As I mentioned yesterday, unless something especially exciting happens, or I come up with a new way to photograph this scene, this will be the last of the shots of the stranded ferry Riverdance.

As for this one: it's another attempt to capture the scale of the scene, but this time I wanted to focus on the salvage going on in and around the boat, rather than just the boat itself.

In terms of post-production, this one was relatively straightforward other than the fact that I altered the colour temperature when I processed the RAW file (as described in my first digital workflow tutorial); i.e. it's considerably warmer than the actual scene.

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4.48pm on 6/2/08 Canon 1Ds Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 70mm f/4.0 1/640 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro 2x1

When I post a shot in my beachcombing category it's normally quite a safe bet that nobody else has photographed the bucket, or piece of driftwood, or whatever else it is I happen to stumble across as I wander along the beach; i.e. there's no competition, and the shot stands or falls on its own merits (or lack of them).

In this case though, there are hundreds of photographers taking photographs of this stranded ferry, so I wanted to make sure that I got at least one decent shot today – and I'm pleased with this one. Because of the angle it was taken from, it doesn't do a great job of conveying the scale of this boat, but I'm pretty pleased with the end result nonetheless.

I haven't posted the EXIF data, as this was an HDR constructed from three bracketed exposures, but all were taken at around 180mm with my 70-200mm zoom.

As always, let me know what you think.

I think that the thing I like most about this shot is the expression, or more accurately, the lack of expression, on the face of the guy in the center of this image. What's interesting about taking these sort of shots is that people don't realise they're being photographed, yet appear to be staring straight at the camera – at least for some of the time. And I guess that what I find especially interesting is that this is an expression, that under normal circumstances, you would never see; i.e. when we have eye contact with another person our faces are often animated – we put on a front, of one sort or another. Here, there's an absence of such an expression which, to me at least, makes this type of portrait quite unnerving. I probably could have put that better, but I guess you know what I mean.

Oh, and I'd be interested to hear which you prefer between this and yesterday's entry. For what it's worth, I can't decide between them but like them for quite different reasons.

And finally, I have nothing to put up tomorrow and am not sure that I'll be able to come up with much between now and then as our youngest two both have coughs and colds and, yet again, we seem to be coming down with it too. Not to mention the fact that they'll probably keep us both up for most of the night. So, if nothing goes up tomorrow, at least you'll know why.

captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter cropped?

12.05pm on 23/1/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 40mm (64mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/15 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro 2x1

John and I went for a walk along the beach this afternoon – between Blackpool and St. Annes – and came across this TV. Admittedly, it was a little further up the beach when we found it, but it would have been dark by the time the tide came in so we took the liberty of moving it. I think that John will be putting up a similar shot this evening and I'll be putting up a black and white version tomorrow.

Oh, and many thanks to John for lending me his 1Ds for this shot. My batteries had gone flat so I had to beg a few shots with his camera. I suspect he won't let me forget it in a hurry ;-)

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2.55pm on 28/12/05 Canon 1Ds EF 28-70 f/2.8L USM 70mm f/8.0 1/160 aperture priority -1/3 partial 100 no RAW C1 Pro minor rotation

Update: I'm really pleased to be able to say that this shot was awarded a noteworthy in the recent Photo Friday challenge, Signs. Thanks to everyone who voted :-) Arguably, with four children, sometimes five, you could say that we probably already have more than our fair share, but it seems that fate has deemed that we'll have another one. Well, more likely the logic of biology has deemed we'll have another, but you know what I mean ;-) Anyway, when I saw that this week's Photo Friday theme was Signs I knew roughly what shot I wanted to get. Earlier this evening I took about 50 shots and have spent the last couple of hours trying to decide which one to use; and I drew a blank, mostly because I didn't have a single shot that told the story I wanted to convey. So, in a bit of a departure from usual, I've gone for these two. Had I not being trying to get something together for Photo Friday, I think I would have gone for a variant of the first shot, but I didn't think that it did too great a job of conveying the notion of a 'sign', whereas the second one seemed a bit bland on its own. On which note, look out for baby pictures some time around the middle of August :-)

For most of the time our three year old acts as though she were possessed, and "relaxed" is the very last word you would use to describe her. Rarely though, as with this shot, she appears almost magically elfin and mysteriously calm.

