Bridge to St. Paul's

Ahhh Boxing Day (is it called that anywhere other than the UK?), judging by my friends on Facebook, it should be renamed recovery day. Since I barely drink at all these days, I feel pretty good, it's only a pre-christmas stomach bug that's letting me down a bit. For those who are feeling a bit worse for wear, I hope you had a great time, and that you feel better soon! In general, I hope everyone has had a fantastic Christmas.

As well as Boxing day, it's Thursday, which means I owe you a blog post. Yes it's a little later than usual, I have had a bit of a day on the sofa myself, as we don't get many days like that anymore!

The picture you see was one taken a couple of years ago, when my main camera was a Nikon D90. Sometimes I go back into my photographic archives for inspiration, and come across a photo I want to work on. I often then question why I did nothing about it at the time, but realise that it doesn't really matter. As we grow at our said artistic ability, our inspirations and motivations will always change and develop.

I looked at this picture and knew I wanted to create a black & white image out of it. Although I have black & white photo processing software applications, I nearly always create the black & white image in Lightroom, as I find this does everything I need it to do. The only other feature I thought about adding was a dollop of 'grain' to give a real old photo look, but I preferred the cleaner, modern look. The only other program I used other than Lightroom and Photoshop, was Topaz Adjust, to bring a bit more detail out of the buildings.

This photo has a couple of obvious leading lines towards the magnificent St. Paul's Cathedral, and I have seen other photos from the same perspective, but I was happy to capture the hustle and bustle of the bridge as well.

Until Saturday then (my next blog post), keep having a great Christmas!

Should we have Photographic Principles?

Today's picture is a bigger deal than you probably realise. The reason is because it goes against a photographic principle that I used to have, which was basically that I would never add into a picture anything that was not there previously. In this case, it is the blue sky. But even that I used to frown upon, seeing it as unrepresentative of the scene as it was taken. Now however, I am much more relaxed about it, and start to wonder if you are setting yourself up for failure, by having any photographic principles at all?

It goes back to the question, what is photography, and what is art? Or is there a line at all? Aren't we all just trying to create beautiful pictures for people to enjoy? As I said, I used to not like the idea of blending in a sky that was not originally part of a picture, but what happens when you have a day out in a particular city, hoping to get some iconic shots of particular landmarks, and it is nothing but grey sky above? Or even worse, a blanket, empty, featureless sky? Is there no artistic licence to 'improve' the scene? Can I ask any more questions in this blog post? The perspective that made me change my mind, was this tutorial by Serge Ramelli (well worth a watch). He transforms a wonderful building with a featureless sky, into a much more interesting work of art. Although my favourite version of the picture, was about half way through the video, the point is that adding elements in the post processing stage can simply make a photograph much more interesting.

I still don't think it's wrong to call it photography, as you have to your original photograph in the first place, but I suppose there are people who are always going to say you cheated. Heck, people still think digital post-processing is cheating, but my opinion is that your work will soon become irrelevant, if you are not keeping up with modern developments and techniques. At the end of the day, the idea is to produce an image that people simply love to look at, and therefore nothing is really ever wrong. Of course I agree that competition photographs should be free from heavy enhancement (or whatever the particular rules are), but for art's sake, I do not think it is worth having any deeply-held principle, you are only likely to go against it one day.

The last question I will ask in this blog post, and one you should ask yourselves with your pictures, is does the image enhancement make it a better picture? You can see the original cloudy version (after some processing) below. It's all completely up to one's own preference of course, but I'm not sure a cloudy version of Big Ben, the London Eye, or a London bus would make it onto a souvenir postcard.

The Lights of London

Today's picture was taken between the Christmas and new year period, whilst visiting London with friends (and wife). This was taken in the Tower Bridge area of London, and shows the night lights over the area where the new Shard's building, the new tallest building in Europe lies. I'm not actually sure if it is finished yet (?), but I know you can now visit/work there. This was shot at about ISO 1000, which is less than I thought I would have to (the D700 handles noise and low light very well), but I was helped by being able to rest my camera on the fence down by the river. I also took some low light HDR pictures of Tower Bridge itself, but probably due to the light, the results just weren't good enough. I am still yet to get round to writing up my plans for the year, but one of my main aims is to be a better 'editor', as Scott Kelby would say. If it means posting less frequently then fine, but I won't put up any picture that's just ok or good, I have to really believe in it.

I spoke last week of wanting a new look for this website, and though I tried a few ideas afterwards, it became an absolute disaster. I wasn't happy with the way it insisted on displaying, and therefore I retreated and tried to go back to my old look (at least for now). However, this wasn't playing ball with me either, so I'm sorry, I'm stuck with this kind of makeshift temporary look, until I finally figure out a good new look.

