Bugle Blog - maxblackphotos.

Photowalk and stuff....

7/29/2013

Well time really does seem to be flying.. I just got an email from Scott Kelby inviting me to run another Worldwide Photowalk.. http://worldwidephotowalk.com/ now then....
It really took a huge amount of effort to just get folks organised last time and there were grumblings that not everyone got on a mini tutorial...and I was completely knackered after the last one...that last mini toot...I was speaking utter garbage by then....sorry..... So I'm not sure..... I'd have to rethink and maybe limit numbers or something...meh...I'll think about it today......
Well looks like I will have to send the Nokia 925 back now...I've had the email asking for it...but it's so nice and a great 'in your pocket' snap camera...I avoided 'pont and shoot' as most camera's we carry around with us actually are that, irrespective of how much dosh you've lavished on one. One last burst of snapping with it today and then get Mr DHL to come and take it away....I'm filling up already....mind you I'm looking forward to that 41 mpix 1020 Nokia dropping through the letter box at some point http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/phones/phone/lumia1020/?cid=ncomprod-fw-src-na-uklfdevicerangelumia1020-na-google-gb-en-1todtmx1cb164
Might have a different slant on the Photowalk already...you'll be the first to know of course.

Check out my Behance site for this new 'Fins' project.

Fins..

7/27/2013

No not multiple endings for a Mr Hulots holiday film but fins...stuck on the back of Americarna...big bits of metal so here's a few to have a look at

Delving ever deeper into the chasms of Photoshop CC so you don't have to..

It's that Friday feeling.

7/26/2013

Right , I'll be off to shovel some manure rather than type it in a short while..better and cheaper than going to the Gym. Some of my images are going to be used for the reprint of Richard Laymons crime thriller novels in Germany...( yep...me neither...) http://www.amazon.com/wiki/Richard_Laymon/ref=ntt_at_bio_wiki . Just nice to know every now and then where your images end up, that is the ones that are bought legit not the ones half inched off site..there is a little reverse search engine you can use to track images you may think are off on a jaunt without your knowledge http://www.tineye.com/ ....that is if the little monkeys havn't stripped out the metadat from your file... ah well

Anyway oh yes, nice to get some work out there published albeit under a blanket of type, that's where I seem to be at the moment, on Ordnance survey maps and Paperback covers...I'd lke to say it's a living...no I really would but....

If you havn't made it across to my Behance site then here are the latest images of Manchester, I like this style ...well for the moment so expect more or completely ignore, we still live in a free world apparently... oh TFI Friday folks, big hello to you hundreds...yes I'm not making it up..hundreds of newbies who have dropped in this week for a look.

No these arn't shot with the Nokia Lumia 925 but these are

Hospital waiting....

7/23/2013

Persistant chesty cough so off for an x-ray...thought I'd take the Nokia 925 and do a bit of editing 'in camera' to while away the time. Well...super efficient NHS had me in and out in 10 minutes so only had the briefest of times to use the editing tools in the Nokia but here are some of the examples.

So...using the radialand tilt shift blur options ..which are so nice and easy to use...touch the are then squeeze or pinch the sharp are and let ht ephotne do the rest..quick and saves as a separate file. First 2 had some o the overlay presets in the Creative Studio...first one is amber the second Ivory. All very fast and you can always zip back to the original file and try something else.

Car Shows..

7/23/2013

It's summer so that means summer shows and to be more specific summr car shows, always good for photo opps especially when the sun gets in on the act and gets to work on all that chrome.

Chucking it down today so chance to get stuff on ebay and gumtree, i'll post some links later.

Experimentation

7/20/2013

Okay a quick post from todays faffing. Plastic mixing bowl, a bit of material...Nokia 925 and you get this sort of thing.....

So it looks like layer work in Photoshop but just a bit of left field thinking with an old mixing bowl and a piece of gauze borowed from my much better halfs stockpile.

