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Charlotte and I met on the roof of the National Museum in Edinburgh. It was incredibly windy and this made it difficult to get many pictures of Charlotte with Edinburgh’s roofscapes behind. This one was my favourite of the windswept images we did, and would have been my second choice overall. I love the intensity of Charlotte’s look and her eyes have great catchlights. (Oh and Edinburgh looks OK too).
Once again my favourite lens, the Sigma 28 f1.8 was the choice.
Arran and the Cumbraes from the Haylie Brae above Largs
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I have bought a new camera! Everyone I know has said to me ” how can you possibly need another camera”? My photographic friend Shirley understood perfectly well when I told her. She said in a burst of great wisdom, you can’t have too many cameras. How right she is:-)
In actual fact, despite having two DSLR’s I only have one compact camera and that is the very desirable Panasonic LX3 about which I have blogged before. It really is a great camera with a great lens. The trouble is I have discovered that it is an awkward size. It is ideal for going for a walk with it over your shoulder, or even in a large coat pocket; it would never fit in an inside jacket pocket or even a shirt pocket. This means I can’t really use it as a compact in the true sense and so I needed just that, a compact.
I have no great faith in tiny compacts to take great pictures as they have tiny sensors and often overambitious lenses full of compromises. They can never deliver control over DOF due again to their pinkienail sized sensors, but a compromise had to be made. I wanted small, simple, decent lens quality and reasonably fast response, (I once had a Nikon S210 and it was too slow to respond to the shutter button for my taste). The compromise I settled on was the Canon Ixus 100. I really wanted a wider angle lens, but most reviews said the obvious rival, the Panasonic fx40 delivered softer pictures due to an overambitious wide lens. So, I’ll only occasionally use my compact, but it’ll be great to have one small enough to be with me at all times. A good compromise I think.
Yesterday was a case in point, I cycled to Largs and the Clyde coast, travelling light with just a cycle jersey and its back pockets for my raincape, phone and wallet. The ixus was so small as to be barely noticed in a corner of one of these pockets. Just for fun, here’s what it can do. “better than a slap across the back of the knees with a wet Glasgow Herald” as a friend of mine was fond of saying.
My beloved Carbon Trek that uncomplainingly carries my 1/10th of a ton around. (no really!) Largs behind.
The beach near Skelmorlie looking back downriver towards Arran again.
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The UK can have no more beautiful river estuary than the Clyde.
A post that does what it says on the tin:
From the sailing club pontoon on Loch Leven looking east to the Pap of Glencoe with its little bonnet of cloud on the right.
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The view over the Black Mount area from one of the roadside lochans on the Rannoch Moor.
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Anyone who has walked the West Highland Way will know this view well. Ben Dorain, with it’s particularly steep sides simply towers over the West Highland Railway and the road north. I have climbed this a few times myself and can verify its classic Munro status. A great mountain.
Gerard Burns: “Prophet and Loss”
I have found this second inspiration piece to be a real challenge. My friend Elisabeth chose this quirky and challenging painting by Scottish artist Gerard Burns. I didn’t know anything about Burns, but have since learned that one of his paintings hangs in the First Ministers office in Holyrood. (Scottish Government). When I look through Burn’s work, I am struck by how realistic his brushwork is. His paintings are disturbingly real, causing you to check whether there is a photographic element to them. That’s not the only disturbing thing, he mixes a sense of the fantastic and dramatic with people who you feel familiar with. A child, who looks ordinary, familiar, stands with two enormous wolves in one, in another a girl walks in a familiar, perhaps Glaswegian post-industrial landscape with a menagerie of creatures, including two doves accompanying her. I find his work brilliant and challenging, mixing the ordinary with the dramatic and the wonderful; as though he challenges us to see the same in what’s around us.
He isn’t beyond some humorous and wry comment either. The piece that Elisabeth chose seems an amusing metaphor for me, and in a time of such instability and fear in the financial and economic world, this seems an appropriate painting. For me the businessman is reeling backwards under the inexorable pressure of the money swirling around him, doing what money does, oblivious to his attempts to control the environment. It could depict the moment he realises that he isn’t in control. For those who are interested in chaos theory, markets may exhibit chaotic behaviours when the predictable and smooth patterns of economic transactions suddenly break down and become an unpredictable storm. In other words, it may be impossible to ever truly be in control of economies!
