Who Sees these Interiors?

First of all, the title comes from the opening line of the Manic Street Preachers song 'Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning). That is the only tenuous link, nothing that clever. Interior work is something that doesn't often feature in my photography, and yet is a key area I want to focus on in future. I have always loved how interior shots lend themselves so well to HDR, and the lack of a sky means that the time of the day is not so important.

If there is any photography business I could see myself going into, it would be interior design. This is simply because there are plenty of hotels, bars, local businesses and houses that require good photographic work. The main reason though, would be to bring my own creativity to these buildings, and we all know that HDR in the UK is yet to have created a big impact in the business world, as HDR real estate photography has in the US. The French photographer Serge Ramelli is a particular inspiration here, and has some tutorials on shooting interior design (www.photoserge.com).

The photo above was taken at The Swan Hotel in Bibury about 2 and a half years ago, when my main camera was the Nikon D90. It is an HDR image, taken from 3 exposures, and was taken on a tripod, which is essential for interior design photography. It means that you can shoot at low ISO, and therefore create all the light you need for a particular scene, without having to deal with noise.

You can see the image as it came out of Photomatix below, before my layer-masking and retouching steps in Photoshop and Lightroom. I used Topaz Adjust as well, to bring out more detail, perhaps lost by the layer masking process. If you click on either photo, you can alternate quickly between the 2 in the lightbox, to see the before and after changes a lot better.

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.

Match of the Day

Saturday night has been the time of day for my new blog post for 2 weeks in a row, but when else is a better time to post a picture called Match of the Day? Perhaps only the British audience will understand this, but of course Match of the Day is the national institution TV show, showing all the highlights of the Saturday's football games. It will be a bit lacklustre for me this week though, as my team is playing tomorrow (#grumpyface).

Photography is a wonderful hobby to have, but once people know you have it, it leads to many requests for picturing various local events taking place. This was a cup final that took place in my local town of Newbury in May, and I was asked to capture some pictures of the Canal Bar FC (team in red and gold shirt) in action. Sadly they lost the final, but it gave me an opportunity to practice some sports photography. I am very interested in this field, and would of course love to picture some of the great sporting events, but I think due to the cost involved, it is a field of photography you have to work your way up to (unless of course having a few thousand quid lying around is not an issue). There are lots of local events that take place though, where you can learn to take your first steps in sports photography, before you make it to Wembley!

Even for a local football match, I tried to make this picture come alive, so I used quite a bit of Topaz Clarity, as well as some cross processing (in Color Efex 4), to bring out the details of the pitch, and give it a more attractive shade of green. The Topaz Clarity gave a great boost to the details of the football shirts as well.

Tip: I am no experienced football photographer, but I do know the key to a great action shot is to have the ball as the key focus of the picture. You can see in this picture that the players only have eyes on one thing, and the struggle to get it shows in their faces.

The Magic Kingdom of Krakow

Ok, so I may owe a slight debt to Walt Disney for the title, but I'm sure the Disney Magic Kingdom owes (at least some of) it's design to the magnificent churches of central Europe. All over Europe you can of course find magnificent old and new castles and churches, and Poland is no exception. The church above is St. Joseph's Church in the Podgorze district of Krakow, slightly away from the city centre. It was built at the beginning of the 20th Century, and is well regarded as a magnificent work of architecture. We were only passing by on our way into Krakow when I took this picture, so it was captured during standard daylight (there are some wonderful photos taken of this church at dawn/sunset), but I still could not resist firing off some bracketed shots to create an HDR, no matter if it is a fairly touristy shot.

It was nevertheless a difficult picture to process (as these tall churches often are), as it does feel the building has been compacted a little. I could fix this in Lightroom, but then I lost the pathway leading up to the church, which I had specifically allowed for in the composition at the scene. Sacrifices have to be made occasionally I guess, but the HDR work and a bit of Topaz Adjust has given me a result I was hoping for.

