Today, I passed my Diploma in Photography from the Institute of Photography. I now feel confident enough to say I am a photographer and will go forth and shoot 🙂
A Walk Along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal
The sky makes this shot.
Mini me
The three rise locks, Apperley Bridge.
Lock gear – NERD
Bridges
Boaters – the strangest wildlife on the canal. I can say this as I am one.
A week in France
I took this at the Saint Andre Fete, France. Note the kissing couple to the right. I was more concerned with grain due to high ISO. The bands were good and the locals like to perform for the camera!
I took these in Ambialet – a very photogenic place.
I took a some lace bunny ears to France with me, I think they’ve worked a treat with two completely different atmospheric shots.
This is my sister Helle. I love the serenity of this image.
Again, I wanted to capture light (sunset) and water. I like the ephemeral and ethereal look of it.
A Hummingbird moth. The shot is great with a high shutter speed to catch the wings but the composition lets it down.
A plain Cabbage White looks glorious against the pink flower and dark background caused by high shutter speed.
Poppy
Dusty
Chucky
Loki
Helle in the woods.
Mimosa tree, which grows by the Tarn at our favourite swimming spot.
Stone sheep and Story telling
Stone sheep and Story telling
I can’t think of a better way to spend Saturday evening (pre Trades Club) on the ‘tops’, as they are locally known, with my camera at sunset and two very good friends. The sky was overcast and dull with an occasional burst of sunshine.
The man doing the ‘it was this big’ is a very good friend and was the story teller for the evening. He lived on the tops for a number of years and is familiar with the ever-changing landscape and the people who populate the subsistence farms dotted around the hills. Listening to G in his environment is like listening to the hills coming to life and I felt, whilst capturing images of the sights around us that I had a brief to work to. Gordon and his family are in all of these images. He says he likes to come to this place as it’s like a time-scape rather than just a landscape. The stones are the same but the light changes over time – everything in the landscape looks different in changing lights caused by the weather and the season. Our moods are reflected here too.
Stone is so beautiful – I think I’ve developed a theme over the last couple of posts. It’s all written there in the Yorkshire stone. The location of this shoot is London Road, Calderdale, between Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. The Pennine Way runs through here past Stoodley Pike (which appears very wonky through the viewfinder). I’ll be back here very soon, hopefully with a more dramatic sky.
I would like to dedicate a wonderful evening spent with two amazing people and the images captured to Lindsay who spent too short a time in this place.
Day out at t’mill
I love West Yorkshire, especially the industrial landscape. The mills, chimneys and canals portray a rich history built on entrepreneurship and architecture. Of course, it is difficult to show the social aspect of mill life, however, it is important to me to show how the spaces are being used now and the structural and architectural elements which make these buildings so iconic of the northern industrial towns. Temple Works as you will see in the following photographs is architecturally bonkers (3rd image), with Victorian romanticism shown in the Egyptian facade. It is also structurally unsound and has been since its inception. It once boasted the largest room in the world (1st image) and was never powered or heated electrically. It was heated by a weird industrial age eco version of air con (2nd image), which meant the roof needed to be grassed. Sheep were kept up there to keep the grass down. Like I said, a bit bonkers.
The Mill is now home to individual artists, film makers, photographers and bands.
I wanted the ‘Get off yer bike…’ image to portray the vivid colour of the bicycle and John Wayne’s fake lipstick. I took the image of the internal posts to show the contrast between dark and light on opposite sides of the pillar ‘line’. The images of the posters, I took because they show diversity, faded glory and a touch of irony. The wanted the images to look grimy and ‘urban’ to reflect the current use of the mill and also the working conditions people endured during the industrial period.
The roof requires some propping!
Some of the spaces were useful to practise some low light photography
This tour of Temple Works has inspired me to concentrate on the industrial heritage of Leeds and Bradford and I hope to provide some historical background along with the images.
Moving
Today, I got the opportunity to practise capturing moving objects. I used a fast shutter speed and wide aperture to freeze the images. I think the top image of the terrier with stick is great, really pleased with that one. The tan dog doesn’t look as dynamic or aggressive as it did at the time coming towards me. I found the best shots were taken at ground level so I got a bit of cow shit on me, all in the name of a good image. The third one is pretty funny – insert caption type photograph.
Back in the graveyard….
Graveyard goats
Took Sally for a walk the other day to Calverley (between Leeds and Bradford). Thought I’d walk around the cemetery as there is an unusual tree carving there. Instead, I got distracted by a couple of friendly goats leaping on and off the older, collapsed tombs and headstones. They were very curious, especially when Sally (Tenacious Terrier) took exception to them and started the particularly irritating high-pitched barking she saves for those moments when you need her to be quiet. I got a shot of them head butting each other but it’s not from the best angle so didn’t include. The shot I wish I’d got was when the larger goat tried to head-but Sally who had teeth bared and straining at her lead. Anyway, more about the terrier later. I like the composition (goats like jumping on stuff) and the dark atmosphere of the shots. It was drizzling and the headstones and church walls are blackened by former industrial pollution (like most period stone buildings in West Yorkshire).
Beginnings
After having a good think about what I wanted to do with my life – always the big questions, I decided to take a good, long look at what I wanted to say about me, the things I want to change about my world – the world, the things I like to do that make me feel happy and inspired, I decided to really, properly capture what my mind sees. I tried writing things down in the hope that the stuff in my head would convey to paper – it didn’t, well not in the way I wanted. I tried drawing – particularly bad at this. I realised that I have always been drawn to the captured image – whether experiemntal or representational. I like strong images that make your face do something, whether in shock, horror, admiration, envy, lust, anger or unbounded sense of injustice – this is how I want to portray my thoughts. So began a journey through the technicalities of exposure, composition and equipment choices – it’s a science in itself. I’ve been told to become proficient in using manual mode or I’ll never be any good, others have told me to throw away the rule book. I’ve never been one to be moderate so I’ve done both these things in no particular order! So, I decided that until I can assess a particular condition/atmosphere and choose the appropriate settings automatically, or at least with integrity, I would not spend a fortune (not that I can anyway) in the hope that I’d ‘get good at taking pictures’. My wonderful ‘husband to be’ bought me a second-hand Fuji Finepix S30 EXR bridge camera to start me off and I love it. This first post is for you Nuttall! I took this picture of him after learning about low light exposure and hope I have conveyed in the image what I saw – a strong man (arm muscle & tattoo) but in a vulnerable state (he was having an afternoon sleep after a bit of a heavy night).
Now to work out why my opensource software crops my photos too much.
Temple 