Greetings all

It's been about a month since my last journal, been busy with all kinds of stuff..not least shooting my first wedding of the year.  It went pretty well, I'd forgotten how exhausting it is to shoot for 9 hours straight.  Took around 2300 shots, so there was a lot of editing and processing to do.  I've had loads of client meetings already this year, and have got quite a few weddings lined up for the summer, so it's going to get pretty busy.

Still, landscape is what I love most, and it's been a while since I was out shooting skies and the like, so I'm really happy to be heading off for a week photography in Scotland tomorrow. It's my first time back in Britain for years and years, so it's going to be strange to go back.  The weather there is absolutely crap though, the webcams in the places I'm visiting in Scotland just show unremitting cloud and rain, and there's plenty of snow about too.  Ah, who cares...if I wanted good weather I'd have gone to Brazil.  It only takes 1 minute of good light for a picture

Anyway, hope everyone has a good Easter and don't forget Bernardo's photo contest:

Through Your Eyes Photography Contest

The first prize is a choice of either a Nikon D700 or a Canon 5D Mk2, and there are various excellent runners up prizes.
I'm honoured to have been chosen as one of the judges, so over the next 3 months I'll be going over the contest submissions and choosing my favourites.

You can find out all about the competition through the web page linked above, or check out Bernie's journal
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Features

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope your having a good week

Bernardo Medina, better known to most of us as `foureyes is organizing a fantastic photography competition.

Through Your Eyes Photography Contest

The first prize is a choice of either a Nikon D700 or a Canon 5D Mk2, and there are various excellent runners up prizes.
I'm honoured to have been chosen as one of the judges, so over the next 3 months I'll be going over the contest submissions and choosing my favourites.

You can find out all about the competition through the web page linked above, or check out Bernie's journal

Looking forward to seeing what people come up with, good luck everyone

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Features


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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hey, hope everyone is well.

Wow, we're into February already and this is the first time I've got around to writing a journal.  Hope everybody is well.

First of all, there's a new update of Neutral Density Magazine out.

[link]

It features an interview with black and white photographer Cole Thompson, and I've contributed an article on telephoto landscapes.  Enjoy.

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Earlier this year I helped out a friend of mine at a show.  She's a violinist who earns extra money by organizing string quartets for weddings.  In return for helping her, she left some of my cards on her stand...I really didn't expect anything from it, after all, at the time I only had landscape photography cards, and there were hundreds of wedding photographers at the show.
Well, it turns out that there's a market for documentary photography at weddings because I've already got 3 bookings for 2010, and there are various other things that look like panning out.  I'm not interesting in doing posed shots, I don't like directing people and I've never had any inclination towards fashion photography and the trend to carry that style over into weddings.  In the meetings with clients I've said that I just do documentary photography, capturing the wedding as spontaneously as possible...and luckily it seems that there are some people who only want that.  A couple for a wedding I'm shooting in March booked me solely on the photos they saw of mine from the Amazon, and basically said "carte blanche...do whatever you like"  Brilliant.
So this has meant a flurry of getting contracts written up, learning about portable flash reflectors and softboxes, printing up wedding photography cards, getting the wedding part of my site looking better, translating it into Portuguese and hassling people for testimonials.

It's a whole new world, and in the midst of it I seem to have forgotten that I'm actually a landscape photographer who takes pictures of...you know...landscapes.
Next weekend I'm heading down to the south of Portugal, where fingers crossed, I may actually take some landscape photos...I'm not holding my breath though, we'll see.

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Daily Deviation

So I was really surprised to get a daily deviation a few weeks back on this shot from Italy.



It's always an honour to get a DD, so thanks so much to ~TRBPhotographyLLC for suggesting it, and `kkart for featuring it.

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Features







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Hey, hope everyone is well.

A new journal to wish all those who celebrate it a very happy Christmas, and wish everyone a great 2010.

This is the first Christmas in about 6 years that I've stayed home in Portugal, so I'm going to use the 2 week holiday from work to re-charge, to get through a big stack of reading and, if it ever stops raining, head out to the coast to do some shooting with ~arqhugo

I've finally got round to upgrading my computer.  I was originally going to get a Mac Pro, but the new imac 27" 2.8ghz quad core is more than enough for my needs, so I ordered one last week with 8gb of RAM and 2TB of hard drive.  I played around with one in the shop and the 2560x1440 screen is amazing, so much better for photography than the 1440x900 that I'm using now on my Macbook Pro.  
Should arrive next week, looking forward to it.
Also, this week I booked my flights to the UK for next Easter.  I haven't been back to Britain for years and years, so that should be interesting.  Teresa and me are driving up to Scotland to spend 3 days in Glen Coe and 4 days on Skye.  Should be fun, but there's a lot of photography to come between now and then (I hope).

