Photography at sea

The other day I said that I would be posting some of the pictures from my time aboard my boat.
Well, this one captures one of those very special moments when the light is just mind-blowing. I was sailing up Loch Striven in Scotland when the skies went almost jet black as a squall came in. Then, suddenly, the cloud parted just wide enough to allow a beam of sun to spotlight the side of the hil and that lonely cottage down on the shore.

Oh, just in case my friend Alwyn, who suggested last time I posted a picture of this sort that I’d got at it a bit with Photoshop, no Alwyn, this is as nature produced it. In fact, Alwyn had a point last time, I had just tweaked the image a little, but not his time.

It is vital not to underexpose in these conditions. Expose for those highlights and let the rest go almost black if it wants too that brings out the drama. That’s what the picture is all about.

The pilot book decsribes this Scottish loch as ‘bleak and featureless’, but I have to disagree when the light plays tricks like this. Daunting, awesome and threatening, maybe, but featureless, no.

One of the downsides of taking photographs of seascapes and landscapes from a boat is that the images can often take on a two-dimensional, flat aspect because of the lack of foreground interest. In some respects, this picture has to be described as lacking depth, but the drama of that light makes up for that in my opinion.

This picture will be one of a series that will illustrate a feature I have written for a yachting Magazine called Sailing Today I actually began the magazine myself some years ago and became its founding editor. I still write and photograph regular features for it when I have time.

Front or backlight?

I’m always reminding my students about the different properties of the direction of light and how important it is to understand what’s going on. Frontlight (light behind the camera and front-on to the subject), I tell them, takes always the shadows and can make the subject look flat and two-dimensional. However, I am quick to point out, frontlight does have a trick up its sleeve: there may be colour hiding in the shadows, and by removing them by using front light you will of course see more colour. So a colourful subject often looks even more colourful when lit by frontlight.

Well, as always, there are exceptions to the rule, and photographing flowers and leaves is one of them. Depending on the thickness and translucence of the flower or leaf the thinner and more translucent the better – you can often increase the intensity of its colour by placing the light behind the subject and letting it shine through the leaf.

The photograph above is a good example. This is a very simple picture which relies on its colour for its visual appeal. The sunlight is almost directly behind the leaf and is shining through it; and so illuminating the green like a projector lamp.

In this case, the backlight has shown up the veins of inside the leaf and brought more detail and interest. Frontlight would have shown the colour of the surface of the leaf, but none of the depth of colour and shapes inside it.

Give this technique a try next time you are photographing flowers. Sometimes you can get the best of both worlds by having the light source behind the subject and using a reflector under or beside the lens to bounce some light back onto the surface of the flower.

Learn much more about understanding and how to use light with my Better Photography DVDs

Colour and light

This well-hidden corner in the old town of Cuitedella in Menorca must have been photographed countless times by different groups of my students during the photography holidays I run on the island. I just can’t see how a photographer could possibly walk past this place without raising a camera. It positively demands your attention because of those wonderful colours.

However, it is never easy to photograph. The first problem is lack of space; you just cannot get back far enough. This tiny little square is very small indeed, and even with a wide angle lens equivalent to 24mm, it is difficult to include as much in the composition as you would like. Use a lens any wider and the distortions completely ruin the atmosphere of the scene. The answer to this, of course, is to decide which particular elements of the scene you find most interesting, and concentrate on those. In other words, careful cropping in the viewfinder.

Then there is the difficulty of parked motor scooters and bicycles. On occasions these can add to the interest, but this very much depends on the type and visual appeal of the bikes that are parked there some are more interesting to look at than others.

The last problem is the light this photograph was taken around midday with the sun very high so that it shines down into the narrow square, which is surrounded by houses in a narrow back street. The downside of this type of light is the strong shadows and high contrast. But it does have the advantage of bringing texture to the wall, and addng shadow patterns across the cobles.

I like this subject best of all on a sunny day when the sun does not shine directly down on it in the morning or afternoon. Then it is very bright, but soft, emphasising the reds in the wall, and the green of the leaves and the wooden bench. You need to adjust you White Balance (WB) in these conditions using Cloudy, Shade or Custom settings.

Blue, red and green is a powerful colour combination at the best of times, and when those colours are combined with simple outline shapes the tree, archway and the bench. An interesting image should result.

A career in photography – 1

After some considerable prodding, I promised that from time to time I would write about how I got started in photography, and some of the stories behind my career. So here goes, this is the first one…

I was fourteen years old when I decided I wanted to be a press photographer. I’d seen a photograph on the back page of Dad’s newspaper. They’d call it a ‘light bulb moment’ these days, but then, way back in the early 60s, something much more powerful than your average 40 watt bulb was ignited inside me. I knew at that moment what I wanted to do with my life.

The picture showed the photographer in the cockpit of one of the RAF Red Arrows jets. The camera, with a wide-angle lens, was in the front of the cockpit looking back and it showed not only the man who took the shot, but the tight formation of aircraft behind. It dawned on me that that man was not in the Air Force, yet there he was flying with the Red Arrows. That was the life of a press photographer, and that was what I wanted to do. Years later when I was a staff photographer on The Daily Express in Fleet Street, I met that photographer. His name was Ron Burton, and he became a friend. He was enormously pleased to hear that his picture had inspired a 14 year old kid to set off on a career in photography.

That very evening I announced my intentions to Mum and Dad.

“I want to be a press photographer. I don’t want an office job, and I really don’t want to work in a dirty old factory like Dad. I’d like to get out and about, and some of those London photographers get sent all over the world taking photos. Just you look at the pictures in Mirror. That’s what I want to do.”

