I was extremely flattered to be asked by Anita, who organises the annual Grandison Road Camera Club competition, to help judge the competition and award the prizes. The children who entered ranged in ages from 6 to 13 years old and the standard of work was exceptional.

The children were all given a disposable film camera, yes a film camera, and were asked to take photographs covering the following themes: Common Life, City and Town, Animals, Scenic/Landscape, Humour, Family Group, Portrait, and That’s Life.

Anita not only spent hours of her time on the competition she also paid for the cameras and the prize money. She also gave up most of the table space in her house for a number of weeks so that the photographs could be displayed. So from the children and parents who participated, and myself, many thanks to Anita.

Here are the prize winners and the photos that they took. 1st prize category winners were awarded £5, second £2.00
COMMON LIFE:
1st Prize: Madelaine Leggett aged 10
2nd Prize: Emma Whyte aged 13

CITY/TOWN:
1st Prize: Robbie Whyte aged 11
2nd Prize: Amy Smith aged 6

ANIMALS:
1st Prize: Tom Sheldon aged 8
2nd Prize: Emily Sheldon aged 9

SCENIC/LANDSCAPE:
1st Prize: Madelaine Leggett aged 10
2nd Prize: Bella Stevens aged 6

HUMOUR:
1st Prize: Dan Smith aged 9

FAMILY GROUP:
1st Prize: Amy Smith-Cornfield aged 6
2nd Prize: Nicholas Legget aged 8

PORTRAITS:
1st Prize: Emma Whyte aged 13
2nd Prize: Madelaine Leggett aged 10

THAT’S LIFE:
1st Prize: Nicholas Whyte aged 8
2nd Prize: Robbie Whyte aged 11
THE MAJOR PRIZES
FIRST PRIZE: £20.00
Dan Smith aged 9

SECOND PRIZE: £10.00
Bella Stevens aged 6

THE JUDGE’S FAVOURITE:£5.00
Emily Sheldon aged 9

THE SPONSOR’S FAVOURITE: £5.00
Robbie Whyte aged 11

Merits (£1.00) were also awarded to: Emma Whyte, Tom Sheldon, Madelaine Leggett, Nico Whyte, Bella Stevens, and San Smith.
Overall Effort Prizes (disposable cameras) were awarded to: Amy Amith and Robbie Whyte.

Home

Beyond October in the run up to Christmas we get so busy with autumn photography, photographing parties, and stocking the stall, so this will be the final competition this year.

And because it’s the last competition of the year the prize is a BIG ONE!!!!

A big welmome to The Nappy Valley team and their members, we’re going to present the prize on the 21st November with the Nappy Valley Team at our stall on Northcote Road. More about that in November.

Can you guess where the following photograph was taken? I need city and country. The prize is a pair of framed 700mm x 570mm photographs worth £370.00.

You have until the 15th November 2009 to enter. All you need to do is reply to this post or if you don’t want others to see your answer email me with your answer ma@photoarte.co.uk.

You’ll find this image somewhere in the buy and rent prints gallery.

Good luck and I hope to hear from you soon.

Home

Autumn is by far my favourite time of the year for taking photographs. One of the things that I noticed most in my first year in the UK after my arrival from New Zealand was the change in seasons. We did (still do) have seasons in Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand, but the South East of England regardless of how awful or good the summer has been always seems to enjoy a period of settled weather around this time of year and you can tell that the autumn colours will be with us soon.

Some of the best outdoor photographs I think I’ve taken of families outdoors have been in the autumn using the colours and leaves as props, and I also think some of my best selling gallery photographs have been taken in various cities in autumn.

So how do you take photographs in autumn? My biggest tip for photography in the autumn is KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You can break all the ‘keep the sun behind you’ rules in Spring, Summer and Winter but in autumn the direct light is much softer than it is in summer and worth using to your advantage.

For Portraits and shots of the children playing in the leaves set your DSLR to AV (aperture priority), and set the aperture to the lowest it will go to – maybe 6.4 ,5.6 or 4. The corresponding speed will be quite high and you’ll be able to capture the movement without too much blur.
You could also try this in reverse if the children (and the adults) are throwing leaves at each other. Set your camera to TV (time priority) and set the speed to 60. Take plenty of photographs, I take 50 or 60 images in a burst if there’s lots of action, the law of averages dictates that six or so will be good. take a look at my portraits page for more info.