Messing

7/19/2013

I have the time..I have the tools...a bit of talent..so on these lovely hot days why not put it all together and have a bit of a faff around and see what I can come up with. Now I know, there are folk out there who see, in a photographic sense, Photoshop as the very spawn of the devil himself, I look on it as I would my dinky 50mm f1.8 as an essential part of my shooting kit. Okay you do have to have a level of personal constraint and not every thing I see warrants a whack around the chops with some complex software but if I go out to capture something specific I will already know what the final image will look like...and that includes some uber faffing in Adobes finest..or not.
But every now and then I'll pull out an image file from the dusty vaults and give it a bit of a smack sometimes making it cry in the process. Now I've intimated that I might be on a collision course with Portraiture, it has always been my 'elephant in the room' and now it sits on my shoulder, a photographic earworm...just nibbling away. this is the part where I get to the point....but how do I want my portraits to look??? well I thought I might jump in the archives and pull out some head shots and get the old Photoshop CC warmed up and head off for a jaunt and here are some of my experiments....now these have nothing to do with any creative lighting or location or make -up or such they are the first shots in looking at how I want the final images to appear

Early days and all the techniques are reproducable, all involve layer work and toys from the Photoshop cupboard. Now the trick is for me to see the final images in my head and when i pursue this and nail this head shooting. I'm looking forward to it and will make sure that procrastination is swept to one side.
Okay I have been trawling the web looking for a portable lighting system that is a bit more sophisticated than a bare flash or tungsten skin melter and I think I have found my ideals.
Ice Light
and
F+V R-300

Yes I do think LED lighting is the future, especially portraiture so all I have to do is rustle up some cash and I'm away.... rustle up some cash...maybe I should have chosen a more finacially rewarding profession looks like a trip to my old mate Mr Ebay and recycle some gear...TFI Friday btw...lots of dashing about this weekend so catch you next week.

First shots..first impressions... Nokia 925

7/16/2013

First off..it really is a lovely piece of kit thinner than the 920 but I did like, no really like the Ferrari Red of that one. Still this has an understated feeling of quality, if it were mine I'd have to get a tough as boots case for it as it would join the rest of my kit in a 'chuck it in the bag' style that I usually adopt when out taking snaps. So lets have a look at few snaps from the dear old thing.

Down on the allotment as I had a lot of manure spreading to do before this interminable sun dried it all out. Now the only thing I've found that could be a slight annoyance is focus hunting in close up macro shooting, there is a slight amount of vignetting, f2 and close up work gives a nice soft fall off, just make sure you hit that focus sweet spot..and of course they are Jpegs...... so if you blow things out ..well there really is nothing to bring back in any PP work. Even in bright sunlight the screen gives a really good image although the focus indicator can suffer a bit. Of course there are all the lens apps that come with the phone and I'll have a fiddle about with those later
Charging was straight forward and fast and image download was very speedy. If you have skydrive then you can get your images synced and the whole process is fast and easy>

So first impression, fast, keep it in auto and you can snap and snap and.... clear screen even in challenging conditions, camera access even when locked, a useful bunch of tools pre loaded....hmmmm what's not to like as a point and shoot replacement...point and shoot is a disservice..it is a creative tool and I hope to show over the next few posts how you can push things and create some different and creative images......

Lowlight and up close with moving chckens didn't phase the Nokia

Nokia 925 Close-up mode.

