Dhanakosa

Dhanakosa is a retreat centre in the Loch Lomond and the Troccachs national park, afew miles to the north of Callander. We went there for a week of photography and meditation earlier in October. I did enjoy the regular meditation, the vegetarian food and the peace and quiet of the situation of the retreat centre on Loch Voil. Of course there were plenty of opportunities to get out and about and take pictures - not just landscapes but little details around the centre, mushrooms, trees, waterfalls and even candid portraits. But it's some of my landscape photographs I've decided to include here.






On the last whole day of the retreat we were all up before dawn for the hour's drive to Rannoch Moor to catch the sunrise. Nothing too spectacular as it happened, but still a great morning out, with three stops in all including one with a wonderful view towards Glencoe.

Blown about in Cromer

Last Sunday we made a quick stop in Cromer after visiting a couple of properties - in Potter Heigham and Aldborough - as part of the Green Buildings open days organised by Norfolk CPRE. The strength of the wind blowing from the sea (from the north) was probably the greatest I've ever experienced in Norfolk. People were practically blown off their feet and many clung desperately to handrails. We had our cameras and I took a whole series on the Sport setting, which worked really well....I was expecting most of them to be ruined by camera shake. But not only that, the colour was practically monotone and though I converted one toblack and white it would have worked equally well if I hadn't. See what you think. Afterwards, I regretted not trying to capture some images of people struggling against the wind, but it was quite hard to stay upright!

Cambridge

I was in Cambridge a week ago spending most of Sunday wandering around the city centre with a camera and a mission - to take some black and white pictures in a style reminiscent of the great Henri Cartier-Bresson - for the small photography group I belong to. As I'm really keen on streeet photography and fairly blatant when it comes to using my camera in these situations, I approached this project with a certain degree of relish. In the end I picked five or six to convert from colour to black and white. (In Photoshop Elements 2, I used Image>Remove Colour and then adjusted the brightness and/or contrast as I thought fit). Here are some of the pictures, though not necessarily the ones I thought most reflected the aim of the day's shooting.

Depth of field

This week's project for a small photography group I'm involved with is depth of field. Here are some of the shots I took at the weekend outside the Norwich City Hall (a magnificent Scandinavian style building, bu that's another story).

Leicester city centre

I had a pleasant trip to Leicester last week with my daughter. She had never been to Leicester and I hadn't been to the city centre since my student days, so it seemed like an excellent choice for a day out. My only mental images of the centre were the clock tower and the market, but I had seen pictures of the new John Lewis building ands was really keen to see the building and try to take some interesting pictures (though in the end I only had my Ixus compact with me). We took the park ande ride into the centre - and this dropped us off very close to the Highgrove Centre - which is linked to John Lewis by a first floor bridge. The John Lewis is a glossy, shimmering and intriguing piece of architecture - always changing with the shifting light. There are some very keen security staff around the outside - one approached me and explained it was all right to photograph the building, but not the shop frontages underneath....hmm.....I agreed in order to avoid any trouble.

Anyway, here are a few images. There's a marvellous covered fruit and vegetable market and this is linked to a series of indoor markets, and some intrigiung shop frontages as well. Some things about Leicester centre have changed, but it's still recognisable. And we had a very pleasant lunch at Carluccio's too.

I am curious (yellow)

This quirky film title from the 1960s seemed an appropriate way to introduce this subject - just a bit of fun in North Walsham one evening along the lines of capturing images on the theme of colour. After spotting a bright yellow bin near to headstones in the churchyard I decided that would set the theme, seeing as the town centre seemed to have acquired something of a yearning for the colour yellow.

Experimental wedding photography

I've often thought it would be really great to become a wedding photographer, but the market is saturated and it's hard to see a way of breaking in. I think one way is to find a niche market and exploit it, and I've been trying to read around ideas on this in particular and wedding photography in geneal by reading Photo Pro Magazine - they seem to have regular features on this subject that look to be pretty useful. No doubt I have a good deal to think about but I'm trying to work towards this over the next couple of years.

I've been playing arouind with some pretty drastic crops of some pictures I took a few weeks ago at a wedding in Suffolk, and so here just for fun are four images. It gives me some ideas and things to work on - sometimes a crop works and sometimes it just doesn't.