Festival 2018

Cie Pré-O-Coupé

YES! The 31st Festival CiRCa starts today – 10 days of madness in and around Auch – I am covering 17 performances, some I know, but a lot of new work – watch this space!

#festival_circa_2018

Spring Cleaning? In October?

Well yes – from time to time it’s a good idea to clean the muck off the sensor of your camera/s, and as the Circus Festival starts in 5 days time….I thought it best to be prepared.

I prefer the « wet » method of sensor cleaning – a couple of drops of cleaning fluid on the swab and a couple of gentle passes on the sensor.

The best way to check if the cleaning has got rid of all the muck is to take a photograph with your widest wide angle lens – in my case, I used my 14mm, stopped down to it’s minimum – f/22. Take a photo of the sky or a bright, even surface – much easier to see the blobs of muck. Using the minimum aperture means that the natural ‘diffraction’ which occurs at very small apertures will mean that the dust spots really stand out.

This is an example before the cleaning process. The dark spots are tiny pieces of dust. It saves a lot of post treatment to remove this rubbish before making pictures! (Click on the image to enlarge it)

Contrast 101

Here’s a example of how a little « treatment » can enhance an image. Some people would throw up their arms in horror and say stupid things like « This never happened before Photoshop » etc.

Of course it did – for more than 80 years there have been a whole series of different contrast printing papers that photographers put to good use in their darkrooms. With the advent of colour photography, home printing became more complex, but « adjustments » were always made, to increase or decrease colour temperature, take out dust etc. To say we have never « treated » images before Photoshop is a fallacy. Click on all the images below to enlarge them.

This is the final « treated » image

To get there, we started with this…

…which has had no colour or exposure adjustments – just simple noise reduction and lens correction.

I applied a few very simple adjustments to get this…

…which isn’t too bad, but I felt it needed a little more contrast…and I also added a « vignette » to loose the hard edges…which became the final version.

I also created a black & white version, just for fun, as high contrast black & whites are a favourite of mine…

It’s ok – but I think I prefer the final colour version – I fully realize that I’m in a minority of one, and probably the only person who likes this – I just thought it showed a very simple approach to creating a more interesting image.

But don’t forget – the original image needs to be correctly exposed in the first place. The people who blindly fire off their cameras all over the place, not taking any account of the exposures, are basically wasting their time – when they download the initial images they will have to spend a considerable time trying to get them back, more or less, to a « correct » exposure (but isn’t really) and then even more time and effort to fine-tune the image to make it worth looking at, which more often than not, it isn’t.

Getting it right in the camera is primordial – with a good base, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

National Daughters Day – wtf?

I can’t believe I missed this – and I feel sure my daughters will never let me forget it – but I seem to have let National Daughters Day * pass without sendind a card…

Please excuse me – in my defense, I had no idea that there was a National Daughters Day…

I’m Googling « National Left Thumb Day » and « National Clean Underpants Day » to check the dates – best to keep ahead.

Can’t help thinking that « National Blue Sock Day » could be fun…

* It was on the 25th of September

 

Sometimes I wonder…

Sometimes I wonder if these idiots do these things on purpose. I mean, they can’t really be this stupid, can they?

Recent in a long line of #stupidquotes, here’s Mary Carryonbag, otherwise known as Pariah Carey, I’m sorry, Maria Carey:

« Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry…I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff. »

And of course we can’t forget Ronald Bump:

Talking about John McCain, « He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK, I hate to tell you. »

And surprisingly for Al Gore;

« A zebra does not change its spots. »

It seems to me that there’s an inverse correlation between the dollars in ones bank account and the neurones in ones brain.

 

The holidays are over

Yes, we’re back in Auch.

Visa was, as usual, superbe – the Kevin Frayer exhibition was, to us at least, the best offering this year. Remember this?

Camp de réfugiés de Balukhali, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, 20 septembre 2017. Un garçon rohingya désespéré s’accroche au camion d’une ONG locale qui distribue des colis alimentaires d’urgence aux réfugiés récemment arrivés.
Balukhali refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, September 20, 2017. A desperate Rohingya boy clambering onto the truck of a local NGO distributing urgent food supplies to newly arrived refugees.
© Kevin Frayer / Getty Images

Kevins exhibition was in the Eglise des Dominicains in Perpignan, where we had seen Don McCullin’s exhibition a few years ago – magnificent background to truly exceptional photographs.

