Out & about - Queen's Staith; York

sb010082               Queen's Staith, York

The glowering sky promises more rain for the already swollen and overflowing River Ouse. As land and river management has changed upstream of York the floods have become more frequent, and damaging.

What the Duck?

Some time ago Aaron Johnson started doodling.

What emerged in the mid 2000s was What The Duck.

A strip aimed unashamedly at the modern working photographer.

Think Scott Adams with a camera. He pokes and prods at the joys and insanities we work around day in, day out.

From his site you can get a desktop widget for the Mac; a great way to start the working week. They normally raise a sometimes slightly uncomfortable smile. This week's raised a guffaw. I'd managed today (yesterday as this post goes up) to find a Wi-Fi connection leant against a pillar box*

*for anyone under twenty; get someone to explain about the wonder of writing letters on paper if you don't know what one of these is.

A note on copyright. The WTD graphic and the strip are © Aaron Johnson; see whattheduck.net  for details

Sign of the times - Tha's bin telled!

sb009107     Bradford, West Yorkshire

The title is cod Yorkshire dialect for "You have been warned".

Fare - Sweets on a Sunday

sb010020    Traditional sweets, York

Iced fudge in John Bull's sweet shop. A small shop filled with the traditional sweets people of my generation remember with affection. And children of my daughter's generation discover with delight.

In the window - What the cluck?

sb010070        Clandestine Chicken

With all the competition for our attention window dressers have to be increasingly inventive. So what's the modern way to sell clothes?

A toy chicken in Groucho Marx glasses. Obvious really.

Out & about - Yesterday in York

sb010016   Not today dear......

sb010024   .... there's too much river.

I was up in York yesterday.

A day when the weather forecaster offered warm and bright. What I actually got was chilly, draughty and not really very bright at all.

The River Ouse was running in spate, high and fast with spring run off. So much run off that boat trips were cancelled and riverside walks impassable.

sb010018  Bike friendly York...

sb010079 ... wet bike anyway

Five things that keep me loving photography, part1

sb009462   Stairway, Pond Street, Sheffield

Allen Murabyashi, CEO of PhotoShelter wrote a thought provoking blog, a rant about why he loves photography


This got me thinking, apparently thinking is good for me at my age.

What keeps me so in love with photography?

What reinvigorates me when it all feels stale?

After some 'assistance' in the bar from my daughter I just about managed to narrow it down to five things, approximately. She then pointed out I can't waffle on about all five (approximately) things in one post.

That's why over the next couple of weeks or so there'll be five posts as a series "Five things that keep me loving photography."




1]  Making a print

Out & about - Westfield, Bradford

sb008742   Westfield development; Bradford

A cold, grey autumn sky lowers over the stalled Westfield development in Bradford. This temporary park was created in an attempt to reduce some of the visual impact of what one wag described as "the biggest hole in Yorkshire". 

The mural actually reads "Urban Garden" but because of the angles of the road and wall this is what most passers by see.

In the window - A bear in a Wolf's window

sb009905   The bear in the window*

Why, when you finally get through the commute and into town is there always some great bear in the comfy window seat?


* for the sceptical, this is a straight shot, there's no Photoshop Aperture trickery involved. The Wolf of the title is Wolf & Co hairdressers, it's their window.

PhotoShelter - getting going part 4

One of my gallery windows

I've been using PhotoShelter for just over three weeks now, it's probably a good time to take stock and reflect.

Ss some thoughts so far;

Well, I now have a library site, with some images priced for sale. There aren't enough of them yet (about 100 as this goes up) and the gallery organisation is less than great, that will take time. But a start has been made and I'll tweak things over the next couple of months.

I wasn't well prepared before I opened my PhotoShelter account. My life would have been easier had I prepared a large number of images set to the correct size and ready to go. In my defence I got a time limited offer email and dived in perhaps a little too early. As a result I've been rushing to catch myself up; including changing the layout of my blog and website to fit in with the PhotoShelter pages. They fit together reasonably seamlessly now. This coming week I'll be changing my stationery to match too.

My workflow has got a bit of a kick up the efficiency. I created a series of folders on the Mac for my PhotoShelter uploads, pending, progress and done. I upload from "progress" via the uploader; I can still be processing images in Aperture and export the A3 versions to the 'pending' file. I've created an export preset in Aperture so this file export is now pretty much a couple of mouse clicks, whether I'm exporting one or a dozen files. After some messing about sorting I now upload all files to the "default" folder in my archive. I drag and drop them into the appropriate folders and then galleries from within my PhotoShelter account. This has proven to be the most efficient route for me, your folder structure may offer other efficient routes.

