Chemotherapy Appeal 2012

The older you get, the larger your network of friends, the greater the frequency that cancer rears it's ugly head. The pain and grief it brings is shared amongst so many not directly affected by it. It was a real joy to be asked if I'd make an image for Barnstaple's Chemo Appeal for this Christmas. I'm hoping many people will be inspired to give to the appeal after seeing the cheery seasonal photograph.

These 'painting with light' photographs are never as easy as they look. This took 9 photos to get all of letters looking readable, plus another to add a little more light into the sky and trees. Thanks to Julie Whitton for organising it and to the 11 volunteers who stood out in the cold for an hour making this picture right.

Bideford Christmas Lights 2012

This year I'm doing my bit to make the Festive Season more interesting and creative. I'm offering people the chance of doing a night photography workshop based around the big 'switch-on' of the Xmas Lights in Bideford and Barnstaple. Below is the course description for Bideford on Sunday 2nd December. To reserve a place click here.

3.30pm: Meet upstairs at Gertie’s Café, Mill St, Bideford. The workshop will start with a round the table chat and introduction to inspirational images from night photographers. You’ll learn how to set your camera up to make long exposures under artificial lighting and for fireworks. You’ll also learn how to balance flash with ambient lighting and to raise the sensitivity to light of your camera so that you can use it in a more candid way. If you have particular images or techniques you’d like to duplicate please bring examples of them along.

4.20pm: Practice session making experimental images under low light and artificial light. These pictures and all of your successive images of the evening will be given 121 feedback to enable your photographing to continually develop and improve.

4.50pm: photographing the grand ‘Christmas Light Switch On’ (5.00pm)

5.30pm: Reindeer Parade. Here you will learn practically how to make documentary photographs of people (public, entertainers, stall holders, Santa etc.) and animals (reindeer) at night.

6.00pm: Firework Display. Using long exposures and combining more than one frame to photograph the firework display within the town/landscape.

6.30pm: Official end of workshop.

7.00pm: Optional drink in a local pub to assess and discuss images.

Bideford Christmas Lights 2010 ©Dave Green

Barnstaple Christmas Lights 2012

This year I'm doing my bit to make the Festive Season more interesting and creative. I'm offering people the chance of doing a night photography workshop based around the big 'switch-on' of the Xmas Lights in Barnstaple and Bideford. Below is the course description for Barnstaple on Thursday 22nd November. To reserve a place click here.

4.00pm*: Meet upstairs at Boston Tea Party, Tuly St, Barnstaple. The workshop will start with a round the table chat and introduction to inspirational images from night photographers. You’ll learn how to set your camera up to make long exposures under artificial lighting and for fireworks. You’ll also learn how to balance flash with ambient lighting and to raise the sensitivity to light of your camera so that you can use it in a more candid way. If you have particular images or techniques you’d like to duplicate please bring examples of them along.

4.50pm: Practice session making experimental images under low light and artificial light. These pictures and all of your successive images of the evening will be given 121 feedback to enable your photographing to continually develop and improve.

5.20pm: photographing the grand ‘Christmas Light Switch On’, here you will learn practically how to make documentary photographs of people (public, entertainers, stall holders, Santa etc.) at night. You will also get all the instruction needed to make photographs of the night-time landscape of the town centre lit by Christmas lights.

6.30pm: You won’t be photographing soul superstar Beverley Knight, but you will get a chance to experience and document the party where she’ll be headlining on the Square. After this you’ll be using fill-in flash to photograph the samba band.

7.30pm: Official end of workshop although there will be an optional drink in a local pub to assess and discuss images. You’re welcome to then continue taking pictures at the after-show party which continues at the Pannier Market headlined by iFunk.

Christmas Lights 2010 ©Dave Green

*all times are subject to change – awaiting official publication from Barnstaple Town Council.

Sandymouth

I've just gone through the pains of replacing my computer. My main frame was making so much hard drive noise and running so slowly that it was high time I moved forward from XP and 2gb of ram. I now have a Intel i5 processor with 8gb of ram which should suffice for a few years. Suddenly I am able to construct images that I could not have hoped for in the past and this image from the cave at Menachurch Point will be my biggest ever photograph once it is completed.

This constructed photograph is made up of 116 separate frames, many of which were triplicates of the same part where I would use my hand or dodging tool to remove flare; then skillfully merged together in Photoshop layers (minus the fingers). I will be able to get this 1.5gb file printed fine-art high-quality to at least 5 foot or 1.5 metres. An earlier 'snapshot' version is below.

This cave is of particular interest to me; lying at the edge of North Cornwall AONB at Hartland it is the spot where the RFA Green Ranger came to rest after it's shipwreck at Gunpath Rock in 1962.

