Before and After.

When we were in Holland recently we went for a walk on the beach on Sunday morning after there had been a night's worth of snow - the sky was flat pale grey, the sea was grey, the sand was brown with a layer of white. 

I'd never taken photos in such conditions before and it wasn't an immediately appealing view, but I had in mind the textures I've been so impressed by recently and decided that the flatness would work beautifully with them.

Before

 

After

Lincoln Cathedral and some new kit.

After much reading on websites about remote shutter release devices for my D300 and getting very confused, I decided to phone Calumet who have always advised me well in the past. I settled on a very reasonably priced own label set up which has a radio trigger kit and an adapter for my Nikon camera. One half of the trigger kit is attached to the camera by Velcro or a metal clip (I was hoping for a hot shoe fitting which would be nice and neat, but that wasn't to be.) and the other half if a little do-dah with a button which fires off the shutter. I had a very quick play yesterday and it works which is a good start, but I'll have to have a proper session with the camera on the tripod and set up in Live View Mode which is how I'll be using this new arrangement on my next shoot for Balfour Beatty.

I also got around to sorting through my pictures from Lincoln Cathedral and here's a taster:

A Few Photos From Crete

A small selection of pictures taken on my recent trip to Crete - you can see many more at my Flickr site. Some new prints will be appearing at my Etsy shop as well.

Postboxes at Stavros.

Three Domes at the Triada Monastery

Monastery Cat.

Cafe Owner at Imbros - maker of Svakian Pies.

The Last Master Baklava Maker in Greece in Rethymon Old Town.

Friendly Olive Trees.

Blue, Green, White and Brown.

Eurocultured 2009

., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

We had fun at Eurocultured in Manchester yesterday, breaking with most Bank Holiday traditions the weather was perfect, bright, sunny and hot - too hot for me, but I'm feeble. This festival has been going on for about six years I think, just around the corner from where we used to live. They close off a couple of narrow streets under the railway bridge and fill it with graffiti and street artists, bands, craft stands, food and other cool people. I'm really not a festival type but this is just about my scale, nice and small we saw lots of great live art in progress, some strange men in organge jumpsuits reciting poetry and playing ukuleles and jumping around.....we had a great freshly cooked in front of us cajun chicken wrap and the first Pimms of the season. Most enjoyable!

Fresh, Bright, Green and a little Damp.

The weather's been terrible here lately - a weekend in the Derby Dales was in weather terms, a wash out. Only the stunning scenery saved a disaster!

I've made a new print today to express the more romantic side of the lousy weather! Shot in Parsonage Gardens in Didsbury a couple of weeks ago after a(nother) rainstorm I give you:

Fresh and Green

In relation to my previous sourdough post, my starter's risen about 5mm above the red rubber band marker. It looks like we're in action!

Joy Diversion - a great Manchester Band

I love my new print!

I'm always impressed and amused when I see graffiti like this, it takes so little sometimes to create something very clever.

Joy Diversion - $35

Flowers after the rain

I popped out to explore some localish gardens for the first time this afternoon. It had been raining all day and the tulips were sodden and sparkling with raindrops in the sunshine.

Spinning, lights, candyfloss......

I've finished the funfair pictures with the process being somewhat interrupted by my snap decision to make a Treasury half way through! It's interesting to see that all of the pictures I've put in my Treasury have that particular Etsy look about them, you know what I mean, the desaturated, slightly vintage look which seem to be what all the big photography sellers are wearing these days. When I make my own pictures they are usually full of colour and light, this is my real and natural preference for photography, I do like the whimsical Etsycentric look very much and I have certainly tried to fit in with the cool kids by having a go, but it didn't really work for me. So I give you full Eyeshoot styled full colour, non-whimsical, non-antiqued big and bold funfair pictures!

Featured and Manchester Photos.

My Ministry of Silly Walks print has been featured on the Burgundy District Studio Blog today which is splendid news as it's a really stylish blog with many interesting makers getting their fifteen minutes of fame.

I had a great weekend from a photographic point of view, I was out and about all afternoon on Saturday in the seedier bits of Manchester with my camera and took 200 pictures of various pieces of graffiti, bricked up doors and windows, rotten wood and abandoned chips etc.....I have strange taste in locations! Here's a sample of the results:

Gone and Forgotten

I've been updating my website a bit today, I feel it's been rather abandoned lately, I've been adding some photos from my recent trips to Spain and the Isle of Wight, I've not added too many, as they're not exactly the best photos I've taken and I try to be selective on Eyeshoot - after all, I do have Flickr for posting a much wider range of photos.

One gallery I've been filling out a bit more is the one called Gone and Forgotten, it's for photos of abandoned graves, headstones and flowers at the Southern Cemetery which is just over the road from my home. It's the most amazing place and I'll happily spend hours in there taking pictures and even went blackberry picking there this summer (several jars of blackberry jelly and a cobbler were the tasty results). I find the bare graves with remnants of real flowers or faded bunches of plastic flowers incredibly beautiful, mournful and sad. When I first started to go there I'd concentrate on the damaged lead letters on the stones, the ones where many letters had dropped off as I found that I liked the resulting graphic effects, the way that some randomly formed words really stood out.

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Sunday 2008 Manchester.

Busy busy busy

I've been making some new prints today which has been fun - I love looking back through my photo library and revamping some old favourites or seeing previously discarded images in a different way. They are all very different from eachother and I wonder if this will be a problem. There's such a 'look' on Etsy for the big selling photographers and I really don't seem to be able to get into that texutred, washed out, romantic thing which seems to be what you need to be doing to sell lots of prints. I love the look, but I really prefer bright images althoguh I am enjoying playing around with desaturated images from time to time, it's a very forgiving technique. Mind you, I do plenty of Viewfinder images but they've not been big sellers for me either. No sales for weeks now..... I wonder if it's it me or you?





Also a Treasury first - two prints in one!

Don't be Shy, Come on In
by Make Your Presents Felt

A fantastic shop with a great name. I really didn't know that I liked felt things until I started to notice it on Etsy.....

New photos from London

We had time to spare in London before and after our Champagne guzzling trip. I've finally sorted through my pictures and here are few of my favourites.