Oh, and this is one that must be viewed with the dark theme.

Update (31^st December, 2004): The final Photo Friday challenge for this year is Best of 2004 and it didn't take me long to decide that I should put this shot up. Technically I'm not sure that it's my best shot, but it's certainly one of my most striking and one of the ones I'm most proud of out of all the ones I've posted in the last 12 months. And oddly enough, this time last year, I posted a shot of the same daughter for the Photo Friday Best of 2003 challenge.

Update #2 (11^th January, 2005): I'm really pleased to be able to say that this shot was awarded a noteworthy. Many thanks to everyone who voted :-)

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6.36pm on 14/12/04 Canon 20D EF 70-200 f/4L USM 200mm (320mm equiv.) f/4.0 1/60 shutter priority +0.0 evaluative 100 580EX RAW DPP no

I had intended to get out and about this afternoon, at least for an hour or so, but as usual events conspired to keep me in – though in this instance the events were rather unusual. I got a phone call from American Express asking if they could check some of my recent credit card transactions with me. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it appears as though I've been the victim of a minor form of identity theft in that my card was registered at an address in London and around £800 has been spent on mobile phones. What's scary is that whoever did this must have access to at least some of my security details otherwise they wouldn't have been able to arrange the change of address. Anyway, I don't know the full details yet - the fraud team are going to ring me on Monday – but it did mean that I spent the afternoon ringing my bank and other credit card providers to check that I wasn't now living in the south of Spain hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt. Fortunately I'm not ;-)

Anyway, back to the photography: this thing/object may be immediately familiar to some people, but I hadn't seen one before, and thought it would make a good shot for this week's Photo Friday's theme – Patterns. And, in this instance, the only change that was made to the image was to colourise it.

And finally, a couple of people mentioned yesterday that they liked the writing I put up to accompany my entries. Interestingly enough chromasia is a descendent of a static blog I first started writing in May 2003, and at the time the photographs were very much an accompaniment to the text. It's interesting how things change and switch around over time :-)

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4.50pm on 20/11/04 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 36mm (58mm equiv.) f/10.0 2.5 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW no

I haven't entered any Photo Friday challenges in the last few weeks as I haven't had time to participate, but I couldn't resist this one – Furry – suggested by Heather. We got a couple of kittens at the weekend. Well, I say "we", what I really mean is that our daughters got a couple of kittens, and while I have to confess to not being the world's greatest animal lover I do think these two are cute.

What's interesting about this shot, for me at least, is that I took around 30 photographs and the composition was 'off' on all of them. A lot of them though worked much better at a 4x3 crop (the same as my G5) rather than a 3x2 (my 20D). I suspect that I need to rethink my compositions as it seems that I'm probably falling back on old habits; i.e. attempting to use my 20D in the same way I used the G5.

And I do realise that there are limitless ways to interpret 'Furry' that don't involve pet cats, I just couldn't come up with any today ;-)

capture date camera lens aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality white balance cropped?

3.44pm on 28/9/04 Canon 20D EF 50mm f/1.8 II f1.8 1/125 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 yes RAW auto yes (4x3)

I almost didn't make this week's Photo Friday challenge – Mother – as I left it until yesterday evening to get around to actually shooting something relevant, mostly because I assumed that I'd be able to take something of my wife and our daughters at any point during the week. But it almost didn't work out. This is one of about 20 shots of my wife and our youngest (she's almost 18 months now) and it's the only one that comes close to capturing something of what I was after – the rest were quite atrocious.

Actually, this is version two of this shot. My original idea (unusually) involved producing a high-key image with a much tighter crop, and I really liked the result, … but my wife hated it. And after wandering around the house mumbling about the injustice of it all, and that I couldn't possibly miss a Photo Friday, and any number of other spurious arguments, I'm quite glad she objected as I think this is a much stronger shot than my original attempt.

