Miamorama

This is one of those days when I have been thinking all day, what am I going to post this evening? Without dragging the story out too much, I decided to post something I very rarely do, a panoramic photograph. I processed this a very long time ago, but have always been put off by how thin and difficult to see ultra-wide panoramic shots are online. Today however, I am thinking what the heck.

This complete picture was taken from 5 images, that were stitched together in Photoshop. In fact apart from that, my post-processing has been very minimal. I did content-aware a telephone mast out of the picture, but in terms of the overall look, I only really added a slight vignette in Lightroom.

One of the most interesting facts about this picture, is that it was shot from my hotel balcony, while I was staying in Miami last year. It is of course one of the Miami bay areas, north of the main south beach hot spots. One last thing, this was shot in January last year. Boy I miss that sunshine....

Park Central Hotel / End of 2013

The end is nigh. Not in some apocalyptic fashion, but of course I mean the year 2013. I always post the pictures at the beginning of the blog posts, knowing that a lot of people will be only interested in seeing the photograph, and that is absolutely fine. But for others who read what I write as well, I would just like to write about my thoughts going into the new year 2014. Before I do though, I should  quickly say that the picture above was taken in Miami, in the famous art deco street in the South Beach region. Among all my processing, I have tried to give this picture a little vintage look, to match the wonderful car in the foreground.

So 2013 is about to be gone, and to keep with tradition, a new year is about to begin. The reason I want to share my thoughts on this New Year's Eve, is because there seems to be an extra amount of motivational messages/goal-setting exercises, that are spring up in the internet world this year. Now I am very interested in personal development, and am completely for people bettering themselves as time goes on. Some of you may know, I launched a website this year called PhilosophyOne.com, which was all about personal development, and sharing whatever knowledge I had learned about how to achieve success. If you search the internet for this website now however, you won't find it. This is simply because I have reverted it to my HalewoodPhoto.com website, which it initially replaced.

The reason I ultimately think I decided to not proceed any further with my personal development website at the moment, is because I read a book in July that changed my life. That book was 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was an Austrian Logotherapist (a type of therapy he created), who survived the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz, and others as well. Man's search of meaning is not only a heart-breaking recollection of his experiences in wartime death camps, but also his thoughts on finding meaning in life, and how having meaning in life, is essentially the only way we can live happily. I could probably write a whole essay and more, about my views on this book, and the lessons within. However, I will quote Frankl from his preface of the 1992 edition of his book (he died in 1997).  This little passage has become my basic philosophy for living now:

"Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

Having real meaning in life (and these days it is not easy to find as Frankl acknowledges), would replace all the goal-setting exercises and motivational speeches you hear. The kind of meaning that makes you get up with no problems every morning, and helps you look to the future with excitement. Of course, I am not suggesting not listening to motivational speeches, some speakers are extraordinary, and indeed very inspiring, but I would suggest replacing all your goals and new year resolutions, with the simple question - what am I living for? Then ask yourself, are you happy what you are doing, and do you feel that you are doing what you put on this Earth to do? I believe that when you find that meaning, that has perhaps been lacking from life, you suddenly realise that you now have all the motivation and happiness you ever needed to sail through life.

Which brings me back to the point, why did I ditch my personal development website? Well, because I realised that after a lot of soul-searching, having read Viktor Frankl's book, my main enjoyment came from Photography. It is everything I love, and everything I want to do in the future. With the plans I have for my photography (you should hear a lot more about these during 2014), I wake up happy, and am looking to 2014 with nothing but anticipation. You cannot fail when you love the activity you are participating in. Perhaps when I have some more life experience, I will one day come back to the personal development side of things, but whilst I enjoy my photography and am pursuing my dreams within this field, there is nothing else I want to focus on.

Having shared my thoughts, I would like to wish you all a very happy new year, and hope you all enjoy your new year's eve. Without much fanfare, I will be back in 2014...more specifically Thursday.

South Beach, Miami

Just wanted to do a quick blog post today. The pictures above and below were taken from my trip to Miami in June. There are still quite a few pictures I have taken this year that I haven't posted yet, but posting (almost) daily on Facebook has helped me go forth and just publish pictures, I may have overlooked for this blog.

These picture as you can tell don't really look like photographs or HDR's, and that I would accept. Miami is of course so wonderfully unique and has a culture all of it's own (as most cities do right?), that I was inspired to create more 'arty' pieces out of these, rather than straight photos (plus it helped eliminate the heavy noise on the picture below!). This was largely achieved in Topaz Clean.

The first picture was taken outside the Art Deco centre along South Beach. The 2nd picture was taken in the Delano Club, which was once owned/part owned by Madonna. Not the cheapest club I have ever been in ($500 a table) but then I was with work, so all costs covered!

The Miami Sunset You Can't See

Film critics have often said that what you can't see in a scene, is often more important than what you can. Hitchcock was a master of this, though it was also used to great effect in the movie Se7en (I even wrote it like it is on the DVD). You know the 'What's in the box?!' bit at the end. I would write spoiler alert there, but if you haven't seen it now, well you really should have, it's nearly 20 years old. Now I know it's completely unartistic to point out features like this in your own work, but then I don't really think of myself as an artist, just a guy trying to capture the scenes of the world that capture my imagination. This will probably backfire on me one day, when I insist I want to be treated seriously as an artist, man. I think I'm way too grounded and down-to-earth for that though.