So have a great holiday folks.  Eat, drink and be merry

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My good mate ~pestilence has just started a new group showcasing waterscape photography.  If you like that kind of stuff, then have a look and add to your watch list



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Features

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hey, hope everyone is well.

Been a while since I updated my journal, been busy with various stuff.  Last weekend I finally managed to get out to the coast and do some waterscapes.  It's been more than 6 months since I got my feet and my tripod legs wet in the ocean, and I got some shots I'm quite happy with.

Another thing I finally managed to get done was updating all the galleries on my website to get the style consistent and coherent across the whole site.  
I was never really happy with the old galleries, as they were just templates from Apple Aperture, but I finally managed to get around to building new ones using Flash and a plug in called Slideshow Pro.  It's the same software I used for the slideshows on the front page, you only need to do a tiny bit of XML coding, and then you can position the slideshow or gallery or whatever anywhere you like on a html webpage using Dreamweaver.

All the galleries are the same style now, so check out any of the the Travel Galleries.

As I've said in other journals, I've been doing lots of weddings and events, and as I was starting to get inquiries about next summer, I realised I should get a proper wedding website up and running.  It's still under construction, and I'm still waiting on the testimonials from previous clients (it's really hard to nag people for stuff like that), but it's pretty much taking shape.  If you're interested, you can see it here.

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Huge thanks to ~pestilence for the sub.  Mate, you need to stop doing that, I owe you so much already

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Features







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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Check out this video.   Some incredible BASE jumping footage, the guys skimming the cliffs with their fingertips as they go down.  The part where he misses the road by a couple of feet is enough to make you look away.  
Absurdly dangerous I know (I read that there's 1 fatality in 60 BASE jumping participants), but this is definitely worth watching

[link]

Not been doing much landscape photography recently, I'm just too busy with other stuff.  I did do some shots for Climate Change day yesterday, which are somewhere on the  350.org site.  
Then, last night I was doing some shooting with a string quartet at a launch in Cascais.
Just bought Steve McCurry's "In The Shadow Of The Mountain".  Wonderful book, he's far and away one of my favourite photographers.  While this isn't quite so brilliant as South South East, his books are always a real treat.

I'll do a full journal with new features and stuff when I've got a bit more time...

Hope you're all well :-D

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I've been working on putting together a new website for my wedding photography, which I should have up and running in a week or so, and also working on the new calendar, trying different online printers etc.

I've got a large glossy and a smaller calendar already up online at Lulu, which you can find here.  There's also a slideshow preview on my website.  The Lulu calendars are nice, good saturation (a little TOO saturated truth be told) and print quality.  I may change one of the images, and I will certainly be doing a Deviant Art version in the next month.

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Contest Winer

I was one of the judges in a landscape photography organised by ~Rykardo and there were a lot of fantastic images entered.  Congratulations to everyone who took part, judging them and picking a winner was really difficult.

Anyway, once the votes were all counted, =r3novatio was the winner with this wonderful shot.



The runners up were *EmilStojek and *alexandre-deschaumes



Well done everyone


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RAW Conversion

If you shoot Nikon, this might be interesting to you.  Years ago, when I started shooting RAW, I spent a while playing around with both Lightroom and Aperture for RAW conversion.  To be honest, I didn't really see any difference between them and liked them both, so I decided to stick with Aperture as it's an Apple program and integrates better with my Mac system.  I was always happy with it, although I noticed when I switched cameras to my D3 that I needed to put more time into getting the images looking great.  Basically, with my D3, the RAW images right out of the camera were very flat, lacking in contrast and vibrancy and soft.   Of course, it's RAW, so that can all be added back in, but when I go away on a trip and come back with 800+ images, that means A LOT of work.  Likewise with a wedding, where I might shoot over 1000 frames, it's time consuming to have to do so much to each image.  
Of course, Aperture is great for batch processing, but this only works if you need to do exactly the same adjustments to each shot, which is pretty rare.

