Every now and then there's a lot of wind that whistles across the top of the Monts d'Arree where I live here in France...so I got to thinking, what if I set the camera up on a tripod during a  real whizzer of a breezy day and did some long exposures of the foliage in the garden being battered and wafted about...so I did...early days but exposure times of between 6 to 30 seconds with the usual set up of Nikon D750, 50mm f1.8, f8 to f11, iso 100, B+W Nd x10 stopper and a bit of gaffer tape over the eyepiece, nothing special but  another way of looking at things, The Flowers/plants in question are Inula, Bamboo and Monarda.

There may be some of you out there, like me, who can remember when television was a 2 channel affair, Sports Mixtures were 4 for an old penny and the only bit of motorway, of which my Dad took car fulls of us unrestrained nippers out for an 100mph white knuckle blitz was the Preston Bypass ....black and white days...anyway ...non of this digital tomfoolery we have now, if you had a half decent camera back then and had done the almost unthinkable thing of reading the manual before you got stuck in snapping, it may have come to your attention that on the base plate was a little button that, if pressed when cranking the shutter lever, would prime the shutter but not wind on the film.... double exposure of a negative could then ensue with your latent images, unseen and as yet undeveloped. The creative process had begun...I forget how many rolls of 35mm were deemed only fit for the bin but it was part of the learning process...lets do a timey whymmey thing and scoot along to present day.
No buttons on the base plate but here's the thing, if you have a decent Dslr and do something crazy...errr..like read the manual, I know it's quite a mad concept really...then in your menu system there will likely be a multi exposure setting...okay forgive me I should have said most Nikon Dslrs, if you have been led astray by the spurious claims of other Dslr manufacturers then I can't vouch for  multi exposure being in your camera menu....I am sorry for your loss... so I have 2 Dslrs from the Nikon stable the tough as old boots D700 which has the ability to shoot 10 exposures as one file and the under engineered D750 which has only a maximum of 3 multi exposures to play with. So here's the set up...Nikon D750, Nikkor 50mm f1.8 and in the menu I have set it to take 2 exposures per frame or image file.... I'm having culture thrust upon me again at the Chagall Exhibition in Landerneau here in Brittany...I've been before but there is not restrictions on taking photos...so here are some shots using the double exposure set up...shooting RAW so into Lightroom CC for a tickle then spat out to here.  So no layers photoshop just in camera faffology.

Now the next 2 were shot outside...shop dummy and then lined up to shoot any willing victim in the street to produce these creepy portraits...think of the possibilities and have a dip oh and do something crazy...read your camera manual...

There's only 50 of us who live here in the little village of Kernevez in the Monts d'Arree region of Finistere. But that dosn't stop us having a yearly fete and so besides taking the group photo for the newspaper  I thought that maybe a few portraits could be squeezed out of the group.
So here we are then, just a softbox  with a Yongnou 586 fired through some Yongnou triggers, all wireless, D750 and a Nikon  70-200 f4, TTL at 1/3rd power iso 200 and most at f6.7..... just ordinary folk having some fun.

Needs must ..after my last 2 health scares I had a choice to make and I decided to accelerate  work on the gardens and land rather than photography, well just in case if you see what I mean. Anyhow back out and about with my bag full of cameras and lenses. One lens down as I've 'retired' the 24-85 Nikon I was using for Library images as it really is far too squishy image wise for me, an inherant lack of critical sharpness throughout it's range if I was reviewing for a magazine, so for the moment it's having a breather until I usher it towards the door marked 'Do one....' So out and about and although the weather was a bit mixed down in the Loire Valley I bagged a few images I'm happy with both types, some for the image libraries and the rest with a a leaning towards the creative side of things . So here are a few from the aristocractic crumbliness of Chaumont. In typical French style crumbling plaster and broken windows housing art from around Europe...love it.

Oh these are in camera 3 shot multi exposures using a Nikon D750 with a 20mm Nikon F2.8 and if you can remember an old blog post I did about the rubber eyepiece of the D750 being prone to popping off..... well if you do go through Beaugency and find one on the pavement...well it's mine.

The Lensbaby Velvet F1.6 Macro...well macro is part of the capabilities of this lens. All of the following images are taken at F4 where there is just enough sharpness and depth whilst knocking out the backgrounds with that smooth Velvet blur. These are all hand held natural light shots and with it being a bit breezy I set the focus and then 'rocked' back and forth to try and get the sharpness at the point I wanted. Okay, I could have used a flash and a tripod for the camera but life's too short. Looks like a lot of Orchids are braving the elements locally and blooming so expect some of those to appear soon. Shot with a D750 at iso 200 and  I let the camera figure out the shutter speed.

January, sick and tired you've been laughing at me...ah the classics..... oh oh oh it's magic, too much Spotifying can have injurious consequences. Well we've all had some weather and  here perched on the Monts d'Arree we've had our share and a few other Republics share of rain, almost flooded out by the creeping rise in the water table, up 3 metres and sploshing at the front back door, blew the pump off the Fosse but under enough water to keep 2 pumps a pumping for a week before it could be repaired...hang on...you're probably not here to have your ears bent by the travails of rural living but like Gloria Gaynor well, I will survive (spotify again) and the galvanised bucket of ablutions is once more returned to the barn. Oh yes photography. Well just back from a jaunt to the UK, not much snapping done, one day in the Huelgoat woods doing long exposures...meh...oh and some mashing and flailing about in Photoshop. So my book cover agent mails me and enquiring if at some opportune moment  may one remove ones posterior from that galvanised bucket and mash up a few of those images that have been known to frighten the horses as he's sold some  and folk are about as interested in what's left as last weeks school dinner boiled cabbage. So here is a selection which may, at some point in their digital lives, be snapped up, have fonts spread all over them in an enticing blend that will help them fly off the shelf or out of Amazons warehouse....or not.
​Oh there's a link at the bottom to some new stuff on Getty which most certainly will not frighten any horses.

