Broadway Market

A few weeks ago you may have seen this graffiti laden post on the Regent's Canal, well I also spent an hour or so walking down Broadway Market and these are a few shots of what I came across. As you may remember, I was part of a much larger group, London Photo Walk, and as we progressed through the market we were certainly getting lots of strange looks.

My favourite is this first one of the dog. He was stood like that for over five minutes waiting for his master to come out of what I think was a chip shop. It caught the eye of several people and I wasn't the only person to capture it. If you're so inclined you can anthropomorphise all sorts of emotions and stories onto the little guy. Unfortunately, when the owner did emerge it turned out to be a rather unpleasant drunken tramp type chap.

This picture of a tower of suitcases isn't quite the one I wanted; what I wanted was to be right at the base of the tower looking up with a seemingly huge mountain of suitcases filling the picture. It was just outside a little flea market shop and stood about 6 feet high; I got down on the frozen concrete floor to try and get it right. If it had been warmer I could have composed it better - getting the tower square on, controlling the depth of field more and so on - as it was I just wanted to quickly get up off of the ice cold ground. This is my next best effort. It's retro look could well lend itself to the texturing/antiquing effect that I blogged about previously.

This last one is a curious one. I'm not really sure why I like it, I just do. The overcast conditions helped bring out the rich colours in the brickwork and obviously the painting is an unusual one. Maybe next week I'll look at it and decide it's rubbish but, for now, it remains.

Painting With Light

Here's one hot off of the press for you. These pictures have literally just been taken and are still a bit wet so handle with care.

For a few weeks now I've been meaning to try out a new technique known as light painting. This is basically where you black out a room, or go out at night, and then use a long exposure and a torch or other light source to paint an image of some kind. This is basically my hallway (I couldn't use the front room because Sue wanted to watch Men In Black) with me sat on the floor using a mixture of phone and iPod to 'paint' with. I set up the remote within reach of Sue and got her to control the exposure in bulb mode which basically means she pressed a button every time I yelled Now! She was thrilled to be my assistant for this.

Anyway, after a lot of trial and error, I almost managed to get something passable. The trick lies in being able to visualise what you've already painted because you can't see it. I also needed to learn to cover the light with my hand to, effectively, take the pen off the paper so to speak. There's definitely a knack to this. I've thrown in one or two of my botched attempts and I need way more practice but hopefully you'll be able to see what I was aiming for. And thank you to Sue for being my glamorous, sofa-based assistant.

A woeful first attempt

This heart is a bit abstract but you get the picture

Smiley face? Just.

Regent's Canal

Reflection of a gas holder in the frozen surface of the canal

Another week brings me to another one of London's canals. Last Saturday saw me up and out in the biting cold to join in on my first ever London Photo Walk. What they seem to do is meet up every six weeks or so and wander along a predetermined picturesque route somewhere in the capital. There's no fee or dues to be paid, it's just a group of like minded people out and about with their cameras - it was great.

The route started at London Fields, went down through Broadway market and then out along Regent's canal before returning back to London Fields. At first I felt pretty self-conscious, I get nervous about street photography at the best of times nevermind when there's scores of strangers around and it's your first time at a new event. This wasn't helped by the fact that I was feeling a bit tender from the night before. The jitters quickly disappeared though as being in such a large group was actually a big help, everywhere I looked there was someone with a camera in front of their face snapping away.

Not only did this large group help give me a bit of a safety-in-numbers style boost in confidence but they also gave me lots of good ideas. If I saw someone near me take a shot then I wanted to know what it was of, sneaking a peak over their shoulder to see what they had captured. This gave me a fresh perspective on scenes that I might otherwise have passed over unnoticed.

The Regent's Canal is linked to the Lea Navigation canal that I blogged about a few weeks ago near the Olympic Park via the Hertford Union Canal. The canal itself was probably a little less pleasant than the Lea, perhaps not benefiting from an Olympic inspired clean up. One similarity between the two though was an array of excellent graffiti; I know many consider this nothing more than vandalism but, in the right setting, it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite art forms. I suspect that, as I and numerous others on the walk were photographing the big bird motif, we may well have caught the artist in the act. It looked a lot brighter than everything else in the area and the man standing furtively next to it with a carrier bag of what could well have been spray cans was behaving very strangely. He clearly didn't look comfortable having people paying close attention to what he was doing, but at the same time he didn't leave, he must have had more work to do.

The only draw back to this excellent event was the biting cold. Those that know me will know that I love the cold, it's very much my sort of weather; this was a different matter however. To be able to use my camera properly I can't be wearing gloves, they're too clunky and I can't feel my way around the camera. No gloves and two hours at sub zero temperatures left my hands a little worse for wear. For the last half hour I couldn't feel the shutter button and often actually had to watch what my fingers were doing to know what I was up to. When I text my wife once it was over it took me nearly five minutes to write a simple message because I couldn't really move my fingers. Making a fist as quickly as I could took me nearly five seconds and my little finger wouldn't move at all. My hands were in not inconsiderable amounts of pain into the next day and holding anything with them was particularly painful.

I now own a lovely pair of fingerless gloves.

Snow What?

Well, it finally happened. We've had a very temperate winter so far here in the UK, one of the warmest on record, but this week Europe has been gripped by particularly cold Siberian weather fronts and some snow has finally made it to the majority of Britain, even the south east. So for those of us that have been out and about in the white stuff here is a post that's as fresh as the snow depicted. These images were hand reared on Hampstead Heath, they have been fed only the choicest, natural, organic feeds and were humanely dispatched in a low stress environment. They were rapidly blogged and are to be consumed with 48 hours for the freshest flavour.