So I started to look at different RAW conversions, and every single time I kept coming back to Nikon's own Raw converter, Capture NX2.  It seems that if you're using Nikon, there's no better software for NEF conversion than Nikon's own software (makes sense really).  I also kept reading that it was slow, clunky and not as intuitive to use as Lightroom or Aperture.  It DOES use Nik Software's control point technology ,which if you ever used Viveze or Silver Efex Pro, you'll know how fantastic that is....so I downloaded the 60 day trial from the Nikon site.

I'm amazed to be quite honest, the difference in files right out of the camera is astonishing.  The contrast and colour right out of the camera is brilliant, the richness and depth of the reds is something I have NEVER seen in a RAW file converted by Aperture.  On top of that, astonishingly, I'm seeing A LOT more resolution and detail, which I suspect is how the software handles micro contrast.  Blown up to 100% the images don't look digital at all, and there's a lot more detail.
This is right out of the camera, with no sharpening added.
I've uploaded 3 comparisons which you can see below.  These have been converted from RAW to TIFF in Aperture and Capture NX2 with nothing done to them.  No sharpening, no contrast, no colour or contrast adjustments, you can even see the dust spots from my camera.



Now, I don't know if this is the case with all camera's, as this is Nikon software, so I expect it to work best with Nikon cameras.  Having said that, I never had a problem with my D80, just the D3, so it might even depend on the camera and it's image processing.  But for the D3, the improvement in the images is incredible, I'm seeing as big a difference in the files between Aperture and Capture NX2 as I saw between my old camera and my new one.  I feels like I've bought a new camera, and I'm only frustrated I didn't make the switch sooner.

When it comes to usability, the interface isn't as slick as LR or Aperture, but it does offer A LOT more control, particularly over localized changes (impossible in Aperture) with the U-Point technology, you can do local adjustments of colour, contrast, curves, levels, colour temperature, sharpness, guassian blur, saturation, etc etc...directly on the RAW file.  I don't need to convert to PSD or TIFF files and do that in PS anymore, it really is fantastic.
It also runs faster than Aperture on my machine, but the file sizes are bigger.

All in all, it's the best thing I've done since I upgraded my camera, and if you shoot Nikon (especially one with the image processing from the D3, such as a D700 or a D300s, then I really really recommend you give it a try.   
I can't speak for LR, as I never used it with my D3, but as should be obvious from the pictures I uploaded, Capture NX just wipes the floor with Aperture.

Now I want to revisit a lot of my older shots and see if I can improve them.....

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Features







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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you are all having a good week.

So, been busy throughout the summer with various stuff, and now I realize that my 3rd DA anniversary has passed.

Three years since I started here, at the time I had only just started taking pictures and was using a point and shoot.  I recently was talking with *JakeSpain and we were both in complete agreement about how crap the early images in my gallery are.  I'm not completely sure they're all that much better now, 3 years on, but at least they're taken with a nice camera, I've stopped doing horrible big borders and started resizing my images for the web a little better

A HUGE amount of whatever I have learned, I've learned from watching the brilliant photography of people on this site, and received so much good advice on everything from camera techniques to better post processing ideas.  

I can't believe it's been 3 years, and I can't believe how many fantastic people I've met through DA.  Both brilliant artists, and people who I hope I can call good friends (you know who you are).

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Been meaning to put this in a journal for a while.
Months back, I was pondering about the best way to cut down vignetting at 17mm with a ND400 screw in filter and Lee grad filter holder screwed on top.  I came to the conclusion that it would be better to just remove the ND400 from it's screw in housing and insert it in the grad filter holder adaptor ring with a bit of Bostik.   I ordered another adaptor ring, and used it to screw in the glass of the ND400...it took me about 10 minutes to do and has completely removed any problem with vignetting, as well as cutting down on the number of things I have to screw onto/off of my lens.

One of my better ideas



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I've been getting more and more requests for weddings, and as they really do pay very well, have taken a couple of them up.  Of course, it's meant learning how to use flash, which first meant buying one.  I got a friend to pick me up a Nikon SB600 Speedlight from B&H Photo in New York (US price = 170 euros.  Portuguese price = 450 euros! WHY DO WE CONSISTANTLY GET RIPPED OFF LIKE THIS IN EUROPE?!)
Anyway, after lots of experimenting with photographing my (incredibly patient) wife, I used flash for the first time at a wedding last week and was really pleased with the results.  No highlights on the skin, no nasty shadows, no red eye and no artificial brightening of the room front to back.  I read a lot of Joe "Grandmaster Flash" McNally's blogs and picked up a lot about flash underexposure from there.  It's about just getting the flash to feather or kiss the subject.....easier said than done.

