So I’ve just done the blurb thing, that is to design a photobook of my own pictures using the website called blurb. It’ll be a few weeks yet before it arrives, and hopefully it’ll be worth the effort. Can’t wait to see the results. You can see a preview if you click the badge above.
photo: Ilford XP2
My sister Liz gave me a bag of rolls of Ilford XP 2 Super for my birthday, so I’ve dusted off the old Yashica and taken it out a few times. Here you see the results, with a little tweaking in LightRoom. I had a few doubts about posting a picture as posed and studied as this, but I was encouraged by the reaction in various other forums, so I’ve gone ahead.
I’m a fan of the tones and grain that are achievable in XP 2, however I think this is either a little overexposed or badly scanned, or a combination. I’ve had a tip from Mort on creativeireland.com to head off to Gunn’s and get them to scan the neg [what you’re looking at now is a Gunn’s scan] – a better job than what you see here (done elsewhere). If you look at the full size image you can see jpeg artefacts which make it look a bit noisy.
So despite the convenience and instantaneous results of digital photography, I still like the artistry, artifice and anticipation of film. Ben’s reaction to me taking the photograph was ‘let me see’, but it’s dawning on him (and me) that with film you have to wait. I still catch myself looking at the back of the Yashica to see …
John Gunn Camera Shop, 16 Wexford Street, Dublin 2, 01 4781226
future work
A friend of ours, crack jackson jr has just got the €€€s to make a movie he and the lozenge have written, to be shot sometime next January and to be edited at The Farm by me and post produced by the team, involving a load of CGI, green screen work and the like. A space comedy of sorts. Looking forward to it a lot, should be fun…
I’m not being deliberately obscure about the names, these guys may want a degree of anonymity and those are their aliases out there on Web 2.0.
I know their real names.
texture 101
I’m not sure where this is going but I’ve started experimenting with textures in photoshop – a totally self taught tool and not very well at that. Anyhoo, I’ve started fiddling with textures, inspired by seeing the work of some flickrites of note (AdeleS, *Mama*Lola*). These people have great technique and I suppose what I’m trying to do is make my images appear as if they’ve been reflected in tarnished brass, or in an ancient mirror with the back silvering has been scratched and is peeling off.
The first thing I did was to go out and shoot some textures, and therein, I suspect, lies the rub. Textures are like anti-images, they’re what you don’t notice, so I think I’ve got to train my eye. So I started out in our playroom which has a dirty perspex roof, covered in all sorts of bits of twigs, moss and other objets and from the underneath, backlit it looked like it might have some potential. I squeezed off a few shots of our perspex, brought them into photoshop, and you’re beginning to see the results above. The technique is a combination of layering, overlaying, levels and selective colour, restoring parts of the faces back in which have become too mangled.
As I mentioned on the my flickr site, I’m not sure what this technique is adding to the images yet other than a bad skin condition which none of us has.
Photo Booth brings out the kid in all of us
On any given day I might come home to find the kids messing round with Photo Booth, and not only my kids, but any others who happen to be knocking round the house. Personally I think it’s fantastic that the two older kids will sit down and, well, just create. There’s no adult choreographing here, it’s just kids posing, experimenting, showing off, gurning, pulling faces and losing inhibitions. Even the odd adult finds their way in.
Enjoy …
If you’re having trouble viewing this mpeg, you can always view it here on YouTube at lower resolution
Music is by Tin Hat Trio
“The Clandestine Adventures Of Ms. Merz”
Book of Silk
For those of you who don’t like kids you can always watch something else.
new feature: photo galleries
There’s a new feature available from the navigation bar above. When you select photo (between CONTACT and RSS), you’ll be whisked off to a sub domain called photo.intercuts.com which is where you’ll find a number of photo galleries – images I’m responsible for. Have a whizz round in there if you like – you can always return back here by clicking on back to intercuts central in a banner at the top right of most pages.
Enjoy!
This has been superseded by photo.intercuts.com
photo: God’s country
God’s country
Originally uploaded by Hugh_C.
Another one from the Waterford infrared series. I’ve put this one in a frame which has put me in mind to do a bit of printing. I’ve tried it in one of the online services, and the preview looks great, so I’ll give it a go eventually. I’ve also stuck a couple of these in an online printing service, so you can pay through the nose to have ’em printed and mounted yourself!
photo: Lightroom v Aperture
processed in Adobe Lightroom
processed in Aperture
Test shot of Ben using a borrowed Sony DSC-F828 in Night Shot mode, so in theory an infrared image, although he’s mostly lit by an off-screen iMac. I doubt the iMac emits much IR, but I think the camera has its own IR source – maybe I’m doing it an injustice.
I like the image regardless, I like the unusual tone and colours.
The top image is processed with Adobe Lightroom, the bottom with Apple’s Aperture. Apart from the obvious vignette in the Lightroom version, I still prefer the subtleties it can produce. I can’t seem to recreate the skin tone in Aperture, but to be fair, I should try a different test using Aperture first.
photo: Photoshop Lightroom
Downloaded a trial version of Adobe Lightshop – seems pretty similar to Aperture but don’t know either of them well enough to evaluate just yet.
I’m very attached to this image of the barley though …
[UPDATE]
I wasn’t aware that Lightshop has stuff like this built into it, which as far as I can gather, Aperture doesn’t. The link leads to a flash-based web gallery of a selection of images which is easy to generate from within Lightshop.
photo: infrared and Nikon
Originally uploaded by Hugh_C.
Shona and myself took a little trip down to Dungarvan in Waterford primarily to eat at The Tannery, but also to kick back and relax. I took a few snaps before breakfast this morning, a glorious day with blue skies and big clouds, perfect for a bit of IR.
This is the first outing with the Hoya R72 and the Nikon, and the results are reasonably good. I’ve yet to crack the focusing thing though, since IR doesn’t focus in the same plane as visible light, and so I’m pretty much guessing. And seeing as you can’t see anything at all through the viewfinder, composition generally has to be salvaged in post production.