PhotoShelter's SEO grader is proving invaluable, flagging the many things I've either missed or didn't know about. I've no custom pages, meta descriptions are missing and the gallery descriptions are patchy. Embarrasingly I'd forgotten to add page titles. These are all important factors for SEO. They'll be corrected over the next week. The only thing I'm not really keen on is being unable to add my favicon from the template system I'm using. You can do this if you're using the manual customisation route though, it would be rally nice to have this as a template option.

I'm reasonably happy with the way things are settling so far. All the mistakes have been mine, and easily corrected. These corrections have been helped by the very clear help, menu and analysis sytems provided by PhotoShelter. Time to get more images up there, and get some page titles added.

Passing scenes - Back to the commute

sb009049      Commuting on Supertram

Supertam serves Sheffield city centre from the outskirts, moving shoppers and commuters. Here it speeds past the wooded banks of the South Yorkshire Navigation.

A century or so ago the canal was the fast, state of the art transport; now it mostly sees pleasure craft and anglers.

Out & about - Off North Bridge, Doncaster.

sb008760      Tree and pylon, Old North Bridge, Doncaster

Decades apart, the tree and pylon stand rooted amidst the maze of tracks linking the east coast main line and the old train works at Doncaster. For some reason the mobile phone signal on the station remains, shall we say patchy.

Street art - The cat who goes?

sb009899        Stencilled cat; Meadow Terrace, Sheffield

I seem to be getting a thing about cats.

In the window - The cat who knows

sb009902     The cat who knows

Porter Pets' cat, a regular sight in their window. Like all cats he is aware that all knowledge is his and the rest of the world exists only as a collection of cat toys. He seems to delight in surprising small children of all ages as he uncurls from catnaps in the sunny window.

Trees - City trees

sb009710         Silver Birch; Sheffield city centre

Sheffield is a remarkably green city. Trees and patches of green are dotted throughout the city.

Here Silver Birch (Betula pendula) grow on the edge of the city centre, between the Library and one of the Universities. At night these branches form a significant roost for Tree Sparrows (Passer montanus), a welcome group of fellow city dwellers.

Shop front - John Carr & Co (Electrical)

sb008824 John Carr electrical; Abbeydale Road, Sheffield

A sign of the changing face of British retail.

On Abbeydale Road in Sheffield a long established shop lies empty. It's window now containing nothing but dust and reflections.

Noctilucence - Happy Valentines's day

sb008531  Futon shop window; Devonshire Street, Sheffield

You have remembered haven't you?

Out & about - Climbing Works; really it does

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I've climbed since the age of three. It's the only sport I've ever really enjoyed, though I've only ever been at best a mediocre practitioner. Perhaps because it's as much a mental exercise as a physical one, one that has helped immensely in living with manic depression*.

This image was made in the changing room of The Climbing Works. Probably one of the largest bouldering walls around; certainly one of the best and friendliest.


*Apparently this ghastly disease should now be called bipolar disorder; I've lived with the ruddy thing for over thirty years and manic depression describes it perfectly. Bipolar disorder makes it sound like one is a sexually adventurous penguin.

Technique - Edges

I'm planning to start photography workshops again next year, working back through my notes some simple things repeatedly cropped up.

This blog seems an ideal place to revisit these. They'll be the simple things we can all do; especially with the rise of the chip it's all too easy to get bogged down in pixel counts, burst rates and zoom ratios.








This short piece looks at edges. Specifically here the edge of the frame. Our visual systems have evolved to detect difference, especially in edges; a consequence of the "Four Fs" theory*. So how does this apply to photography? Well the quadrilateral that forms your image has at least four very strong edges. If any of these are broken the viewer's eye will snap to that break. The same goes for edges inside the frame, breaking the line grabs the eye. As we tend to consciously attend to the centre of the image such mistakes are usually picked up before the shutter is pressed.

These two images show what I'm writing about. Image 9715 and 9716 are of the same wall, an easy image to make. The tonal range fitted the chip easily and the grass provided a perfect midtone to meter off. As usual I used manual spot metering; on my E3 I find this approach suits best. Exactly the same system as I use with film. What I didn't do however is carefully check the edges of the frame. Look closely at your right side of the frames; on 9715 there's an unintended distracting line of light; past the edge of the wall.

sb0009715

sb009716

<  Look closely at this edge, a thin distracting line of bright detail I missed in the viewfinder. I spotted it on the LCD panel under magnification.


















< Here I recomposed slightly, cropping out the distracting brightness.












