It's all been done and said before - time for change

Seems like time is ripe for change and a big one. With 2010 nearly upon us the talk of all the New Year Resolutions is building, I liked a message on twitter.com from @grahamwarsap about making a list of 10 things to do in 2010. A few days to work on the 10 things list for me I think, but while you're thinking how about some musical inspiration

Stranglers Something Better Change

Don't you like the way I move when you see me?
Don't you like the things that I say?
Don't you like the way I seem to enjoy it?
When you shout things but I don't care

Something's happening and it's happening right now
You're too blind to see it
Something's happening and it's happening right now
Ain't got time to wait

I said something better change
I said something better change
I said something better change
I said something better change

Don't you like the way I dance?
Does it bug you?
Don't you like the cut of my clothes?
Don't you like the way I seem to enjoy it?
Stick my fingers right up your nose

Change!

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BUZZed again

A quick post for the first time in ages, seems to be par for the course these days. Lots to come as I've got a pile of pictures from some shoots and a recent trip to Finland but they'll come later.

Last night due to a fortuitous set of events I went to go and see Buzz on their latest 'Rock till it drops off tour'. Buzz is a bit of a special band for us, they were the band that I went to see one Sunday night in July and I met my now wife, and they also played at our wedding. Of course we're all a bit older now but once again Buzz didn't disappoint and the crowd was full of quite a lot of familiar faces from many years ago too.

Just as long as Mac, Sparky, Nobby and Wink can keep on and play that funky music till you die things are not so bad. Technology has moved on and now there's a myspace page for the guys at a URL that can only be described as obsfuscated:

• http://www.myspace.com/buzzaldrinmemorialhospitalsecondeleven
  

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Coping with massively increased workload

If someone asks you to take on the whole job of another person or two in your company then it's often linked to an amount of corporate restructuring. The problem becomes how on earth did your busy eight hour day just get made in to 24 hours of madness and most importantly can you cope physically and mentally with all the extra. My own approach to this kind of situation has been to radically look at all the stuff that needs doing and booking it in my day in 30 minute or hour long chunks. Blog posting though has taken a back seat for now in case you hadn't noticed.

For the period of time you select you only do the task at hand, that means no cofffee or tea break, let the answer phone take that call and close the email application. Or if you are in the email application for the task then make sure new mail notification is OFF. This is quite effective and helps but you find that the brain doesn't rest easy when it's learning and doing lots. For this you need another strategy or it's a short term of sleepless nights followed by a car accident as you drive to or from work. The importance of brain switch off, or at least on to simmering instead of boiling, cannot be overstated. You have to find something that you can do that completely tasks the brain with not working. For me that's early morning walks in the countryside where I can get some fresh air and concentrate on sheep, insects, plants, flowers, birds, trees in fact anything that's not a computer or a website or a magazine or even driving! Thinking it through, then probably the quintessentially English post on the blog of fellow photographer and friend Nick Wilcox-Brown may be what started my early morning walks approach.

For me it works, I can walk for half an hour or so early in the morning at a fast pace in open country side and then I can get in to work with a state of mind that is not simply frustration and tired. As a bonus you do see some of natures great sights, the sun shining through the long grasses, the swooping flight of red kites over the terrain of Oxfordshire and even the odd early morning hot air balloon.


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The shoot that nearly wasn't

A chance to take some pictures in a studio doesn't come round all that often, and so with a plan and some fellow photographers the plan was made.

1. Choose a time and date for the shoot we could all make
2. Find a venue for the studio, a nice big village hall plenty of space for a studio set-up
3. Find a model or maybe even two willing to model perhaps time for prints

So you do all that then four days before the hall you booked tells you the builders are coming and the ceiling is coming down. Do you really need all that space, can a smaller room do? Time for cunning plan B (and actually plan C too). With the studio options using a local hall running out plan B was a location shoot in an industrial area a litte off the beaten track. The model was happy to move locations for somewhere unheated and open to the elements, the photographers all charging Speedlite batteries in anticipation. So that was plan B.

The results with big thanks to Lauzie_b from PureStorm are a testament to the flexibility of the Canon wireless flash system. All night the three photographers used the same Speedlites, sometimes setting power individually from the master, sometimes using ratio control with E-TTL II but mostly with novel lighting clamps and brackets.

We made the most of a peeling paint backdrop in the first two then moved to a blue painted door in the next. At the end of the shoot we had four Speedlites on the go in an X shape lighting Lauzie_b from both sides front and rear. It was also nearly dark.

Remember the plan C mentioned above, it happened too! When the hall ceiling issue cropped up I put in plan C in case, an afternoon shoot with a model in some local woods. Needless to say this happened and the shoot finished around 45 minutes before the one with Lauzie above. Time for a swift coffee and blueberry muffin at Costa coffee in between shoots. I'll post some of the Jennie shots later.