I actually enjoy weddings a lot more than I ever thought I would, but it is VERY hard work.  I was shooting at the wedding for 8 hours, and did over 20gb of images...around 1100.  You never rest or stop, you always feel that you have to be making sure they get a fantastic record of their day.  Then, four days of editting, and a couple of days setting up a webpage and slideshow, as well as a gallery.
The camera is vital, and the Nikon D3 just sings at work like this.  It focuses and fires faster than my nerve synapses do, and it always seems to know just where to focus.  The frame rate ensures you get the fleeting moments, and the quality of the colour on the skin tones is absolutely spot on.   A really wonderful piece of equipment and a pleasure to use.

I'm shooting another next week...
Anyway, here's a selection of shots from the wedding.








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I've been proofing calendars for 2010, and have received a really nice one from Lulu [link] It's huge, and the glossy paper is quite a bit nicer than DA calendars.  I will DEFINITELY be doing a DA one though, I've been blown away by the support I had here for my last 2 calendars, so I'm not about to stop making DA versions.
There'll be more on this in a later journal

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Features



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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

I have been invited to be a judge of the second landscapes and waterscapes contest run by ~Rykardo


Description

This is a contest for landscape and waterscape photos. the shots may be submitted to other categories as long as it is clear that the photo is either a landscape or a waterscape.


Rules

* One photo per person.

* To enter, send a note to ~Rykardo with the subject "2º Landscapes/waterscape Contest".

* The photo must have a minimum resolution of 400x400 px.

* Photos must be taken in 2009.


Deadline

The deadline is 15 September, 2009


Judging

The judges are as follows:


~Rykardo


~Alex37


*islandtime


~AndyMumford


~Inebriantia


~soulofautumn87


=realityDream

The judges will choose their 10 favourite photos and give:

1º > 10 points
2º > 9 points
3º > 8 points
4º > 7 points
5º > 6 Points
6º > 5 Points
7º > 4 points
8º > 3 points
9º > 2 points
10º> 1 points

I noticed Alex gave a brief description of what he'll be looking for in the images he chooses, which I think is a great idea, so I'm going to do the same:

I'm interested principally in composition and the arrangement of elements and colour within an image.  The mood and atmosphere of an image is also really important to me, as well as an element of originality.
I'm also going to be looking for images where good camera technique and control of light is strongly evident, rather than an image that depends on post processing skills for the final result.

It's worth noting though that a quick glance at the galleries of the different judges will make it obvious that we all have slightly different taste in what makes a great landscape image.


Prizes

1º Featured by

2º and 3º Featured by who offer the feature (briefly announced in my Journal)

All works received will be featured in news article.


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August Features & Stuff


On holiday here, and it's bloody hot.  
I've got a big list of "Things to do this summer" as my computer screen saver, so I doubt I'm going to be around DA much over the next month.  
I've not been out shooting landscapes in months, but I have been doing more and more street photography around the city. I like to try to push myself in different directions, do new things and not the same old same old things-that-I've-done-before-that-worked or I've-seen-shots-like-this-and-they-worked approach.
Not saying there's anything wrong with that, I just want to expand my range a lot more and become more versatile and flexible in the field, and I find doing really different stuff (in my case street or architecture) opens my mind up a lot more than just doing nature photography.

Came across a great couple of sentences on Thom Hogan's website the other day

"Formulas create formulaic work, where one person's work looks like another's. Those of us who photograph to evoke response don't use formulas. We experiment. We break rules. We try randomness. We dream before we photograph, and we dream again after. And what we try doesn't always work."

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My Best Work From 2008

About this time each year I like to look back on what I shot the previous year and see if there are 6 or 7 shots that I know I'll still be happy with in 10 years time.  I leave it until mid-way through the year because I like to have some distance between the time when I took the shots, for them to have moved out of the realm of "recent work" so I can judge them more objectively.
Looking at my work, it's apparent that the vast majority of what I shot last year was coastal waterscapes, and to be honest, now I find them to be pretty generic.  The shots which most excite and interest me are the ones where I tried something new, which started a new direction in photography for me

The popularity of a shot here on DA I've realised very rarely has anything to do with how proud I am of a particular image, and in the case of last year, many of my most popular shots are nowhere near my own favourite 5 or 10, and conversely some of my favourites were only submitted here as scraps.

