Inside San Maggiore Giorgio

Venice hey, been a long time since I posted a picture from there. Well my Venice photos have been getting a lot of attention from myself recently. Probably because in the 2 years since it's been that I was there, I look back quite objectively at the pictures and think 'hmmmm, I would do this now', and then I realise that RAW files are not cast in stone and I can tweak them as needs be. I have even been making some slight adjustments to my Burano picture, one of my best known pictures (without trying to sound too disgustingly modest).

So why am I doing all this? Well 2 reasons actually. Firstly, because I bought a book recently on Amazon for a penny. Yes, you read that right, 1p (the delivery charge cost 240% more than the book). Why people try to sell books for penny I have no idea, but at least it means you can get hold of books, that would have been incredibly difficult to find elsewhere. The book I bought was called Charlie Waite's Venice. A book of photographs by one of my favourite photographers, taken in Venice. You probably had guessed that from the title though. The book was first published in 1989 and though there are many great and inspiring pictures in there, what surprised me was the amount of noise (film grain) present in many of the photos. This was obviously more acceptable then, as ISO was controlled by the type of film you selected, not in-camera like on modern DSLR's. It made me realise that most people are nuts if they don't believe that digital photography is an advancement over film. That much noise would just not be acceptable in today's photographs, I believe. Don't get me wrong, I do think film grain adds a fantastic quality to to some pictures, but the amount of noise present in other photographs, takes away from the overall quality.

I am digressing slightly, but the book did inspire to go back to my own pictures of Venice taken in April 2011. The second reason I have been going back to my Venice photos is because I am going to bring out an Ebook (though you can get in standard book form as well!) of Venice. It's the type of photographer's photography book I like; not too much on words and lots of great images (I hope you think anyway). The type of photography book Scott Kelby creates when he returns from certain destinations. I have always wanted to create these types of books as well. You may remember that I released a book (small though it is) last year entitled 'West Berkshire in HDR', so the Venice one will be my second published book.

Today's picture is one I think I originally posted on Flickr a couple of years ago, but I reprocessed it last year. This is the time I have posted the reprocessed version.

Lady of Murano

Better late than never today! I've just got back from my stag weekend in the beautiful city of Malmo in Sweden, which is why today's blog is very late. I'm tired physically and mentally but I have survived, always a good thing after your stag do! Anyway, I have no thoughts to share regarding photography now but obviously could not have left the day blank. So here is a photo I took last year of this superb glass sculpture from the island of Murano in Venice. This is one I had printed for my exhibition last autumn and now adorns one of the walls in my living room. A new photo and plenty of photography thoughts to come on Tuesday!

Antonio Vivaldi Museum

I've been very busy this week completing my pictures for the Woolton Hill postcard project and seeing old friends, and I haven't had much time for photo processing. So I've decided to do something I have not done for a while and that is post one of my (self-professed) 'classics'.

It's good timing that this picture comes onto the blog because it's about time I added a bit of an international aspect back to the website. Venice is not short of significant historical figures and right up there with the best known is the classical composer Antonio Vivaldi. The museum dedicated to him in Venice is actually quite small but worthwhile nonetheless. The instruments on display were used during the time of Vivaldi or perhaps indeed by the maestro himself.

This is an HDR from a single RAW file. I wanted to do a 'real' HDR but the room was just too dark (whilst using the camera without a tripod) to capture the brighter exposures. They came out too blurry. With the emergence of even more photo software, it's one I have always thought about revisiting and may attempt to fix the blurry RAW files but that project is for another day. This picture never lacked attention as it is on websites such as Flickr and is always one that pleases people at exhibitions I have held.

Burano

As I said on Thursday, today I have chosen to post another of my 'classics'. I know it is perhaps a bit self-indulgent to call them that but I only refer that to some of my pictures which I feel have done particularly well, either on the internet or with the wider public at exhibitions. I don't deny that I do want to get more of my pictures from last year on this website, as people may find it harder to find them elsewhere or may have not seen them before at all. So whereas I'm primarily fully committed to posting new pictures on this blog site, I will continue to post an oldie now and then.