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Where I live update

Two posts in the same month, what has become of me? This is even more important as this is the where i live picture for this month too. This was taken a few evenings ago on a much needed walk around the village. Lately it's got incredibly hectic at work and I've some new assignments that means a lot of learning new processes and getting up to speed to lead some projects that are already underway.

For these kind of walks I like to use the quiet time to move things round in my head to make sense of them and so whilst a camera is a given the lens I took was one with no choices; a simple 24mm lens. Taking macro shots of flowers was not the intention as I set off, but seeing the sunset quite early on the walk I thought that maybe with me laying flat on the ground I could explore the sunset from a whole different 'plants eye view' perspective. I think I need to try some more images exploring the look of the world from a marked different perspective, maybe it will further strengthen my use of wider angle imagery.

I'm already thinking that it will be a 10-22mm lens on the camera for a coming trip to Spain.

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Time goes by so slowly

Hardly seems like it was February then all of a sudden a dawning realisation that it's May. Did I really not post for that long? Prompted by a post on Martin Gisborne's blog about a barren month dawning realisation that it had been a rather quiet March and April here too. The more strange thing is that I've been out taking some pictures over that time and have some portrait shots I'm really pleased with. Some are taken on a training day where I got to shoot a model or two - nice training.

Bridal portrait taken with the EOS 5D Mark II in natural daylight filtered through some blinds.

Then in an almost similar location just a day or so later I got this one. Not a bride but still a nice portrait and one that has me enjoying the EF 50mm f/1.2L lens again.

Finally still in training I progressed and saw the opportunity for some daylight flash combination. Take a long lens, use it quite wide open to lose the background and wheel in a voice activated lightstand to hold a Speedlite 430EX II just out of the frame camera right.

So March and April were not without pictures, but certainly were missing on the blog posts.

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Where did February go?

It seems like only days ago since posting the snowy landscape pictures, yet as I sit in a hotel room on some seriously costly internet access (more for 24 hours than I pay in a month at home!) it is scary and disconcerting to see 24 staring back at me from the face of my watch. Duly chastised for 16 days without a blog post I must be...

Bit of a wirlwind, shot a great young couple a few weeks back and posted them in the flickr stream. Even had cause to use one of the shots in my day job, with the appropriate approvals and releases of course.

And no it's not this picture, but it is this model. Still I was a little blown away with the results and the look of this model. Even now I'm wondering if the alternative of a 180 mile round trip from this hotel to my local camera club to shoot her again would have been the better thing to do this evening. There'll be other times I keep telling myself and then find my post about the amazing frosted landscape...
So since I'm at the focus on imaging exhibition in Birmingham tomorrow I'm going to have to keep a lid on my newly reinvigorated enthusiasm for studio photography and avoid a trip to the flash centre booth for some more studio lights.

Ghost Rider / Rush
I've been reading a fantastic and meaty book that I got for Christmas called Ghost Rider, Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart. Having a long time enthusiasm for many things related to the band Rush I was pointed in the direction of the book in a random internet search. It's a book I've seen and thought about before, but now seems to be the right time to read it. The story is of Neil's rehabilitation back in to life following the double tragedy of losing his daughter and then wife. So much of the book is packed with an insight in to dealing with grief, and seeing the way he deals with what life serves up. It's also peppered with bits of Rush lyrics (penned by Neil and co.) that seem to be fitting to the music on my ipod - even on shuffle. Just this morning I was stood in a shower thinking how long I had been interested in Rush's music - probably ever since A Farewell to Kings and then almost scarily the iPod serves up Xanadu (from that album) but the version from the Section Quartet on a Rush Tribute album. Weird this coincidence. Still it's a great book that is nearly finished, and I know that at least in reality the end isn't that Rush breaks up as they played a 30th anniversary show - I went it was spine chillingly good, and have since played another studio album tour - I went again...

Rubbish hotels
Travel and hotels is not all it's cracked up to be I've just secured a room move from one with mouldy shower walls and a main room that you can touch both sides of the room if you stretch your arms wide. New room is nice, but the hotel is busy and a bit faceless with mega expensive food and room service that is taking orders for delivery in at least an hour and a half! Hello it's eight thirty I'd like something before 10pm!

February where_I_live
Where I live could be interesting this month... do I post the picture of the mouldy bathroom that an A2 sized print of got me the room move. I really liked walking in to reception as people are checking in to see the duty managers face. He seems more concerned about the possibility of more pictures showing up before I check out. Seems like a picture in this hotel is worth an upgrade to a room with a 300 pound a night price tag more than the one I was in!
Or should I make the where I live of the pictures from the walk in the country side where I took the pictures in the snowy landscapes post. In my thinking it's more fitting to my goal, and was fitting in terms of pre planned shooting, even though I took advantage of the conditions. Does this sound like a cop out yet???


