My book is now available on Blurb!
I made this very simple photo book at the end of last year and have some copies at home, but I couldn't use the publish to the world service offered by the site as I live outside of the USA. This morning I had an email from them saying that the service was available to everyone, so with great glee I popped over and got myself organized. And here it is!
It's a small book of 10x8 inches and is available in hard or soft cover, there are 48 pages of lovely photographs shot in three locations in North Morocco last spring.
Please have a look and let me know what you think of it.
Friday, 29 February 2008
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Monday, 25 February 2008
Lost views and relist
Etsy very carelessly reset most of it's customers view statistics over the weekend. I know I'm not exactly up there with the big boys, but I was fairly pleased with my modest traffic. I've decided to relist some of the items which are languishing at the bottom of my items for sale and have started off with this rather nice black and white matted print of rowing boats in Essaouira. It's been sitting on my shelf for some time now and really like to be shot of it!
Here's a screen shot of it having it's moment of fame on the front page!
If you want to look closer, click here.....
Here's a screen shot of it having it's moment of fame on the front page!
If you want to look closer, click here.....
Sunday, 24 February 2008
New Printer and chaos.
After much deliberation about whether I should buy a new printer, I finally did the deed. I've been looking into it for quite a while and had decided on the Epson R2400 which is sort of the upgrade of my old and trusty Epson Stylus Photo 1270 which I've had for about 6 or 7 years. I wanted a machine that would still do A3+ and wanted full bleed and archival inks and this fitted the bill. Full of resolve, we headed off to Calumet, my new favourite photo shop and were immediately persuaded to look at the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 which does everything the Epson does plus some extra stuff which I liked. The print samples were stunning. The printer can take a really wide range of paper and media going from tissue paper up to canvas which the Epson didn't. As I will want to use thick fine art papers and photo rags, this was just what I wanted. It was a bit cheaper too.
Yesterday we also bought an iPhone each and that's what we concentrated on getting sorted last night so this morning the full horror of the work involved in getting the new printer installed finally hit. It's much bigger than the old Epson and I'll need to access the back for the hand fed papers, which meant that the position of the old printer wasn't suitable as it was against a wall and the daft layout of my work station didn't really give many options for repositioning. Peter then had the great idea of putting the beast onto our redundant but much love tv trolley and having it based in teh living room next door. I must explain that we're not exactly the soft furnishing and pretty living room types, pretty much every corner of the flat looks rather like a design studio with books, pictures, computers and assorted other junk all over the place. Therefore, unconventional as it may seem, having a chunky metal trolley with a huge printer in the living room isn't such a weird thing in our lives. Peter's gone out to get a longer USB cable and a new powered hub for me which gives him a quick escape and a chance for a coffee and a quick read of the papers before Maplins opens leaving me to tidy my disgusting dusty desk, with it's rats nest of cables, and generally have a bit of a sort out which has made quite a difference really. He'll be back soon and then we can really get the show on the road.
I can't wait to make some really lovely prints and hopefully my new Spyder2 will help with the colour management and calibration as I've not been too satisfied with my colours for a while now. A new slate.
Yesterday we also bought an iPhone each and that's what we concentrated on getting sorted last night so this morning the full horror of the work involved in getting the new printer installed finally hit. It's much bigger than the old Epson and I'll need to access the back for the hand fed papers, which meant that the position of the old printer wasn't suitable as it was against a wall and the daft layout of my work station didn't really give many options for repositioning. Peter then had the great idea of putting the beast onto our redundant but much love tv trolley and having it based in teh living room next door. I must explain that we're not exactly the soft furnishing and pretty living room types, pretty much every corner of the flat looks rather like a design studio with books, pictures, computers and assorted other junk all over the place. Therefore, unconventional as it may seem, having a chunky metal trolley with a huge printer in the living room isn't such a weird thing in our lives. Peter's gone out to get a longer USB cable and a new powered hub for me which gives him a quick escape and a chance for a coffee and a quick read of the papers before Maplins opens leaving me to tidy my disgusting dusty desk, with it's rats nest of cables, and generally have a bit of a sort out which has made quite a difference really. He'll be back soon and then we can really get the show on the road.
I can't wait to make some really lovely prints and hopefully my new Spyder2 will help with the colour management and calibration as I've not been too satisfied with my colours for a while now. A new slate.
Friday, 22 February 2008
Many miles - My little Smarty hits 16,000
Ha! Now set up for Mobile Blogging!
In the past I've had a great time sending pictures to both my LJ and Flickr accounts on may phones with no trouble until suddenly, quite a while ago my phone (Sony Ericcson 850i) suddenly decided not to let me send any emails, telling me I had the 'wrong Yahoo login'. This really irritated me and I tried everything I possibly could to find out what on earth that meant and had no luck. I know it's not exactly the end of the world not to be able to email pictures, but I really liked the fact that I could just do it! Today I set up the system here at Blogger and it worked first time.
It's all rather ironic really as I'll be replacing my phone any day now, most likely with an iPhone which of course has a famously crappy camera. I've deliberated for ages and driven everyone mad with my procrastinations about why I should or shouldn't get a particular phone and I've sort of had enough of scouring the websites to find any useful information and I think I'll just have to live with a naff camera for the next 18 months. It's not as if I never have any other camera with me, theres often a hefty D300 around my neck or my slightly chunky, battered and temperamental Fuji Finepix F10 in my handbag. I might even keep my K850i on a pay as you go system just to email pictures, or is that a really sad thing to do?
So, it seems that mobile blogging is back for me!
Thursday, 21 February 2008
More Through the Viewfinder
As mentioned in a previous post, I've been trying to work out the magic of Through the Viewfinder photography and haven't really been doing very well. I wondered if there was any way to cheat at it - there seem to be ways to cheat at most types of photography so I set about Google. Flickr came up with the goods in a wonderful group called Noise and Dust where people have photographed their viewfinder with a blank view so you just get the border and any dust, flares, vignetting etc. All you have to do next is mess around with blend layers in Photoshop and you get a fabulous image like the one above. I shot a pretty ordinary bowl of slightly sad looking fruit on my D300 and then applied the viewfinder from an Asco Panda camera from the group mentioned above and I think the result is wonderful. I've done a few more using pictures I shot yesterday, some corks and a bunch of daffodils and then tried some existing pictures of food - apples, tomatoes, red onions and some lovely pears which all lend themselves very well to the technique and could feasibly have been shot using the 'real' method. Just before I went to bed last night I applied the same technique to a sign on the North Pier in Blackpool which was also very successful.
What I would like to do to continue this so it's not so much of a cheat, is to use the same process, but shoot the viewfinder of my Rolliecord see this post as I think I'd be more comfortable using my own camera, it's also a much cleaner look and I love the cross hairs. I'll try to do that tomorrow morning or certainly over the weekend.
What I would like to do to continue this so it's not so much of a cheat, is to use the same process, but shoot the viewfinder of my Rolliecord see this post as I think I'd be more comfortable using my own camera, it's also a much cleaner look and I love the cross hairs. I'll try to do that tomorrow morning or certainly over the weekend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)