Buckingham Palace

Well what grander way is there to end 2012 on than a picture of the palace. Yes the palace. The home of the British Monarchy for many decades now, and a cultural icon of the United Kingdom. Most people are in a bit of a disbelief when I tell them that despite only living about an hour from London, I had never visited Buckingham Palace until last week, when this picture was taken. I don't really know why myself either, I just haven't got round to doing it. I think it's also perhaps though that having a passion for history such as I do, I'm always more keen to visit the older places such as Hampton Court Place or the Tower of London.

The weather was particularly British when I visited, overcast clouds mixed with the occasional light rain, but at least it gave a nice soft light to capturing pictures. Clouds can be made more interesting with HDR anyway. I used Topaz Adjust to bring out more details and colour for the whole scene and blended it in with the original at about 70% opacity.

Hope everyone has a great end to 2012 today and a wonderfully successful 2013! Back on here again tomorrow!

Google+ Communities / The National Gallery

Well it seems that the latest craze to hit the photography world at the moment has been the introduction of the 'Communities' on Google Plus. I'm not sure how this really came about or how it differs from the groups aspect that was once on there, but nonetheless I have been drawn in like everyone else to become part of the communities that I want to be part of. I have joined 10 communities in fact and some of them are really great. Some of the one's I recommend are The Art of Post-processing, HDR Photographers and of course Trey Ratcliff's Stuck In Customs community.

Now I am well aware that I have in the past had a little dig (not in an angry way, think bucket and spade size) about people who try to 'own' communities of photographers as soon as the next photo social media craze takes place, but without any shame I have set up my own community - UK HDR Photography. This is the only group I am interested in setting up and it's purely to do with my desire to get UK HDR photographers and UK based HDR photography more recognition. There are many great HDR photographers in these Isles and I truly hope that as many of them (maybe you!) join the group as possible, and share their work for us all to enjoy and get inspired! I will be adding content and again would love to see other folks get very active on there as well.

The National Gallery

I have uploaded a picture today, which I have recently 'made over'. This is a single RAW HDR image of The National Gallery in London. It was taken in October 2010, on the same day I took my first ever pictures that I converted into HDR images. I rarely go back to old images, but sometimes I look back and think I can tweek it and add a little something more now.

Going Underground

Seems like a long time since I did an 'inner city' shot, so to mix up things a little here on TPWPH (worst abbreviation ever....), I decided to post a picture from back in my D90 days, when travelling round a city taking handheld HDR's was a lot simpler. I can't really walk round taking handheld HDR's with my tank that is the D700 now (too many blurry shots) and to be honest I wouldn't want to, as I'm pretty much attached to the tripod nowadays, which does make your pictures better.

3 bracketed shots, Lightroomed, Photomatixed, Photoshopped, Topazed and finally Nik Colored. I prefer natural looking photos though......What?

Roulette

As I promised, here is a 'classic' (self-professed of course) from last year, which I'm sure most people will recognise as the London Eye. It is one of my more important pictures though, as this is one that has sold and is sometimes referred to by people who have seen my work as one of their favourites. I certainly hope it goes to show that you can get good daytime HDR pictures as well, it's just a case of using a bit of creativity and of course covering the necessary range! Perhaps it would have been a bit more accomplished if I had managed to get more of the London Eye in the picture but that wouldn't make it perfect, as towards the bottom of the picture, the wheel is broken up by the entry platform. Photography of course is not about trying to fit every bit of a subject in the picture either, just that people know what you are trying to represent and capture, and in that sense, I wouldn't change anything about this picture.

I did mention the other day about having a lack of new material recently and that has coincided with a lot of thoughts about some gear upgrade, so watch this space! In the meantime, it's my responsibility now to go out and find more potential photographic moments and that I fully intend to do.

Ad Land London

So hopefully now my busy period that began with moving property less than a month ago and culminating with me being best man at my mate's wedding on Saturday, is over. I know life doesn't really work like that and just when you expect a break something else comes along, but for now it seems I will have more time to focus on photography, get back to putting a lot of effort into this website and seeing much more over what everyone else has been doing.

Today's picture is of perhaps one of the key advertising spots in London, if not the country, which of course is Piccadilly Circus. This was taken a little later than my previous Piccadilly picture a few weeks ago but is another attempt to capture the hustle and bustle of London at night. I know it's not perfect and if I could have captured more of the car speeding past at the bottom I would have, but until I purchase a full frame camera, I'll just have to work with the limitations of my D90!

