It's been a while.....

Well it’s six months since my last post so lots to catch up on. I have spent the summer in London and managed six weeks in my third home Pegomas which is a small village outside Cannes on the Cote d’Azur. Great painting and photography country with that strong Mediterranean light, the sea and the mountains.

So, in the Gallery at the moment I’m showing images from a range of locations, mainly landscape subjects but will be adding (and subtracting) more pages with the best of the images from summer 2018.

I’ve had a bit of a shake out with my lenses over the past few months and have added a wide angle Nikon 18-35mm F4 and a Nikon 28-300mm F3.5-5.6. The wide angle choice was a no brainer as its so light, sharp, works well with the Lee filters using the 77mm WA adapter ring and shows no sign of vignetting. Now normally I wouldn’t really go for a super-zoom lens but after checking out the Nikon 28-300mm and being impressed with how sharp it was I purchased it to use as a daily carry around in France. Well it didn’t let me down, I managed some well lit, sharp shots from the wide end up to around 200mm. It does drop off a bit in its edge sharpness at the extreme end of the zoom but cropping can help with the worst of this. Nevertheless its one of the best super-zooms I’ve used and for the moment its in my travel bag.

At the moment I’m editing all the stuff from the summer but also making time to get out and shoot the autumn colour in this glorious sunshine……

Back to my roots......

The "Black Country" is the name given to the Industrial West Midlands of England. In this region the industrial revolution took place in the late eighteenth and nineteen centuries. The region was built on coal and iron and the myriad products of metal, ceramic, glass and wood manufactured by hundreds of thousands of men women and children. The place was dirty and dangerous and the workers were little more than slaves to their rich employers. It became one of the areas where trade unions were formed in the late 19th century to fight for the rights of the workers and is the place where I was born and although I headed south in the mid 1970s it still feels like home.

I have added a new page of images captured at the famous Black Country Living Museum. Over the past thirty years the museum trust has built a complete Black Country village by dismantling significant 18th to early 20th century buildings from around the region and reassembling them on the museum site. If you haven't been its worth a visit. 

Happy New Year

Well the new year and January has brought typically British winter weather and I'm not the sort to be out in all weathers with the tripod tied to a tree in the teeth of a howling gale. Oh no, I'd prefer to be watching it all from the window of a warm bar. But, we have had one or two bright days so I've ventured out into Kent and wandered around a couple of interesting locations. I found Leeds Castle a tricky place and only managed to get one half decent composition in a three hour shoot. However, I now have a slightly better understanding of the location and will try it again soon. Scotney Castle near Lamberhurst was much easier, smaller, and with a compact location I managed a few compositions which are now in the Gallery. Leave a comment if you're so disposed. Ok, that's enough, more later. Happy New Year everyone! 

More Additions...

I think the dark evenings mean its time to get stuck into some post processing, so I've been doing just that and have now added a few more images to the gallery which include some new landscape shots and Gothic pages, together with a few new edits of images of Coldrum Long Barrow.  

More to come......

Back in London

Yes, back to London today and I've now posted the first edits of my shoot at Clevedon Pier. I decided early in the planning that this shoot would result in black and white images. The pier is such a great structure with beautiful arches and patterned ironwork giving such a graphic feel which, for me, is best represented in monochrome. I was also lucky that the light was truly brilliant on the day of the shoot so I used the Lee Polariser and a three stop ND Medium Grad filter to balance the sky and water etc. Anyway based on this first shoot, I've decided to give Clevedon another day probably in the winter months. 

Ok that's it for now. More later......

Just catching up....

Hi, I think in this post I'm going to talk a little about my workflow and the kit I use. I other words what's in my camera bag. Lets say firstly that I'm a Nikon user, not sure why other than I've always used Nikon cameras in my teaching and so I guess they're very familiar to me and I'm too lazy to change. So, I currently use a Nikon D810 together with either a Tamron 24-70mm 2.8 VR or a Tamron 70-200mm 2.8 VR lens, both excellent fast and sharp lenses. I use Lee filters, e.g. their landscape polariser, ND grads and occasionally a Big Stopper for long exposures. I find the two lenses pretty adequate for most situations (although I am thinking about acquiring a wider option such as the Nikon 16-35mm) and this kit plus my Manfrotto tripod rounds out my working gear.

I post process using Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop on my iMac with a Wacom Intuos 5 Touch tablet.

As you can see on the site I'm quite keen on b/w at the moment and love the contrasty, cool almost metallic effect which I've used on some of the images, notably the recent shots of Coldrum Long Barrow in Kent.

Anyway enough of this, more later.....

Welcome to my site....

which is at present in development but over the coming months I will add more images and give a commentary on this blog about my choice of subject, locations and working methods.