still life

Well, I haven't posted anything on the blog for a long long time..

From starting Lightflows a couple of years ago, I've changed careers and am now working professionally as a photographer, which is a dream come true. The down side is, I am so busy working and promoting the business I haven't had time to sit down a post!

Any how... we've just returned from a pre Christmas break to Prague in the Czech Republic and I actually found time to relax and take some pictures for fun!

Prague really is a supremely picturesque city - with it's Christmas markets, interesting shops and alleys, wrapped up in the Eastern European architecture it's a photographers playground.

This shot is of some art installations we saw in one of the plaza's or squares in the town, there were a bunch of other interesting pieces to see, but this cage around the lights was the most attractive to me.

Hopefully I'll have more time to post over the holidays, and that just leaves time to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!

I found this shot sitting in my archives, it was taken last year at Goodwood. The 'Goodwood festival of speed' is an annual hill climb held a Goodwood park and features sports cars from multiple generations and genres.

Sitting in front of the stately home, this amazing structure, constructed from girders with Landrovers mounted on them was a sight to behold, it has a really surreal quality to it, an angular monolith.

Continuing with the cold theme, here's another shot from the weekend. I can't describe how truly beautiful the frosts have been here, maybe even more beautiful than fresh snow. I'll be putting up some more landscape shots in the next few days.

I'm taking a break from the Moroccan series as we've had some amazing weather over the past days and I've been out shooting quite a bit. It's been an unusually cold winter here in South England and the last few days have seen extreme hoarfrosts, beautiful white crystals covering everything. It is truly beautiful.

This is another shot from the dusty mountain village in Morocco and was taken shortly after shooting the Mercedes that I posted yesterday. Again, the main thing that attracted me to these gas canisters was the beaten up texture.

As for the processing, I have enhanced the foreground/background separation by increasing the defocusing of the background using a mask, in addition the canisters were originally blue, but I adjusted the hue to a rusty red to suit the surrounds and overall toning. Although simple, this is one of my favorite shots of the whole trip.

Today's shot was taken last week on our trip to Morocco. We stopped off in a small mountain village near to Asila and amongst the hussle and bustle of the market town I found this beaten up old Mercedes, at least that's what I think it is - the badge is missing.

I just love it's beaten up old texture and grime, it really caught my eye. This shot was taken using my new Nikkor lens - 24-70mm f/2.8, and i'm really pleased with the quality it produces, particularly the depth of field.

I'll be posting more shots of the textures, places and people of Morocco over the coming days.

On the way back from shooting the sunrise, we stumbled upon these dew drop coated spiders webs. I've only isolated one here, but the whole area was covered in them, it was quite an amazing site, very hard to capture well on camera though.

This was taken on our visit to the fantastic Eden Project in Cornwall. If you're in the UK this place is well worth a visit.

I've been preparing some prints for an upcoming exhibition, details here , and stumbled across this shot, which has be prepared and ready to post since last year.

It was taken on our trip to the Czech Republic , just before Christmas last year. I'm not sure why I skipped over posting it, but it jumped out at me , so I'm putting it up now :-)

What I particularly like about the lamppost is it's perfectly straight, but the cap is tipped to the side, it's a lamppost with style! 

Fresh back from my trip to Austria and have quite a bit of new material to post.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and commented over the last few days, it's much appreciated and I'll do my best to pop by and leave comment too. Thanks.

I managed to get quite a few portraits that i'm happy with over the weekend and there some stories to tell as well. This shot however was taken in the medieval castle on the top of the hill overlooking Salzburg itself.

Someone had left this digger standing by the wall and what attracted me to the shot was the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the bright colour and the desaturation. One note about the horizon line, the digger was on a slope so I decided to leave it that way. I look forward to posting the next few images over the coming days.

One from before Christmas in the Czech capital. It's not supposed to be perfectly straight either, I like the organic nature of the cobbles and wanted to compose it a bit off centre-ish.

Hiya, i'm back. Once again , apologies for the sporadic posting, we are in the last throes of finishing the new Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. Needless to say, everyone is working their socks off getting the project finished, and I don't have much energy for anything else right now.

This is another one of my lunchtime shots. London is going through a massive phase of redevelopment and there is construction on every block. I seem to find the machinery and other technologies make good subject matter and have been documenting a few projects.