So here are my own faves from my work last year:

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It's an interesting exercise, and something I really recommend everyone have a go at.

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Features

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're having a nice week.

On holiday here, and it's bloody hot.  
I've got a big list of "Things to do this summer" as my computer screen saver, so I doubt I'm going to be around DA much over the next month.  
I've not been out shooting landscapes in months, but I have been doing more and more street photography around the city. I like to try to push myself in different directions, do new things and not the same old same old things-that-I've-done-before-that-worked or I've-seen-shots-like-this-and-they-worked approach.
Not saying there's anything wrong with that, I just want to expand my range a lot more and become more versatile and flexible in the field, and I find doing really different stuff (in my case street or architecture) opens my mind up a lot more than just doing nature photography.

Came across a great couple of sentences on Thom Hogan's website the other day

"Formulas create formulaic work, where one person's work looks like another's. Those of us who photograph to evoke response don't use formulas. We experiment. We break rules. We try randomness. We dream before we photograph, and we dream again after. And what we try doesn't always work."

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My Best Work From 2008

About this time each year I like to look back on what I shot the previous year and see if there are 6 or 7 shots that I know I'll still be happy with in 10 years time.  I leave it until mid-way through the year because I like to have some distance between the time when I took the shots, for them to have moved out of the realm of "recent work" so I can judge them more objectively.
Looking at my work, it's apparent that the vast majority of what I shot last year was coastal waterscapes, and to be honest, now I find them to be pretty generic.  The shots which most excite and interest me are the ones where I tried something new, which started a new direction in photography for me

The popularity of a shot here on DA I've realised very rarely has anything to do with how proud I am of a particular image, and in the case of last year, many of my most popular shots are nowhere near my own favourite 5 or 10, and conversely some of my favourites were only submitted here as scraps.

So here are my own faves from my work last year:

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It's an interesting exercise, and something I really recommend everyone have a go at.

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Features

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're having a nice week.

I'm counting the days...8 more working days and I'll finally be on holiday....then SIX WHOLE WEEKS of no work
We'll still be busy with the Turismo Rural project, but at least I'll be free of commitment to my day job for the next month and a half.

I'll be spending lots of time in the south of Portugal, hopefully finally getting to shoot some of the locations I've scouted down there.  I'm also planning on doing a lot more shots around the streets of my home town, Lisbon.  When the skies are boring, and I don't have that much time, it's great to just wander out into the streets with my camera and shoot handheld.  It's ironic, but my best selling shot of last year by a significant amount was a shot I took around Lisbon, and only submitted here on DA as a scrap

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So, I'm hoping to do more and put together a larger portfolio of Lisbon shots.

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Book

I've been playing around with the idea of getting a book printed for a while now.  I've looked at Blurb and Lulu, but decided to get it printed via Apple, principally because it gives me a lot more control over the organisation of the books, and I can also organise it and order directly from Aperture.
The downside of doing this is that it's not available for purchase on the internet, but to be honest, it's something I've done for myself....I don't really expect anyone else to be interested in it.
Still, if anyone is curious about what books printed via Aperture are like, after receiving my book this week, I can tell you that they really are fantastic.  The page quality is wonderful, and the print quality very very high, although I'm a little disappointed with a loss of brightness on a couple of the images.

I'll certainly be doing more, I think it's a great way to keep a printed portfolio of a years work.  Here are some shots of the book.  They're all taken at high ISO, so please excuse the quality







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Features



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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Haven't picked up my camera for so long now....just too busy with other stuff and it's starting to really annoy me that I can't find the time to get out with my camera.
Hopefully, I'll have some free time in July to get out shooting.

In the meantime here are some scraps from a weekend trip to the south of Portugal.  I didn't get interesting skies, so tried to focus on shooting the kinds of things I would normally ignore, composing "busy" scenes and some macro shots.

Nothing at all special, but these are the only pictures I've taken since I was in Italy 3 months ago.




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Features


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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

This has been showing on some TV channels, but if you haven't seen it yet, you really MUST make the time for it.

