AR-Graphics

What's in the Bag The extra odds and ends I find useful 1: Bag Over the years I've used (and abused!) various camera bags. At the moment I am using a top loading Lowprow bag. It's modular design allows me to add and change various pouches and cases as required. There seems to be a current fashion with backpack style bags, but I'm not a fan. Despite their generally large capacity, and load distribution, I don't like the fact it's contents are not readily available and that you usually have to put it down to get inside. Not good on wet, dusty, or dirty ground. 2: Flash Bracket & sync lead As well as a flash and spare batteries, I also carry a flash bracket that allows me to get the flash off and away from the camera yet keep the whole thing relatively compact. There is also a TTL flash lead for the rare occasions I switch the flash from manual. I also attached a Velcro strip to the bracket so I can mount a remote shutter trigger (I really mis...

The Art of Flight. People who know me know that as well as photography I have a passion for aircraft. It therefore goes without saying that whenever possible I love to combine the two. The golden age Over the years I've been lucky enough to capture performances of some beautiful examples of aeronautical engineering, from the wooden Mosquito, through the EE Lightening, to the spectacular SR71. I can fondly remember the air shows at places like Mildonhall, Alconbury, and even Weathersfield, where the smell of jet fuel mixed with the smell of the burgers specially flown in from America. Sadly with shrinking budgets and growing security concerns, many air shows have become distant memories. Along with less displays, I now have less opportunities to travel to them. Continuing Love However my love of flight has not diminished, and as well as enjoying aircraft in their natural environment, I have always had a fascination with the technical side. So some time ag...

I Have The Power! Anyone who uses a speedlight knows their voracious appetite for batteries. No sooner do you put in a fresh set and start shooting than the recycle time seems to start climbing! It's one of the main reasons I tend to avoid using this lighting if I can. I like to maintain something of a rhythm during a shoot and having the ability to take a coffee break whilst the flash recharges, tends to break the flow. A lot of the time I'm using studio flash, however there are times when that is just not feasible and so I need something that has the portability, without the problems associated with AA batteries. An external battery pack seems an ideal solution and there are commercial versions available. The cheapest just add extra AA batteries, and better versions tend to start getting expensive. So I decided to look into a DIY solution. The Answer My research lead me to the Sealed Lead Acid battery (SLA). These batteries are used in a selection of ite...

A Slippery Slope In my last blog post I talked about how keeping an eye on the details in a photograph can make all the difference between a passable and a great photo. It's something I try to apply to my work both during the shoot and in the post processing. I also find it hard not to pick up on such things when viewing others images. I can totally understand however photographers just starting out having much on their minds and not noticing the little details. Beyond the subject As I said previously, the background is probably one of the areas most overlooked and something I notice quite regularly are "wonky" pictures. Whilst I believe there are no real set rules in photography and that photographing at an angle can work, I also believe that doing so can often be tricky to pull off and needs to appear intentional. Anything else to me just looks sloppy.  I recently saw a selection of wedding pictures that had been posted and was shocked to see a lot of the ou...

The Devil is in the Detail Passing on the knowledge and experience you've gained can be very helpful. The obvious beneficiary is the receiver, however there is huge potential for the giver to also learn and better understand things. Working and talking with people at earlier stages of the photographic path have enabled me to trace and chart my own journey. It's brought me a clearer view of where I've been, and hopefully how I wish to move ahead. Many times I have recognised myself in what people are doing and thinking as they progress and it's interesting to see if they will come to the same conclusions and realisations that I did or move in a different direction. One thing that recently became apparent to me is the level of detail with which I tend to look at an image. Upon reflection it's something I've automatically done for quite a while. This picture was taken ages ago on a medium format camera using a waste level finder (which will flip the imag...

Presets Good or Bad? It's funny how times change. Back in the days of film, manufacturers spent fortunes on trying to develop films with accurate colour rendition, low grain, and good tonal range. At the same time us photographers would have to deal with the cool blues of Ektachrome or the vibrant greens of Fujichrome, all the time wishing Kodachrome was available at higher than 64 ISO! Today it seems all the rage to bring those "faults" back into the image, and a whole market has arisen to do just that, with a bewildering array of software, apps, plugins and presets. It's fantastic that digital gives us the ability to make such adjustments (even non destructively) to an image, and there is probably some interesting underlying psychological basis as to why we wish to add a seemingly analogue element to the sterile world of digital. However I can't help but feel that there are times when the reasons for their use are somewhat misplaced. I know of ma...

Where is that picture??? One of the most useful pieces of advice that I think can be given to someone starting out in digital photography is, "figure out how you are going to organise your picture files". I well remember sitting waiting whilst a "professional" photographer tried to find a particular picture to show me. After several minutes it became embarrassingly obvious he didn't have a clue where it was on his computer! The ease and lack of cost with which digital images can be taken means collections of pictures can grow at a very fast rate. What starts out as an easy exercise finding a picture amongst a selection of several hundred, starts to become harder when it grows to several thousand, and a major task when it becomes tens of thousands! That is unless some form of system is employed. It is therefore a good idea to spend some time early on figuring out how you are going to best store your pictures. It's a case of a little extra t...

Let There Be Light! The other day I stood waiting for my children to finish school and admiring the light. It had recently stopped raining and now the sun was intermittently peeking through broken cloud. Opposite the sky was still dark from the storm. The low afternoon sun coupled with the lack of normal fill from a clear or cloudy sky, gave the light a very rare quality that gave lovely contrast and enriched the colours. The light was constantly changing though, as the clouds varied in their coverage of the sun. I watched fascinated by the subtly with which the shadows and colours changed, before being brought back down to earth by my 8 year old son jumping on my back, announcing school was out!   Light is the most fundamental building block of all the visual arts, without it images cannot be captured. Camera settings, lighting modifiers, etc, are just tools we use to shape the way our subjects are affected by it. It's many forms, whether natural or artificial, can be use...