So, after rather too much angst for my taste, here's Photo Friday entry #40 ;-)

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Canon G5 7.14pm on 29/7/04 f3.0 1/60 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 28.8mm RAW auto no

Having posted entries for the last 38 Photo Friday challenges I didn't want to miss one so have interrupted my guest posters, albeit only briefly. I took this yesterday evening, as we wandered along the beach with the kids. It isn't the most immediately relevant shot for this challenge – Ocean – not least because this is the Central Pier in Blackpool and the 'Ocean' you can see in this shot is the Irish Sea, but I am pleased with the way it turned out.

Right; back to the unpacking :-)

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Canon G5 7.51pm on 21/7/04 f3.2 1/500 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 11.2mm RAW auto minor rotation

I've submitted this shot to week's Photo Friday theme – Fashion – on the basis that fashion need not mean 'fashionable' (I often have no real idea as to what's 'in' and what's 'out'). And I suppose it needn't mean anything to do with clothes either, but this was one of the shots I took while I was away and was going to put it up over the next few days anyway.

It was taken outside a café at Hampton Court and is one of a pair of shots of a woman sat at the next table. And just for once I think the G5 was probably a better bet than a DSLR in that it's remarkably easy to take casual/candid shots when you can preview them through the display while the camera sits unobtrusively on your knee. I suspect that any attempt at candid portraiture at a range of three feet would be out of the question if you needed to look through the viewfinder ;-)

As for this shot: I was fascinated by three things about this scene: the woman's hands (which I think are quite beautifully elegant), the interplay of the cream and pale blue of her jeans, and the contrast between her clothing and the cane-backed chair she was sitting on. I didn't manage a shot combining all three elements (tomorrow's is of the latter two) but I think that both are quite effective.

And finally, many of you will know that I often email a reply to the comments that you leave on chromasia. I suspect that I'm unlikely to have the time to reply to the ones that were left while I was away and won't have too much time this week either, so don't worry if I don't get back to you any time soon.

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Canon G5 3.09pm on 18/6/04 f3.0 1/80 aperture priority +0.0 spot 50 28.8mm RAW auto no

While saying this is probably the kiss of death as far as any subsequent comments go, this is by far my favourite shot since I started this blog – just don't ask me to explain why. It's something to do with the detail, and the colours, and the quality of the light, but beyond that I really can't explain quite why I like it so much. But, as always, feel free to disagree ;-)

Oh, and if I hadn't been entering this shot for this week's Photo Friday challenge – Landscape – I would have called it "in amongst the light", which is rather more fitting than "Photo Friday: Landscape".

And that's the good news.

The 'bad news', if you want to look at it like that, is that I'm going to make a couple of changes to when and what I post to chromasia. Over the last month or so my expectations as to the quality of shots I should be putting up has risen to a point that I really can't sustain without seriously neglecting some other aspect(s) of my life. So, after just over four months of posting something every day, I may stop posting at the weekend (which will give me a bit more time to go out and shoot some decent stuff) and I may post some shots that don't quite meet the standards I've been trying to match over recent weeks.

And I suppose that part of my thinking has to do with the reasons I set up chromasia in the first place. First and foremost, chromasia is a means to an end, the 'end' being better photography on my part. And posting the best shots that I can take day after day certainly addresses that aim, but it's starting to wear me down a little. Another reason, to quote Amanda (from a recent discussion we had concerning the purpose of photoblogs), "photoblogs are personal journeys"; i.e. they're about my life, or your life – the things we see around us, the things that bring us pleasure, the things we think are worth drawing to the attention of others. And in recent weeks/months I think I've partly lost sight of that aim. So instead of always trying to produce technically and aesthetically wonderful work (at the expense of everything else) I'm going to spend a bit more time thinking about why I started all this in the first place.