Amidst all the advertising that appears in this picture, there is a saying (and I didn't notice this until after I'd processed this) which is 'We will either find a way, or make one'. It dates back to Hannibal and has been one of my mottos in life ever since I heard it a few years ago.

St. Paul's Revisited

I have posted this picture on my previous blog and Flickr before but unlike my 'Holy Murano' picture a little while ago, this isn't just a 'make a couple of tweaks here' job, this is a fully redeveloped, remastered picture. As I said, I first 'published' (in the internet sense) it sometime last year and it got quite a good reception but truthfully I was never satisfied with it myself. There was too much noise and distortion in the sky and it was always my plan to start again with it after that.

So this is my new version. It's much more subtle than the last attempt and less extreme on the saturation as well. I am indeed much happier with it and this is the version I will use from here forward. It is of course the spectacular St. Paul's Cathedral plus Millennium Bridge. It was taken late one summers afternoon in London last year, while I had some time to spend after a training course. I created this iteration by using just 2 bracketed shots for the HDR and I think this helped reduce all the problems I had before with it.

London Summer Fountain

The summertime hey, seems so far away now but alas we are slowly moving towards it! It makes it extra difficult to remember what the summer is like when you are going through a bit of cold snap like England is at the moment. I took this picture during a stunning summer's afternoon in London last year, while I had some spare time before catching my train home. This building (which I assume is nowhere famous?) is down by Waterloo station and many commuters must pass it everyday going to and from the station. I always like seeing how water features such as fountains will look when you put them through the HDR works. 9  times out of 10 I'm always impressed. I had to poke my camera between the iron-barred fence to get this picture and then try to get a shot wide enough to capture nearly all the fountain which I think I just about achieved. The sun was a great height at this time as well, allowing me to try to position the camera to capture the sun gleaming in one of the top windows.

It seems quite rare now that I choose to use all 3 exposures I usually take for an HDR scene, this again was processed using just 2 shots. After Photomatix, I worked in Lightroom for a bit and used Topaz Adjust to bring more detail out, which especially helped with the fountain.

Ambitions for 2012

First of all, I’d just like to say a big welcome to my new blog ‘The Photographic World of Pete Halewood’! I consider this blog page an extension of my new website petehalewood.com, so hope you get a chance to visit there as well. Today is the official launch of both sites, though they are both work in progresses. More about that another time though...

So 2011 is gone and 2012 is here. Despite 2011 ending on a rather sour note for me with the loss of my previous website (thenightboat.com), in all it was a great year and of course I want to build on that in 2012. My first priority which I am about to do is buy a long overdue tripod and a new lens - in this case the very popular Sigma 10-20mm one. It’s perhaps an oldie now but it’s always been highly rated and if it does the job I need it for then I won’t mind. I spent most of my photographic investment in 2011 on buying software and now that I am happy that I have all the tools I need, I must concentrate more on the photography itself. I’m a firm believer in getting the picture in the camera, not on the computer. Get that right and the post-processing element is a lot easier and a lot more fun.

My plans are bigger than just a new lens though, the Sigma lens is only 1 of several lenses I’d like to own, and if I start to sell more pictures (far from easy) then I will invest this straight back into photography. I will have to check my dates but I have another exhibition booked for a single day in Newbury Town Hall on Saturday 2nd or 3rd March. It will be a smaller affair than my last exhibition at The Bear Hotel in Hungerford, but will still give me a great opportunity for people to see my work. I am getting married this year in September, and with saving for that and a house, traveling abroad might be a rarity this year. I’m ok with that as I believe you can get some stunning pictures if you get to know your local landscape but it will be sad I that I don’t get to go away much. Oh well, might have to plan the honeymoon somewhere inspiring....

I should say at this point a big Happy New Year to everyone! I don’t intend the blog posts in future to be this long but hey, it’s the launch! Today’s picture is of the British Museum in London, somewhere I got to walk round a little while in London for the company I work for’s Christmas Do in December. Wouldn’t say I came with many (if any) great pictures that weekend, though after a while processing this one, I was happy with the look I got. Next blog post on Thursday! As with my previous website, I welcome all comments, feedback, discussions, issues etc...What’s your photography ambition for 2012?

Grand Central Paddington

Most HDR photographers have a grand view of a station in their HDR arsenal and this is mine (for now). The emphasis for me with this one was the structure of the roof and the patterns as well. In an ideal world, I would have been able to take the picture straight down the middle of one of these rows of arches but unfortunately the stairs to the cafe haven’t been placed that way. Therefore, it’s a bit of an angle shot at the same time but I’m quite fond of the details at the bottom of the arches that run along the left side, so all wasn’t lost. 

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just want to wish everyone a Happy Christmas!