Butterfly wings

Butterfly inside the window

I see too much of this

My monitor screen, photographed through a reversed 50mm 1.8 on extension tubes

Snowy the white cat

Shrine to Albert

Street lantern

Tram stop

Statues

Fountain backlit

Scaffolding

Street photography

Office blocks

Backstreets

Manchester Architecture

Church of England

Manchester Cathedral

Marketing 101

Moving to a new colour space.

After several happy years with Adobe RGB, it is time to move all my gear to a new colour space. It was a sudden decision, brought on by new information ( the release of Adobe Lightroom v.1 - http://www.adobe.com/go/trylightroom, which uses ProPhoto as the default space ) and no reason not to move quickly. From now on, I will be using the ProPhoto RGB setting for my digital photography.
You can read a good introduction to ProPhoto on the Luminous landscape website - http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/prophoto-rgb.shtml.
I never had any complaints about Adobe RGB, it was solid, reliable and trustworthy. But I have to keep up with the times and keep my options open, which makes ProPhoto the better choice for coping with and exploiting future calibration and printing advances.

Working the search engines

It’s hard work keeping on top of several blogs and making fresh regular online content but it pays off surprisingly quickly. We have only been pushing the re-branding as The Manchester Studio online since the end of last year. Already, we have the top place and three other listings in the Top 20. The discipline of providing fresh images means that we also have a good incentive to go out and find original photographs and to present them in interesting eye-catching ways, once we get them back in the studio.

Two new important links for digital artists

The first is John Derry's Blog - http://pixlart.blogspot.com/
The second is the website of the new free post-production magazine from the Rangefinder publishers, AfterCapture - http://www.aftercapture.com/

Stained glass window

from a local church.

The Manchester Evening News Building

Taking black and white out of photography

To the Impressionists, one of the biggest insults was to say that someone used black in their palette. I think that is a major hurdle for artists to overcome when they try to transfer painting techniques to photography and digital art. We are so used to talking about black and white photography that we forget we are talking about tones not colours. How many photographers still think that they make a photograph by setting the black and white points? If we want to reflect the look of paintings, we have to think like the original artists and remove plain white and pure black from the palette.

New building in Manchester

Can't tell how to describe it best- Art Deco or bauhaus?

Market Street

In the style of Gustave Caillebotte

Impressionist photograph of the fountain

The Fountain

Off the Drawing Board

Impressionist/ Pointillist photograph

When the best shot of the day is unplanned

It was one of those days yesterday. I filled up a card with architecture shots so I could practice some new techniques on line art and Lucis style illustrations. I thought I did okay but it was depressing to see that the best image was done by accident - a misfire when I pressed the wrong button. Even worse, when I tried to replicate it on purpose, my composition was worse : (

Hive City

Upper Altrincham

Pick of the Crop

Architectural illustration style photograph

Dog in dappled light

Birches (after Birch Wood)

Impressionist "Shady Walk"

The new watermark for The Manchester Studio

I wasn't happy with the script watermark we have been using. At a legible size, it was taking up the width of most images. I have redone it to resemble a Japanese wooden stamp or seal. This fits in well with the oriental style that we have adopted to finish out current range of images and is likely to be the one that we take forward to develop in the future. I have rotated the initials to make it more abstract and to compensate for the too obvious western source.

Microsoft Vista not for Adobe?

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=7153 Reports that a lot of our favourite creative programmes won't run well on the new version of Windows.

Our new pet squirrel

Corel Painter X

It's out already. They kept that quiet. What happened to product launches?

Urban Wildlife

The poster boy for our new clothing lines

Hand-held moon photograph

Interesting photography weather

We are certainly getting the full range of weather this week. Earlier we had the fog, which gave me the chance to make scores of images, which I still haven't gone through. Today the moon was so close and bright, I was able to use my 70-300mm for detail shots. Tomorrow, we are promised thick snow. At least I will have all my winter shots for next year's calendars!

