'Fractools'
About six months ago, I started using a fractal program; Apophysis. A couple of weeks ago I started to use another fractal program; Ultra Fractal (UF). Now, as many people have attested UF is a very capable program, with a great user interface and there are things that I can do in UF that Apophysis cannot do. For these reasons I shall continue to use it. But, and here is the rub, it doesn’t give …
New camera - not!
At the end of last year, I didn’t buy a new camera. Only it feels like I did. Let me explain.
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Since 2008, I have been using a Nikon D80 and processing the results in Capture NX2 and Photoshop Essentials 8. The Nikon is a great camera but I had been limiting myself to ISO 400, as the image quality at ISO 800 and above was unacceptably noisy (in my view) and the noise reduction software in both PSE…
Not in the 'zone'
I’ve been back on my feet for a couple of weeks now (after a bout of sickness) but I have hardly picked up the camera. Somehow, the desire to confront a subject and mentally whittle away at it with the camera, just hasn’t been there. It’s not that the process is so onerous; I love working a subject until it surrenders those final frames; the ones that you know are the real essen…
Grounded for manufacturer's recall
I have not forgotten you all. Just somewhat incapacitated at the moment. So if you don’t see me posting work and commenting for the next couple of weeks then its because I am trying to get back to some degree of normality with my sub-optimal kidneys. I’ll drop by when I can (as I am now) and see what marvellous stuff you have been posting.
David (Phoxford)
Life imitates art?
Unbeknown to me, at the time I was experiencing the magic of taking this picture …
my father-in-law was about to enter his last day. After processing and posting the picture to RB the following morning, we got the call to come to his bedside.
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“Dick” had been the best; an active man physically and mentally until Parkinson’s disease took hold of him and made him a shadow of …
Don't wear black socks
I’ve just been set a photo assignment. The last sentence in my client’s email was “Don’t wear black socks.”
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What? I only have two colours of sock in my draw and one of them is black. That’s half my wardrobe that I can’t wear on this shoot! What’s wrong with black socks? Has my client got a paranoid hatred of black socks? Is this a safe job? I̵…
New ways with B&W
I cut my photographic teeth on black and white and I still love to explore some of my pictures as B&W versions. Form and light are essential ingredients for a good picture and sometimes an array of colour can overpower those other attributes. With that in mind, I was looking again at Castle Hill Station and in the process had one of those eureka! moments. 
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The problem I had with this conversi…
A tale of 3 RAW files
Once upon a time, a photographer stopped his car on a mountain road to take a picture. It was winter, the sun was low, the shadows deep and the snow quite bright. Thinking “HDR” he took three exposures -1.5 ev, 0ev, and +1.5ev, went on his way, produced the HDR file and was quite pleased with it. Eventually it ended up on redbubble here:
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The photographer moved on, learned new tricks a…
For the despairing ...
Sometimes, it’s easy to slip into despair about our work – will it ever be ‘good’? What has it got that a thousand others haven’t already done?
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I was looking for a file today when I came across this video and decided to watch it again. It spoke to me, as it did when I first watched it. Maybe it will speak to you – hang on in through the long intro and you will …
Show some emotion
I’m coming to the end of my first month on RB. In that month things have been changing for me as a photographer, or as a maker of photographic pictures (a description I like better). I have, in a word, become more cynical about my own work.
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I had, probably, been wooed by the gracious comments of the non-photographers amongst my friends and family, who had admired my work and pronounced it &…