Coffee time

Here is another vacation photo just captured on the spur of the moment. Part of the skill of photography is learning to 'see' or frame a group of elements out of a wider panoramic view. I thought that this had all the elements that I wanted: the blue sky, the sea in the background, together with the formality of the white balustrade and table and parasol contrasted with the relaxed couple sitting on the chairs. An evocative image of Mediterranean sun. This photo has been cropped slightly to increase the focus on the subject and I guess if I really wanted to improve this picture, then I would pixel clone the sea over the person watching from the other side of the balustrade at the bottom right of the picture.

Contre Jour - Nerja, Costa del Sol, Spain




Nerja, Spain

 

I have always been a fan of Contre-Jour or 'into the light' photography. I love the dynamic and bold shapes that it can create. An early morning walk on this beach in Spain meant that people were just arriving onto the beach after breakfast for an early bit of exercise or a session of yoga. The sun, though warm, was still low in the sky and reflecting wonderfully on the sea. Digital cameras seem to handle this sort of shot so well. I did nothing but point and shoot - all in a matter of seconds, to get this evocative shot. This has had no retouching or cropping at all. This is the great advantage of the compact digital camera - small enough to carry in a pocket or the palm of one's hand - and no messing about with lenses, apertures and shutter speeds, just pot and shoot!

Summer boat

A quick shot of a boat on the south coast of England during a recent sunny spell of weather. Shooting into the sun like this is known as contre-jour, and it can give some quite nice effects as the sunlight reflecting on the waves in this shot. This picture was an opportunistic one, taken very quickly using the automatic light meter settings. If the picture looks too dark, using the adjust setting on the camera, if you have one, and opening up the f/stop by one or two will usually give the right effect. If you are unsure and have the opportunity, take two or three shots at different f settings and select the best one later. It is almost impossible to get the horizon square and level, but of course the sea horizon is ALWAYS level, so once the shot is selected, rotaing the shot in software such as Photoshop is vital. Go to Image/rotateimage/arbitary and enter a number (in this case 2) to rotate the image clockwise or anticlockwise by that number of degrees.

Portmerion - The 'Village'

Who is number 1?

You are number 6!

I am not a number - I am a free man! I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed or debriefed!

What a great series the Prisoner is, with Patrick MacGoohan as Number 6 imprisoned in The Village - a community whose location is unidentifiable.

And what a great place Portmerion is, the location used for the 1960's series, situated just a few miles out of Portmadoc. If the weather is fine and the sky is clear and blue, then one might be in the mediterranean instead of on the North Wales coast. I love this place, with its quirky architecture...there is a photo opportunity around every corner.

And of course there is the Prisoner shop, full of souvenirs and memorabilia from the series. Just watch out for Rover....

Southport pier

Building on the pier at Southport, Lancashire, England. I was just struck by all the the angular lines of this scene. Even the sun helps to make yet more angular shadow lines. If I was going to do anything to this picture, it would be to increase colour saturation and remove the people at the right of the shot.

Donkeys at the seaside

donkeys, originally uploaded by foto-art.

I love the emptiness and slight bleakness of this shot, which sums up the coastal resort of Blackpool in Lancashire on a cold, windy autumn day. This was taken while out for a walk on the beach and little has been done to it afterwards: It was rotated slightly to get the horizon level; It was slightly cropped to remove a group of people in the background on the extreme left; Colour saturation was also increased slightly. Notice again the rule of thirds and the formality of the composition.