Mr & Mrs Gosney

It’s been a beautiful last couple of autumn days here, which has made my attempts this week to “carpe diem”, in a photographic sense, all the more relevant (if not always successful).

I’ve had a slight change of mental approach to the 365 project, in that I’ve attempted to make the images reflect the day, rather than be just an image that I could have attempted to capture on any of the 365 days available. The challenge here, for me at least, is that the day may not reveal what most represents it until relatively late, and I prefer to have a clearer vision in mind what I’ll photograph. However, there can be advantages, as days with events already penciled in can be relied upon to provide some inspiration, such as our visit to a RPS distinction advisory day on Sunday. Other events, such as me breaking off the key in our combi boiler, have provided unexpected inspiration:

Our visit to the Advisory Day on Sunday is simply out of interest and as spectators, rather than a more active involvement. I’m sure that it will be a source of long term inspiration though, and interesting to see the standards by which two of the RPS’ distinction levels (LRPS and ARPS) are measured.

Further inspiration, from a technique rather than subject perspective, has been provided by Syl Arena’s book “Lighting for Digital Photography”: this had long been on my Amazon wishlist, until I noticed that a marketplace seller had an “good condition” copy for under £5. That seemed too good to miss, and having sat on my office windowsill in a pile of photography books for a couple of weeks, it’s now come out for me to dip in to. Impressed with the first couple of chapters, the first on describing light being more relevant and interesting than the second on equivalent exposures. A little more reading over the next few days and it might be time to try balancing some flash with natural light, or perhaps persuading Mrs G to model?

This weekend will be busy, work tomorrow and the RPS event on Sunday, but I’m hoping for a wander around Pontefract town center on Saturday morning. Before starting the 365 project, I enjoyed wandering around the town with my M6, appreciating the lack of weight, the beautiful handling, and the unobtrusive appearance. The 365 project has made me concentrate more on shooting digitally, and whilst the 5d is a fantastic camera it doesn’t have the strengths of the M6. It’s a quandary that can be balanced at a weekend by shooting, developing and scanning on the same day, or by using Mrs G’s Fuji X20. Sadly this lacks both the emotional pull and the fines of the M6, and the technical excellence of the Canon along with its selection lenses. Perhaps the M6 should be used for a series of images documenting Pontefract market and the surrounding town center activity, the digital cameras routinely used for 365 images, and the two cross over when it’s convenient to go from shooting to scanning on the same day. What is certain is that the Leica has spent too much time sitting on my desk and not enough time with its strap around my neck.

Happy photographing!

This seems to have been the week that we’ve moved from the tail end of summer, enjoying the last of the sunshine and moderately-warm temperatures even when not sunny, into sub-10 degrees mornings and breath clouding the air when going out to feed the birds.

Still, autumn has it’s positives: as I type, a male greater spotted woodpecker’s dangling off our suet feeder, stocking up for the chilly night ahead, and this afternoon I had the pleasure of attempting to burn some leaves that I’d swept from the drive:

Once the heat of the fire pre-leaves had dried them out, the smoke desisted and they burnt up nicely. Quite a lot of time and effort for not getting through a great many leaves though, although it did give me my photograph for today.

A good Quidco cashback offer for Wex Photographic tempted me to invest in a LED panel this week. I’ve been considering one for a while, and finally went for this. The 365 project is no doubt going to require a moderate amount of indoor photography during the winter months, and using a constant light source seems like a good way to learn a lot more about lighting at the same time. Win / win… hopefully!

(Bye bye woody – he’s just gracefully departed)

Unfortunately I’ve not yet had the opportunity to start the street photography course that I’ve mentioned in a previous post, it keeps being pushed back as week by week my lunchtimes disappear in a blizzard of keystrokes, rather than wandering around with my camera. The discipline of having to take and post a photograph each day is moving from onerous to an enjoyable challenge now, so long may that continue.

Wishing you a happy photographic weekend!

It’s a lovely, sunny Thursday afternoon, and I’ve reached double figures in my 365 photo challenge. Today’s image is the eleventh of the series. Hardly any to go at all then… oh.

It has been fun so far, and photographic opportunities widened by visiting Croydon, Leeds and Nottingham over the past 4 days. I’ve no more trips planned for the next couple of weeks, which is going to challenge me to try and find subjects of at least some interest within reach of home. It’s a challenge I’m looking forward to.

One potential subject is sleeping soundly behind my in my office: Portia is in her second week with us, and she’s been fantastic. Lots of fun, but the combination of a tendency to not keep very still and coming out in low light isn’t an ideal one, even with a camera that produces usable images at high ISOs. I suspect that Portia will feature as several entries within the 365.

However, today’s photograph is another sign of Autumn, a fallen begonia.

A short post this week because of the focus on work, but with a weekend free to recuperate, relax, then to explore more photographic info there should be more to report next week.

Happy photographing!

It’s been an exciting week.

It started with a lovely couple of days at Swinton Park, a beautiful hotel near Masham in North Yorkshire. Whilst we were there, Mrs G read an interview in a “homes and gardens”-type magasine with a guy who was in the midst of his third or fourth year of a 365 photography project. It may have been feeling rested after a night away, inspired by the beautiful surroundings, or perhaps still enlivened by the wine from the night before, but I decided that I should finally undertake a 365 project, and kicked it off that day.

Today is day three:

Over the first three days I’ve realised how much more I’m going to have to think, and how much that’s going to benefit me, so looking forward to seeing how things progress over the next few months. However, as we’re moving towards darker days, perhaps some lighting kit may be in order, we shall see. It will be interesting to see how many times over I can shoot, process and post a 365 image on film.