Oh, lastly, Happy Easter everyone! :-D

Thanks for the feedback on yesterday's post.

This shot was taken in a derelict building near where I live. There is a tunnel being built through our local hill and some major roadworks underway, partly in preparation for the 2012 olympics, but also to remove the current road which runs through a nature reserve, near to the place i've been taking the foggy bracken shots.

The upshot of all of this work is that lots of houses and buildings along the route have been ear-marked for demolition, and this has been providing me with plenty of shooting opportunities :-)

This is one of my lunch time shots, where I get out in the West End of London and see what I can capture on my break.

Although quite dark, and with a moonlit quality, this was actually taken in broad daylight as the EXIF data shows. The window frame was a very lovely emerald green colour, which initially caught my eye, but overall I felt the shot and textures worked better as a black and white, I hope you like it.

Well, haven't managed to post for a few days again, i've been struck down by a really heavy cold and have spent most of the weekend resting up.

This shot was taken through the window of a cafe in London, that had closed up for the evening. I liked the retro feel of the place, it was just stuck in time somewhere between 1960's and 70's.

On another note, i've been busy coding some new features for the site, more about these in the next few days, i've got some bugs to wrangle out first :-)

This one is from a Moroccan street market or Sook(sic?), and was taken on Christmas day, the year before last. Added to the excitement of taking pictures in Morocco , is the fact that people really don't like having their pictures taken there, so getting good candid portraits is hard, you have to be super discreet or pretend your not taking pictures at all, by looking one way ,whilst taking a picture with the camera pointing another.

Although this isn't a portrait, If I remember correctly it was one of those shots, with camera pointed down clicking away.I'm not much of a fish eater either, but I believe these are freshly caught sardines, maybe someone will be along who can put me right :-P

Well, 1st post of 2008 and another shot from Prague, this is an old pair of scales that were in the window of one of the traditional Christmas shops. Not much to say about this one really , i just liked the colour and beaten up old paint. Happy New Year!

This is the next in the series of Prague photos that i'm going to be posting. This shot was taken in one of the many squares that inhabit Prague's old town. One thing i particularly like about the city, is the attention to detail everywhere, most of the streets and pavements are covered in these small cobbles, an amazing feet of work, they add a lovely texture and richness to the city.

This shot was taken with my new 50mm prime , which is a f1.8, and i'm enjoying the tigher DOF that i have available now.

This is the first of a series of pictures that i'm going to be posting of Prague.We were there a couple of weeks ago doing some Christmas shopping and it really is a beautiful city and i shot a lot of pictures. I've been hunting around trying to find something festive to post, but nothing has jumped out as of yet, so instead i'm putting this up, a moody B&W of the run down station in Prague center.

This old style bike caught my attention whilst walking through the market street and lanes in Ciudadela, Menorca.

It's only with hindsight that i wish i'd tilted the camera up to include the lamp and less of the floor, but i guess that's the way it goes sometimes, maybe i'll shoot it again if we ever go back there.

These rivets are part of a large victoria railway bridge that i like to photograph often. It's such a big, chunky structure will plenty of opportunities to shoot at different times of the day, as the light play across it and creates a variety of shapes and textures.

I used to smoke , but have given up for a year now, which i'm pretty happy about, but that has nothing to do with this shot, except that it includes cigarettes! I just liked the pattina of the table and the ashtray together, the image is processed quite heavily qith a mask to pull the ashtray into the same range as the table.

I found this old corrugated iron sheet , which had rusted nicely, and this ball whilst clearing the garden yesterday. The sun was lowering in the sky so I thought i'd setup a shot and take a few snaps. This is my favorite of the bunch, i'm sure it's one of a series as i've got more rubbish to come out of the garden yet!

Taken shortly after this shot, again in the street of Ciudadela in Menorca. I am pretty happy with the B&W conversion which initially took place in Aperture, which i then refined in Photoshop afterwards.

On most days i work in the West End of London, the area provides is a great place to walk around and take shots at lunchtime.

This light was in a stairwell and i liked the texture of the concrete and glass. B&W conversion was done in Aperture.

I sometimes walk back from work over Waterloo bridge and take some photographs as well. Not much else to say.