It's a documentary on the planet and humanity's effect on it produced by Yann Arthus-Bertrand who did "The Earth From Above"


Home - A Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand


It features some of the most breath-taking and stunning photography I have ever seen, and a very powerful reminder of how badly we treat our planet.
It made me angry and upset, it made my jaw drop in wonder, and it also made me ashamed.

Really, watch it now

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're all well.

After a pretty long hiatus, Marcin (*xMEGALOPOLISx )has updated ND Magazine
It features an interview with stunning black and white landscape photograper Mitch Dobrowner whose work is so good it almost makes me want to give up.
I've also contributed an article on camera bags & tripods which is a very very nerdy read - I'm sure !Star-buck will love it

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I'm heading off to the south of Portugal for a couple of days this weekend, just to take a break from work (which is very busy right now).  I was there a couple of weeks ago and had high hopes of getting some good shots as there are some locations I've wanted to shoot for ages.   Going down on the train, the sky did this:



Which is Murphy's law really, as there often seem to be great skies when I can't shoot them....I took that shot from the end of a train platform in the couple of minutes I had while I changed trains.  Hmmmn, train stations...not really the best place to shoot landscapes from...

All the time I was down there I didn't see another cloud, and the only shots I did were of flowers and plants, here are some of the poppies and medronho berries that were out at the time (I'd foolishly left my camera set to ISO1600, so these shots have a little noise) :




Maybe this weekend will be better, but I haven't seen a cloud in days, so it's probably going to be more flower photographs

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Just got hold of a second hand Nikkor 24-85 f3.5-4.5 [link] at the ridiculously low price of $200.  I don't use mid-range zooms much, and my first choice lenses are my 17-35 f2.8 and my 80-400VR.  I do have a nice 28-105 macro, which is very nice (the poppy and berry shots above were done with that lens) but the 24-85 is reputably sharper, and it's super light, so won't add any noticeable weight to my camera bag.  I couldn't really say no to having a look at one at that price, so I'm quite looking forward to playing around with it when I receive it next week.

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Features


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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my recent work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're all well.

It's ages since I wrote a journal, so here goes...
When I bought my first dSLR, the first lens I bought with it was a wide angle, the Sigma 10-20.  For a while that was the only lens I had and it was all I needed really, as I loved shooting wide angle waterscapes.  Just before I went on a trip to  Marrakech I bought a more versatile 18-200, but I'd become so used to the wide angle lens, that I still pretty much only shot with the 10-20.
I went to the Amazon in December of 2007, and looking at all the shots I brought back, I'd guess that at least 80% were taken with that lens...but ironically, it was on that trip when I started shooting more telephoto landscapes, and arguably my favourite shot from the entire trip was a telephoto waterscape:



Since then, I've been shooting more and more landscapes with the telephoto lens, and on my last trip to Italy, I noticed that the ratio  of shots done with a wide angle and a telephoto has changed dramatically.  I'd guess that in Italy, more than 60% of the shots I put on my website were done at focal lengths over 70mm, and again, my favourite shot from the trip was taken with a telephoto lens:



If you look at the work of legendary landscape photographer Art Wolfe so much of his work is done with a telephoto lens.  In his book Edge of the Earth Corner of the Sky more than half of the landscape shots are done with a 70-200mm lens.  Not just Art Wolfe either,  Galen Rowell David Noton Ian Cameron Guy Edwardes and of course  Yann Artus-Bertrand to name just a few.

I still love wide angle landscapes, and my gallery is still full of them, but I'm really enjoying shooting and seeing landscapes done with telephoto lenses.  It's a whole different type of shooting which forces you to think differently in terms of composition, and there are some fantastic examples here on DA.  
Sadly however, that these kind of shots don't seem to get that much appreciation here on DA.  I'm not sure why, but there seems to be a blueprint for deviant art popularity which basically means wide angle shots with some foreground interest to lead in, a colourful sky and preferably some moving water will get lots of attention, but a well constructed telephoto shot, which doesn't feature any of those elements, will be largely ignored.

Don't get me wrong, like I said and as my gallery proves, I love those wide angle shots, but think it's a shame that other equally well constructed and created shots don't seem to be as appreciated here, and I think that in turn discourages people from expanding their creative horizons to try to shoot landscapes in a different way.  
I know that for a long time I didn't bother submitting my telephoto shots here because I simply didn't expect people to like them, and I can understand that people want their work to get seen, and so will stick to a style of photography that will get their work more attention.