Of all my pictures, I know this picture from the island of Burano in Venice, divides opinion the most. It really is a case of people either love it or hate it. Many younger people and none photographers will often tell me that this is their favourite out of all my pictures, whereas people with artistic or photographic experience tend to be unsure, even sceptical about it. If you have been to Burano, you will know that the houses are genuinely all different colours but people sometimes people suspect I have changed them on this picture, something I would never wish to do. It remains one of my favourite pictures though and of course I am delighted that so many people do enjoy this one.

Timeless Torcello

A picture almost a year in the making.... Perhaps it is my last picture to ever come out of my trip to Venice in April 2011. It is certainly a picture I have been obsessing about for almost the entire time I have been home from Venice. It is quite a long story but Torcello was one of the places I was keen to visit during my trip to the Venetian Lagoon. I had seen pictures of this place, which by the way is the Church of Santa Fosca, and this became high on my priority list of pictures I wanted to take. The day we visited Torcello was a typically glorious Venetian sunny day and though there were a fair few tourists arriving via the vaperettos, it was also a quiet and peaceful place. This gave me opportunities to take the picture of this beautiful church that I had been imagining, though the story of why the picture took so long to complete began that day as well.

You see if you look at many other pictures of this church (and maybe I will show the original RAW pictures soon to highlight my point) you will notice that there is a church spire behind the top left of this church. It is actually the spire to the cathedral that lies next to this little church (click this link). The day we visited, my old enemy in photography had covered the whole of the spire - scaffolding. I took the usual 3 bracketed shots with the intention of creating an HDR but when I was back home in England, nothing could make me nearly satisfied with the pictures I tried, as the scaffolding was hugely distracting and very ugly. I knew that for the picture to be any good, I had to get rid of it. This was an amazingly tough job, as it was not a simple spot heal / clone stamp job. The tone and colour gradient of the sky was different throughout the whole picture and the church spire complete with scaffolding was too large an object (and connected visually to the church in the picture) to easily displace. My photoshop skills have never been good, so I knew as well that I would just have to wait for a time I could easily remove (without being noticeable) the spire in the background.

Well it wasn't easy, but 3 hours working on this picture last week finally paid off and the blood & sweat that went into this picture, began to produce a result I was very happy with. In the end I blended the picture with a texture of sandstone I took from rocks in the Czech Republic, to give it it's final rustic look. I've called it 'Timeless Torcello' because this church alone dates back 1000 years. The cathedral next to it (Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta) was founded in 639AD. Torcello is an ancient place and in fact was the first colonised island in the Venetian lagoon. If you ever do visit Venice, I promise you will not regret visiting the very special island of Torcello.

Holy Murano

Yesterday's exhibition at Newbury Town Hall went very well and I am delighted that so many people came in to have a look and chat to me about the pictures on display. It is always worthwhile for me to do these exhibitions as the main goal for me is to introduce more people to my work and I certainly managed to do that yesterday. There maybe another chance of me appearing in the local paper this week as a result so I will keep you all updated if that materialises. Thanks a million to all those who attended, I can't say how much I appreciated it and to all those who helped out as well (you know who you are!).

Holy Murano

This picture is a bit of an oldie, though I have revised and updated it (which just means I've tweeked it a little). I'm 90% sure this is the church of San Pietro Martire, 1 of 3 churches on the island of Murano in Venice. At one point I thought I had lost this picture on my hard drive forever, as I was quite disorganised in my early days of where and how I stored files but alas I still had a hi-res jpeg version which I could adjust and tweek (sharpen, crop and saturate a colour or 2 here and there) a little.

On a final note, I have changed the style and background of this website slightly, though don't get too used to the background as I will be changing that again soon. One of the things I love about the blogger system, is that it's very quick and easy to make major design upheavals and other changes.

Madonna Dell'Orto

I've decided to post an 'oldie' (it's not really that old) today due to being pretty swamped with none-photographic issues recently. I'm in the process of buying a property at the moment and will hopefully be moving in very soon. It's taking up a lot of my time anyway and rather than rush a picture together, I decided to post a favourite of mine from last year. I have posted this one on Flickr before but never as a blog.

This is inside the magnificent Madonna Dell'Orto church in Venice, not too far from the Rialto bridge. I took this picture using a gorilla-pod, whilst sitting on the very back bench of the church. It was one of the first pictures I processed on my return from Venice and though I did not choose to use it in my exhibition in October last year, it still remains one of my personal favourites. The paintings on the far wall behind the alter are truly spectacular and I think one of the reasons I like this particular photograph.