Unit 2: 1; 1.1; 1.2; 2; 2.1; 2.2; 2.3; 2.4
I am so ridiculously behind with my notes and this blog that it’s shameful. We’ve been faffing about with Photoshop and it’s taken its toll. What with trying to get my head around and practice what we’ve learnt in class, AND try to write up those studies in a remotely interesting, let alone correct fashion, I am on the verge of losing the plot. I’ve saved a couple of draft posts that will see the light of day at some point. But not yet. Definitely not yet.
In the meantime, big news. And I mean massive.
Yes, the master of ICM has not only seen my post about him; he has made contact. Someone dobbed me and my blog into him and, bless him, rather than having his lawyers send me a Cease And Desist for using his pictures without permission, he emailed to thank me for my interest in his work. Plus – even better – he asked if it was OK to nick a quote from my post to use on his website! OK? OK? Frankly, I’m having the “I Felt Like I’d Been Punched” commemorative t-shirts made up as I write.
Clearly a thoroughly nice chap, Chris also offered to answer any questions I might have. Since then, I’ve found out that he gets the depth of shade/darkness his work is known for by crushing the blacks; used to use a 50mm and ND filter but now just uses a small Olympus (which one I am yet to ascertain) and zoom lens. He’s also pointed me in the direction of a bunch of articles and videos explaining ICM technique here. So that’s some homework to add to my list.
Hearing from Chris encouraged me to get back on the ICM tip. So I did. This time the weather was better so I added an ND filter to allow a longer exposure to experiment in. What seemed to work best was slow, smooth movement that followed a natural line – here a fence and hedgerow. (Too fast and I ended up with pics that made me feel carsick and looked dire.) I’ve had very little chance to edit any of these. I’ve taken a lot of pics recently and would rather get some of them up on the blog, warts and all, than spend much longer tweaking them. But I will go back to my favourites and have a play around with them.
These first ones are pretty much straight out the camera. Saved as jpegs from Camera Raw without a tweak. So still work to be done. I need to boost colour and shade, at the very least. I’m drawn to the most abstract ones. There’s one in particular that I like to think of as my “Turner”. Pompous numpty, that I am.
One of the few images I’ve had time to muck about in photoshop with is the one below. The sky in the original shot was quite grey, so I’ve used Photoshop to bring in a bluer sky from a completely different image, and also added some colour blur to the grass area by blending in an ICM shot of some grass and yellow flowers .
I also tried using photoshop to blend multiple images of the same subject – in this case, roses against a brick wall. As a first-time practice, it worked out ok, but I am pretty sure I went the long way around to get there. Plus, I fancied trying out a bit of blur, but I’m buggered if I can remember how to do that. Still, class tonight. Poor old Zig, our tutor, is going to have to go over this all over again…
Life Through a Lens 
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