For Landscape photographs take your time. Most lenses perform best at around f11 so set your camera to AV and the aperture around 11. If you have a tripod use it even if you can take the photograph handheld. I find that using a tripod slows the picture taking process down and I think much more carefully about the composition. If you’re standing with your back to the light the camera’s metering system will be quite accurate although you will need to take a few frames at different exposures just to make sure you get a spot on exposure. Take a look at my photograph galleries for more autumn photographs.

I’ve talked a lot about the settings you should use on SLR cameras. With compact cameras where you can’t make many manual alterations to the camera exposure don’t worry KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You’ve got plenty of time, the colours in the last two years according to my records start to look good in mid October, and oak trees don’t start falling until mid December.

Home

I get a lot of questions about how to take great photographs of sunsets. The truth is, it’s easy. The hard part is finding a great sunset and being ready at the right time. If you follow the following tips you’ll be ready when you find the perfect sunset.
The sun sets every day, but to get a perfect sunset picture you need the right conditions of dust and clouds.
The dusky-red of the setting sun is the result of dust in the air. Wind blows lots of dust from the ground up into the air, and smoke and industrial pollution provide dust too (it’s one of the few benefits of air pollution). So do forest fires. The biggest contributor of all is volcanic eruptions. There’s nothing like a volcano to launch a huge payload of dust and smoke into the upper atmosphere from which it circles the globe. In recent years, beautiful sunsets have been credited to the eruption of Mount St.Helens in Washington, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, and most recently, Mt. Etna in Italy.
Clouds help too. Whether it is thick clouds that obscure portions of the sky or wispy clouds that take on colors of their own, the most dramatic sunset pictures almost always include clouds. The main reason we associate beaches with sunsets is that they give us an unobstructed view of the setting sun on the horizon. No mountains in the way. No buildings. No city lights. Just a flat horizon and the setting sun. Plus a smooth expanse of water to reflect the colors!
Also, if you’re hanging around on the beach, you’re probably relaxed and in the mood to enjoy a great sunset. You have time to watch the sun go down and savor the changes that take place over time.

What exposure should I use? The answer is that there are a range of correct exposures. If you use your camera’s built-in meter, you will usually be way off because the sky is still relatively bright, and the meter will underexpose the image. If you have a separate light meter, your best approach is to try to meter the ambient level of light. To do this either take an incident-light reading, or take a gray-card reading. Either approach will usually give a proper exposure. However, to be on the safe side, we suggest you take a number of bracketed shots.
Bracketing is a technique used by professional photographers to get the best exposure. To bracket, if your meter tells you to expose the scene at 1/60 of a second at f/8, then make the photograph and then take another frame at 1/60th at f/5.6 (one stop more exposure)and another at 1/60th at f/11 (one stop less exposure). This way, you have taken frames with more and less exposure than that which the meter indicates. You may find that a slightly lighter or darker version of the scene may give a more pleasing overall exposure.
What if you don’t have a separate meter or a way to control your camera’s aperture and shutter speed? As long as your camera has auto-exposure lock, you can still bracket…only you’ll do so by “fooling” the camera. Here’s how… First, point your camera at the sunset and take the indicated exposure. Second, point your camera at the ground where it’s darker, lock the exposure, recompose on the sunset, and take another exposure. Third, point the camera at the sky, lock the exposure, recompose on the sunset, and take another photograph. You should now have three different exposure settings for the sunset!
There’s another aspect of exposure for a sunset — timing. Sunsets aren’t static. They happen over time. When you prepare to take those sunset pictures, plan to spend at least half an hour, so you can photograph the scene every five minutes or so. Clouds move, colors deepen and change, and the image you record a little later as the sunset unfolds may have more drama and richer colors than you saw fifteen minutes before. Take lots of pictures, and choose the best of them later when you see the results.

What about composition?
Even the most spectacular sunset will look like abstract wallpaper if you don’t provide some context. Silhouetted trees or other objects in the foreground give a sense of scale and location to the scene. A great sunset will have a different feeling if it’s taken at the beach with a few palm trees in the foreground.
Of course, dramatic sunsets, despite what I’ve said about beaches and islands, can be seen in other places too. Wherever, see if you can place an interesting object in the foreground What about mountains? They make wonderful images, but they often present a problem when it comes to sunsets. If the mountain is tall, the sun will set behind it while still glowing a bright yellow. The mountain may rise too far above the dust-laden horizon for you to see the deep red hue of the setting sun.