Mum looked doubtful and I half expected a dressing down for saying what I had about Dad’s job at the diesel engine factory – it put the food on the family table after all. But Dad himself chipped in here. He paused from filling his pipe with the richly-scented mixture of St. Bruno and thick twist that bulged in his well-worn leather tobacco pouch and looked up.

“Now that’s what I call a proper ambition – see the world at someone else’s expense, and I don’t mean in the bloody army, either, square bashin’ and peelin’ spuds. Well paid, too, I’ll bet. You might even be famous and get your name in the paper one day. You give it a try son, I’ll write the letter for you if you like.”

That was it. Done and dusted – to Dad it was now all perfectly clear cut. With his total confidence in the talents of his only son it would be inconceivable that I would be turned down for a job as chief photographer on a top London daily newspaper. Not, that is, once he had written a letter asking the editor to give me a job. But then, Dad was also very sure of his own letter writing talents.

According to Dad’s bullet-pointed letter, those newspaper editors would be missing a golden opportunity, in fact they may even be negligent in their duty to their readers, if they did not immediately offer me a job.

When the letter was finished it was decided something was needed to illustrate my ability as a photographer. We hit upon the idea of enclosing with each letter a contact print of some of the snaps I’d taken with my new camera, an Ilford Sporty. The photos showed next door’s ginger cat, sat on the coping stones of the wall that separated the back yards of our houses. The cat had feathers stuck to his whiskers and a very satisfied expression on his face. At its feet, balanced across the apex of the soot-blackened wall, was the bedraggled corpse of a freshly-killed house sparrow. The Daily Mirror in particular was always keen on animal stories, so surely the editor would see from the evidence of this picture that I was an animal photographer of some distinction. These two-and-a-quarter inch square, black and white snaps of next door’s cat made up my entire ‘portfolio’.

I copied out the letters in my own hand, popped a contact print into each envelope and rushed down to the post office in the centre of town. Strangely, every editor wrote back within a week explaining that there were no photographer’s jobs available just then, but one of them did suggest helpfully that if the sparrow had been a little more chirpy he might even have considered using the picture in his paper. He also said it would be a good plan to get some more ‘hands-on’ experience with a camera before applying for a job in Fleet Street; perhaps on a local newspaper as an apprentice.

So Dad got busy again with his pen, paper and dictionary. He composed another letter to be sent to every weekly newspaper in a twenty mile radius of home. The replies came in dribs and drabs over the next few weeks, but each brought the same depressing news – there was still no prospect of a job when I left school in a few months time.

Right,” said Dad, who was beginning to take this as a personal slight on his letter-writing abilities, “Perhaps it’s more of a case of ‘not what you know, but WHO you know’. There are plenty of jobs like that, so maybe we should try and think of someone who might be able to help. We need what’s called a ‘contact’”.

He was absolutely right of course. I needed an introduction, a personal contact who could smooth the way a little; open a door just enough to get my foot in. With a solitary ‘O’ Level in art and a profound loathing of school, it was obvious that I had no future as an academic. Photography seemed to be the only job that would offer me the life I dreamed about. It was a job that had everything; travel, excitement, fame, the lot, and, as far as I could understand, you didn’t need to pass any exams to get to the top. My mind was made up, my heart was set on it; I simply had to become a press photographer when I left school after my fifteenth birthday. But after so many disappointing replies to all those letters, hopes were definitely beginning to flag. No one in the family knew anyone even remotely connected with journalism, photography or newspapers, perhaps it was hopeless after all.

Next – sometime soon – how I made my first ‘contact’

Portraiture weekend

Well, we’ve just had a fantastic weekend with a great bunch of people at the grand old Cally Palace Hotel here in Galloway. The theme was portraiture using flash and available light. I think everyone had a great time. Some travelled very long distances. Cliff flew up from the south coast of England, Russell came down from the wilds of Inverness, while Bob came all the way from The Isle of Man. Alwyn was the lucky one – he travelled just a few miles. One of the truly rewarding aspects of doing this tuition is that so many people come back again and again, and this weekend was no exception. Only Bob and Cliff had not been to me before either to Scotland or Menorca. Hopefully we will see them all again soon. It was also great to see Maria, a regular student of mine, she couldn’t make the whole weekend, but travelled from Edinburgh just to say hello and meet everyone.

Anyway, thanks to Ken, Cathy, Bob, Russell, Alwyn, Peter, Cliff for making the weekend so enjoyable. Oh, and thanks to Tom, our model, for the day.

I have embedded a short video below to show the gang at work.

This morning I got a lovely email from Cathy, one of the participants.

Well, Philip, you did it again! Worked your magic on a group of (almost)
total strangers, so that we all had a wonderful weekend of learning and fun.
Thank you!!
And thanks also to Norene for the organisation and patient posing, and to
Tom for his patience and good humour.

Thanks Cathy – and the whole gang.

How to photograph abstracts – part 1

Photography in bars and cafes

How to use a telephoto lens

Photography weekend now fully booked

The Photography Weekend at the Cally Palace Hotel, March 7-9th is now fully booked. I will not be able to change the Photoactive website for a little while so thought it best to let everyone know through the blog.

Meanwhile, never missing a chance to publish a a photograph or two, I’ve posted a couple more pictures taken on that little outing with the Canon G9 yesterday. I was in the old city of Chester a wonderful place to be taking photographs.

I loved the old chair, and confess that when I spotted it I did move it to a positition in front of that lovely distressed wood. What a great background. Remember, the world is your studio – so never be afraid to move things around a little if you think it’s going to make a better picture – as a travel photographer I often did exactly that. No one will mind if you put things back where you found them.

The other photograph was taken in Chester Cathedral. Dead simple, nothing clever, I was just attracted to the colours hitting the wall from the light coming through one of the stained glass windows.

How to use the direction of Light – part 2

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