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Cold weather fun

Ever since I woke on Monday morning the landscape outside my front door has been a lot different from normal, we've had some snow courtesy of a weeklong cold snap. It's made driving conditions treacherous and for some of the week the local children have been enjoying a couple of days at home as it tough for the teachers to reach schools. On Friday morning I woke early and saw that my car was heavily frosted, yet by the time I'd showered and had breakfast snow was falling rapidly and there was almost 3 inches of snow on top of it when I left home. It seems that the Oxfordshire area where I live was hit pretty hard and many major routes were all but impassable.

So with the weekend here and some bright clear skies it's a great chance to get out and take some photos of the landscape under a thick blanket of frozen snow. The temperature overnight on Friday had made the slushy snow of Friday turn in to the rock hard ridged ice of Saturday, and the wonderful powdery snow had turned to fine crystalline snow with a hard ice crust. Seizing the chance to get out I walked out of the edge of the village in to a white winter wonderland and shot pictures for about two and a half hours. Wrapped up warm I was fine until I realised that all the bright light had gone when I needed ISO 800 to have a chance to handhold shots with the 17mm wide-angle lens. The EOS 50D had no problems in being out in the cold for two and a half hours, even the battery still showed full despite quite a bit of low angle live view work and a lot of reviewing the histograms on the LCD.

There's a few more in my flickr photostream.

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Where I live - January

It's strange how the first month of the year has gone. Usually January is a gentle start, this year it seems more like it's the second half of the year than the beginning, and we're all playing catch-up already.

Ok so to the pictures for the personal where i live challenge....

I liked this picture as it was one I pre-visualised even before visiting the location, and when it came to getting the image it only took me four pictures to get the shot I eventually chose. Despite my initial writing and indeed thoughts about the night shot in the alley I decided that since this is the start of my project it needed some element that signified growth or journey. The low angle also was key, one of the other of the shots was taken from a higher viewpoint and looked like a simple snap. I processed the image twice, once for the black and white and once for the boots then layered them with a mask in photoshop.

Just two days after this shot above I was at my local camera club for a studio lighting course session. Despite some initial concerns with the available space and a conflict with the local allotment association annual meeting, the inspired choice of flash out in the car park made for some unexpectedly good set of pictures. Also a great set of willing models prepared to brave the cold weather in the improvised outdoor studio. I've also found that the Canon Studio Portrait picture style is actually rather good on this kind of picture. I used the P-STUDIO picture style in DPP when I did the RAW conversion.

I was using the EOS 50D, it's an amazing camera producing great results in low light as this portrait was taken at ISO 1600. There's been a lot about videos and low light coverage for the EOS 5D Mark II but the EOS 50D is also a pretty good camera. I am thinking that the RAW files from these DIGIC 4 cameras are a bit tougher for the computers and Canon DPP to process. My computers seem to struggle more with EOS 50D and EOS 5D Mark II images than they do with EOS-1Ds Mark III RAW images.

After my initial enthusiasm for the challenge there was a period of concern that this was going to be a dismal failure at the first step, but I'm now happy that I can go in to February having cleared the first step.

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CRM revenge

Previously I've written about the delights of telephone sales calls and some fun methods of dealing with such calls. I've just been sent this fantastic story of an elderly woman who writes a letter to her bank advising it of new processes for dealing with her as a customer - in essence turning the automated systems used by so many companies on their head.

http://finlandsfinest.blogspot.com/2008/10/forward-that-cracked-me-up.html

I can't wait for the first chance to put this one to use....!

I'm already thinking to follow the current ideas and request that they send me the company address so that I can write to them to inform them of the procedure to follow to contact me with appropriate security processes.

Still not made the picture for January where I live yet, and only 12 days to go.

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Lesson for all - capture the moment

Ahh the decisive moment, that point when it all comes together in a perfect frame. Sometimes we forget or don't take the pictures we see, thinking to come back later. Once again nature has reminded me that the moment is fleeting.

As I typed away at last evenings post I made the throwaway comment about warm weather and the loss of the pretty frozen landscape. Surprise..... it's bright sunshine, warm winds and the only frozen patches are few and far between in the morning. So remember in the case of hope and particularly, hope it stays like that until I'm ready to come and shoot it, there's two hopes; no hope and Bob Hope (he's dead). My perfect frozen picture landscape is gone today and I don't know when it will be back, maybe a year or more.

Lesson learnt, take your camera with you, it only gathers dust at home!

