Silver tree trunk

Green World

Painting detail.

Why models shouldn't share make-up

Eyelash mites just love to gather in make-up, mascara etc.

Retouch of tree in a glade

The history of photography.

I found a really interesting website.

A friend of WTD

I signed up as an official friend. Support the art and the artist.

Richard Avedon

You probably recognise the name as the artist who toured the States taking portraits of people on the road against a white backdrop. Sometimes his pictures remind me of ebay product shots, sometimes they look like museum exhibits or those 19th century anthropological slides about lost tribes in the Amazon. Whichever, his picture certainly bear looking at. I think I'm going to buy a white pop-up background this week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTJMgqX0mo0

David LaChapelle

This fashion photographer seems to be attracting a lot of discussion lately on the model forums. You can see a youtube video about him here.

Professional photography.

Professional means getting paid for the work you do. So stop copying what all the other professionals are doing, forget the fads, don't buy the latest gadgets, don't include the latest add-on unless you get paid for it. Just concentrate on getting a good sound service and product.

Woodland

Into the grove

Trees in Worthington Park.

The march of Time

It seems like only yesterday that I bought my first digital camera. It was the most expensive camera I had ever bought. Okay, 640 x 480 pixels was never going to make a poster but it was good enough for web pages. The thing I like most about my second go at digital photography is that it is so much cheaper than digital videography - so far. I have been able to find some great lenses and they have all been under £100. Happy days seem to be over now though, I might actually have to spend more than double that for my next lens. At least lenses go out of date so slowly, that I will probably have gone through 3 cameras before the lenses need replacing.

Traffic congestion

Lines and patterns

More from the Walk to Altrincham series.

Gloss or matt finish?

Fine Art = Matt

Modelling = Glossy

Commercial = Glossy

Fashion = Glossy

Comp card design (Sed / Zed card)

The comp card is a two-sided compilation of your best images. It is also called a Sed card, after the photographer who designed the layout in general use today. It can be called a Zed card and this is the name used for actors' comp card.
The usual layout is to have a head shot on the front and upto four smaller images on the reverse. The full physical statistics should also be printed clearly, especially natural hair colour and length. It should be printed on card stock and can be matte or gloss finish. The UK / Euro size is A5, whereas in the US the common size is 5.5" x 8.5". Fonts should be plain and clear and only in black or white colour. Your name should be in a large size but not to distract from the headshot. If you intend to specialise in one field, then include a representative image, along with a full body portrait. For the headshot, you want to be looking at the camera so that you can literally catch the viewer's eye. The main shot should always be in colour but the other images can be in black and white. It is a good idea to have the printer coat the card for protection to keep it looking good. Update your comp card regularly to keep it current. Only use your very best images. Have them remade if necessary. Use a professional photographer and Make-up Artist but do not have the photographs retouched. Have them printed off-set for best results.
The photographs you use should gel: they should cover the range of your abilities and tell the story of why you are the right choice. Have a card made for each client or situation. The images have to stand out while at the same time working together. The headshot has to stand out in a pile of 100 others on a table. Use variety in the images, expression pose etc - once more everything has to be aimed at the one target though. Don't mix mats, borders and full-bleed images - keep it coherent and polished.

Portfolio advice for new models

The typical portfolio will include:

Portrait	Camera Angle:	Frontal 3/4 Profile (from the side)
	Cropped to:	Face (close-up) Head Head and Shoulders 1/2 body (waist up)
3/4 Body	Camera Angle	Frontal 3/4 Profile (from the side) Back
	Cropped to:	Mid-Thigh
Full Body	Camera Angle:	Frontal 3/4 Profile (from the side) Back
	Cropped to:	Full Body
Hand	Camera Angle	Varies
	Cropped to:	Hand Hands
Foot	Camera Angle:	Varies
	Cropped to:	Foot Feet
Eye	Camera Angle	Varies
	Cropped to:	Eye

There should also be included different costumes and photographs with and without make-up. Only include your best work and have your best image at the front. Model portfoios should be printed at 9″ x 12″ and should be matted so that there is no need to turn the book when viewing portrait or landscape format. Include some black and white images. It is important that at least one head shot has no make-up and is not retouched.

