Category: Photography

Landscapes

Dinky van

On location and I’ve brought my trusty 1950 Bedford delivery van with me.

Dinky van

We’re on assignment because I’ve just started Ben Hawkins’ The Complete Beginner’s Photography Course, A Modular System for Success and the park at Nostell Priory is an ideal location to complete the Landscape section, including this attempt at ‘forced perspective’, creating an illusion with a toy car.

Dinky van

It worked better on the lichen encrusted capstones on the old park wall than it did in the sunlit courtyard at the stables because I couldn’t get the camera down far enough to get ‘eye level’ at about the height of the van roof.

The Rule of Thirds

Nostell Park

But there’s more to landscape photography than toy cars – or as Ben suggests we call them ‘the right props’. He starts with the rule of thirds.

dead tree

Then adds a focal point – again, to have most impact, at a junction of thirds.

Lead-in Line

Woodland at Nostell

His next suggestion is to create depth by adding a lead-in line, such as a path or shoreline.

Framing

lake
bridge

And of course you can frame a landscape with an overhanging branch, a tree trunk, a bench or even a Robert Adam bridge.

The only shot that I struggled with for technical reasons was one which showed a still landscape with one element moving and blurred – such as cascading water or windswept grasses.

I need to try again with a tripod and, as a long exposure is needed, on a duller day.

Nostell Priory

Intentional Camera Movement

ICM

This was my attempt at ICM – intentional camera movement – a rowan with plenty of ripe berries. It’s intended to give an impressionist effect.

Hostile Aliens

production still

Hard to believe that I didn’t become Yorkshire’s answer to Steven Spielberg when you look at these 1965 production stills from our ambitious science fiction home movie Hostile Aliens. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop, I’ve been able to print this hopelessly badly developed negative for the first time. Richard Ryan’s stand-in dummy is about to be incinerated by the Alien’s heat ray. Alien played by my sister Linda in my dad’s oilskin and waders (plus papiere mache mask when the camera was rolling.

discussing scene

Linda also played the World Security observer responsible for monitoring outer space for alien invaders. In real life the emergency telephone put you through to the telephone exchange at the top end of Wensley Street.

stop action filming

For a stop action shot of the World Security armoured personnel carrier trundling towards the alien landing site, Lin pressed the cable release while I moved the model inch by inch across our garden rubbish heap.

The Old Gang

lead mine spoil heap
As usual, don’t rely on the colour, as I’ve colourised my original black and white 35mm shot in Photoshop.
Swaledale trip

One last snapshot from our 16 July 1965 third form trip to Swaledale. Sorting through the old gang (‘gangue’ = waste) near Hurst, Swaledale are my two school friends Derek Stefaniw examining a chunk of mineral – perhaps fluorite or galena? – alongside cool dude Paul Copley.

Swaledale trip
From this distant view, I can’t identify any of the teachers or pupils examining the lead mining waste heap.

Triumph Herald Coupé

Amongst my 1965 negatives, the shots that I took to start or finish off a film are often everyday scenes from home life that wouldn’t normally get recorded. This shot, which comes just before the Richmond Castle photographs, is my mum’s car, a Triumph Herald Coupé taken in our back yard.

estate car

We did once fit our family of five into mum’s coupé, even though there were no seats in the back. More comfortable was dad’s Standard Vanguard Estate, registration RHL 777, which he bought from our friend Jack Buckle’s garage.

Richmond Castle

arch
negative

On our Ossett Grammar School school trip in the summer of 1965 we visited Richmond Castle. This is the same film as the Reeth photographs that I posted yesterday and, as you can see (left), the negatives are equally badly scratched, spotted and, in places, solarised.

I think that this works well for the Norman arch (above) but as a change from the daguerreotype effect that I went for yesterday, I decided the clean up the remaining images using the spot healing brush in Photoshop.

I soon realised that using the mouse on my iMac was impractical so, after boosting the contrast in the desktop version of Photoshop, I transferred the photographs to the iPad.

wall of Richmond Castle
Photoshop for the iPad
The iPad version of Photoshop, using an Apple Pencil, Sketchboard Pro, a PenTips Magnetic Matte Screenprotector and a PenTips Drawing Glove.

Touching up the images using an Apple Pencil in the iPad version of Photoshop makes it so much easier.

I air-dropped the image back to the desktop version to colourise it, using the Photoshop Neural Filters.

Plaque to Robert Baden Powell, found of the Scouts movement.

A Walk in Swaledale, 1965

My thanks to James Alderson and Farming Lass on Instagram for identifying yesterday’s lime lorry incident from summer 1965 as being on the Hurst road at the Reeth end of Swaledale. I’m guessing that the cottages and lead smelting chimney are at Hurst or nearby.

I’ve gone with the daguerreotype vibe for this gallery of colourised photographs from our walk, which include my friend Stef making friends with a Dales pony.

In addition to the scratches and blobs my inept film development has also resulted in some solarisation. The shot of our party negotiating an area of mining spoil (possibly above Langthwaite?) would have made a good cover for an Alan Garner novel.

Swaledale Lime Lorry, 1965

lime lorry

Summer 1965 and there’s been a delay in a delivery of lime in Swaledale. Perhaps you recognise the delivery man or the guys he’s talking to – the local farmer perhaps?

This colourised image is from one of my badly developed black and white negatives from 1965. There are dozens from a school trip of Richmond Castle, which Iooks pretty much the same today, so it’s the few which feature vehicles that particularly interest me.

The View from the Car Park

Wakefield from the Ridings Centre car park

My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?

  • To the south, to what Lawrence Butler called the ‘upturned pudding-basin’ of Sandal Castle motte?
  • To the south-west to the Emley Moor transmitter on the edge of the South Pennines?
  • Or looking back across the precinct towards the peregrine eyrie on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral?

Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.

In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.

The Border in June

The flower border in June: buttercup seed-head, cornflower, lady’s mantle, marigold, lavender, salvia, annual meadow-grass, seed-pod (lupin?), white clover and red clover.

These are taken on my newly-repaired Olympus OM-D E-M10 II using the 60mm macro lens. Good to have it back. I could have taken very similar photographs on my iPhone but the digital SLR camera gives me more control.

Holme Moss to Temple Newsam

cheshire sign

One evening in 1964 or 65, we drove out to Holme Moss on the watershed of the Pennines, on the border of what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire with Cheshire.

127 photos

Apart from some disappointing contact prints, I’ve never been able to look at these badly developed photographs so I’m surprised to see that the sign ‘UNFENCED ROAD BEWARE ANIMALS’ is just about readable.

That’s my sister on the West Riding sign.

Temple Newsam

Temple Newsam

On another evening outing my dad drove us all to Temple Newsam, Leeds. This time that isn’t me on the plinth.

Temple Newsam