Parc d'Armorique..this is where I live, if I had to try and describe it it's like a mixture between the Lake District, the Peak District and the New Forest but without all the tourists..... and just down the road to the North, West and South are the varied coastlines of Brittany and I've not really photographed much of it, all the work on the farm and being a wee bit ill for the past 6 months has knocked all the things I've planned to do on the head. So, new gear in the bag, Nikon 24-85, 70-200 and 50mm lenses to try out and I've barely given the D750 a chance to stretch it's legs..I'm waffling..anyway here are some snaps from Le Gouffre, where the River Argent runs down to the old Roman Lead mines and only about 6km from home.. So back with the ND filters and tripods over the next few weeks.

There are times when you want a shot so badly that, well, you just have to ignore that little flashing flash(?) symbol or sometimes little wavy hand, brace yourself against some solid object, take a slow sniper breath and blat a shot off. But what if you want to take a shot at a crazy low shutter speed to record some movement but then want some sharpness in there as well...I know...get a tripod or as I've done on the beach, make a dinky sandcastle or place your camera on a rock...but what about hand held...with a telephoto in challenging conditions. 
Enter stage left the Nikon VR 3 system and with a bit of algorithmic waftines, Photoshop CC and it's Shake reduction filter.  So out and about in the rather wonderful Huelgoat woods shooting the woodland in some nice low autumnal sunshine, ended up at the old Roman Lead mines and the River Argent... so walking back along the River path it suddenly struck me that a tripod would be more than useful but that was many a kilometer away in the car. So as I was out giving my new Nikon 70-200 F4 VR 3 a bit of a shakedown well, I thought I'd try to see how far I could push things... so 1st image is shot at F13 145mm on an FX...but at 1/8th of a second hand held...1/8th yep with VR active I wanted moving water but something sharp as a counterpoint.

Looks like they use a lot of edge contrast maths in a kind of Clarity fashion..add too much filter and you do get a breakout of light and dark haloing on the edges but trial and error will give you the experience to sort it out. So here is an enlargement from the bottom of the Holly as a before and after view, I'm sure there is something to be done by using a color selection and turning it into a mask to blend the shake reduced image(?) back into the original file anyhow...handheld at 1/8th and sharpish with a Telephoto..well what's not to like

So first up is an old Freecom 500gb drive which has all kinds of stuff tucked away so I've loaded some into a Lightroom Catalog and set about for a faff. When I look back on some of the processing I did..well..it is to my eyes now quite harsh, in those days the workflow was Bridge to Photoshop and off you go..use all the toys..spank that file until the pixels squeak. Well one things changed for sure and that's workflow.. Lightroom CC to Photoshop CC and saved back to Lightroom for a final once over before exporting...I was a late Lightroom adopter, version 3 I think and these days I never bother with bridge..time eh!! Still having it all on subscription means I'm always up to date...anyway these files are all shot with a Fuji S3 and it's buddy, the Tokina 12-24, delving into the files it wasn't such a bad combo, mind you I now see all the sensor dust...yikes....lumpy!! No wonder Alamy used to refrain from accepting some of the early stuff... so these shots are from Blackpool and Glasgow..mono conversions with my new found skills(?) on  Wacom put to the test and its wafty brushing onto masks thingy. I'll be concentrating on the Black and White stuff for the next few posts and as I've just downloaded some screen recording software I'll give you the chance to see what goes on when I'm left on my own with some old hard drives and the whole of Spotify to amuse me.

.....like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, a ukulele fave but this is supposed to be about photography and ( wait for it) here comes the link...I have a round eyepiece on the D700..staggering...there must be more, well I'd have one on the D750 but seeing as Mr Nikon under engineered a lot of the outside, all I have is a rectangular one that pops off once the over stuffed camera bag is opened. And continuing this thread where I hold the D750 by it's ankles and give it a botty smack...3, yes only 3 multi exposures available for one file...I'm shaking my head and popping my shoulders at that one, where was I ..Oh yes the D700 with the big round rubber eyepiece, and dear reader the ability to take 10, yes 10 multi exposures per image file, not sure about you but I'm losing the will to live on this one, lets cut to the chase. Old Skool D700 set up to take six in camera multi exposures, tickle of EV and auto gain switched on camera clamped to eye and rotated whilst the operator stands as still as possible, lets skim over the hands , arms elbows and things wafting about,but yes, as still as possible. Now what if we point the lens at Mother Nature and see if anything escapes from the delete pile...here you go then. Oh Eden Project down in Cornwall...

Boom straight into it, cool sunny days, clear nights and misty early mornings until the sun burns it all off. As I made a bit of a horlicks cleaning the D700 sensor (too much fluid)...I locked and loaded the 105micro onto the D750 for a wander amongst the wafting droplets of water on the afore mentioned early autumnal morning.... Red moon tonight and a clear night promised.

Fete du Buerre at St Herbot this afternoon, butter, bread, cider, tractors, music and cider...not forgetting the cider.