Textures & Despondency

I have been feeling a little despondent about my photography lately.

I feel like I am getting my head around the camera finally but I have been focusing so much effort into this (spot the unintentional pun) that I have lost sight of what I want to do creatively.

I think part of this is down to suddenly being part of a photographic community with so many conflicting views on what is good and what isn't I can't hear the sound of my own photographic voice.

It will come I suppose. More research required. I've always been impatient.

Still, my latest experiments with textures seemed to go down well on flickr, so in the absence of trusting my own judgement, I'll be happy with theirs for now.

Click for larger size.

Little Red Boat

Sea Grass

The Cornish Fishermen Project

Well, I have been looking for something to get my teeth into.

I was feeling quite uninspired by the camera clubs competition 'People at Work'... I had thought for weeks about what I might do, but by the day the entries were due in, I still had nothing.

I didn't really want to walk into a shop and shove a camera in someones face and I wasn't even sure that would make a good shot in any case.

Then I heard that the Three Jays, a local fishing boat, was being launched (by hand, not wheels) down at Gorran Haven, a local Cornish fishing village. I didn't take much time to weigh up the options, as well, there were no options, so instead I grabbed my camera and headed off.

It was late morning, and the light was quite harsh, so I decided to use Photomatix to try and pull some detail out of the shadows and calm down the highlights. I was fairly pleased with the results over all.

There are more to come, but here is a taster:

Here is the one I entered for the competition - it came 2nd :)

(It's pretty much impossible to see them properly at this size - so for better, larger versions, click on the photograph and it will magically grow)

More to follow - watch this space :)

My flickr

Trains, Mills and Horses...

So I discovered photomatix...

Having had a long standing hatred of the over saturated HDR images where clouds seem to look like trees, I never thought it would be my bag.

However...

I found out that you don't have to process the images to that extent and I quite liked experiementing with the different effects, but I am trying not to get too addicted.

So here are a few examples:

70013 Oliver Cromwell at Par

One for all you train spotters out there. Got up early and headed to Par station where I got a good spot on the bridge to see this steam through.

Forgot that standing on the bridge would mean that I would be in the steam cloud itself, so got a couple of interesting shots of... steam.

The engine was at the back as it was on it's way back upcountry and it didn't stop at the station, so I was pretty pleased that I managed a couple of half decent efforts.

Train spotter info:

70013 Oliver Cromwell is a British Railways standard class 7 (also known as the
Britannia class) preserved steam locomotive.

The locomotive is notable
as one of the four steam locomotives which worked the last steam railtour on
British Rail (BR) in 1968 before the introduction of a steam ban.

(Thanks wikipedia)

Luxulyan Water Mill

We headed to Luxulyan Valley to walk over the viaduct and explore the trail which is part of a World Heritage site because of the amount of old industrial buildings / works that are still there.

This mill used to have a huge water wheel which powered an incline to Joseph Treffry's railway to Pontsmill.

Dirty Horses



Just a couple of dirty old working horses. I experimented with textures on this too, probably a little overdone.

Larger sizes can be seen on my flickr