What focal length should you use for a great sunset? The longer the lens, the larger the sun will appear in the picture. The surprising fact is that the sun in reality is only one-half a degree in diameter. What this means is that, if you shoot with a “normal” lens — say a 50mm — the sun will be less than 1/80th the width of the frame! You want the red globe of the sun to be a lot more significant than this. To achieve this, use a very long lens — 200mm is the minimum…400mm or longer is even better. One point, however: With such long lenses, be sure to support the camera on a tripod, monopod, or convenient flat surface since the exposure will be relatively long and you want to prevent camera shake.

WARNING: It is dangerous to your eyes to look directly at the shining yellow sun. Don’t look directly at it until it is low enough in the sky to have turned red. If you’re using a long lens, this is especially important. The lens is like a telescope. It magnifies the intensity of the sunlight. Don’t look at the sun through the lens until the flaming yellow glow has turned a dark red.
If you use film, what should you use for sunset photos? Almost any film will do. Some pros want the “grainless” look of Kodachrome. Others will use their regular ISO 800 film, and see no difference. My recommendation: ISO 200 or 400 will be fine. These ISO are good settings for use with a digital camera as well.

White Balance
White balance refers to the correctness of color in a photographic scene. The white balance feature in most digital cameras ensures that color appears correct regardless of the lighting conditions. Theoretically, if the white balance is correct, then all of the colors in the scene are correct too.
The first and perhaps easiest method is to shoot RAW files in the “Auto” white balance mode. The camera will automatically select the white balance for you, and allow you to focus your efforts on composing a great image. However, you will most certainly need to correct the white balance later in the digital darkroom during the RAW conversion process. For sunsets, you will likely find that the “cloudy” or “shady” presets will more closely resemble the actual look of the scene. While this is a useful method, I believe in getting it right in the camera the first time.

Sun Can Damage CCDs
It’s never a good idea to point a digital camera directly at any intensely bright light-source. Direct exposure to the sun while it is high in the sky can damage the delicate image sensor found in most digital cameras, the CCD. Fortunately as the sun approaches the sunset its intensity will diminish greatly. That’s primarily because the light rays become scattered as they pass through atmospheric haze and pollutants that surrounds the earth. The closer the sun gets to the horizon, the safer it will be to point a digital camera at it. Never stare at the sun. You will cause damage to your eyes.

Auto-Focus
Very bright objects in the center of the frame can confuse the Auto-Focus feature found on most digital cameras. You can avoid the problem altogether by switching to Landscape mode. Landscape mode sets the camera lens to Infinity ensuring sharply focused sunsets.

Turn around!
Many times we get so caught up in photographing the sunset itself that we forget about the beautiful light that is being produced by this modified light source. Turn around and take notice of the golden light a sunset provides.

Golden Light
Don’t stop shooting after the sun has dropped below the horizon. The light levels may be low but the quality of the light is pure beauty. Try shooting a portrait in this light and you’ll be amazed at the rich golden tones you’ll get.
Why is the quality of light so special? With the sun below the horizon, the sky essentially becomes a huge soft box, spreading reflected light through the atmosphere without the harshness and shadows of a point source such as the direct light of the sun.
The bottom line is digital cameras will perform better under soft reflected light conditions. Take advantage of this golden light, it doesn’t last long.

Use a Tripod
Because of low light levels, shooting sunsets may require long exposure times, so you’ll need a tripod. Exposure times of one or two seconds are common when shooting sunsets. Many digital cameras have replaced the cable release with a remote control. If your camera has one, bring it. This will reduce the possibility of camera shake during exposure times.

Include Foreground elements
Consider including foreground elements such as an interesting a tree or house into your scene. Just because you are shooting a sunset doesn’t mean you only have to include the sun. Because of the direction of the light, foreground elements will almost ertainly be reproduced as silhouette, which can help to build visual drama in a sunset image.

I hope you find this useful and you are able to apply some of this to get great sunset pictures. As I said at the head of this article, the problem is to get to a place that has great sunsets. The rest is easy!

Home

This is a subject I can ‘talk the handle off an iron pot’ about. It’s a subject I’ll revisit again and talk more about specifics.