Recently though, I've tried to mix up my submissions to more accurately reflect the type of landscape work I actually shoot and put on my website, and this year there's pretty much a 50/50 split between wide angle and telephoto shots in my submissions.  

So, for this journal I've put together a selection of brilliant land and waterscape shots all taken with telephoto lenses just to show you that fantastic images don't stop after 35mm


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The galleries of my work from my last trip to Italy are now up on my website

Tuscany
Umbria

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my telephoto work






Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're all well.

Just got back from 8 days in Umbria and Tuscany, a fantastic trip.  The food and wine have been wonderful, the people (particularly in Umbria) are incredibly friendly, and the landscape is some of the most beautiful I've seen in Europe.

Umbria is stunning, just incredible countryside of valleys and snow-capped mountains.  We stayed in the south, which isn't particularly touristed (with the exception of Assisi) and I was amazed at how every valley has water racing through it, every hill has a medieval village clinging precipitously to it's side, and I know it's a place I will definitely return to again to shoot at a different time of year.
Tuscany's beauty is much softer, and has been much more photographed, but nevertheless, it's an incredibly attractive place.  We stayed in the centre, in a place called San Quirico d'Orcia, about an hour's drive south of Siena.  
If you like rolling green hills dotted with cypress trees, then you'll love Tuscany.  On my last evening shooting there, I was standing in a field on a hilltop with my tripod set up waiting for the light to peak, and a guy appeared with a tripod over his shoulder walking towards me and set up alongside.  He'd just driven all the way from Norway to be there, and his face was glowing:  "I can't believe this place.  It's just like every picture I've ever seen of Tuscany" which was pretty much exactly what I'd said to Teresa when we first drove into the area through villages like Montepulciano and Pienza.  It really is the kind of place where you want to take a photograph around every corner.

As I said, the food and wine there is fantastic, and just that, along with the warmth and openness of the people would have made it a wonderful trip.  However, I was fortunate to get some lovely conditions for photography as well, although I wish I could have stayed in both places longer as there was still so much I wanted to shoot.  
I've also never been on a trip with such varying conditions - I've been shooting in temperatures a little above 0º at around 1800 meters, and a few days later shooting in t-shirts in the warm late afternoon sun.  I've also never been covered in so much mud in my entire life.  Tuscan fields are very wet and very muddy at dawn at this time of year, and it seems that everything I own is now caked with a layer of fertile Italian soil.

I'm pretty tired as I've done a lot of driving over the last week or so and been up for 6 consecutive sunrises.  I haven't got around to uploading the cards into Aperture yet, but from what I can see on the cameras LCD, I'm as satisfied with the shots as I've ever been after a trip, and feel that I've got a pretty broad collection of images;  countryside and mountain vistas, early morning mist and fog, waterfalls, villages, street details, sheep (yup sheep) and even some macro work...which I've never attempted before.
Not sure when I'll be submitting any shots, it's going to take me a while to go through them, edit and process them, and as soon as I landed back in Lisbon my mobile phone rang with work asking me to go in this week (although I'm still technically on holiday).

For now I just want to sleep and get all my washing done

Take care everyone, have a great week.  Looking forward to going through my devwatch and seeing what you've all been up to.

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you're having a good week.

Just finished re-building my website

[link]

I was never really happy with the original, it was basically put together with templates, so it was pretty limited.  
Over the last 6 months I've been getting more and more inquires about prints and licensing, and it bothered me that the images on my website weren't presented as well as they are here at DA.
So, over the last month or so I've built the html pages in Dreamweaver, and put together a small Flash slideshow for the homepage.  I've also re-uploaded all the images in all the galleries because the old version had unsharpened, unresized images which I wasn't happy with.

The site is still very simple, but I've never liked fussy websites, so I wanted to keep it as "clean" as possible.

There are a lot of images on there that will never see the light of day here at DA, particularly my travel photography, so if you're interested in seeing some different stuff from me, have a look in the Marrakech, Andalucia and Lisboa galleries in the Travel section.

Hope you like it.

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Last year I was contacted by Idea Design Photos Magazine from Taiwan, inviting me to be interviewed and featured in their magazine.  A couple of other artists I know from DA have already been featured there including `hakanphotography and ~Furiousxr and it is a very popular magazine in Asia, so I was quite honoured.
Anyway, the interview appeared in the March/April edition, and I recently received my copies of the magazine. it's a long article, 16 pages, with a lot of my images and I must admit, it did feel pretty nice to see it

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You can see scans of all the pages on my website, here [link] but my scanner is pretty poor so the colours haven't come out at all how they actually appear


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Features


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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone

Last year I was contacted by Maxime Bender [link] jazz musician based in Germany, about the possibility of using one of my shots for his next CD cover.