2 stories of the dangers of the internet.

The first story is about a notorious photography store, although I have seen similar operations with other big ticket consumer products. They are regular advertisers in all the glossy magazines with big page spreads. They have incredible prices in the true sense of the word. Turns out they are well-known for hard sell bait and switch tactics. Price tag seems low but to get the same package everybody else sells, the customer ends up paying more for all the individual elements that were originally bundled. Someone tracked down their offices and found out that most of them were mail-drops. Not confidence inspiring.

The second story is about how anything you say on the internet can be used against you. There was a normal thread discussing photography technology and a new bit of software. Imagine the surprise of one of the posters, when months later, she finds out that a newspaper in another country has quoted her, with all her business details in an article.

Photography humour

I've seen this comic strip around the internet quite a bit. The cool thing is that the artist truly believes in sharing, so he lets anyone include the strip in their blog. Great free content - and a good laugh!

It's slow work being an artist.

I am worn out and have only done one piece of digital art today. I am a bit fed-up because I can normally get through five or six. I am hoping it is only because I am using a new work-flow so that the final image is suitable for 3 or 4 sites without further work. I hope that is all it is - I have 7000 other photographs to go through before the weather gets good enough to travel again!

New digital art - "Rush Hour"

Rubbing off the new.

Remember when they were first marketing CDs? High quality music that would never deteriorate in the way that a record got scratched. Yeah right ; ). How many CDs have you had to bin because they wouldn't play anymore and how big is the after-market for disk cleaners?
Two years into the fashion for flush-mount photograph albums and reports are coming through of big problems. Not a lot of problems but serious ones. The surface actually rubbing off prints as they touch the other pages in an album. Pages sticking together so firmly they cannot be separated safely. Pages unglueing in hot temperatures. Oops! Could it be that the new technology is flawed? Or it could be the sweatshops where a lot of the albums are assembled even if the companies are well known western names? Time to re-evaluate the services and products on offer to make sure they won't let you down and that the guarantee is strong enough to keep the customer happy.

Put my first image on deviantART

Bit of a palaver to get it uploaded. I will have to see how it fares for sales. The returns are fairly meagre, about the same as the RF stock sites - 30p to £3 a print sale : (

Sale Town Hall

New Microsoft EXIF info tool

Microsoft has released a plug-in for Explorer that reads and edits EXIF and IPTC data.

New chocolate labrador dog painting

The Walk to Altrincham (Part 2)

More photographs on the website - http://www.themanchesterstudio.co.uk.

Change the story by changing the POV

Just by changing the point of view or the crop of a photograph, you can totally change the story the photograph tells to the viewer.

In the first picture, we have an idyllic haven, which could be timeless and in any location.

Yet here in the second picture, taken from the same spot and at the same time, the story is of paradise lost as mankind encroaches on nature and leaves his rubbish behind

The walk to Altrincham (Part 1)

Adobe Bridge CS3 beta 2

Adobe have released this upgrade to be installed over the original beta. Do not uninstall the previous version.

The advantages of LAB

In spite of the smaller gamut in LAB compared to RGB, it is worth changing modes in Photoshop when you are sharpening or using noise reduction filters. Sharpening in LAB avoids getting halos around edges and noise reduction works better to when applied to the luminosity channel.

String sets

One of those "Doh!" moments and a great tip for repeatable results from flash.

Once you have a flash set-up that you like and you want to be able to repeat it on different days / shoots, cut lengths of string to reach from the flash to the subject. Next time you set up, put your flashes on the required setting, put on the pre-measured string and move the flash forward until the loose end touches the subject.

4 of a kind.

I couldn't make up my mind.

Direct link to our flickr portfolio.

I finally set up a dedicated page, so you can see all our public images in one place.

Blogging is the new trainspotting!

