Workshop impact

They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I suppose the saying holds true. I enjoyed my time with Colin Homes enormously and would recomend it without hesitation. However in good management speak, what has been the impact and what did I learn?

Some aspects were reassuring in terms of my existing practice and my general camera craft stood up reasonably well. I've not long been using the Lee Big Stopper so some aspects of handling that were brushed up. The first part that Colin addressed with us was exposure. This came as a bit of a surprise as I'm reasonably adept at getting well exposed images with a  good range of tones. However whether it is due to growing up with colour transparency film or not I have  always feared over exposure. Colin pushed us to get our histogram as far to the right as possible I've seen this expressed as ETTR (Exposure to the right). I've never worked that way in the past but seeing files produced have converted. He also taught me to make use of RAW files. I've never been that bothered but working in RAW was a revelation. The final part of the technique slot was given to using Photoshop CS5. I've never gone beyond Elements before but now it has converted me completely.

Time and Tide

Time and tide, as they say, wait for no man. I’ve just made the effort to check times, got up early, made my way down to the sea to work on a particular image only to find I’ve made a mistake. Not only was the tide not high but it was virtually out and getting lower. I was there last night but ended up coming home after  a very frustrating hour. The cold was so intense that the pain in my hands became unbearable. On top of this the wind was so strong that it was lifting the tripod (+D700, lens and bag hooked on below) to the extent that I had to hold on during the 2m45s exposures. One of those times when maybe the ultra thin, lightweight carbon fibre legs might have been better made of cast iron.There is a danger in pre-visualisation as today when I couldn’t make the image I had in  my mind, nothing else would come and there was no flow.

Eastern shores

Just back from a brief visit to North Berwick. I'd gone to visit some local beaches and with a picture of the tidal pool in mind. In my defence the tide was against me and the image I made was ok'ish. However I was brought up very short when I happened to look in the window of the art shop on the high street. I was stopped in my tracks by one of the most remarkable pictures I have ever seen. They are the ones that fall some way between inspiring and making me want to throw it all out and take up stamp collecting. The photograph was by Colin I Homes. I just stood and stared and wished it had been mine. On searching for his work I came across his website  and discovered a huge body of marvellous images. I also discovered that he runs courses and am currently investigating.