Feedback welcomed

I hate working in a vacuum. Luckily I don’t work alone so there is always someone to give their opinion on what I am up to. In business, there is no point doing work just to one’s own taste. You have to work to the taste of the buyers. Note well - the buyers - not the critics, associates, family and friends. There is no room for arrogance in work either. I can take pride in what I have made but I am not above working in a particular palette to match someone’s wallpaper! BTW that reminds me of the mis-spelling of the week: “Palletable” - work made not to one’s taste but which can be shipped to the buyers by the pallet full : )

Colour combinations.

An interesting site that keeps an eye on what other people are doing with colour - http://www.colourlovers.com/

Beacon

Corners

The Fog.

What is it about fog that is so unsettling? Is it not being able to see what is just beyond reach? And what is it about green fog that is the stuff of nightmares?

The narrow path.

Foggy night.

The first image from the other day, out in the fog at 5 a.m.

New series of prints in colour variations.

The Manchester Studio imagekind link.

http://themanchesterstudio.imagekind.com/pictorial

My new gallery on imagekind.com

I will be selling higher resolution images through there in the next few days. Just look for themanchesterstudio.

Amateur Hour.

I might have used this cartoon before but it says a lot to me about being creative in modern times. Everyone wants to be an artist. The technology is in every home now so that each person can bring out the artist in them - whether he was there or not! It just seems that we live in an age of half-baked attempts to be whatever we want, whether we have the skill or not. Even worse, people expect it to just happen without any hard work or training or experience. I hear that DIY has been replaced by GSI (Get Someone In). The reason is clearly that people are now so busy trying to be what they aren't that all their spare time is being used up not with hobbies but trying to make their hobbies pay. The saddest thing I read this week was the tale of a new father. He really believed that he was going to be able to make a part-time hobby something to support his family by - ahem - "investing" thousands of pounds in the latest equipment.
Whatever happened to leisure time and the idea of relaxing and enjoying yourself with free time?
It isn't like being creative is fun anyway! Any "job" is just that and if there aren't bits that you hate but do anyway, you are never going to be successful enough to make a living at it.

Adobe Bridge CS3

I continue to be impressed by the latest beta. The image importer is really smooth and is now my favourite tool for this, replacing Phase One Media Reader, which shows how good it is.

Freezing fog.

My fingers are frozen off. The dog woke me up at 5am to go out. I noticed that it was foggy and seeing as it was the first fog of the year and since I was up anyway, I put on my coat and got my camera and went to the park to get some atmospheric shots. It was cold and dark. If the fog hangs around, I will have another go in the daylight.

The Manchester Studio at No.1 on dogpile.

Yay! After a month of hard work putting up loads of content, The Manchester Studio website ( http://www.themanchesterstudio.co.uk ) has reached the top spot on dogpile searches.

High Rise

Bird boxes on a tree in the park.

Larger print gallery

You can see larger versions of my favourite photographs on my deviant gallery - http://themanchesterstudio.deviantart.com/

Sunlight through the trees.

Joke of the week

Valentine's Day special

Celebrate with a brand new look. To help you mark our 10th. Anniversary, take advantage of our gift to you:

Invest just £100 in an private portrait session before the end of February 2007 and we will give you



Glamour Portrait Session in 1 or 2 outfits



CD containing 1 High Resolution image, 1 each Print Resolution Black-and-White / Colour, 1 each Web Resolution Black-and-White / Colour



Two 6" x 4" Prints.

Thought of the week

Once an image is out there, it should be strong enough to speak for itself.

Should a critique always be positive?

I was listening to the Radiant Vista podcasts. I have only just found them so I have a year's worth to catch up on. They were discussing how people could send in pieces for critique and that the reviewers would always be positive. Of course nobody is going to enjoy a roasting but the whole point is to have problems pointed out so you can get rid of any weaknesses. IMO, so long as all points are fair, there is no harm done and I myself would rather find out my mistakes sooner rather than later.

Photoblogs

I have just put my main blog on http://www.photoblogs.org/ . I like the way it automatically links to the rss feed. Simple, painless and free - sweet!