It's taken a while for the CD to come out, but it finally arrived in the shops last month on Jazzsick/Rough Trade [link] Maxime kindly sent me some copies.
I'm immensly honoured to see one of my shots on a CD cover and all the promotional material that goes with it.  I grew up listening to bands like The Smiths and The Sundays, who were all on the Rough Trade record label, and it's a real buzz to see on of my shots on the cover of that same record label I wish him every success with the CD, and if you like jazz, check it out..

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The other day I was playing around with some shots taken from a cliff top, taken at the same time that I captured one of my recent submissions.   I took them principally to give an overview of the scene and to see how it would work as a panorama.  It's a long time since I stitched a pano together, and I wanted to practice.



It's a silly shot, but I thought some people might be interested in seeing it, so I uploaded it to my scraps.

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Features




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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone

Hope everyone is OK.
The good weather seems to be starting in Portugal, the days have got a spring like feel in them, and it’s Carnival weekend coming up so I’ll be heading to southern Portugal for 4 days with Teresa.  Anyone else got plans for Carnival?

Anyway, here are some recent inspirations that have been making me look longingly towards my suitcase again and dream about heading off somewhere:

BBC Ganges  [link]

This is beautifully filmed 3 part documentary on the Ganges path from the Himalaya to the Ocean, taking in the landscape, wildlife and culture of the people who live alongside it.  Fantastic stuff.  Northern India has been on the list of places to visit for years now, and this has really made me want to scratch the itch.

Thanks to Maciej  ~MaciejKarcz for recommending BBC Wild China  [link] to me.  It’s stunning, the photography is just jaw-dropping and reminds me a lot of BBC Planet Earth.  Again, it looks at the land, the wildlife and the people and to use Maciej’s words, brings you up in “goosebumps”


I’ve been a huge fan of Daryl Benson’s phorography for a while (he’s the guy who designed the Reverse ND Grad for Singh Ray) and recently tracked down and invested in a couple of his books.  Fanatastic stuff, you can see PDFs of a couple of them on his website.

Canada [link]
Alberta [link]
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~ThierryHuchet

I've been watching Thierry for a while, his work is just wonderful.





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Some of the work I've seen recently that I really love


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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone

Hello everyone, hope you’re all well.
I’m still really busy at the moment, all of my weekend is given over to the Turismo Rural project my wife and I are starting.
My wife quit her job so she could dedicate all her time to it as we're now in the phase when it's simply impossible to only have the weekends to dedicate to it.  Friday was her last day, which was pretty strange, but things are going to start moving faster (hopefully) now.  I'll carry on working for a couple of years, hopefully finishing around our targeted opening date in June 2011.

Anyway, I haven’t been out shooting once this year, but I will have a few days in the south at the end of February, and then at the end of March I’ll be going to Italy for a week.  
In the meantime I’ve been going through old shots and re-processing them…and discovering a few old images I’d forgotten about as well.
I’m mixing up my submissions between older and new shots, and trying to introduce more variation into my gallery.
I’m also slowly editting many of my older shots, mostly because I’m removing the frame and giving them some nicer polish than they had before, and I’ll re-submit a couple of them that I think might deserve another look.  

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Some more beautiful galleries I’ve come across recently with stunning mountain photography.  Fantastic stuff.


~samuelbitton






~cschoeps




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A handful of images that I’ve really loved recently

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For the gearheads..

Thom Hogan, one of the most respected internet writers and reviewers on Nikon cameras recently reviewed the Nikon D3X [link] I found his conclusions pretty interesting and was surprised at the 100% comparisons between the 24mp D3X and an uprezzed 12mp D3.  
It’s worth reading, particularly if you’re convinced that you need more megapixels.

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone

Michael Anderson has started a gallery here on DA.  I've been a fan of his wonderful work for a while now, and anyone who enjoys landscape photography really should check out his gallery for some stunning wilderness images.

*michaelanderson





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Also, check out *XavierJamonet






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~GuyTal

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Links

My Website [link]
Neutral Density Magazine [link]

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Some of my work





Take care everyone