Project with SASH underway

Its taken quite a while to set things up with SASH but I shot the first participants today.

The project is to photograph the Hosts and the young people in their home, unposed, natural light, using restricted equipment, in this case an Olympus PEN F, with 25mm f1.8, 45mm f1.8 and 17mm f2.8 Zuiko lenses.

I used the Mono mode setting on the PEN F for OOC jpg but shot raw as well to have the option of colour images if necessary.

Abdul has a fantastic story. At 14 he left Ethiopia on his own, travelling up through Africa until reaching Libya. He then crossed the Mediterranean into Spain ending up in the "Jungle" in Calais.
He eventually reached the UK in the back of a lorry, and was apprehended by the police and sent to a refugee hostel in Ashford. 
From here he was sent to York and that is when he was hosted by Sam and her family in their home.
Three years later he has a York accent and is going to college.

It was really nice to meet them both and a big thank you to them for letting me take their photographs.

Featured photo on ephotozine.com

I popped onto the web-based photo magazine Ephotozine.com today for a quick look and to my surprise my image was the Featured Members Photo.

Well chuffed!

Harrogate Photographic Society Projected Digital Image Competition - Portrait Winner

Jake Attree in his studio in Dean Clough Halifax 2017

I entered this image in the Harrogate Photographic Society Projected Digital Image Competition in the Portrait category.


The independent judge Andrew Linscott, a Northallerton based professional photographer, chose this image as the winning entry.


I wasn't at the judging but by all accounts Andrew was very complimentary about the image.


I took this during a visit to Jake's old studio in Dean Clough in Halifax in 2017. I used the Fuji X-Pro1 with Fujinon 56mm f1.2 lens, I've since sold the Fuji as, good though the results were as evidenced above, I found it way too slow.

Tethered shooting with Canon 5DIV

Its been a while since I last blogged. I've not been around as basically I've not had much to say.
However, fired up by 2018 I decided to spend a cold wet Saturday in the Creative Cube trying the out the tethering with my Canon 5DIV.

I found tethered shooting to be simplicity itself.
I simply connected the 5DIV to my MacBook Pro with the supplied USB lead, switched the camera on and immediately Canon EOS Utility 3 launched and I selected Remote Shooting.
From here I could control the camera settings (changes were instantaneous) and enable Live View shooting.

I also had Canon DPP4 open looking into the folder the images were being saved in. 

I applied Digital Lens Optimisation in DPP4, as well as correction for distortion etc as I find DPP4 does this a little better than Lr lens correction, there is not much in it but to me the files from DPP4 look a little crisper.

Then within the DPP4 Tools menu I Transferred to Photoshop, saved as a psd file and adjusted the images to taste.

The subjects were lit with two Rotolight LED lights and I used my  Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro USM lens.

Ceramic art by Maggie Barnes Ceramics