19/01/2009 by jim.

A low budget car shoot with Top Gear treatment.

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17/01/2009 by jim.

I shot these as backgrounds to some portraits that I am working on at the moment.

I shot 3 frames of each seperated by 2 stops and then merged them using Photomatix.

I will adjust this as a background to belnd into the portrait.

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16/01/2009 by jim.

A lot of photographers are talking about HDR or High Dynamic Range, some with love but many with distain.
I nearly always use some form of HDR even if it is only adjusting the levels or doing a bit of dodging and burning in much the same way as we used to do when making simple prints in the darkroom.
Using dedicated software to obtain extended dynamic range in my shots has not really appealed to me until my friend Martin showed me some of his work recently. Most of the post production work that I do here is quite subltle but every now and then you get a subject that just screams out for a bit of over the top processing.
For me it’s all about the finished photograph rather than the technique used to create it. Many purists disagree but I have spent half of my life in darkrooms creating special effects and for me this is no different.
The days are gone when it was acceptable just to apply a Photoshop filter to an indifferent photograph to make it special, but techniques can be used to enhance the visual story that you are telling with your photographs.

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14/01/2009 by jim.

The weather has been so cold just lately I have locked myself away browsing through some shots that I took in the late “Summer”!
I don’t know about you but these short, grey days just sap the energy from my brain and I long for a bit of Sun and saturated, colourful photos. It set me to thinking about film characteristics, in particular, Fuji Velvia. This was my favourite film for just about everything except product shots, the colours were just too bright for pack shots but you could feel the warmth in the landscapes and skin tones looked healthier.
The trend these digital days appears to favour desaturated colours and feeling a bit contrary decided to reprocess this shot in the Velvia style.

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04/01/2009 by jim.

I have been working on a job depicting the changing face of farming practices and this is a great time of the year to be shooting close to Sunset.

The secret is in the timing.
Uderexposing the outdoor ambient and fill in the subject with a hint of light.


These shots were taken in that magic light time about 1 hour before the Sun dips below the horizon.
Plus you still get home in time for tea.
You can’t beat it.

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03/01/2009 by jim.

Carrying digital SLR’s around for the last few years have aggravated an old back problem and I have been looking at ways of lightening the load while maintaining quality.
The Canon G9 is my first venture into digital compact cameras and as long as you keep the ISO low gives some quite acceptable results.
No way is it good enough for commercial shoots though, proving that pixel count is not the deciding factor in image quality. At least I can shoot with some degree of comfort.

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31/12/2008 by jim.

It’s getting to that time of the year again when you look back at some of the highs and lows of the past photographic year and add a few photos to the “must get around to printing” pile.
A New Year always starts a little slowly business wise so I am trying to get some of my pictures in some sense of order. Staring at the screen is giving me square eyes!
A big thank you to all of the people that I have met this past year who have filled my life with kindness and positive thoughts. I wish you all well for 2009.

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15/12/2008 by jim.

I have recently been making some of my favourite photographs into wall posters and was quite happy with my method of presentation - until my wife saw them!
I was under the impression that a black background would suit some of my pictures best but this is apparently a very male attitude. Seen from a female perspective, white makes a much better choice.
I guess that I should agree as when I make a Wedding presentation, the Bride always chooses the Ivory album while the Groom goes for the black leather cover and we all know the Bride is correct.

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30/11/2008 by jim.

Whenever you get a famous personality come to town it invites the typical media crush to get a photo while trying not to offend fans and annoy the subject themselves. It becomes very tempting just to shoot with on-camera flash and get the same shot as everyone else.
On this occasion Kate Adie arrived later than she wanted and three photographers ended up with 90 seconds to get our photographs. Fortunately all of the fans - a sell out event, were seated by then so I ushered her into a small area where I had set up a speedlite in a Lastolight ezybox at approximately 45 degrees to a chair and set Canon’s iTTL flash metering system on to ratio. I used a 580ex on-camera to fire the off-camera flash, giving the off-camera flash 3 stops more exposure than the fill in flash.
Using Canon’s iTTL is a way of shooting that the Strobist fraternity are only just starting to embrace but I have found it an excellent method of using of-camera flash when set up and shooting times are pushed to the limit and manually adjusting flash power outputs is not possible.
At least you end up getting a shot that is not the same as everyone else.

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15/11/2008 by jim.

I was looking for an image to use on a friends Birthday card and realised that when you work for the Press you have to be very careful when you alter the content of an image.
No such problem here. I wanted an image of Gateshead that a talented artist would appreciate.
I hope that you like it Alan.

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