Miami in February is certainly a more attractive place to be than the British Isles, though I'm not an anti-winter person. It certainly has it's charm and beauty, though the typical day here is 9 times out of 10 a dreary, wet, overcast, cold one. I'm not a great fan of Big Brother (the TV series) but I could not help but LMAO (!) when Jermaine Jackson came to Britain a few years ago on Celebrity Big Brother, thinking it would be a snowy, fairytale-like land in the winter. Oh, when will the world learn!

So anyway, the beauty of being in Miami in January/February is the summer-like sunsets you can get, that are months away in Europe. I was lucky enough to be treated to a boat trip around the Miami Bay area the evening of this picture. As a photographer, this means you won't be getting the crispest, super sharp shots, but you can certainly get pictures that would not be possible from other vantage points. The sun was going down way over my right shoulder and was reflected beautifully in these 2 buildings. It took a while to grow on me I think, but it is perhaps now my favourite shot from my Miami trip. It is a single image, processed nearly entirely in Lightroom, with some minor clean up work done in Photoshop.

f/6.3 / 92mm/ 1/100sec / ISO 400

Dancing in Little Havana

The Cuban centre of Miami, with all due respect, Little Havana is perhaps not a place I would venture to again in a hurry. Having got a taxi ride from South Beach to Little Havana (which seemed worlds apart), the taxi driver dropped me off at a location, which meant I had to walk quite a distance to get to the main point where the tourists visit, such as the cigar-making shops in the centre. It wasn't the most secure walk I've ever had to make, and watching a news programme later on about how many guns were handed in that day as part of a guns armistice scheme, made me somewhat relieved I had not known how many guns were on the 'street' there in the first place.

However, Little Havana has tons of energy to it, and as well as the famous cigar shops where you can see them being rolled and made in front of you (picture of that coming up soon), there is also music always playing outside and people enjoying the atmosphere. These guys were happy for me to take their picture of this wonderful scene I came across in the centre of Little Havana.

It is a single image (not HDR) but I have used Topaz Adjust, as well as Lightroom, to give the scene a bit more energy and tone, than just a standard out-of-the-camera photograph. Tomorrow I am travelling to Egypt, so won't be back on this blog for over a week or so. I shall return with plenty of pictures still to come from Miami, and hopefully some good ones from Egypt!

Ocean Drive

Ocean Drive is the classic road along South Beach in Miami, that contains many of the famous Art Deco buildings, an iconic landmark of the city. I honestly did not know much about Art Deco until watching a video of Miami on the flight over, but in essence it is a row of hotels that date back to the 1920's and 30's, that are now of great historic interest.

Today's photo is not so much about Art Deco, but just a flavour of what Miami is about: the Spanish influence, palm trees, vintage cars and of course the beautiful weather. This was a well timed shot, as this car is not part of the diner behind it. It was parked there whilst waiting to be parked by the valet. The car in front of it waiting to be parked was a Ferrari (only in Miami!). This photograph is a single image and was processed entirely in Lightroom 4.

I have plenty more pictures to come from my time in Miami, and I know I have not been very good at putting them up. I will blog again tomorrow with a new picture from Miami, before I go away again on Thursday for another week....to Egypt. As I said last time, it looks like I can get back to the travel aspect of this blog this year.

Miami Nights

Writing this blog on a cold, English Monday morning, when last week I was in 28 degrees heat, walking on golden beaches and swimming in the bluest sea you've ever seen, is obviously quite depressing and not easy. I returned from the sunshine state yesterday, having been out there since last Tuesday. Although it was a business trip, it nonetheless provided a very welcome getaway from the English winter, something I have very rarely been able to do. Miami is a truly beautiful, and indeed cultural city, of which I had not really expected prior to my visit. It was a given that I would take a camera out there, to capture the city's sights in my 'offtime' from work, and so I took out the lighter and more portable D90, as opposed to the much bigger and hand luggage restrictor that is the D700.

I'm lucky to have taken quite a few pictures, of which should be able to fill up this blog for quite a while. Today's picture is one I took within a couple of hours of arriving in Miami. This was the view from my hotel room. Although it might be easy to be sad not to have a sea view, I was not complaining at all, as I immediately realised I would be able to get one of those nighttime city HDR shots, that I have seen of so many other cities. This is a traditional 3 shot HDR, taken in manual mode, and using the hotel balcony as a makeshift tripod, having not been able to take one out there myself. Processing a picture like this is a lot of fun, even after the Photomatix stage, because you can pick the best bits to include in the picture from the 2 HDR's I created (one de-ghosted and one not) and the original RAW files.

You will also notice today that I have changed the name of this blog to Pete Halewood - Home and Away. You may remember that last year my blog was called The Photographic World of Pete Halewood, which was a title based around the fact that I would have pictures to display from around the world. Due to my lack of travel last year though (in no small part due to my wedding and house move), I changed the name to Talking Photo with Pete Halewood. This year however, I hope to 'get out' a lot more, and this is why I'm confident enough to name this blog in part as an ode to my travels, but also to reflect the large numbers I will take in the UK. Today's picture is my first HDR taken in the USA.