Our visit to l’Hérault was just what we wanted too – exploring the area in the mornings, and reading books by the pool all afternoon – what more could we ask…

This is from Cazavieille, Hérault.

After a week we left and traveled ‘overland’ (ie; not on motorways) to a tiny village called Volx in the Alpes de Haute Provence – another week of exploration and reading by the pool – it was, after all a HOLIDAY.

This is from Simiane-la-Rotonde, Alpes de Haute Provence.

Sunrise, viewed from our terrace – Villeneuve, Alpes de Haute Provence

Next stop? Surely the most important thing coming up is the Festival CiRCa in October… More on that later…

 

It’s that time again

September already? Must be time to visit Perpignan.

Yes we’re off again this weekend (PS Key’s Under the mat…) and judging by what I’ve been able to see on Internet, this years exhibitions should be very interesting.

All the usual places to visit, with a very full day in prospect as we review all that’s up for offer. Here are a few examples of stunning work from some of the worlds photo journalists being shown at Visa for the Image this year.

Balukhali refugee camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, September 20, 2017. A desperate Rohingya boy clambering onto the truck of a local NGO distributing urgent food supplies to newly arrived refugees.
© Kevin Frayer / Getty Images
A Palestinian hurling stones at Israeli troops during the fourth weekly protest on the Gaza-Israel border. According to medical officials, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops firing across the border fence. April 20, 2018.
© Khalil Hamra / The Associated Press
World Press Photo of the Year

Venezuela Crisis
Caracas, Venezuela, May 3, 2017. José Víctor Salazar Balza (28) caught fire during clashes between riot police and demonstrators protesting against President Nicolas Maduro.
© Ronaldo Schemidt / Agence France-Presse

The eternal paradox – I’m impatient to see what dreadful pain and sufffering are being wrought in our world.

 

My ‘take’ on the situation – NIKON Z series

Since the recent announcement of the NIKON mirroless cameras, the Z6 & Z7 I’ve read, with a certain amusement, the various on-line/forum/YouTube ‘experts’  and I have to thank the authors – it’s quite amazing just how far from reality people will take the tiniest tit-bits of information.

Aside from The Angry Photographer (TAP), who is a complete card-carying idiot (who owns « at least 300 Nikon lenses » – yeah – of course you do…) and the only person who believes in what he says, most of the commentaries have started off fairly quietly before becomming hugely theoretic and oft-times frankly fantasist – it’s clear that 95% of the people writing A: have little competance to comment, and B: can’t actually write anyway.

A recent « Anonymous post » over on the NIKON RUMURS blog was 100% right – but the forum members then proceeded to tear his comments to shreds.

A popular subject is Nikons choice to equipe the new cameras with just a single memory card slot. To must intelligent photographers, this is a very minor inconvenience – to the forum members this is almost the end of the world. It has to be understood that a large percentage of the forum members don’t actually practice much photography, but are very prolific commentators – so their argument was « oh no, we can’t back up our data in the camera – what happens when I photograph a wedding and the memory card goes bad???? »

Well most, if not all, serious photographers would have a second (or third) camera with them – it’s unlikely that they would rely on a single camera, and it’s far easier to have multiple bodies each with a different lens etc.

The « oversights » from NIKON are listed, page after page of errors – they didn’t include this, they didn’t include that…total rubbish but for the forum members it’s important to show you are up there and Following this nonsense – please don’t ask me why.

One question which seems really obvious to me, but as yet no-one has even asked, let alone tried to answer, is why the new Z series lenses are so expensive?

The existing 50mm f/1.8 AF-S is a perfectly capable lens, sharp, light, etc. and costs 200€ – the new Z series lens with the same optical formula is 679€ – yes, of course, I can use the new one without the FTZ adaptor, but one I have the adaptor I can use it with all my older lenses. The 35mm AF-S is another example – the original AFS costs 489 for the f/1.8 while the Z series equivalent costs 949€

The camera bodies are not, in my opinion, particularly expensive – so are Nikon trying to recup some of their development money in pitching the new lenses at a much higher level?

Gotta go – there are some new comments on the blogs that I’m watching – cheers up a gloomy afternoon!

 

 

 

Netflix? Who needs Netflix?

Time’s latest cover

Let’s face it, it would be difficult to write this stuff, so the fact that it’s actually happening currently makes the news channels far more interesting to me….