There is an easy way to reduce such mistakes, practise rolling your eye around the edge of the viewing screen on full coverage cameras. If your viewfinder only covers 93% or so (some do, it's roughly the film area an automatic minilab printed) then, with your eye at the viewfinder, roll the camera in a circle so you get a good look at each edge. Of course you can always check on your review screen; or less conveniently, once you get the file open in Aperture. Of course with digital capture practising these techniques is much cheaper than when we all used film.

Remember however, the eye grabbing feature of a broken edge can be used for effect. It can imply movement, loss, threat, mystery. I've used it particularly in some fashion work. Like all "compositional rule" breaking just make sure you use it mindfully.


*The hindbrain (the bit that twitches at Ride of the Valkyries or the opening chords of Betthoven' Fifth) spots movement and thinks can I Feed off it? Do I have to Flee? Do I Fight it? Can we F@@@?

Out & about - Half term enticement

sb009479

Lent half term is a traditional time for a short family break. That's why, in the first few weeks of the new year we see modern versions of the classic rail excursion poster on our daily commute.

I wonder if these posters will become as collected and loved as their early twentieth century antecedants?

Street art - Watching?

sb009855  Spray eyes; Charter Row, Sheffield

Velo - Table and cycle. Sheffield

sb008860

The Peace Gardens from a cafe window.

A somewhat off kilter mix of smoking, fresh air and exercise on a nitheringly cold day.

PhotoShelter - getting going part 3

sb00121      Trinkets for sale, Sheffield

Previously posting about PhotoShelter I've looked at general set-up and upload. All is still going well.

Now for getting the stuff for sale. I'm just looking at RM sales here. You can choose to set up RF, Personal Use and print packages either via the print vendor network or via self fulfilment. The process is much the same via simple drop-down menus and radio buttons.

Noctilucence - Here to there? Sheffield

sb008332

sb008172

Book Review - An inner silence: The portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson

*

Now, I'll admit to a little bias here. Henri Cartier-Bresson remains an inspiration to me.

Notwithstanding my personal bias, this is a sumptuous colection of portraits; the first to be drawn entirely from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. The ferocious face of Samuel Beckett glaring off leftward demands you open the book.

Out & about - Birmingham International Station

sb008299

Street art - Peacock…

sb009599   Painted Peacocks; Sidney Street, Sheffield

All around Sheffield local artists have decorated walls and boardings, brightening the town wonderfully.

This peacock is a particularly vivid and eye-catching example.

Sign of the times - No, the other left…

sb00783  Redevelopment(2006); Sheffield rail station

In 2006 it was decided that Sheffield Railway Station should be redeveloped. Now, change happens and I'm certainly happy my house has modern plumbing and central heating. It's just that change often links itself inevitably with disruption. Sheffield, in it's own inimitable style took this link to heart.

This was the scene which greeted us commuters for quite some time. Now the works are finished and we have a lovely open, sweeping concourse with fountains that sound like a chugging steam train; really quite lovely.

None of us ever worked out what a "drop of area" was though.

PhotoShelter - getting going part 2

sb009771

The previous post about PhotoShelter I commented on an initial set-up to get my library pages matching the look and feel of my other promotional materials. All went well. Now for the meat(or tofu, your choice); getting some images up there.

Beside the seaside - A memory from childhood past…

sb009858 Engine No.4 Loch; Rail station, Douglas

The Isle of Man holds many fond memories for me. As a family we would regularly take a month there during the long summer break, as well as a week in spring and autumn. It's where I first used a camera; a very simple and much missed Kodak Instamatic. For anyone interested in preserved rail(as I was when a child) it really is a must visit place. The ice cream and fell walking are pretty good too.

I was sorting some old photographs, and unsurprisingly, the steam railway featured heavily. Some of the images fit in well in my catalogue as historical references. After all, what's more nostalgic than an old postcard size print, slightly faded and scuffed?  Here, sometime in the late 1970s locomotive No.4 "Loch" waits in Douglas terminus.

I'm going back this year, for the first time in twenty years. The island forms an integral part of my interest in tourism and nostalgia, both personal and sociologically. It will be interesting to see how things have changed.

Passing scenes - Message to all humans...

sb007324 Beside the A14; Fen Drayton, Cambridgeshire

Not much to add to that really. Except, why in the middle of Cambridgeshire farmland beside the A14?

In the window - Making a spectacle…

sb009403 Spectacle advertisement; Surrey Street, Sheffield

Spectacles, when I was at school, were not the most stylish of things. Now they appear to have become a major fashion accessory, the label sometimes larger than the frame. These rather more stylish frames are from Paul Smith.

And before anyone asks, yes I do like Paul Smith's designs.