Flowers for Billy

I've been working on a couple of pictures recently with a view to posting them today but none of them have really done it for me. I suppose that's one of the drawbacks of photography, or any artistic venture, that you can spend a long time working on a particular image and in the end you have to resign yourself to saying "it's just not working". I know this is my own fault because I need to get out and shoot more but with the weather looking like it's starting to change in England (and I sure wish I had my camera with me in Hungerford yesterday), I can feel inspiration coming back. I know photography shouldn't be dependent on the weather and I see lots of great indoor HDR shots but as I have said before, I don't try to force inspiration on myself either. I have looked around for things to photograph but unless I get that great 'ah ha' feeling, I don't anticipate a good image just miraculously appearing while searching for it. It's the outside world that really inspires me. Perhaps I shouldn't over think it too much because an image that doesn't work for you might be amazing to someone else but surely art has to be something you yourself are happy with. There are of course pictures that I tend to go off very quickly or that are much less preferred to others but I would never put anything I wasn't completely happy with on this blog or any other platform. Which is why sometimes I post one of my self-professed 'classics' because I would still rather post a picture that I am happy with (but has not appeared on this blog yet) than something just to fill a gap.

So onto today's picture then and I decided to stick in the Liverpudlian rock 'n' roll era. Billy Fury was hitting the big time just before the Beatles were and was perhaps partly successful due to his similarities to Elvis. He went on to have many hits throughout the 60's (though if you asked me to name one, I would be struggling) but sadly died of Rheumatic Fever, which he had first contracted as a child, in 1983. He was 42 years old (as Elvis Presley was when he died). Although perhaps forgotten by the international scene, Billy is still fondly remembered in his native Liverpool and this statue of him can be scene in the Albert Dock area of Liverpool. It is a single exposure, processed entirely in Lightroom 4. The clarity slider in Lightroom 4 is one of the greatest tools in photo processing software. It can make single images have a fantastic (and artistic) detailed look without straying into HDR processing.