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Yellow

Photo taken in the garden on one of those rare sunny days here.

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Cornfield

A slightly long walk away from the house I found these fields ripe.

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Sheep and the lamb

I was out with the long lens one day and captured a few shots of the sheep and their pups who were in a field behind out vet.

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First snow

Hello, this is my first proper new photo in ages!! Sorry for being away for so long. Just lack of time, lack of motivation and lack of access to Photoshop CS. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a few more done before my trial runs out in 12 days time.

This was taken in the fields near my house after a we got covered in snow (for the first time in years) in February 2009. We don’t get much snow here so I made the most of it and took lots of pics.

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Prints available

I’ve completed creating prints on my store page at deviantART.

Have a browse of the the available photos below.  They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and canvas and mugs are available too.  They are all bordered as seen here, but please let me know if you wish a non-border version or if you would like prints of any other photo of mine, found on my flickr page or my .photography collection.  Please also let me know if you would like other products such as calendars, mouse pads, magnets, postcards, coasters, puzzles?

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Improve colours in your Firefox browser

Basically if you are using Firefox as your Internet browser you can quickly change a setting to improve the colours you see while visiting sites with images and photos.

The details below have been taken from the International Colour Consortium’s site here (which tells you how to check and test the colours) and from LifeHacker’s site here (which tells you how to fix the colours).

I didn’t see much difference in some of my photos, but did in this photo on my Flickr page.  The colours become more vibrant so its well worth giving it a go.

From LifeHacker:

“If the digital photo you just uploaded looks washed out on Flickr compared to in your desktop image editor, that’s because Firefox 3’s advanced color profile support isn’t turned on. To enable it, type about:config in Firefox 3’s address bar, then click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button. Then, in the Filter field, type gfx.color_management.enabled and set that value to true (its default value is false). Restart Firefox. From there on in, your photo colors will be richer than they were. Why isn’t this value true by default? Well, according to Mozilla, you’ll see a 10-15% performance hit using this setting, but if you’ve got a reasonably fast machine, it’ll be worth the better-looking photos. Hit the link below for an extended explanation of Firefox’s color profile support.

From International Colour Consortium:

“Is your system ICC Version 4 ready? One way to find out is to view or print this page using your system. The test image uses a mix of unusual ICC version 4 and version 2 profiles, one for each quadrant of the image. The test is also available in pdf format, as in both html and pdf file formats each image can use an unique profiles.

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Updated Info page

I have just updated the Info page, full copy is below. Also I’ll be working on a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page which will be added in the near-future. If you want any questions answered please let me know and I’ll try and include them in the FAQ. New Info details:

Photography & Prints

Prints, mugs and more are available to buy on my DeviantART store. The store is currently in need of a massive overhaul so please bear with me but there is a large selection of products to choose from that might interest you. Keep checking the site as new items will appear regularly. If you are interested in any image that is not listed on the DeviantART store but you’ve seen on my Flickr photostream please get in contact with me and I’m sure I can arrange the product.

Services

I own a large array of gear, including a semi-professional camera body and large range of lenses. My current location is Edenbridge (a small town in Kent in the South East England. Please check back for details of services I can provide and stock images that will be available. In the meantime, please contact me if you wish to use any of my photographs or feel I can help you in anyway.

Stock Images

A selection of my photographs will soon be available from a stock image site. Please check back soon for more details.

Achievements

Small in comparison to some but I have had several of my photographs used by various people and companies. This includes several photos appearing on a major credit card company’s site, a shot from the 2007 Wimbledon tennis championships on the home page of an outside television broadcasting firm and one made the final selection of potentially gracing a UK Royal Mail stamp in the Summer of 2008. Also a French design agency is working to publish a book of my London photos that has been ‘miniaturised via post-production. Many of my photos are under the Creative Commons license and have been used on several blogs including NowPublic. I am a regular contributor to the wonderful Dark Matter Magazine; a collection of artists from many different genres and media. And I’ve recently had a photo printed in a UK newspaper.