Every forum I go to now is infested with bloggers.
"Hi, I've got a new blog. Want to see?"
"Cool. Want to see mine?"
"Cool. Hey! They've got a new blog. Let's go and see!"
What is more tragic is that these people convince themselves they are putting in all that time to talk to their customers, but they only show them to people in the same line of business!

Snap shot to portrait

With work, a holiday snapshot can be turned into a studio portrait.

Smudge painting of our dog.

New BBC4 photography series in 2007

This sounds interesting - charting the history of photography. No schedule details yet.

Frame effect

Playing with the Bling tutorial from Photoshop Cafe.

Inspiration

Ever start out intending to make one sort of image and end up doing something totally different? That happened to me today. I was surprised how it turned out. It wasn't like I didn't have a plan - I did. I was continuing to work on a japanese look - bright colours, manga style illustration. Somewhere, in the illustration phase, it became more important to follow the 50s graphic look that is another main interest of mine. So the final image is a bit of both. But hey, that is how new things are made.

Still life

60s print style

Canal illustration

Last in this style

My first art competition

Should be fun having a go at this - http://www.pbase.com/pstewart/contest2

Another Natasha Newton style photograph.

Six Cross-Process looks.

Same image, different looks.

Selenium Lith look photography

Solarisation look photography

Another family self-portrait

Gaynor is off to Australia in the Autumn, so she won't be able to borrow my camera for drunken self portraits at the Christmas party.

Photography inspired by artist Natasha Newton.

Atmosphere counts in photography.

Rangefinder Magazine January Issue

This article has some great atmospheric shots of horses and cowboys. This is how I am used to seeing hoses, being raised on John Wayne films. The impact is even greater because of the obscuring dust which actually adds more to the images, causing great silhouettes and backlit subjects with the use of ambient light.

Our photo model is too fat!

Our guinea pig has eaten so much since Xmas that he is now too fat for his props and has wrecked my shooting plans just when I have got a little studio ready for him : (

Cold day taking photographs in the park

We spent the first day taking photographs in the park since the New year. It wasn't as cold as when we last went out in November but it was cold enough so that my fingers were still stiff after putting my gloves on when we had finished. We only spent a short time out because of the weather but I still managed to take 50 photographs of trees. I have more shots planned for tomorrow. We met the cutest miniature King Charles spaniel. We also heard the alarming news that people are holding dogs to ransom in the park. What a sign of the times, when yobs will try to kidnap a beloved pet.

Printers always know the right time to break

- Whenever there is a panic job on. Last week I finally got round to doing my tax forms. This week they come back with an error and I have to reprint them. So what happens my printer stops working! Not one, not two but three printers! All decide it is time to wind me up! If they had all been Epson, I would have been on the phone to the head office, as it was the third culprit was an elderly Xerox that seems to think that 10 years on one drum is long enough.
Wouldn't you know it too, after printing the forms using the printer reserved for DVD printing, one of the Epsons decides to start working properly as soon as I take the cover off. :-(

Why are beginner lighting kits so bad?

I was on ebay again today (guilty : ( ) looking to get a bargain (fat chance) on some more lighting gear. Once again the prices are a shock. As expensive as the shops in most cases and then the double whammy of postage with their profit already built in. £9 postage on a £3 brolly? I don't think so. I thought it might be cheaper to get a kit instead but look at the prices they are going for! £200 -300 for a kit whose specifications are a sign they are just to catch the gullible. Who on earth can use a 45W flash- bounced at that? Most pros I know use a minimum of 2 300W and a 600W.

Kodak in trouble again?

You can always tell when a company is in worse trouble than anyone thought, when they start making "hip" adverts about how "they get it". Yeah, right. Kodak, the company that lost an empire. Now the only reputation they have, that is talked about, is poor service and unreliable software. What a come-down.

The essential essence of a photograph.

This is a section of a larger photograph (which is why it is not as sharp as it should be) but it points out what, to me, is the critical feature of a photograph. It bears study and the more you look, the more of the story you get. My attention had been elsewhere, so that at first the stain on the steps didn't even register. Going through the day's photographs again, it struck me how like a bloodstain it was. Bearing in mind the location on the war memorial and the surroundings of the other marks of loss and remembrance, I was overwhelmed by how poignant the stain was and how it symbolic it now became. This is a place where we remember the people who spilt blood for us.

