Happiness

The inevitable result of mixing a small boy with a warm day on a sandy beach. The excitement and exhilaration in his face is a joy to watch.
Shot from the safety (and warmth) of dry land with my 70-200mm lens.

Number 5

This building was on one of my randomised walking routes while on holiday. I loved the panel lines of the various patches that had been applied over the years.
The sun was setting in the background but was still far too bright to be captured by a single exposure. So I set the camera to auto bracket +-2 stops and fired away hand holding!

The image was then brought into PhotoShop and combined.

Pottery Lesson

This was taken during the Robin Hood festival. It shows my son being helped to create an as-yet-undefined pottery artifact by the chap on the left.

Try as I might to get the right angle on the shot I was hindered by onlookers who were oblivious to my shooting. I tried to find an angle that would show the pot too, but when I did, I lost their facial expressions.

The Apocathary

Although it may look I went on holiday to somewhere exotic, this chap was actually in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham!

He was selling Frankincense and Myrrh from a stall at a Robin Hood festival.

Shot using my 70-200mm at F2.8 and 1/160th.

I love the beard and medieval glasses. This guy really takes his business seriously.

Big Brother

I took the image as my children played in the waves at the local beach. I think it captures the essence of them at play quite well. I used my new lens wide open at F2.8 to capture this shot at 1/2000th of a second, allowing me to freeze the action.

During post processing I changed it to a Duotone and then added a diffuse glow.

Mist

I grabbed this shot while on holiday in Northumberland.
The river near where we were staying was quite near the coast and it had these adolescent swans constantly patrolling right in front of me.
It was a very humid day, and each time the cold wind blew in from the sea a quite ethereal looking mist would appear almost hiding the swans.

I took this at 1/800th and F22 with two stops of underexposure so that I didn't burn out their white feathers.

Farmyard

I spent last weekend at something called the Farmyard which is an annual event held for bikers up near Helmsley.
It was an interesting experience and I took my camera along hoping to get a couple of good people shots. However I was a little worried that my camera would become an endoscope so I didnt take as many as I should have done.

The top shot is of me and the friends that I went with, along with the sadistic ba$*!rd second on the right who rode me in on the back of his Fireblade.

The large chap on the bike had been riding round naked all day and I didnt really take any notice untl he turned up with his much better looking companion.

Hong Kong

I took this photo on a Hong Kong street some while ago.

I loved the clutter of all the signs and so I went up a nearby multi-storey car park to get this shot.

In its original format there was simply too much information to take in. So I have converted it to black and white, just leaving a few signs in the original colour.

Blown away...

We were on top of a hill in North Yorkshire when it was REALLY windy.
It was actually quite difficult to stand so I grabbed this shot while she sat and rested for a while.

I like the expression of excitement on her face as the wind was whistling past her...

Taken using a flash and slightly underexposing the sky to emphasize the clouds.

Romeo and Juliet

We were lucky that the one of the major structural components (i.e. the body filler) didnt fall off the rusty wing she was laid on.

I think that the Robert Palmer video inspired this shot. I really liked the way that the dress and the car blended into one.

Shot on transparency and then scanned it has had very little post processing. I did remove the number plate though.

Harbour

I wonder how many people will recognise this harbour in East Yorkshire?

I haven't cheated, these are the colours as captured on Fujichrome film before I digitally scanned it in.
It was just before sunset and wasn't raining for once. I didn't have a tripod so I just put the camera on the harbour wall and hoped for the best.

The blurry image dead center is a small yatch leaving.

Hit and Run

Taken from the top of my classic Italian sports car (read: rusty junk) this image features one of my rare nudes.

The farmers rape field had a track running down the middle that I used to get my car into the center. I stood on the roof of the car to get this upside down image.

Taken on Kodachrome film and scanned. I applied a motion blur to the reflections and to the ground itself to make it appear that the car is moving.

This field was in the middle of nowhere with a good view in all directions so the model wasn't worried about being seen. However we didn't expect the small squadron of microlights to fly over!

Silhouette

Opportunist shot taken while on holiday in Spain. For once the model wasn't whinging about being cold, but was whinging that the rocks were sharp.

The sun still had a long way to go down, but I wanted to include it in the photo. So after making sure the front of the lens was immaculately clean I managed to get this image.

I had Fujichrome slide film loaded at the time, but still managed to meter it quite well.

Scanned and post processed to increase the colour saturation in the sky.

Whitby Boats

Some small fishing cobbles moored up in the small fishing village near Whitby.

The original image was very flat, so I used an embossing layer to emphasise some of the detail in the writing and the decaying woodwork. See the small image for how the original looked, although you will have to click them both to zoom in.

The result looks like the name has been carved into the boat, and brings much move life to the image.

Cross, Channel, Swimmer

Taken at a leisure complex near Blackpool this one shows up the strong colours and shapes and of the building.

As soon as I got there, I liked the way that the centre channel of the wall leads the eye down. So I waited until the sun was just right and added the girl in the pose shown.

Shot on Kodachrome with my Minolta 9000 and scanned, this shot required no post processing at all.

The slide film makes the sky at the top of the frame behind the white handrail almost black.

Water works

Kids, water, and cameras dont mix, so I used my 70-300 to get this from a safe distance. It was a bright sunny day, so with the sun behind her I used a 580ex to fill in.

I like the vivid colours in this shot, plus you can see that she is in her element.

Not a lot of post-processing, just sharpened and boosted the colour saturation a little.

Big Brother

As soon as I saw these two walking up the alleyway in Majorca I knew the shot I wanted.

I post-processed it with a simplifier filter and boosted the saturation. But this is essentially exactly as I saw the finished image before I even picked the camera up.