Usage/Copyright

All photography and graphics on this site and my DeviantART store are copyright to me, all rights reserved. Any photography, graphics or artwork on my blog that is not mine is copyright to their respected owners. If you wish to use any of my images please get in with me. Please do not use them without my permission. Any photos on my Flickr photostream that are not photos found here are under a Creative Commons license, so please check the individual photos for their exact license and availability of use.

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Kaz at sunrise

 

A shot of my Golden Retriever, Kaz. He’s a poser as you can tell.
Seriously though, it’s very hard to capture him as he doesn’t stay still for more than a few seconds. At just 3 years old he’s is so full of energy especially when I take him out for his walk! I reckon he could keep going all day long!

But luckily on one of my early morning expeditions I caught him here. He was standing up on a mound near a pond while the Sun was coming up and the sky was a wonderful yellowy-orange. I think he might have heard a train coming and so went into ‘alert mode’ – Kaz loves to chase the trains, but so far he’s never caught up with one.

Again this is Edenbridge and at a place called Prettymans Pond. I’m not sure what it’s called that but it’s fantastic little pond and I’ve spent many an hour here practicing my photography and taking shots of the pond and the trees in every way I can think of. I’ve found that by going back to the same place over and over again you eventually see different angles for shots and find different ways of capturing the same subject. I’ve also tried to go here at different times of the day in different weather conditions. It’s been very interesting to see the changes these bring and I’ve certainly learnt how to look at things with a ‘photographer’s eye’.

This is a slightly adjusted photo (see below for original). I’ve cropped the top and left a little and increased the saturation throughout. Also I’ve lightened Kaz a little as he was a bit too dark. What does everyone think? I still think the sharp foreground branches are a little distracting?

In the process of creating this photo I thought of two questions:

Question 1: What is the best way to convert an image from Photoshop (PSD, TIFF) to JPEG? What I normally do is save the PSD as a TIFF then go into ACDSee and convert it there at max. quality to a JPEG (thus keeping the EXIF data). But this photo really highlights a problem (or two) I’ve noticed in that converting to JPEG reduces the saturation and darkens the brightness. Is there a better way to convert to JPEG to keep the exact tone of the image as well as the EXIF info?

Question 2: I had to refine and touch up the selection of Kaz in Photoshop as left alone he stuck out too much and his hair (especially his underneath) had a nasty line where one part of the image was dark+saturated and the other was bright+lightened. What’s the best way to blend these areas? I used the smudge tool on the selection layer and the result seems OK but is there a better way?

The original photo has been printed in the UK newspaper, Kent & Sussex Courier on 01-Feb-2008 (my first print!) and made it to onto Flickr’s Explore on Jan 8, 2008 at #434. The scan of the newspaper print is below:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

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Up on the farm

 

Shot taken near Boxham Farm in Edenbridge, Kent (UK) and not too far away from my previous shot. The light was amazing that morning!I had scouted this area out previously and knew I had to be there for sunrise. So on the next occasion of a bright morning I was up and out the door at about 6:45am. I trekked up to here in the near-dark (which was a good half hour) and then basically waited for the sun to come up through the trees.

When it did, I was up and down this hill over and over, taking lots of different shots from different angles and of course with different light. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was a right nutter. But it was all worth it and got this and many other wonderful shots.

Second entry on Dark Matter Magazine’s web site. Blog entry is here.

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A morning walk in Kent

I’ve been selected to post on the Dark Matter Magazine site. I feel very honoured to be among such fine artists so have a look. So here’s a copy of my first post there.

This is my (currently) home town of Edenbridge. A small place in the UK county of Kent, bordering Surrey and Sussex. This particular shot was taken near Boxham Manor which is found near Marl Pit. I get a lot of my shots from walking the vast amount of farmland here. It generally means very, very early mornings to beat sunrise, scouting around a bit then picking my spot. Sometimes, though, the spot is already in my head from previously seeing it but this shot was a ‘there and then’ and happy how it turned out.

If anyone is interested I used this picture to create one of my first HDR-style images. It’s an interesting way to create a picture but I’m not quite there with the technique yet. Have a below (second image). To me the photo becomes more like a painting?

As a second attempt I also produced the picture below (third image), but felt that the top left part of the image was too dark (and dark in general). Again, each had slightly different tonemapping settings. Let me know which one you prefer? I’m quite keen on the original myself.

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