My favourites are the panoramas (click them to enamazingify) and this first one. As soon as I saw everyone sledging down the hill I was put in mind of this classic painting by L.S. Lowry.

Textures

Taken at a friends wedding (not that of those mentioned), the effect is only slightly marred by the fact that I lent the cards against a pint of lager

In an attempt to not be quite such an old fuddy duddy all the time I have been experimenting of late with digital post processing of photos. Whilst the gold standard of photography will always be to get the picture as perfect as possible in camera, more often than not something somewhere will go slightly awry. Cue PhotoShop, Lightroom, Aperture or any other of a multitude of suites out there to help process and correct your shortcomings. I have PhotoShop Elements which is basically a stripped down version of the market-dominating behemoth that retains much of the functionality of it's big brother but at about a fifth of the price.

This is one of my favourite shots from my trip to Porto. The old terracotta roofs really lend themselves to the ageing process

As I read about, practice and learn more about photography the more it seems to be the case that pretty much everyone fiddles with their pics to some degree. Those that literally never make any adjustments seem to be regarded as almost puritanical, looked on slightly askance as if they're some sort of idiot savant - brilliant, but slightly odd, and not in a good way. They're bracketed away with those people who will spend two days travelling to a location but always restrict themselves to just one perfect exposure which they'll spend literally all day composing. These people produce superb work but normal people shouldn't, couldn't, be expected to be the same way. 

Another thing that learning more about photography has done is give me the ability to spot more and more modifications in photos wherever I see them be it at bus stops, galleries or in books of fine art photography. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet. On the one hand it can provide inspiration and ideas about new techniques that I might be able to put into practice, but on the other hand an image that previously would have just made me say, "Wow", can now occasionally have me thinking the equivalent of, "I can see the strings". On balance it's probably a good thing. The line between too much modification and just right is entirely subjective. The full spectrum can be seen from fine art puritans at one end to fashion magazines, that seem to deal in works of complete fiction, at the other.

This is the first texture I ever attempted. I was trying to make it look like an old photo that had been printed and mistreated over many years

And so it is that I have decided to play around with these things; obviously the examples here are in no way subtle, this is more than a simple Levels or Curves adjustment. I've deliberately given them all a very aged and antiqued feel; the affect is achieved by blending in a texture layer and the addition of a little vignetting. Different textures will obviously have different effects, and not all photos will lend themselves to such modification so the selection of the two layers you're going to combine is quite important. 


Before I tell you how to go about creating these sorts of photos I'd better let you know where you can get some textures. Luckily, there are lots of very nice people out there who let you have them for free. Go to Flickr and search for 'free textures', this should throw up plenty of results. There are literally hundreds if not thousands  of them there but do please make sure that they are available for use. Check to see if there is a Creative Commons license for the image and if the creator has any conditions of use. Often they will just request a courtesy thank you or a link back to the original texture or something along those lines. There are also good websites dedicated solely to such things like CG Textures. Sometimes you will find that a good photo and a good texture won't necessarily go together; the colours and tones involved and the type of effect you're trying to achieve will all need to be considered in selecting both your starting image and the texture you want to combine it with.

From Vietnam, the old skool bike and conical hat add to the sense of times past

I'm going to end with a quick description of how to go about blending the texture layer into the image you've selected. Unless you own Elements or PhotoShop and intend to actually do this you can probably stop reading and carry on with your life. For the rest of you: sit up straight and pay attention, I won't tolerate slacking. Fortunately, this is actually all quite easy; instructions are for PhotoShop Elements although I'd imagine it's pretty similar for the grown up version. Here's how:

- First up, import your two images into the Elements Organiser and then into the Workspace ready for editing.

- You need your two images to be the same size so go to your photo and click Image>Resize>Image Size. Make a note of the pixel height and width of your image and then go to your texture, follow the same command path and enter in the figures. Make sure you have Resample Image ticked. Your texture will now be stretched or shrunk to the same size as your photo.

- On your texture click Select>All and then press Ctrl+C, go back to your photo and press Ctrl+V. The texture will now appear over the top of your photo as a new Layer.

- It's not really necessary but if you like you can rename the layer to distinguish it from others you might use later by right clicking on the layer in the Layers box on the right hand side and selecting Rename Layer.

- As things stand the texture layer is completely opaque so now we begin the blending process. Making sure you have your texture layer selected on the right hand side (as opposed to Background) simply click the drop down box where it says Normal and select one of the myriad blending options.

- Pick any you like but the most useful will likely be Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light. Once you have one you like you can also modify the percentage opacity by clicking the drop down box.

- The texture you have selected may have a vignette already in it but if not then adding one in can really contribute to the sense of it being an old photo. To do this select the Background layer and then click Filter>Correct Camera Distortion. This tool is normally used to remove vignettes but in this case we're going to use it to add one in.

- On the right just move the sliders for Amount and Midpoint around until you achieve the effect you're after. You should be careful at this point as this alteration is a permanent one that affects the background of your image. Unless you're certain of what you're doing it is prudent to save a copy beforehand so that you can always go back to it if you mess things up. This is a good tip just in general for when you are playing about with your images.

- For some reason this renames the Background layer as Layer 0. You can either ignore this or rename it again.

That pretty much does it. If you like you can add in a standard Curves or Levels layer to lighten/darken the general palette of the image. Save the image as either a TIFF file or PhotoShop file to preserve all the layers in case you ever want to go back to them later on. You should also save all new images as a JPEG in case you ever want to e-mail them or upload them somewhere, like to an exciting blog that you write.

And that's that; give it a try and let me know how you get on. As I wrote those steps I made a new image to make sure I didn't miss anything out; the texture is most clear in the previously light blue sky and I've applied a pretty heavy vignette to the corners to demonstrate the effect. Here it is:

Ta dah!