Mapping out an event

Have you considered how much easier it is to hold an event when everybody knows where they are expected to turn up? In the age of GPS and computers, there should be no excuse for people getting lost. Of course, they still have to know which locations to get to. An easy way of making sure, everyone turns up, is to provide an easy to follow map. Google Maps are easy to use because you can mark all the locations down on the map. An easier version of this is Wedding Mapper that looks similar to Google Maps and is already set up for Wedding Events.

From my window.

The first assignment we got in our first art class in secondary school was to draw the view from our bedroom window. I always thought it was a sneaky way of doing some social snooping so I did the view from the front instead which looked out at another house. Plus it was easier to draw one house rather than a view that stretched over open fields to the horizon. Like I was really going to spend all night trying to do a Turner landscape.
Now my workroom is also high up but the window is small and I often feel like the prisoner in L'etranger only able to see a patch of sky. However, I love watching the sky. Yes, as a kid, there was no purer joy than to lie on the grass and watch the clouds. I wish I could relax enough to do that now : ( .
Cloud race past the window, always left to right, rushing who knows where. They draw a constant stream of colour and shape, much better than anything on television or even the most psychedelic screensaver. They always leave me with the question of how something so dark and grey can pump out so much light.

Lith look image

Very simple technique that, with a simple composition, gives a very striking high contrast image that is almost the same quality as an illustration.

Autoscreen Process for Digital Photographs

Another experiment in my attempts to reproduce old film development processes. Unfortunately, the resizing step to get the image on the blog has done weird things to the pattern, that aren't intentional here.
Similar in effect to a halftone pattern but I find it gives a far more interesting range of effects when you try different blending modes.

An explanation of EXIF data in digital photographs

Modern digital cameras can write extra information at the same time as saving a digital image to memory card or hard disk. This EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data can contain a lot of useful notes on how the camera was set up when the image was made and the properties of the image and who it belongs to.

Free EXIF viewer

In answering a question about EXIF, I found this freeware viewer to inspect EXIF information in digital photograph files. Not only is there a free viewer but there is also a free Firefox plug-in. You can find the Opanda IExif software at this link.

Inspiration for photographs

The wind woke me up this morning. It was blowing past the window so strongly, that I thought it was going to rip the frame out. The longer I listened, the more I thought about how to capture that energy in a photograph. You can't film wind. You can only film its effects. Wind seems a very violent element. It is always tearing things - up, off, apart. It is always causing stress with living things - bending plants and trees, making people and animals lean over or huddle up. In spite of the violence, there never seems to be any malevolence in it. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. Thinking about how to capture wind in a photograph, makes one think of lots of different things to try.

Grainy study

The framing and matting photography challenge.

I have been gradually building up the equipment to be able to do my own frame building and matting in-house. I was spurred on by the desire to add the finishing individual touch. To me, that is as personal a touch as the artist's signature. Of course, that is only the theory.

I have been reluctant to take the first steps and make the first cuts, even tough I have had a 30" x 20" portrait sample waiting on the bench since July. Part of me is worried that I won't be as good as I want.

I have found most of the suppliers I need to offer the service to all my clients from 2007 on. Now I just have to take a deep breath and make the first incision.

New flickr group

I have started a new flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/stockportrait/.
It is a group to discuss and show stock and portrait photographs. If you would like to join, contact me and I will send you an invitation.

Stock Photography

I started off last year intending to start a stock photography portfolio. I spent quite some time adjusting my workflow to conform with the various quality requirements. I took a lot of photographs, often specifically for stock use. I never got round to submitting them. This winter, I will have to finish editing them and put them up. Expect to see quite a few in the gallery.

Xmas Blues

Seems to be a lot of it about. This was supposed to be about the curve of the poles but looking at the image, it struck me how everyone is alone, in complete contrast to a few days earlier when Piccadilly Gardens were full of happy families.