Thursday 29 December 2011

A late Merry Christmas!


Sorry :) Better late than never so Merry Christmas! Hope you all had a good one. Happily I've recieved some added motivation photographically from two books I recieved as presents- The Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby and The HDR Book by Rafael Concepcion. Both these guys are incredible photographers and rock as authors of photography books. I know I'm gettin' old 'cos let's face it; when you're a kid books just get you that excited at Christmas. It's all toys and videos (yes I remember VHS!) back then, but I think it might be time to face it- I'm officially boring.

Anyway, hope Santa brought you what you wanted. I asked for a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 IS II USM but apparently his insurance wouldn't cover the transport of such an item so... better luck next year, wink wink :)

Thursday 1 December 2011

My image 'Layers' in North East Life Magazine

I was once again pretty psyched to see one of my images published this week, this time in North East Life Magazine (a regional mag produced my Archant Publishing.) I'd almost forgotten that I'd sent them  a selection of shots from across the North East as it was about 3 or 4 months back. NEL is always a good read, with articles on events and people from around Tyne and Wear, Durham etc. I was in a garden centre last Sunday and happened to pass a stand stacked with this month's issue. it always features some really great photography (hint, hint!) on a range of subjects, unsuprisingly featuring images of local landmarks and landscapes. Upon flicking through to the reader photos section I remember thinking "Oh ye, I wonder mine will ever get in here" with it taking several moment for me to realise I was staring at my own work! It went via something like "Hey that's quite nice" to "actually that looks a little like my shot" and eventually reaching "Wait a mo, that IS mine!" And sure enough there was a caption with my name and a bit of info I provided about the location and viewpoint etc. They actually got most of those detail wrong as it happens! It wasn't shot at Penshaw as the caption claimed but was in fact made from Grange Villa using a telephoto lens (70-200mm) and I was up taking it at dawn not dusk. You can read about that shoot on this blog (here's the link http://ykpphotography.blogspot.com/2011/08/tales-of-stressy-landscaper.html) Still I was obviously thrilled to see my efforts were justified.

All I can say is it's a good job I didn't think that image was aweful before realising it was my own! Here it is:-