As a photographer, I’m always on the lookout to ’see’ an interesting photo.  In this ongoing quest to capture things I find interesting, it’s all too easy to overlook some of the most important and most interesting photographic subjects around me because of familiarity. I forget that things which are familiar to me might not necessarily be familiar to everyone else.  When something is shiny and new, I notice everything about it, but when I see something often I start taking it for granted.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  We all assume the floor is underneath us every time we put one foot in front of another.  Can you imagine walking or running if we didn’t?

One of the things I love about photography is that it constantly challenges me to see things differently; from different perspectives.  I love this because it forces me to appreciate things differently, to see things differently and in new ways.

There’s been talk amongst the Fab Collective recently about photographing family and one particular photographic project has stirred many of us.

Days with My Father

Those of us who are lucky enough to have family…  Well…  Maybe, it’s time you took another look at them.

There is nothing more important to me than my family.  I’ve spent my entire life with them and they’ve helped to shape me into the person I am today.  But we’ve all flown from the nest and live miles apart from each other.  So, what I want to do is to take another look at them and the life we share.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to capture the essence of what that means to me and share some of that with you.

Watermarks and people who help themselves to my images. I’ve never been a fan of either, but the former is required (in my opinion) to help fight against the latter.

I use watermarks on images I post online in order to:

• Deter people from using my images without my permission.
• Ensure viewers know who the images belong to, should they be used despite the watermarks.

I also only make lower resolution images publicly available to help prevent them being usable for anything other than online viewing.

As with any visible method of protection, there are downsides to some watermarks:

• They can be cropped out of an image.
• They can be cloned out of an image.
• They detract from the viewing experience intended by the photographer.

The last point is why I’ve tried to use subtle watermarks because I personally find most to be too distracting and end up competing with the actual image itself for the viewer’s attention.

Recently, a speaker at a not-for-profit conference took it upon themselves to download a number of my images (which were all flagged as all rights reserved) from Flickr and incorporate them into their presentation without asking me beforehand.  I only found out through another source and took exception.

Had the speaker contacted me before their presentation and sought permission or if they’d used them via Flickr then there wouldn’t have been a problem.  One of the reasons why I took the photographs was to share them with others and Flickr is my chosen vehicle to do this.  I don’t rule out other mediums, but I want to have the option of deciding which.  They are my images, after all.  What right does anybody else have in saying how they’re used?

From my perspective, they took my images, used them without my permission and expected I’d never find out.  They were wrong, in every way, and apologised profusely when I contacted them, but still gave no explanation as to why they didn’t seek my permission first.  It’s plain and simple theft.

What the speaker didn’t appreciate was the consequence of being caught out.  Sure, they get to carry on as they please and hopefully their conscience will prevent them from stealing other people’s work in the future, but what happened affected me and caused me to reconsider how I share my work.  It had to.

So, maybe I watermark more heavily and reduce the resolution of the images I publish.  Will this prevent any more instances of theft?  I hope so.  Will it detract from the viewing experience?  I can’t see how it can’t, but what choice do I have?

For several weeks, I’ve been unable to return to Anglican Cathedral tower for the Thursday evening viewings in order to keep fine tuning my technique due to the poor weather we’ve been experiencing.  Thursday, just gone, was the last scheduled night viewing from the roof of the tower.  So, I decided I would pay a visit come rain or shine.  The addition of the Liverpool ONE Wheel on the skyline gave me even more reason to go.  To my good fortune, the weather was almost ideal; plenty of clear, blue sky, interesting cloud formations and most importantly it was dry!

Here’s the time lapse video clip from this latest trip.

Interestingly, I just noticed one of my earlier time lapse videos made top spot of Flickr’s Explore for October 17th 2009. It may not stay there indefinitely, but I found it an interesting occurrence nonetheless.

Just as with SEO and religion, I’m not really one for discussing possible theories about how Flickr measures interestingness. I have my own theories about such things and don’t feel the need to convince anyone else unless they’re paying me for it. I will say this about Explore: I think it is more a measure of marketing rather than photography/videography. Perhaps, you can understand why I think this is? Agree/Disagree?

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a Fab Collective project which saw us ditch our cutting edge digital photography equipment and arm ourselves with just a disposable film camera each.  Our mission was to go out within a 1-mile radius of our starting location and to simply shoot with the disposables within a 2-hour window.