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Canon G5 3.39pm on 4/6/04 f4.0 1/1000 program AE +0.0 evaluative 50 7.2mm RAW auto

This isn't quite what I was after for this week's Photo Friday challenge – Macro – but I've run out of time. Don't get me wrong, I do like this shot, but I had wanted to come up with something a little more off-the-wall than a shot of a dandelion and one of our daughters; i.e. as Photo Friday entries go this is rather more predictable than I would have liked. That said I haven't even had the time to even think of something off-the-wall, let alone take it, so I suppose I should be glad that I have this one to put up.

On another note: I'm still working through uprgading the way this site is coded but still haven't managed to get around to sorting out the archive pages. And from various emails I've received today it seems as though there might also be a problem with my news feeds (index.xml and index.rdf). Both of these should start with the image's title, underneath which should be the image that appears in this popup (approx. 200x150px), followed by the image description. If you're using a newsreader or online service and the feed looks different (e.g. no image, or just the image but no text), could you let me know which reader/service you're using. Thanks.

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Canon G5 4.40pm on 25/5/04 f3.0 1/125 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 28.8mm RAW auto

As Mike Golding notes, photographers hate to be photographed, and I’m no exception. I must have taken several hundred self-portraits this week – and I’ve hated all of them. So, on the basis that today is the last day I can submit something to this week’s Photo Friday challenge, I gave up trying to come up with something ‘arty’ and took a picture of my bum instead ;-)

This week’s challenge was suggested by playapixie, and I was quite saddened to read the commentary on her own entry. In short, she had intended to post a naked shot of herself but, for very obvious reasons, decided against it. So I guess that I’m saddened, not by her decision, but because we live in the sort of world where such decisions need to be made.

On a side note: I’m the guest photoblogger at No Traces today. Bob Smith has taken a trip to Europe and has asked various people to post to his site in his absence – Milo, Emily, Jon, Ian, me, Jim, mprints, Tracey, and Heather. If you’re interested, you can see my entry here.

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Canon G5 9.47am on 22/4/04 f2.5 1/60 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 17.6mm RAW auto

I wasn’t too sure what to do for this week’s Photo Friday theme – Clean – so have gone with an image that captures some of the things that first came to mind – bright, vibrant colours, and water. And the reason I’ve gone for an indoor shot, or at least a major part of the reason, is that UK winters are normally quite a miserable time of year for photography, and the chances of finding anything outside that doesn’t look grey and washed out (and not overly clean) are rather small.

As for this shot: it’s water running into a glass fruit bowl, and is lit by a single diffused flash. One of the features on my flashgun (a Speedlite 420EX), that I overlooked when I got it, is a high speed sync mode; i.e. it will sync at any shutter speed. And while this image doesn’t really demonstrate that feature to great effect, it did help when taking this shot; i.e. I didn’t need to worry about freezing the movement of the water.

And finally: very little has been done to this image other than a slight increase in saturation, a Curves adjustment, and some sharpening.

camera capture date aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO focal length image quality white balance optical filter

Canon G5 4.34pm on 12/3/04 f3.0 1/500 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 28.8mm RAW auto B+W UV 010

This entry is a follow up to one I took a few days ago, and while it might not seem like an overly obvious choice for this theme, one of the reasons this subject interests me is to do with issues of status.

The notion of a ‘speak here’ grill immediately demarcates ‘us’ from ‘them’ – it establishes a physical and social boundary that indicates that our status is, at best, questionable, and at worst, positively alien, dangerous, and to be kept at bay. And the chances are, in many of these encounters, that the scope to interact as though we were fellow human beings are greatly reduced by such measures.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I can see why such measures might be necessary in security conscious environments, but these grills are now a relatively pervasive feature of modern life. Anywhere that you and I, as consumers, need to interact with ‘them’ – service providers, administrative personel, and other public officials – you’ll probably find a grill such as this. And you can bet, in the majority of these encounters, that your status is diminished by their presence.

camera capture date aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO focal length image quality white balance optical filter

