Sunday 23 January 2011

Old work -and reflecting on what its all about.

Its been a normal period of not doing any new personal work for a while, combination of limited free time, little need for yet more images, no-one around wanting to prance about undressed in front of my camera .... and oh yes, bills to pay :-(

Therefor its always good to go back over earlier work and find a few gems that got passed over in the rush to sort out images after a shoot. One of my fave sessions from last year was when Raphaella was up with young Tim and we grabbed 30 mins in the Farmhouse, one of those shoots when the model and location just worked so wee, and one reason it was a fave shoot is that its a style I have not done enough of recently....
This shot was actually rather rushed but looking back it just worked with a little dodging and burning to compensate for me not spending time getting the light right at the time, my excuse was that there were 4 photographers sharing the shoot so I feel excused. I recently published it on artlimited.net which is useful for gauging public response, can be a bit hit and miss as to when it goes up and who is watching but still an interesting measure of opinion.

Going even further back last year I ran a print of this image but have only just published it on Artlimited, it was actually taken during my very first shoot with Katyt back in 2006, or was it 2005 ? must check the shoot date !

Finally a while ago whilst looking for something else I found this out take taken during a dance session in 2009 with pro dancer Eenia.
It was an out take for reasons of it not being what I wanted at the time but what I love about this is in contrast to the first pic its 98% as shot, just a very small tweak of exposure in Lightroom to improve web viewing and straight up onto the site. The less time spent fiddling about with a mouse the better, its too easy to take the - 'that'll do, will sort it out later in PhotoShop' way of working ! and forget what photography is all about - taking good photographs.

There is a school of thought that after a photo session all unwanted images should be deleted, but hey, its like clearing out the garage, you never know when that old box of goodies will be needed. Problem is the more you keep the harder it is to find stuff, even with life saving programs like Lightroom !

Now there's an idea, take a photo of everything in the garage and catalog it in Lightroom - nah, life is too far short, but I bet someone's done it !!

Sunday 2 January 2011

Olivier Valsecchi













Link to site of french photographer Olivier Valsecchi from his portraits to his amazing 'Dust' series - simply inspiring - worth a close look

http://www.oliviervalsecchi.com/