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Where i live update

Since I posted about the where i live project it's been nothing short of polar bear weather here. I had shot this picture on the way out to meet some friends for a pre-Christmas meal. I needed to walk this way and as I had a camera thought I'd snap the scene to remind me to come back to it. My thinking is some hard light exists under those street lamps and maybe that can be the tone for the picture. Alternative bring in an extra flash and use this as a background to a shot with a model in light with hard lighting. All seems quite sensible really. However back to the polar bear weather, my car showed -11 celsius on Tuesday night and the fields and trees round this area still have a pretty kind of permafrost on them. I think it comes from the consistent sub-zero temperatures and the combination with quite regular freezing fog in the evenings. I was driving this afternnon and I couldn't help but think that maybe the alleyway shot is not the one for January, but instead a super cool - landscape in the deep freeze - shot would be better. I'm still thinking to put the model in and maybe try to cool the background by using a half or even full CTO gel on a flash to light the model and then set the camera to tungsten to make the landscape more blue.

Lots of thoughts and still no picture though. Maybe tomorrow it will turn warm and the landscape deep freeze picture will be lost, I hope not.

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2009 photo project: Where I live..

I've been thinking over the nice Christmas break that I need to stop eating mince pies... errr nope, actually I've been thinking of my own personal challenge for 2009 and this is what I've come up with;

Where I live

All too often we make grand plans but this is one that's really possible to achieve and will make me plan shoots better and more regularly. I'm planning on a picture each month that I have to pre-visualise and execute in the month, and repeat for each month of this year. Follow along if you like I'll be putting pictures in my flickr stream with the tag where_i_live and the only real restriction I'm placing is that the shots all have to be taken in the area I live. It's a chance for me to get out and shoot in the local area and also find or use some new locations and subjects. You the readers of this can follow on and make your own where_i_live pictures. Think of it as a acheivable and learning goal rather than a weak attempt at a 365 that fails with only 1 picture per month.

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Resolution

Guess what; I wrote this last year. I'm hoping to still be in the nice dreamland considering all the options and experiences to be revealed to me in 2009.

Too often we start the year with grand plans, picture a day on flickr, give up the day job and become a professional photographer, take better photos, loose the excess weight gained over Christmas, post more often on the blog etc. Perhaps the only rule of resolutions is that you need to make some so that there is something to have broken by the time February comes round, but that would be the pessimist talking, more on that later.

1. My first 2009 resolution is to take a lot more people shots and develop my skills in engaging with models as a result.

Switches on the Austin Powers voice: Yeah, baby, yeah

Thank you for the tip Mr. Strobist

When I've looked back at previous five or six years photos there's been lots of animals landscapes and sport shots, but I've severely under shot the human race. There was a great peice on mega photographer Chase Jarvis' site earlier in the month of December where he talked about what it takes. The reference to 10,000 hours of trying made some sense to me. In the past - dim and distant - I shot film, a lot of film. As a self funded amateur photographer with a day job, I routinely shot 150 rolls of film for a couple of years straight. I shot mainly motor racing and some glamour stuff in a studio. I shot a lot of pictures, and looking back I realise now that experience really honed my skills. I could pan with cars at all speeds with all kinds of lenses almost as if it was second nature. I could do the old glamour two light setup really easy but never went too far beyond it except by accident. I was a lot younger and single: cars and girls and photography floated my boat so I put in the hours.
Fast forward a bunch of years and now I can still pick up a camera and pan with all kinds of stuff, but I've looked for more use of the skill. I found that I could pan with horse drawn carriages in Florence Italy in the rain. The technique is still there.
Glamour models; not done much in the recent years and I'm now more looking to people pictures that have more appeal than the same stock poses of the same girls week in week out.

Call for models... photographer needs you to collaborate on photo projects - leave me some messages in the comments if you're interested. I get chance to practise and improve my photography and some great pictures to demonstrate what I can do, you get the pictures from the shoot to do what you like with.

2. The next resolution for 2009 will be the megapixel driven one, I think that this could be the year my ReadyNAS needs some bigger hard disks, as the current crop of cameras sure fill up memory cards and the ReadyNAS at a heck of a rate. I also need to get out of the iVIEW/Expression Media hole. No progress on this software lately that convinces me to keep on putting in time with it. But what else would work for me? Aperture, Lightroom, PhotoStation, Extensis Portfolio? It's a big task there's around 20K images in my library, but solving it will make picture finding simpler again.

3. With some more chance to think I've decided the final resolution for 2009 should be a little less technical and more related to approach. So for 2009 I'm going to really try the positive side. By this I mean look for the chance or opportunity first, not the barriers or the reasons not to do something. Mentally I need to embed the following question in my brain;

What can this project, or opportunity, help me to acheive?

Happy 2009 and let's see how much progress I've made on these three resolutions in February.


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Happy New Year

Following tradition I've spent the evening with family and a good bottle of wine watching Jools Hollands Hootenany on BBC2. Jools mentioned leap seconds in the programme and it got me thinking... or more likely googling.

search this on google to find out more 2008 extra second leap

Happy 2009 time for some zzzz

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