COVID-19 - Lockdown

‘Stay Home, Protect the NHS & Save Lives’

I created a page for my coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is sweeping the world.

Its hard not to make this a political statement, such as the header at the top.

Utter nonesense by the government making our front line NHS workers be exposed to this with any form of acceptable PPE. Not forgetting other essential key workers (transport, supermaket, teachers, this list goes on).

Have a look at the COVID-19 page here.

---

Street Photography Rambles

It's 31st March 2020.

The kids and I (as well as the rest of the country) are under government stated self isolation.

With itchy shutter fingers, I thought I would have a look over the photo archive and build a YouTube video with a random selection of digital photos from Brighton

The vast majority of these images were captured on my Ricoh grii, with a few also from my recent purchase, the Sony A7iii.

Tinkerman

I originally shifted to film photography a couple of years ago, as I got bored, no, more frustrated by the constant tinkering with editing photos in lightroom.

(Read polishing a turd).

It was opportune timing. It slowed my thought processes down, eliminated chimping and was a great educational piece, as I developed and scanned all my images at home.

It gave me a new found respect for the masters of street photography, who use film, especially the likes of Garry Winogrand or Vivian Maier, who had thousands of undeveloped film rolls at the time of their deaths.

That said there were instances, were I was missing some photos, either due to the lack of burst mode, or the thunderclap of the Pentax 67 shutter, which stopped me getting that bit closer.

So I decided to step back into digital. A birthday gift in June, afforded me with a new Ricoh GRii camera, what an exceptional piece of tech, designed with street photography in mind.

The idea was to get a series of images, that I could edit (quickly), not tinker with, and could have a uniformed theme with colour.

I originally tried film emulation lightroom presets, but I found the edits………….

…..just too much.

Thankfully, there are many influencers out there, happy to share their knowledge. I stumbled across this excellent post by Sean Tucker on YouTube, explaining the Virtues of HSL (Hue, Saturation and Luminance) when editing colour. The major benefits of this method are:

1) it's a simplified workflow for uniformed output.

2) it's quick.

3) the methodology is the same in lightroom, a mobile photo app (polarr on Android or darkroom on iPhone) or other photo editing software.

This technique / workflow works really well, allowing very subtle edits, that keep colours natural and not over processed, boosting a natural warmth to the images.

This image of the shop owner in Brighton, taken on the GRii and processed in lightroom.

I have a basic HSL preset saved with saturation and Luminance tweaks. Following the advice on Sean's video, these suppress the blues (remove the coldness from the image) and boost the warm tones.

I then add a global contrast adjustment with a medium or strong tone curve.

Next I click and drag the histogram to tweak overall exposure on the image.

Finally, I either select 'as shot' white balance or boost the temperature to warm up the tones.

All these edits a completed in a couple of minutes.

This guide is for lightroom, but as you will see with the Sean Tucker YouTube video, these edits are just as easily completed on a smartphone.

Give it a try.

GAS isn't good, but photobooks are.....

This is my first blog on the new website.

The last 2 years, I have been predominantly shooting film in either 35mm or 120mm. I have loved the experience. It’s been a double benefit, for slowing me down and also chimping.

Of late I thought I would purchase a couple of photobooks, to develop my craft. Having read plenty of reviews, I decided on ‘The Suffering of Light’ by Alex Webb.

This is essential reading for anyone interested in street photography and getting an understanding of framing.

Also, Webb discusses his reasoning for prominently specialising in the use of colour, rather than black and white for his imagery.

As much as you will consume the content of this book quickly, you will most certainly revisit the pages for inspiration, time and time again, as the content covers 30 years of Alex Webb’s career.

Essential reading and a learning for me that photobooks are better than GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).