Congratulations

What a month! I should be celebrating with all of you, announcing the lucky recipient, even commiserating with the rest of you who were not so lucky. Sadly I received only TWO entries in my free draw in April, which I must say is very disappointing. Therefore both of you have been contacted and when I receive your responses with image choices I will be sending both of you a FREE POSTER. Thank you so much for your interest.

In the meantime here’s a glimpse of the type of imagery I produce. I love the processes I go through to get there, and (sometimes) I even enjoy the end result

Summer is Over

Going Home

Great Naze Oak

Sunset over the Pier

Sunrise under the Pier

A Time to Reflect

Special Memories

I will be doing offers like this again, even though the response to this was disappointing. But, why not let me know what you would like to see as a special. Maybe it’s not just a free copy of something from my site… maybe that’s because nothing there interests you especially… would you prefer a special commission perhaps? Something unique? Let me know what ideas you have.
If you’d rather keep your comments off the radar, you can always contact me here to let me know your thoughts.
Either way, as always I’d love to hear from you.

PS – just so you all know, I always respond to ALL contacts.

Some Insight?

Personally I like this image a great deal and there have been many others express their connection to it as well – thank you to all those who’ve commented. I’ve put it up here before but I thought I’d offer some more insight into the thoughts and physical processes I went through to achieve it.

Interestingly, the final result is remarkably close to the vision I had within seconds of seeing the animal asleep. My wife and I were at Colchester Zoo on a very weather threatened day (actually we were soaked through in one of the short downpours that occurred throughout the day).

This Mandrill was dozing outside, in one of the all too short moments of sunshine. I instantly knew I wanted him, yes it is a male (in fact I think THE male of the group),
I wanted him on a dark background. Unsure of how I’d achieve this, except that he would probably be removed from his surroundings, I wasn’t concerned with his environment at all. What was important was the expression and I wasn’t sure how much of the body would be needed to show this in the final image. So I made sure the whole animal was in shot.

The main problem with this was the distance he was away from me. I only have a Panasonic DMC-FZ18. It is a good quality, but still just really a point and click camera. The zoom was at maximum so focus was somewhat compromised. For those interested the settings were – 1/250sec @ ƒ/4.5 ISO 100.

Here’s the original (click for larger view).
 
The basic processes were…

1. to carefully mask the head and neck area to fade into a dark background. I also enhanced the colour a little by increasing the vibrancy and sharpened it as well to give the fur some structure again.
2. I created a rustic frame that was coloured in a way to blend, rather than clash too much with the colours in the mandrill.
   This also has the effect of enhancing the fur colour a little.
3. Finally I masked out some of the lower frame to add the illusion of the Mandrill resting on the bottom edge of it.

That’s really all there is to it… I know it isn’t much but the interest for me was the original idea, just a few seconds of seeing him settle on the rock. I am very pleased with the result as it is very close to my original thought without it being about 3 days work to achieve. Enjoy folks and if you’d like to see more (maybe even purchase one for yourself) come on over to my website and take a look.

By the way, you’ve still got a few hours left to get a poster for FREE just follow the instructions here.

Wow – it’s FREE time again

What more can I say, really. Sooooo long since I posted here (shame, shame) but I haven’t been completely idle.
The Wow of the title is for one of the things that’s happened since I last posted – I’ve completely revamped my website.
It is easier to navigate now and it’s also a much smoother buying process. Please come over and let me know what you think.

To celebrate the new launch I’ve decided to do a give away. It’ll work like this…
Pop over to my Facebook page and like it.

With that done (or of course if you’ve already Liked my page before) leave your details here (so I can link the two) and you’ll be entered into a prize draw. I’ll draw the winner at the end of April and the winner will get an A3 poster of an image of their choice from my website.

7th Rodposse Photo Challenge : Water

Posted this image as my entry here.

If you like my entry, click the image above and it’ll take you to my entry page. Once there, like the post and you’ll be voting for me. Thanks! The one with the most likes WINS.

No major prizes, just the joy of winning (well I can dream can’t I?). It’s a great place to go take a look anyway, you’ll see some great photographs.

This image was taken last year heading in to our Autumn, on our local coast. The water was hitting land with some force, even anger, and this normally implies high tide PLUS high wind. On this day however it was a very high tide but there was very little wind, and the sun was shining in a relatively blue sky. There were many people just standing and looking at the spectacle. The calm seas further off-shore, the tranquil skies and the roaring waves.
I wanted to try and capture this contradiction – I wanted the force of the waves pounding the shore, together with the tranquility of the beach hut that you would normally sit on a chair in front of on such a sunny day! It is probably worth noting that the beach is actually a little over 3m (about 10ft) below the wall here. Just to give some sense of scale.

Nature Footstep – Water on Sunday

62:Drop

This is a re-post from an older post older of mine, but it fits the bill here in a number of different ways.
On a trip to China in 2007 (the year before they hosted the Olympics) my wife and I spent 3 weeks touring, visiting and simply standing in awe amongst some of the most dazzling scenery in the world.

This is the Reed Flute Caves near the city of Guilin in South Central China. Other recognisable images from the area include the Karst Limestone Mountains, with peaks numbering in the thousands – there’s an example of the type of mountains I mean here. There’s also the equally famous terraced rice fields cut into the mountain sides at Longji village.

These caves near Guilin are of course lit for the tourist trade, to show them at their most dazzling. But because the ceiling in this particular formation (which I think is called ‘Crystal Palace’) like many of its kind around the world, is constantly dripping lime rich water and therefore magical moments are possible with a bit of luck and good management.
As there were many tourists (everywhere we went) it simply wasn’t possible to get good positioning, lighting, framing or anything else. I would have loved to get closer to this – along the left hand side in this image – but we were being a little rushed by the guide.

I was able to get close enough to fill the frame with the elements I wanted and to capture the lovely reflection in the glass smooth water in the pool. What I didn’t know at the time was what I managed to capture through pure chance…
…the large dark stalactite (to the right of centre) was randomly dripping water. Apart from the ripple in the pool below, from a recent drop, there is also the rather magical rainbow that I simply did not see at the time. Maybe it was only momentary, maybe it was random, maybe it was deliberately provided by man-made lighting. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. For me it makes the photograph.

What I have done is sharpen it a little, I increased the contrast to aid the reflection in the water and I also decided to retouch out all the people that were milling around. What I am left with is a reminder of the beautiful place that China is to photograph. It is somewhere I would simply DROP everything to visit again if the opportunity ever arose.

I hope you enjoy. If you’d like to see other water images pop over to

Look forward to seeing you there.