Five Best Photos: Decided

Following on from this post i've thought long and moderately hard about this and - for now - this is what i'm going with.

1/ "Man in pub", Thatcham, Berkshire, 1 February 2012

Now, don't get me wrong I've taken photos before this date that i'm proud of.  This photo - I would say - is pretty awful - BUT it's the first one where I actively decided that I wanted to get back into photography properly and this was the first I took upon deciding that. I didn't really want to ask to take it, and i'm still not keen on asking but sometimes needs must.

It felt as though Street Photography was an easy thing to get going with and pretty much for the first year that's what I did.

 

 

2/ "Tree in the Snow", Germany, 2011.

You'll notice 

You'll notice that this was taken BEFORE I "started photography" again.  It's not that i'd not been taking pictures but that i'd not decided I really wanted to try and get into it properly.

Getting feedback is tricky and friends and family saying; "That's nice" is good but not as helpful as it might be.  I figured a good way to get feedback on whether someone REALLY liked something was to find out if they'd put their money where they mouth is pay for something.  With that in mind I took some prints down to my local art shop, got them framed and asked if they'd try and sell them.  This was the first print I sold.  Now, this is NOT a way to make money (not for me anyway) but it was a great feeling to have something sold.

3/ "Roy's Cafe", Amboy, California, 2011.

This is also before I started properly, but it's an image that i'd say i'm most happy with.  It takes me back to a good time driving from the West to East Coasts of America (and who doesn't want to do that?) but also because I think the composition works, and I just plain like the image.

4/ "Shark", Santa Cruz Boardwalk, California, 2013.

When I (re)started I had the idea that everything had to be right in camera (still not a bad aim) and all and and any post-processing was bad.

The more photos I looked and liked the more I saw that you just cannot produce images like that in camera alone.  Of course photos have always been post-processed.  Today it's Photoshop but before that it was in the darkroom.  All the great Ansel Adams prints were greatly laboured over.

This shark (a model above a fairground ride) was the first time I felt I was getting a handle on Photoshop.

 

 

5/ "Abandoned Shack", Rush, Arkansas, 2014.

My trip to Arkansas was the first trip i'd taken explicitly to take photographs.  I'd planned to take photos of abandoned churches, though I also took many photos of types of other abandoned structures too.  I was pleased with the lighting found in this one in Rush, It was a two hundred mile round trip from where I was staying but well worth the drive.


Movie Posters

I was amusing myself by mocking up a movie poster which I may try and realise fully next year.  A friend was trying to write a script about a grown up version of Peter Pan and I figured i'd try and use that as an idea for something photography related.  I started off with a sketch of how I imagined the poster to be.

I then looked around for existing, temporary images to construct a composite image to clarify the design I could see in my head which got me (as I type) as far as this (with the final window, with an arm falling off the ledge - and the main character learning against the wharf with his back to the camera to go).  The poster comprises of thirty-five layers in Photoshop.

With movie posters in my head I was looking at one for Anna Karenina and it's a mixture of great photography and beautiful design.  It was designed by a company called The Creative Partnership based in London, and you see more their work over on their website.

Anna Karenina (large).jpg