The Thames Under Oxford / Pinterest

Here is another record from my recent day trip to Oxford. I mentioned last week that I need to go out and shoot some more pictures now and that is still very true. The more pictures you post from a certain location, the more difficult it is to write about. You've already written so much content on the place! Anyways, as opposed to my 'Oxfordshire' shot last last week, this is from the other side of that bridge that goes over the river Thames and is in glorious HDR! It is an HDR from 3 shots and I decided to go for the square format for this picture as there was little if any interesting content towards the left side of this picture. I always remember Rick Sammon's advice about cropping, which is to always make the picture fill the frame, that's what I try to do.

Pinterest


Since Trey Ratcliff's blog about Pinterest the other day, I notice there are a lot of photographers signing up. Which has included me as well, so if you want to have a look, here is my Pinterest page:

pinterest.com/petehalewood

I only have 2 followers so far, so more would be appreciated! There was a big debate on Trey's site about the pro's and con's of pinterest. I completely adhere to Trey's core philosophy about having no fear who uses or what happens to your pictures and let be what will be. The internet has changed the way artists can have their work accessed and I think you either accept this and use it to your advantage or don't accept this and spend your days complaining of the way things are. It was a wise person who once said "If you don't like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less".

In a way nothing has really changed in terms of gaining success. A struggling pub band with ambitions to 'make it' don't go chasing money out of everyone who hears their music. They are grateful for any exposure they get. If and when they do make it, they will be able to earn a living, but their music will still be used by people unwilling to pay for it. And the internet hasn't changed that, people have been making tapes and bootlegging music for decades. What a waste of time it would be for bands and record companies to chase every teenager who made a tape from someone else's record and let's be honest we've all done it.

The most important lesson I can offer to people who are concerned about where their pictures end up, is simply always remember to tag and record your information in the metadata. That way your picture will always carry a metaphorical 'chip' in it and some way down the line, someone may use that to track you down and ask to pay you to use the picture.

This is simple enough to do in Photoshop, just click into File and then File Info and fill out all the relevant information, just make sure you get your email address or other contact details in there so people can find you!

I have a 4 day weekend now, which will include heading over to Windsor, so hope to capture some great photos around there.

Oxfordshire

I can't remember the last time I posted a picture that wasn't an HDR and I am quite ashamed of that. It was never my intention to become just an HDR photographer and if I had a plan it was to be 50/50 HDR to single image picture ratio. I guess I just always like seeing how a scene will look in HDR and I'm intrigued how an HDR will look when you work on it for a while. I think it's the post-processing I enjoy most about HDR actually. I really enjoy working on photos with the computer and HDR lends itself to this to a great extent.

So as you can guess, this picture is not an HDR and was a single take. It is quite vague to call it Oxfordshire, but I thought it was quite a representative scene of this county. Of course, this is in the city that Oxfordshire is named after, Oxford itself. I still believe in not doing HDR for the sake of it and this picture did not scream to me that it needed the HDR touch. It was taken from inside the grounds of the magnificent Botanic Gardens in Oxford and the river you see to the right is the River Thames, the longest river in the UK. This picture was processed mainly in Lightroom but also in Photoshop CS5 and Viveza 2.