Gerard Burn’s website. The galleries are fantastic.
My response:
The almost photorealistic quality made me wonder whether I could try something similar, although the sheer quantity of cash swirling around meant that I couldn’t envisage technically (or financially) how I could reproduce it. I settled on a more modest collage in which I photographed a “businessman” my ever obliging friend Martin, reeling under the onslaught in his battle with the financial flow. The bananas are just my way of making clear it’s a joke and a metaphor; the man is in a fight without any useful tools. Does he himself understand this? I photographed the falling money separately but on the same background using flash and the highest shutter sync speed available, 1/250th on the 40D. I have recorded here before how little I love using photoshop, but using the layers functions, I built up the “cash flow” over Martin, trying to get a sense of the notes flying towards and around him. One of the reasons for starting this new “26 artists” project is to learn, here I have learned about a brilliant artist, and as a bonus I have moved out of my comfort zone a little with photoshop and developed those skills a little. I hope you like the result, which I have titled “Cash Flow” in homage to Burn’s own shocking pun title of “Prophet and Loss”:
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And so to C. Watch this space.
Any regular subscribers to my blog will remember my photo session with the wonderful Karen Liversedge. Karen is a glass artist based in Oban on the west coast of Scotland and her work is simply beautiful. Check out her site and links here. http://www.karenliversedge.com I have one of Karen’s pieces myself and everyone who has seen it adores it. I’ll post some photos of it shortly.
Anyway, last time I met Karen, we had plans to get some outdoor pictures as well, but we simply ran out of time. I met Karen last week and we tackled the outdoor shots at last. So for your delight and edification…
Karen overlooking Oban harbour with Kerrera in the backround. The backlight was a problem but we used a reflector to fill in Karen’s face a little. I love the views of Oban, and combined with Karen herself it’s all too much!
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However, having nearly blinded Karen with my reflector, we tried turning round and using McCaig’s Tower as our background. The sun then popped out from behind a cloud and nearly blinded her again anyway. It turns out she’s very forgiving. This picture really appeals to me as an artist’s portrait since Karen’s expression is so strong and a little enigmatic.
I never actually set out to be wicked, but sometimes little candid moments just present themselves and something just seems to press the shutter. I really love this moment taken while Karen was speaking to me. Sometimes the unposed pictures reveal something special. How wonderful is the compositional interplay between the curve of the path and the stray lock of Karen’s hair.
However, when I did ask Karen to pose again to fit in with the curve of the folly, (oops sorry Oban pedants, I mean tower), the result is perfect.
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I switched briefly to my 50mm f1.4 for a close up. Simple and lovely with the magical background that this lens always delivers.
To be utterly frivolous for a moment, Karen is such a likeable and quirky person, with lots of playful expressions that I wanted to put together a montage of all 6 or 7 silly/cute expressions. Mercifully my dislike of wrestling with Photoshop meant I had lost the will to live at two expressions. The saving grace may be that Karen will be more forgiving about two than six?
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Normal service resumed: Karen being poised and elegant, as she does..
This is a particular favourite of mine, the streaky background is some kind of leeching from the mortar in the tower. Karen and I thought it looked like shhhhhh-you-know-what from gulls. As so often happens though, getting the framing right reveals it as a fantastic and complementary background. I pushed the contrast and saturation in the wall and then did the same to a lesser extent with Karen. The result isn’t soft, but I think it’s edgier and really suits Karen’s stylish persona.
And finally, back in a friend’s garden, waiting for a delicious pizza, Karen and I braved the midges to get in touch with nature. I tried using fill flash to reduce the patchy light, but it didn’t seem as natural as letting the dappled sunbeam do its through-the-leaves-thing. The midges subsequently flew off with my flashgun anyway. (Any non Brits reading this, imagine a mozzie shrunk about 10 times, with 1000 times the reproductive power and in a really vampirish mood and you’ve pretty much got an idea what a cloud of these biting swines is like).
It was just as much fun second time around Karen, what will we do the 3d time? I feel some more glassy stuff coming on:-)
Thanks again.
Hi Matthew
Just thought id say hi. Just visiting your blog and pleased to see that you are still so active with your photography.. with wondrous results. Hey, I am sorry that we are so close geographically yet have not managed to make contact. Dan’s show is going really well and edinburgh is wonderful as ever.. I hope all is well xxxx Love