When I first arrived on London in 1985 it was a much grimier and dirtier city than it is today. Since then all that post industrial revolution smoke has been cleaned off the brickwork of the major London landmarks, and the general gentrification of the city over the boom periods has been responsible for a much cleaner and greener city. London isn’t unique in that it’s cleaner these days, most cities are cleaner. The inhabitants of cities in general, like London’s, are more proud of their urban space these days.
When I started taking photos of London the first thing that struck me was how ‘low rise’ London was, and you can see this from the bridges and on the river. Of course this was before the Docklands was developed but cities like New York are so different to photograph as all the views are vertical. London suits the panoramic photograph and river cities often do (OK I know New York is also a river city but it’s an exception). London is a mediaeval city and much of is is bolted together with no apparent street plan, but I’m constantly surprised how symmetrical the views are and it is something I look for in my panoramic photographs. The modern architecture that’s been added more recently particularly the jubilee bridges, the London eye, and Docklands has been enormously helpful to us photographers looking for patterns and symmetry. There are two photographs that demonstrate this. the first is the image below I use as the header image at the top of my website and the second is a photograph I took of the Hungerford Bridge and the London eye. I really like the fact that I’ve managed to keep the bridge sharp and get movement in the London eye.

London is also full of quirky images, the telephone boxes in Kingston, the rows of cabs outside Harrods, and the way the London eye looks as though it’s falling over from a certain angle. I find that the quirky images people often comment on don’t sell that well but sit well alongside the images that do.

Being in the right place at the right time plays a huge part in my photography. Getting that ‘great shot’ often doesn’t happen first time, and if I go back several times at different times of the day there’s much higher chance that I’ll get a good shot and often a greater chance of shooting something completely unexpected. To illustrate this I spent one Friday morning photographing Tower Bridge which wasn’t successful as the weather wasn’t great. I met my sister for lunch at the Oxo tower (she was paying!) and I took the following shot of a storm rolling through from the balcony of the restaurant. Being in the right place at the right time counts for a lot.

Over the coming months I’ll talk more about the specifics of photographing a city, my next blog about this will be on Panoramics, how to shoot them, how to stitch them together in photoshop, and how best to print and frame them.

Home

I was born in New Zealand and I spent my childhood there. I am the eldest of four and looking back on my time there compared with friends who grew up in the UK I feel incredibly lucky that I grew up without any of the influences that big cities have on children. My father is English and my mother Australian, and with that influence as children we understood from an early age, unlike many of our contemporaries, that there was a world that existed outside New Zealand. As children we travelled to Sydney to see my mothers family quite often, it was always very hot.  In the winter of 1981 my father took my brother and I to the Uk to visit his family, My brother Simon and I had couldn’t believe how cold and damp it was.

In 1983 I bought my first camera, a second hand Practica MTL3 with a standard glass 50mm lens in 1983, it weighed a ton and I rattled through hundreds of rolls of Agfa Black and white 100 asa film, I didn’t use colour film for years because it was to expensive to develop and print, and as I couldn’t develop and print it myself I stuck with black and white. The Practica camera was built like a tank and it survived many a ski accident and drunken evening at the Carlton Hotel in Christchurch. The Practica camera had a huge paddle shaped depth of field button on the side of the body which when pulled back gave you an exposure reading and a depth of field preview, and although it looked like something Dell boy would try and sell you it took fantastic pictures. My father bought me a tamron 70-100mm lens for my birthday and I could now take take pictures of the girls in the flat next door sunbathing from the roof of our house without being noticed, I had arrived, I was now a photographer.

Like most New Zealanders the travel bug bit me and I left New Zealand in February 1985. My trusty Practica and two lenses travelled to London for our big ‘OE’ (Overseas Experience) I met up with four Australians and together we bought a lime green Volkswagon Combi van from a Dutchman in Waterloo and headed off around Europe. The five of us spent five of the best months of our lives traveling around Europe, I still have the photographs I took on that amazing trip in a huge box in the loft of our house. How naive we were, I’m sure my two daughters will want to do something similar at some point and I’ll have to bite my tongue and let them go. My traveling companions had cameras, the two girls had Nikon compacts, I had my East German cast iron box with a hole in the front of it, and the two other guys had very stylish Canon cameras. Murray, one of the Aussie guys had a Canon AE1 program. I thought the Canon A series cameras were a breath of fresh air, likewise the fantastic Nikon F series. I knew that when I returned to the UK I was going to have trade in the tank for something with more bells and whistles with aperture priority at least.