New Beginnings / The Wroclaw River

Saturday was a fairly new beginning for this site. For too long, I had not been giving it the attention it deserved, and my output of photographs this year has been relatively quite small. The odd thing as I said on Saturday is that my passion for photography is as strong as ever. I'm so keen to learn all the techniques I can on youtube videos and webinars, and having upgraded all my software recently to Lightroom 5/ Photoshop CC, I for the first time want to be an expert on these programs. I have been particularly been enjoying videos by Serge Ramelli and Glyn Dewis recently, and I highly recommend their photo tutorials. The photo community is indeed one of the most giving communities in the art world, and it sometimes astonishes me what you can learn for free, if you want to.

You may notice there is a new look to this website, and as well as having reverted back to my 3 days a week blogging, I would also like to state what this photography website is about:

*Regular HDR (and non-HDR) photographs from myself.
*Tips on taking and processing photographs.
*My view on recent topics in the photography world and software.
*Recommendations of great photographers and websites out there.

What it is certainly not:

*A means to slate any other photographers or photography companies (there's too much of that these days).
*A merry-go-round of ideas I say I'm going to do and don't.

Despite constant going back and forth (due to the whole and rather boring watermark issue this year), all my photos on here will be watermark and border free. I copyright my work, so am not worried about people using it for whatever use, unless it is a large clear case of profiting, despite copyright infringement.

I of course thank all the people who keep visiting this website, and I only hope I can make up for my lack of output this year, with my new 3 blogs a week scheme. It seemed a bit too much to blog 3 times a week before, but even if it is low on text, there will be no problem for me to post a picture at least every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

The Wroclaw River

The river that runs through the Polish city of Wroclaw is the River Oder (pronounced o-dra). This was a handheld HDR (you can just about get away with it in good light) and is taken from 5 separate exposures. As I said, I have been watching a lot of tutorials over the last few months, which has led me to experiment with a lot of non-HDR pictures. I processed this picture over the weekend, to bring myself back into the HDR processing world, which I love so much!

Tip: HDR pictures are always better taken on a tripod. I say that as a guy who hates carrying tripods, and accepts that it is simply not possible to always have one with you. However, though you can get fine handheld HDR's in good light, the slight movements of camera shake can show up when you view the images back on the computer. A set of motion-free sharp images gives you the best chance of producing a wonderfully sharp HDR image.

The Bodleian Fortress

Yikes has it really been that long!? I knew I hadn't blogged in a while, but didn't realise it had been nearly a whole month! Well it's a good job I've decided to revert back to an old habit. Oh yes, I will again be blogging 3 times a week, starting today. Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday (as opposed to previously Sunday), I will post a new photo or topic for discussion. It is the only way I can keep up my blogging habits on here, at a time when I am enjoying photography more than ever.

So having said that, I will keep it brief tonight. Today's photo was taken at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. It was processed entirely in Lightroom, despite the numerous black and white processing programs available for photographers these days. I am currently trialling Topaz BW effects, and am yet to make a decision whether to make the full purchase. Lightroom 5 (as 4 did previously as well) does a great job of black and white processing, and it's often difficult to judge how a stand alone black and white program can go further. What might win it for me with Topaz's program, is the detail slider they have added, to bring out those extra details in a black and white picture.

Tip: The key to black and white processing is contrast. It's too easy when converting a picture to black and white to overlook how boosting the contrast can really bring the picture too life. They can look quite flat otherwise. See you on Tuesday!

Village Life Poland

Another example of 'hyper-realistic' HDR, as I blogged about yesterday. Unlike yesterday's photo though, I did not 'hyper' the sky as well. It's dangerous territory I think to apply a global effect to any post-processing technique (sharpening being another example), but of course there are pictures it will work for.

This is from a village just outside Wroclaw in Poland. My wife does not actually like me taking pictures such as this of her home country, as she thinks it represents Poland in a way (she thinks) most people think of, which is under-developed and poor. Having been several times, I can promise you it is not like that, but in fact I love these old rustic buildings, that are so hard to find in England. They lend themselves so well to HDR, as there is so much detail to capture. Therefore, another good candidate for a hyper-realistic (must stop using that word) look.

