Common Wood to continue a series begun last November with a merged image of leaves and trees.
The original sits splendidly as a large canvas print on a wall in my home and, in a modified crop, in The Stani Gallery. I love the depth of it. When I was last there, with the bare winter branches, I found it difficult to pinpoint the location to begin with. Now, with new spring growth, the distinctive spray of leaves in the right foreground made it easier to find.
While I was in the area I also made some pictures of other bluebell glades - very different from those in Essex the other day: less dense, more mysterious perhaps, more subtle in the early grey light.
Driving through Wiltshire - for reasons I’ll return to in a later post - I found myself wondering when these swathes of brilliant lemon yellow became a quintessential part of the English rural scene?
When I was young such sights did not exist. Then there was a phase during which the planting of oilseed rape seemed controversial if only because of its howling visual impact. And now? It’s just another everyday sign of spring.
Glorious evening light in the garden, with a breeze making giddy pom-poms of the lilac bush in the corner.
Delightful day spent wandering about in West Mersea, with scallops and a glass of chilled white wine for lunch in the Oyster Bar.
Mersea Island, for those who don’t know it (my friend Alistair, who was asking) is indeed an island just south of Colchester, albeit with a very permanent causeway to it. It’s a great place for coastal walks with varying degrees of habitation and interesting photographic opportunities - sea-going boats, houseboats, seabirds, beaches, beach huts, erosion and reclamation and so on. And excellent fresh seafood.
It was also my first opportunity to test my newly-acquired Nikon GP-1 GPS unit. Which tells us, with a single click out of the metadata in Lightroom, that this photo was taken here. Yeah, close enough.
We looked up “bluebell woods”, as you do at the end of April, and went for a walk in Hillhouse Wood near the charming little old village of West Bergholt, just north west of Colchester.
Wow. It is always an amazing sight isn’t it, so many beautiful flowers carpeting the ground almost wherever you look, punctuated with pink campion.
Earlier, our friend Ruth had fashioned a bracelet made from some bluebells growing in Melanie’s garden, musing that it might be possible to craft something similar in ceramic. Good luck!
I was interested to see that the flowers’ stamens are a delicate shade of green.
A scene from the final moments in the dress rehearsal for VFDrama’s production of Spring Awakening: A new musical, which opened on Thursday.
Shooting a live stage show is always going to be tough given the nature of shifting stage lighting. Much of this was on 6400 (as in this case) or 12800 ISO, the D3s coming into its own along with that fabulous 70-200mm f2.8 zoom. I scrabbled about doing my bit.
This one was really on the edge because of the light falloff where they were standing: 200mm zoom at ISO 12800, f2.8 and 1/60th. I’ve used a little noise suppression.
This is challenging work but I love doing it and if any other drama groups are in need of a photographer I’d be very happy to hear from you.
I’ve been closely involved with this project from the start because it was conceived by my actor/producer son, Joe (below).
He and his very talented friends (and younger sister, Alice) have expended blood, sweat and tears on it over the past few months.
I’m not going to wax on about young people today, save to say that if you give them a chance they can do fantastic things. This lot are almost all teenagers and they have come up with one of the most energetic, intelligent, emotional amateur shows I’ve ever seen anywhere. I’m immensely proud of them. Also delighted to pick up any reflected glory! - but it’s been all their work, helped in the last few weeks by expert guidance from director Matt Dye.
Great fun doing the character shots for the show that’s rather dominating our lives this week.
These kids have worked incredibly hard on the production and I really hope all goes well for the final rehearsals and the opening on Thursday.
The girls in costume singing to generate some publicity in High Wycombe for VF Drama’s production of the musical Spring Awakening, which opens on Thursday.
The VF Drama gang are off to Sir William Ramsay’s performing arts centre for two days of rehearsals on their actual stage, with lights and props, ahead of the opening night of Spring Awakening on Thursday. Exciting. For me, there are more full-costume cast photos to be done later today.
Urgh, let’s hope their acting is better than their coffee making …