Until then, I had not shot any film since 2002 when I sold up all of my film cameras.  Actually, that’s not quite true, I still have an APS film camera and little Polaroid Fisher Price thing lying around somewhere, but they’ve not been used since around the same time.

So, there I was.  Not only was I wondering around the streets of Liverpool shooting film on a cartoon emblazoned camera which had cost me the princely sum of £1, but I was also having fun.  Not the same kind of fun I used to have when I last shot film 7 years ago.  This was different.  Not only am I a different photographer from when I was back then, but I’d become so entrenched in the digital way of life I was still checking for the LCD review after the first few plastic, hollow shutter releases.

There’s something very liberating about shooting a camera which has no means of focusing apart from physically moving it within the suggested shooting zone of 1-3m, no means of adjusting the exposure apart from switching on the built-in flash, and no means of knowing whether or not you’d just ‘got the shot’ without dousing it with chemicals.  Heck, I didn’t even know what ISO the film was.

Being used to shooting in low light conditions and allowing auto-ISO to ramp things up for me, I avoided using the flash even in a dimly lit church.  The result was some photographs of bright white window shapes surrounded by very dark grain.  Not quite the serene scene I’d pictured in my mind, but it did make me smile at a time when digital would have had me reaching for the ISO button.

Technically, the photographs I took weren’t the greatest I’d ever shot, but there was an organic, almost unpredictable quality to them that’s so different from the precise, binary world of digital I was used to.  I had to have more.

I’d toyed with the idea of medium format before, after playing with some of the cameras owned by other Fab Collective members, but in the end I’d decided I didn’t want to invest in a whole new system.  So, I decided to get myself a used film body with which I could use my existing Nikon lenses with.  After a bit of research and deliberation, I started fishing on eBay and landed myself a Nikon FM2n; a fully manual camera which would even continue to work without any power source.  I’d decided I wanted to branch off away from the world of digital and auto-focus, back to something which was essentially the same as my first ever SLR; the Minolta SRT-101b.

Holding the FM2n up to my eye was like going back to the place I’d not been to for a long, long time.  It was good.  I’ve shot about half-a-dozen frames of XP2 so far and have no idea whether any of them are sharp or well exposed, but that doesn’t matter so much right now.  For now, I’m taking photographs.

It wasn’t so long ago now, but it seems like an eternity away when we visited the Lake District for the second time this year. We were very fortunate with the weather and had a wonderful two weeks of hill walking. It was challenging, but also immensely satisfying and despite eating well, I still managed to work my belt down a few notches!

Some of the fells we climbed this time around included:

• Skiddaw 931 metres (3,054 ft) – after several failed attempts due to bad weather on our previous visit, we finally managed to reach the summit.  Perhaps, it was because it was the first big walk we did on the trip, but it felt like the toughest.  Incredibly windy on top!
• Catbells 451 metres (1,480 ft) – my most climbed fell and I never get bored of the view from this relatively low climb.  It’s from here I was able to capture some sunrise time lapse sequences.
• Barrow 455 m (1,494 ft) – one of Catbells’ neighbours.  Not a difficult walk, but still a very rewarding view from the summit.
• Binsey 447 m (1,467 ft) – another relatively low fell, but with an amazing 360-degree view.  It’s such a shame I took a camera without any memory cards and didn’t get a chance to revisit!
• Helvellyn 950 metres (3,117 ft) along Striding Edge – Our most exciting walk to date was on England’s third highest peak.  Fantastic views and an exhilarating climb from the Striding Edge to the summit via the loose, rocky face.

Here’s a couple of photos from the trip and a few more over on Flickr.

All in all, it was a fantastic photo break, but I think I could do with a better way of carrying photography equipment especially when primarily shooting with a combination of a Nikon D700 and 14-24mm f/2.8 lens.  That’s a couple of kilos of mass which I need to be able to stow away securely and easily whilst still having it at hand without too much stoppage time.  My trekking rucksack and Lowepro Toploader worked out a little cumbersome at times, but on the whole did the trick.

If you’d like a few suggestions for places to dine whilst in the Lake District, I highly recommend the following:

• Middle Ruddings in Braithwaite
• Horse & Farrier Inn in Threlkeld
• Fish Hotel in Buttermere