So we all went our separate ways, I went back to stay with my Aunt in Chichester, the boys to Melbourne and the two girls back to Sydney. In Chichester my first stop was Whitby’s the camera shop with everything a broke aspiring photographer could want for. This I think was a pivotal moment for me – Nikon or Canon? What system best sits me, I couldn’t afford a train ticket to london let alone a new camera body. The months went by and in that time between returning from my trip at  the end of summer and December 1985 I had secured a job as a ski guide in Val D’Isere France. Two days before leaving on the coach for the next big adventure I went back to Whitby’s in Chichester and traded in my Practica for a gleaming new Canon AE1 program. About a thousand mountain scenes later I returned to London and set about deciding what on earth I was going to do with the rest of my life.

By 1986 New Zealand was in the grip of recession and although London was in the grip of ‘loadsa money’ things were rapidly hurtling down hill. I had been digging ditches for a landscape gardener since returning from my ski season in May but my photography life had changed beyond recognition. I had discovered medium format. With three weeks ditch digging wages I blew the whole lot on a Bronica ETRsi and although it seemed foolish at the time (as I had been lumbered with the combi van which badly needed a few grand spending on it) this new larger format totally changed the way I took photographs. Most of the London and world photographs I sell today were, and still are taken with that camera. It sits on a tripod most of the time, it’s a manual camera with no automatic settings and you look at the image in the viewfinder upside down. Before you click the shutter you’ve scratched your chin, fiddled with your filters, had a sandwich, scratched your chin again and the two or three  images you finally take are well thought out and generally spot on.

The years rolled by I was making good pocket money selling my photographs to image libraries taken with my trusty Bronica. In the days before full frame digital SLRs it was possible to make a good living as a stock photographer because demand for good images was high with so few photographers, comparatively, taking high end images. I tried my luck as a paparazzi photographer working for The big picture following celebs around at 2am hoping for the scoop. I never got the scoop although I was chased across Leicester Square one evening by one of Peter Stringfellow’s bouncers. Most of the press and paparazzi guys at that time had high end Canon and Nikon cameras with lenses zooming up to at least 400mm and I was still using my trusty AE1 program with a motor drive that chewed through film and batteries.

Digital photography hit me later than most of the pros largely due to the fact that I didn’t have any money. I was though scanning slides and negatives mostly for cataloguing purposes in order that I could make some sense of my mountain of 35mm film strips and medium format material. I bought my first digital SLR, a Canon D60 in 2002 and then it’s successor a 20D a year later. I must have shot about about 200 weddings on the D60, the autofocus was terrible, it hunted around for a fix in low light, skin tones were green, it would seize up just as the bride and groom would be walking down the isle, and it gobbled up battery power at an alarming rate. Luckily I had invested in a fast mac desktop and I was able to correct most things in photoshop. The 20d was much better and Canon had ironed out most of the oddities the D60 would throw at you. I’m very glad I didn’t buy the D30!

I have now completely embraced digital, I still use film occasionally and just about all my gallery images you can see on my site are shot on film. I have two Canon 1ds mark 11 cameras which are terrific pieces of kit and bags of L lenses and other studio gear. I still have my trusty Bronica. Much better working on a mac in an airy studio than breathing in all those smelling chemicals in a cellar. It’s easy to feel nostalgic about film, particularly black and white film, but high end digital improves workflow to such an extent that it’s hard to imagine doing half the stuff that we all do now with an analogue set up. Clients too understand the immediacy of digital, they know that they can see proofs very quickly after a shoot. I haven’t got to play with the new Canon 1ds mark 3 yet, if I’ve got time next week I might have a look at one at Calumet!

Home

I haven’t run a competition for sometime and I have been asked quite a lot lately if I’ll be running another. So here goes…….

Can you guess where the following photograph was taken? I need city and country. The prize is a framed 700mm x 570mm photograph or image from my art site (see the link under Blogroll) worth £185.00. You have until the 31st August ‘09 to enter. All you need to do is reply to this post or if you don’t want others to see your answer email me with your answer ma@photoarte.co.uk. You’ll find this image somewhere in the buy and rent prints gallery page (see the link to ‘buy and rent prints’ under Blogroll on the right hand side of this page.Good luck and I hope to hear from you soon.

Home