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Camera Competition
We get a few people saying that Great British Landscapes is a little 'Film biased' and so to try to balance things up a bit, we're holding a competition to ask people to suggest their favourite digital photographers. Everyone who provides a suggestion and accompanies it with a reason why, will be entered into a draw to win ... a film camera!! We've been playing with some cheap cameras from more
With Landscape in Mind
Last week my wife and I accompanied Joe Cornish to a small cinema in Hyde Park, Leeds. Despite the strong temptation, we weren't going to see 'Kung Fu Panda 3D' and definitely not 'Hangover 2'. This was 'Joe Cornish 1' in a leading role in 'With Landscape in Mind', a production by Environment Films. Joe is only credited as 'presenter' but this is 'about' Joe Cornish and covers a more
Ektar 100 versus Velvia 100F
I spent a few days on the north Cornish coast in March and chanced upon a really good week. In fact perhaps too good as the weather was mainly of very hazy sunshine and even foggy evenings. This led me to concentrate more on details than the grand vista, but I did have some fun with moody foggy sunsets. Because of the stable light in the shade I thought that I would make a mini comparison of Velvia 100F more
Light, Composition or Subject?
I’ve read a few times in the past months that ‘light’ is always the most important thing in photography. Every time I read this I’ve felt a little more uncomfortable. This week a colleague pointed out another occurence in the popular press and as I was in the process of writing a couple more articles I thought I had to respond. The only way to really address this is to look at potential permutations of these three aspects of photography more
Mirrors Messages Manifestations – Minor White
Minor White only really had one major publication of his own in his lifetime. Mirrors Messages Manfiestations was published in 1968 and is a strange work. A combination of spiritual guide book, artist catalog, diary extracts and poetry it is a wonderful distillation of his approach to his work and life. Although some of the text is a little 'arty' it still warrants attention. The photographs show a keen mind at work trying to use the landscape (and cityscape) more
Minor White
Some photographers have an extended influence far beyond their public notoriety. Minor White epitomises these individuals. His work in analysing and teaching photography created a whole host of ‘followers’ and in some cases ‘acolytes’ and his writing still inspires today, but a lot of people don’t know his photography (or may be put off by his proclivities) which is a real shame. Hopefully this short biography will help as more
Joe Cornish in Black and White
We thought it would be topical to take a look at some of Joe Cornish’s black and white photographs and this brought up a few nice surprises along the way. more
Wilderness and the Mind of the Photographer
But does wilderness really exist or is it just in the mind of the photographer, who goes all starry eyed at the mention of the word?This article is written in response to that by Julian Barkway on Beauty, which had a wilderness connection, and as a result of Joe Cornish’s report from the great wilderness trek in NW Scotland. His book Scotland’s Mountains could be regarded as a homage more
Joe Wright
Dav Thomas sent me an email recently saying to take a look at Joe Wright's photographs as he saw something interesting going on. After looking myself I had to agree and so called Joe for a chat. He's only been taking photography seriously for about four years but there has been a major change in his outlook over the last year which caught both of our eyes. A systems architect living in Swindon, Joe has a particular love to more
The Psychology of Saturation
There has been some interesting discussion on the history of saturation boosting in photography in recent days, notably David Hyde on the excellent Landscape Photography Blogger website talks about "Did Velvia Film Change Landscape Photography". His topic was about how the use of hyperreal film such as Fuji Velvia and whether it fundamentally changed the look of landscape photography. Well the first question I'd ask is 'could you get saturated colour before Velvia came out?' and I think the more
Kodak’s New Portra 400 Film
Looking in Amateur Photographer this week shows healthy signs that film is nowhere near dead yet. They have featured a whole host of vintage great recently and the current issue has a 'Bigger Pictures on a Budget' which includes medium format cameras available second hand - although some aren't quite so budget as the recent purchase of a Mamiya 7 kit demonstrate. More about that in a future more
Introduction to Black and White photography
I’ve been asked by a couple of people to write some notes about black and white conversions and although I may not be the expert in this area, I thought it would be a good one to tackle and hopefully get some feedback from some people with more experience than me. 1) What to photograph 2) Preparing the file for conversion 3) Converting the colour file to black and white 4) Post processing Most articles and books I have read have spent the most more
Joe Rainbow
We recently took a look at a fantastic photograph by Joe Rainbow of Gunwalloe Scales and asked Joe Cornish to critique it and also asked him how he would approach the post processing of it. The results, whilst not far from Joe Rainbow's version, show some interesting aspects of technique and style. The original picture is shown below. https://youtu.be/5Xj34IfOHiE You can see more of Joe Rainbow's photography at more
Great Wilderness Trek
During the making of Scotland's Mountains, Joe never had the chance to take a long hike with a few friends - he recently had the opportunity to get back up to Scotland with a bit more time and those same friends. I chatted with Joe about the experience and also how he coped with camera equipment (he only took small sensor cameras - three of them however, talk about belt and braces!). Part One https://youtu.be/F7Pzw1Ioehw Part Two https://youtu.be/kWR_qQBWZmo more
What’s the Shift in Tilt / Shift?
The first thing most people learn about creating pictures with ‘correct’ verticals is that the camera shouldn’t be pointed up or down but straight ahead. more