Hyper-Realistic HDR

Creating 'hyper-realistic' HDR photographs has not really been a forte of mine. Hyper-realistic means going beyond creating a realistic photograph (HDR or otherwise), and taking it into something perhaps a bit more extra dimensional. Critics tend to cause this style 'over-cooked', meaning they have taken the HDR too far. This criticism is completely justified in many cases, but I think the hyper-realistic look is one of the key looks of HDR pictures, and encourages many photographers to give it a try.

I have tended to go for a look that uses HDR techniques, but still tries to give the photo a realistic look, and not providing an image that was an unrealistic representation of the scene. However, I have tried my hand at more hyper-realistic techniques recently, to give a particular scene more edge, and yes something beyond reality. In another sense, going for a bit more detail in architectural pictures. It is important to note that the hyper-realistic look is not suitable for all HDR scenes, and I will certainly stick to my usual HDR techniques for landscape scenes, away from an urban environment.

This picture was taken on the Oxford photo walk recently, and the idea as stated above, was to give it a look perhaps beyond reality (even though of course all the details were there when I took the picture). 

I hope you like it, but in any case, let me know what your thoughts are on 'hyper-realistic' HDRs.

iPhoneography

This is undoubtedly a party I am arriving very late to, perhaps even to the point where all the other guests are leaving. However, having finally acquired an iPhone in the last month, I have added a new tool to my photographic repertoire - mobile phone photography.

When I was lured (completely willingly) into photography 3 and a half years ago, mobile phone photography was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to get the best possible images I could, meaning expensive cameras and editing software. I had been noticing though, the advances that were being made on the photo apps market, and whilst not willing to buy a phone just to have a go, now that I own an iphone, I have waded into the thick of iphoneography.

I have 3 camera apps for my iPhone - 1) Snapseed - The best, the king, the one I could not do without. It was created by Nik Software (now owned by Google), which is basically all you need to know with regards to credibility. 2) Mextures - A relatively new app I believe, based primarily on adding textures to your iphone photos. It's pretty good but only gets used occasionally in conjunction with Snapseed. 3) Camera+ - I used this app once after downloading it. I don't like it, never use it, and have no further intentions with it.

It's important to get straight, that though an iphone can take great pictures, it is not a patch on any DSLR camera (which of course it is not intended to be). I will always continue to take out my D700 for  the very best quality. What an iPhone can do though, is provide great images, whilst being a constant companion, being right there in your pocket. There has been more than 1 occasion recently (look at the black and white bridge image above for example), where I have thought 'what a shame I don't have a camera on me', only to then remember, I have a pretty good camera in my pocket.

The other good thing about iphone photos, is that once edited, they are easy to upload to Twitter, Facebook, or any other platform you wish to share them on.

Hope you like the selection of photos above and below, plenty more iphoneography to come!

Meat Specialists

I had planned to blog some pictures from the Oxford Photo Walk (part of the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk) sooner, but there has been a new addition to mine and my wife's household; a little Cockapoo Puppy called Chester. We bought the little fella a week ago, and he has given me a very exhausting week. I have never had a dog before, so this is all a new experience for me, but am thoroughly enjoying being a dog owner. Naturally, everyone who meets him falls in love with him, so we can't wait until we can take him out walking in the big wide world (in less than 2 weeks after his 2nd vaccinations).

Back to the Oxford Photo Walk though, and this easily qualifies as my first photo walk with a large group of people. It was led by Glyn Dewis, and he organised a fantastic walk and event in general, and though it is perhaps a cliché, I can honestly say I met a great bunch of people. Meeting other keen amateur photographers, plus the opportunity to visit sights in Oxford I would not have thought of myself, made the day very worthwhile. Looking forward to going on more!

One part of the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk are the competitions, and though I am not really motivated by these things, I decided to enter the picture above nonetheless (taken in the Covered Market in Oxford). Whether it is the best picture I took on the day, I don't know, but it is one of the few HDR's I took that day, and ultimately, that's what I do.

Sticking my neck out a bit now, but I have so many photos to post that are fully developed, that I do anticipate being much more active on this blog from now until the end of the year.