One of the highlights of our visit was sampling Swinton Hall’s resident cocktail expert’s Espresso Martini. Whilst I’m a big fan of the more standard Martini, and had already enjoyed a pre-dinner Bloody Mary, this was a new experience but one that took little persuasion. Rightly so, as it was absolutely delicious, so much so that either we’ll have to return soon or more practically find a recipe.

An hour or so after we returned from the Dales, we happily added a baby Syrian hamster to our household and named her Portia. She has only been with us just over a day, yet has made it quite clear that she knows her own mind, and as her home is in my office I can hear her rustling around in her nest as I type. I’m very much looking forward to Portia’s first appearance in the 365 project.

The return to work today is the first of a particularly busy series of days, involving go lives and client visits. It will be interesting to see what photographic opportunities can be unearthed once the real work has been done.

Happy photography!

A sunny Wednesday afternoon, half way into our week off work. What better time to develop a roll of Tri-X 400? That was what I thought, especially having used this blog post to work out how to more efficiently use my Kaiser film leader retriever.

Film, spiral, developing tank into the light bag. Film wound straight onto spiral, the hair drier having done the trick before spiral went into the bag. Much satisfaction and looking forward to seeing the images, until I realised that I’d made an error with the easiest, but most crucial element, and had reassembled the tank incorrectly. The result? One totally exposed roll of Tri-X 400, and one unhappy photographer. Also an unhappy wifey, who’d been looking forward to seeing the shots from Rotherham Fair that I took on Sunday, particularly of the hamster show.

The only positive I can take is yet another lesson learnt, and a mistake to ensure that isn’t repeated. Sadly these are rather stacking up.

Yesterday’s visit to York is still in the camera on a roll of HP5+, so intending to shoot the remainder of the film tomorrow and develop that on Friday, hopefully with more satisfying results.

Monday evening brought dinner with my old photography teacher, and some experimentation with the Canon kit. Not sure that I have ever had so many photographs taken of myself, so it’ll be interesting to drop the images into Lightroom and check out some professional, if not entirely sober, portraits.

Time to fire off the remaining HP5+ and load in another roll of Tri-X, not sure that the first roll was really a good way to evaluate it.

Happy snapping!

The life of this blog so far has been intermittent, which somewhat overstates its output. It has briefly sparked into life when we have been to an event, taken a series of photographs, and handed out some cards to competitors so that they have a way of finding where the images will be uploaded.

However, I have recently had my enthusiasm for photography rekindled by a combination of circumstances. Firstly, our local gallery, Pomfret Gallery, advertised a photography competition. A very open-ended one, with the criteria simply an “eye catching” image taken in West Yorshire. It had previously been suggested to me by Andrew Scriven that a good way to develop my photography would be to enter some competitions, so I decided to try and come up with something for this, and I knew that I wanted to submit a photograph taken with the competition in mind, rather than peruse my collection for one that would be suitable.

Friday, 8 August was traumatic for many people in this area of West Yorkshire: I noticed around 1600 that rain had started to fall quite heavily, then when it was time to collect Mrs Gosney from the railway station around 1745 the rain was pouring down. I grabbed the Canon on the way out of the house, anticipating that there might some interesting images to be had, but the weather was too bad to get out of the car with the Canon, and instead we drove home and I grabbed the baby Fuji, my walking boots and a cagoule. Some imperfect shots of the bad weather were picked up from Twitter by both ITV Calendar News and our local newspaper, so I felt that getting drenched was worthwhile, and two of the images made the front page of the Pontefract & Castleford Express the following Thursday.

The Pontefract Grand Prix cycle event was scheduled for the Sunday following the heavy rain, and we’d already decided to go along to take some photographs, but we were even more determined when I managed to grab two VIP passes on Twitter. It was great fun to photograph, despite the rain, and was only 10 minutes walk away to allow for the occasional dry off. Reaction to the photographs was very positive (images are here, and whilst shooting I realised that one of them could become my competition entry: taken after the competition’s launch, in Pontefract, on an exciting day for the town.

After many weeks of on and off attempts at us organising something, my old photography teacher and I finally met up for a couple of drinks. It was great both from a social perspective, but from a photographic perspective to talk to someone who is prepared to be bluntly critical. The flip side is that appreciation of images is worth significantly more when you’re confident that there would be no hesitation to provide constructive criticism should it be needed.

The combination of these situations has really fired my enthusiasm for photography, and specifically going back to basics with a camera that I treated myself to last year and which has been so far very under-used, my Leica M6. Having shot b&w film at school (certainly not with a Leica), the attraction of having the option of film that I could develop myself briefly fired before we moved house, and it is now back: a roll of Ilford FP4 that was mainly shot in London either side of a customer visit was developed at home and scanned with a Plustek 8100 (eventually selected after months of debating the economics of commercial processing / scanning against short term costs of scanner to go with the developing kit already purchased).

I’m now determined to continue to enjoy the Leica, and enjoy the relaxation of shooting with film and a light, fully manual camera. I’m hoping that documentary photography, primarily focusing on our local area, will drive my engagement with photography even further forward, helped by some great online resources and inspirational photo books. Further to this, the intention is to publish a blog post once a week with an image or two, and some observations on where I’ve got to and what’s planned. This weekend a brief trip to York’s on the agenda followed by an evening with friends where I suspect the merits of digital vs film will be heavily debated over a bottle or two of wine.

Enjoy the weekend!

We’ve just returned from our first Strongman competition hosted by Hulks Strongman @ Atlas Fitness in Rotherham.

Lovely day watching some very strong guys have a crack at what looks like some nastily-tricky events.

The link to some shots from the day will be posted in the next couple of days, but in the meantime here’s one of Liam and two of his fellow competitors: