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.