Support your local community!

Art is all very well, but I think it’s important to use our skills to assist our communities. Sonja and I have been donating our time to help with the Gravel in Paradise cycle event in Otago by providing images from each race to go on Facebook, plus higher resolution versions for newspaper coverage and for the next year’s publicity. This year there were three races and it takes us three days or so of intense work for each one (scouting locations, photographing the event and post processing). So not really a big chunk of the year to do it. It supports something that brings visitors into the region, helps strengthen the cycling community and, we hope, benefits the whole town.

I’ve added a small gallery to the portfolio section of this website with a few images from the last couple of years.

This is not a book review

But this is (of sorts)

I keep going on about the importance of printing as the fastest way to improve our photography. The reason being that putting a photograph up on a wall where it can be seen every day allows us to live with it in a way that develops a deeper appreciation of its merits and “faults”.

Bill Cowan’s book contains 111 portraits from his collection and his reflections on them. He has collected them over his working life and lived with them on his walls. I read the review, went to his website (eleventyoneportraits.com) and despite claiming my book buying days were over, ordered a copy.

Using film cameras (the older the better)

Digital has made our processing so much easier and faster, but there is still a place for film for those with the enthusiasm to give it a go. The easiest path is to send the negatives out for processing and the scan and digitise the  result. You don’t need a high quality scanner to get great results, but you do need to be sure the scanner has a film holder or that you can make one.

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Forrester Gallery exhibition coming

I’ve been working on a new set of images in my “Stones” series.

I began making “portraits” of standing stones in 2007, and this will be the third exhibition in the project. These photographs were made in Carnac in Brittany in 2016 with the Fujifilm X-T1 and the process of working on the prints has been on-going.  In 2018 I began discussions with the director of the Forrester Gallery. We looked at the space and considered the presentation and the theme. Shortly afterwards the Gallery closed temporarily for maintenance to the building and re-opened earlier this year.

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The Fire and Steam photo

I’ve been doing a lot of event photography lately, mostly in low light.

I’m happy to help out some local organisations with free images. Usually there is a usage agreement, but I seldom take the time to look at how they have been reproduced in a newspaper or whatever.

Last week I discovered one of the images from last year’s Fire & Steam festival in Oamaru had appeared in the Otago Daily Times and caused some comment. You can one such article here.

I thought it may be useful to explain how it was made.

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