Canon G5 9.19am on 19/2/04 f3.2 1/10 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 8mm RAW auto B+W UV 010

Update: I’m really pleased to be able to say that this picture got awarded a noteworthy in the Photo Friday challenge – Emptiness. So many thanks to everyone who voted for this image. And if you’ve got the time (or inclination) you could always add me to your favourites at photoblogs.org :-)

<edit> A few times in recent months the weekly Photo Friday challenge has come around and something I’ve posted only a few days previously has been ideal – but I’ve resisted the urge to use it and have either taken something else, or used a photograph from my archive. But this time I’ve decided to break my own rule and use the image that I posted yesterday, a) because it’s only around twelve hours since I took it, and b) because I really think that it fits this week’s theme – Emptiness. </edit>

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks worrying about things like resolution (or the lack of it) and the problems of trying to take good photographs with anything less than a DSLR, and finally realised today that my worrying has nothing to do with what constitutes good photography. Sure, without a 1Ds (or other camera with a massive resolution and lenses to match) I’m not going to produce landscapes that rival an Ansel Adams (but then I strongly suspect that even with an 8x10 plate camera and all the time in the world I wouldn’t get close anyway), but that shouldn’t be an issue. Taking good photographs isn’t only/even about resolution (though it obviously helps) ...

Anyway, today I remembered that photography is about vision, and imagination, and capturing the world in a way that you might not normally see – so I decided to stop worrying about the technical limitations of my camera and start taking more pictures. I also decided that I’m going to try and concentrate a bit more on the form of my images rather than their content. So, today’s effort is a move in that direction – a simple (perhaps overly simple) exploration of light and shape. And for anyone who’s interested: it’s a shot of an uplighter (about 14 inches diameter) with minimal post-processing and no colour correction.

Incidentally, I finally got around to sorting out my links to other sites. For months I’ve been collecting bookmarks but haven’t incorporated them on this site, nor have I voted for them at photoblogs.org – I’ve now done both. You can see which sites I visit in the dropdown menu in the sidebar of this page.

camera capture date aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO focal length image quality white balance optical filter

Canon G5 8.02pm on 29/1/04 f3.2 1/160 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 7.2mm RAW auto B+W UV 010

“Structure is not ‘external’ to individuals: as memory traces, and as instantiated in social practices, it is in a certain sense more ‘internal’ than exterior to their activities in a Durkheimian sense. Structure is not to be equated with constraint but is always both constraining and enabling. This, of course, does not prevent the structured properties of social systems from stretching away, in time and space, beyond the control of any individual actors. Nor does it compromise the possibility that actors’ own theories of the social systems which they help to constitute and reconstitute in their activities may reify those systems.”

Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press (p. 25)

I took this series of images in Nottingham over the last couple of days and decided that they would be suitable for this week’s Photo Friday challenge, Structure. I’ve written more about these images on my main blog, particularly in terms of what I see as the extremely negative political and social implications of this poster campaign.

I have to confess that this week’s Photo Friday theme – Foreign – has caused me some problems.

Foreign is a simple enough word, but when I came to think about how I might interpret it photographically, I got stuck. Foreign to who? To me? I live in a predominantly Asian area of our town so I could have gone down to our local shops and taken pictures of Okra, or Asian dress materials in the local shop, or any number of other cultural items ‘foreign’ to me. But, for some reason, that didn’t appeal. Part of the problem is to do with multiculturalism, i.e. these are people who live here – they aren’t, in some important way, foreign to me. Yet this isn’t to do with political correctness, rather it’s more to do with me not being able to get my head straight about what the term means in this context.

Anyway, I decided to take a different tack altogether. The picture I’ve used was taken when our youngest daughter was 26 days old. And while it may seem slightly odd to consider a baby ‘foreign’ I do think there’s something quite extraordinary about their emergence (for want of a better term). Now she’s ten months old she seems perfectly a part of the world, but in those first few weeks (as with our other daughters) she did seem quite other-worldly ... almost foreign.