7/16/2013

You know that thing you do, yes you do, that thing,........ you get so excited about unboxing and getting playing with a new toy that the instructions stay in the bottom of the box unopened.... well I read them and went online and ...here's a shocker..learnt how to use the lens menus...and above you can see some of the results from some very low light level close-up work last night.
Makes me start to wonder why some of the DSLR big guns sell and manufacture big dobbing tubes of metal and glass (and plastic) when in a teensy weeny grouping of Carl Zeiss wonder you can get quite startling image files. Okay get up close and personal with these image files and things look a bit shakey, but that really is up and very close, say 300% viewing scale...now I'd say it's sensor resolution rather that lens so I'm pretty keen to take a look at the 'EOS Phone...the Nokia 1020 with it's 41 megapixel light harvester that , I think will probably make camera manufacturers start binning all their point and shoot cameras, or at least get their cameras to accept phone calls...no ..that would be silly...imagine having a high spec camera that also is fully connected to this old interweb universe...imagine!! Hmmmm starting to ramble..so for most of us the 925 will give you image files that in close up mode will give you a pretty decent A4 print...if anyone actually prints from their phones and of course sparkly crispy images to flaunt around the internet and send to your virtual social media buddies. I'll leave you with one shot this very morning in my front garden

Salsify seeds

Nokia 925

7/15/2013

Well if I'm reading this DHL tracking widget correctly this Nokia 925 will be with me anytime.....now....now...okay maybe a bit later but in time to catch some of this weather.
If you are my reader, yes you, then you will have noted that not too long ago I had the pleasure of having the Nokia 920 for a month to go forth and shoot 'til exhausted....both me and the battery.
Now I really liked it, a very useful tool for street photography as opposed to shoving your DSLR into the great British publics faces...I know, I know there is shooting from the hip and great dobbing 200mm but I like street shots that are wide or standard in their focal length shooting and that there is some kind of engagement with your subject matter. I'm also going to be putting the 925 to the test in low light conditions, so that will be evenings in Manchester, maybe weekends and maybe with people having a good time. I hope this time I can unlock all the lens apps, seems to be some stuff in there that demands you get creative with. Follow the link above to see what it can do. So ...phones..don't think of them as 'point and shoot' look on them as a way in which you see things, if you know me you'll know that I believe it dosn't matter what you use to capture your images as long as you see things in your way.......

Well it's 11 and the Nokia 925 has just been dropped off...time to charge...learn about the camera apps and twiddly bits and get out there snapping....

Architectural Form

7/8/2013

A very long time ago I trained as an Architectural Photographer on 5 x 4 and 10 x 8 swing tilt cameras. Now I've photographed many a building since , during the early years everything that I shot was Mono, vertically correct and sharp as a pin..that was then. Now I still love architectural shapes and how i would have loved all those years ago, was Photoshop... Because now I want to look at buildings as being part of the image not the central focal point...maybe better to show you what I'm on about...here are some images from Glasgow down on the Clyde.

So the images are part architecture, a bit of texture and reworking the sharpness/blur. For me it's a question of creating an image as opposed to recording a photograph and in many ways imposing a look and maybe my own 'style' ...here's a few more

In this over image saturated world that we inhabit it can be difficult to get acknowledgement for your creative talents, especially if you are shooting things that are' scenes that everyone has to shoot' So experiment, do that thing...you know...put the camera gear down and think about what you want to show people and how you want to present things. If you are working an image file then get in there and play...don't save it but keep working it until you develop a 'look' that you like....important point of course is to remeber how you got there...take notes save a layered psd, create an action and save any adjustment layers as presets...and then you are well on the way to using your photography to create images, not just take photographs

Photoshop CC

7/1/2013

Yummy....okay not a comprehensive technical rundown of the photographic wurlitzer but....yummy.
Can I just say, the techie who thought of adding camera raw to the CC filter gallery should be getting a medal, this has made the processing and Thunderbird 2 work on some 'chuck it in the bin exposures...just do it....and do it now' files such a fizzing whizz. I've got some ICM shots from late last year that were not shot in ideal ICM light and ...holy moly...there's actually an image tucked away inside there..just jumping back and forth from CC to Raw filter.....

Liverpool Docks.

Okay not everyone's cuppa or Marmite but I can't tell you how this has appeared from the very depths of histogram hell..so I had a faff with a linear light color overlay as well....fini
So for the rest of the day I will batter away and see if this wunderkind of a programme can do things to things ,,,hmmm,yep, time to stop. Happy July btw,,,