Rediscovered

Every time I step out the door and take photographs I follow a similar process. I wonder. Looking, trying to find a moment that captures my eye. Then at the end of the day I have a memory card full of moments. I take them home. Download them. First I’ll make a quick edit, then have a cup of tea. Then I’ll make a second edit. Another cup  of tea and a biscuit. Then a final selection of the images that I feel are the most interesting. These get processed then uploaded to a variety of social media and maybe my website.

Photography is all about discovery for me. Finding a moment, uncovering little nuances in the world that others might miss or simply exploring something new.

So why should exploration stop after my final selection of photos. Every now and then I like to sift through all the images I discarded, taking a fresh look and retracing a journey. It’s like travelling back in time, it re awakens the memories of the moments in every photo. Quite often I’ll find a photo I had previously discarded, that for whatever reason I choose not to share with the world. Now with fresh eyes it leaps off the screen and reminds me of the thoughts and feelings from the moment I took it.

This is a selection of those rediscovered images. Each one completely disconnected for the next but together a collection of forgotten moments.

Life Boat in the mists of the Brighton seafront.

The Ara Pacis Augustae or Altar of Peace is an altar in Rome dedicated to Peace, the Roman goddess.

The fiery sun setting with the satellite dishes of GCHQ lined up along the horizon.

Ruins of the The Forum of Caesar, part of the Imperial Fora. Monumental squares built by the Romans.

Primavera, gallery and shop opposite Kings College in Cambridge.

Paraglider and birds.

Whilst driving around the island of Khoi Samui we found this Long Tailed Macaques chained to the tree with only a couple of meters of chains movement allowed. Deep in the woodland on the edge of broken track. There was little to indicate what purpose this could serve to anyone. As we passed he just watch us with his vacant stare.

The London Eye is one of London’s newest and most iconic monuments and attractions that is the subject of more photos than can be counted. I love the symmetry of this photo and the contrast between the sprawling branches and the perfectly straight cables of the wheel.

Florence Roof Tops

Gypsy Cobs Collingtree

What a difference a year makes

As time passes, experiences change us. The way we see things, the way we approach them and the way we interpret them. In March 2011 I visited Dungeness, a headland on the Kent coast, mostly known for its power station, light house and fishing history. You can see the images I took on the day here and my experience of that day here. In the time that has passed since then I have dramatically changed the way I approach my photography. The way I prepare, take and edit my images. With this in mind I decided to revisit one of my favourite images from that day.

It was my wife that spotted the shot, she’s very good at seeing interesting photographic opportunities. It is a wooden path, laid over the stony beach that leads out to sea. I crouched down low, so the horizon line was above centre just enough so I could still see the sea. I love the way the path lead you into the unknown.

When I got home, I backed up my images and started to go through them. I had always planned to process the images from that day as black and white. Although some worked in colour. Back then, I always approached the processing a little like a bull in a china shop; head on, smashing through them quickly and generally causing a bit of a mess.

Looking back at my original image Path to the Sea, I was no longer happy with it. It was very flat tonally, interesting shadows lost and the sea barely visible beyond the path; all lost in my poor processing of the image. The crop of the image also had the pathway off centre. How could I overlook such an obvious compositional error!

Here is my original image:

So what did I do differently. Well firstly I adjusted my horrendous cropping of the image! For my original edit I did all the processing in Photoshop RAW and saved a jpeg directly from there. Since then I have come to learn the ways of the histogram. I reprocessed the image in the PS RAW again, adjusting the image until I was happy with it in colour; only this time I opened it up in Photoshop to do my black and white conversion using the channel mixer. Finally I sharpened the image, something I had previously left as default in the RAW processor.

And here is my new image:

I personally feel the whole image is more interesting, doesn’t feel so bleak and is a little more dynamic and I am now drawn in to the scene. Of course this is just my opinion. What is yours? I would love to know.

I am planning to present this image as part of my portfolio for a RPS LPRS distinction on my advisory day in October. So any feedback or criticism on this image or any others on my flickr would be very welcome.

Revisited – Terezin – Czech Republic

This is my first “Revisited” post, where I will look back at some of my earlier eplorations of photography.

These are a selection of photos I took while on a college trip to the Czech Republic in October 2000. We took a day trip to Terezin,  about 60km North of Prague. Terezin was a World War II concentration camp, that was built as a fortress  during the reign of Emperor Joseph II in the years 1780 – 1790.

I took these on an old Pentax K100 using Ilford black and white film. When I finally scanned and processed all these images a few years ago, it helped reignite my passion for photography, and also the love of black and white film.

You can see all the images from that visit to Terezin here.