Green Ranger - copyright unknown

Oops! Hopefully nobody noticed, the shipwrech at Menachurch Point is actually the 1,925 ton steamship "Belem" stranded in thick fog here on 20th November 1917. I've included a picture of some of the remains at the bottom of this blog post. There ought to still be something left of the Green Ranger further up the coast - I shall have to explore soon!
I'll be leading a photographic workshop 'Sea Caves, Shipwrecks and the Rocky Shore' here on Thursday 1st November, exploring this and many other caves and what is left of the Green Ranger (see below). You'll get a good introduction to my own photography whilst learning how to make the best of your own including using your camera under demanding landscape and lighting. Price for the day is £50, please email me to book a place: info@greengallery.co.uk

Other Autumn Workshops include:

Introduction to digital photography - £50
A practical days workshop learning to gain control over your camera, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash etc, setting it up for optimum quality under any given lighting, and making better pictures through composition. Numbers limited to a hand-full. I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for ½ a day for £75
Saturday 20th October in Bideford (10am - 5pm)
Thursday 25th October in Exeter (11am - 6pm)
Monday 26th November in Barnstaple (11am - 6pm)

Half Day Intro to digital photography - £25
A 'sit around the table' workshop to get to know your camera better. You'll learn about shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash and setting your camera up for optimum quality.
Monday 29th October in Barnstaple 3.00pm - 5.30pm
Friday 16th November in Bideford 2.00pm - 4.30pm

Photographing your own Artwork 11am - 6pm - £50
I have a wealth of knowledge and experience of photographing 2D artwork, jewellery and ceramics and I'm willing to pass this on to artists eager to improve their own image making camera skills. Although this workshop is for a small group (max 5) I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for ½ a day for £75, or I can deliver the workshop in your own home or studio anywhere in Devon for £100
Course Description pdf
Tuesday 30th October in Bideford
Saturday 24th November in Bideford

Painting with Light - £25
Celebrate the start of the dark winter nights on Westward Ho! beach. There will be natural light from an almost full moon and I will provide torches with coloured lights, flash lights and flame. You will just need to bring your camera with fully charged battery (please check with me beforehand that it can take a long exposure). A tripod would also be very useful but some of these will be provided. A cameraless friend can come along for free if they are happy be a torch bearer and do not mind dancing around with a light source.
Painting with Light pdf
Sunday 28th October at Westward Ho! (6.30pm - 9pm)
Wednesday 28th November at Westward Ho! (6.30pm - 9pm)
*Christmas Specials* Thursday 22nd November Workshop based around Barnstaple Christmas Lights and Fireworks - (4pm - 7.30pm)
Sunday 2nd December Workshop based around Bideford Christmas Lights and Fireworks - (4pm - 7.30pm)

Introduction to Photoshop 11am – 6pm - £50
Opening an image file and adjusting levels, contrast, brightness and colour balance. Rotating, resizing and cropping an image. Placing an image or images into a new file. Using layers and history. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4). I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for £150, or I can deliver the workshop in your own home or studio anywhere in Devon for £175
Wednesday 31st October in Bideford

Lands End

Light is both the most important thing for for a photographer and often the most difficult. I spent a couple of days in West Cornwall doing some research for Graveyard of the Atlantic and making some new images. The one above is a snapshot, a sketch, its a recording of somewhere I might return to and make a proper photograph. I was waiting for the tide to go out fully at Nanjizal Cave, south of Lands End, so I had a quick look around the rest of the beach. This one was mined sometime in it's past. I always us natural light in these photographs of caves which can be very tricky as this animation demonstrates!
The end result is a combination of most of the 21 frames. I find that you can't simply make a picture like this using HDR. All of these photos are shot in RAW, processed to jpeg, them loaded into Photoshop layers and manually combined.

Wren Music

I had a commision to photograph the staff at Wren Music. They asked for a gothic theme as they were working on a production that required it. The first photoshoot was at Okehampton Castle, a great gothic ruin. The sun was in more than it was out and I had to work very quickly finding the best locations, groupings, expressions etc whilst juggling with the lighting.

There was just an hour spent at the castle then it was into town, for another hour, to use an empty drama room of a local school for the next shoot. I had some lighting with me but the theatre spotlight in the room backed by the black velvet curtains gave the gothic look we were all after. A little light was reflected back into the shadows on the faces using a large sheet of white card. The picture compositions to me were all about marrying the musician with their chosen instrument and making something that filled a 3x4 frame in a balanced way. It was a challenge to make each portrait different from the last as there was no time to change the lighting. Again I had to work very quickly, concentrating on the key things like getting the all important eyes open and in focus.A slideshow of all the photographs from this shoot can be seen at my greengallery website.

Okehampton Camera Club

On Monday 10th September I had the pleasure of talking with the Okehampton Camera Club; a progressive group of about 25 creative photographers on the edge of Dartmoor.

I used the title ‘Constructive Photographs’ to present and discuss my work. This title can be used to sum up my working practice since the mid-1990’s. It was never a conscious decision to have such an obscure thread running through my work. But it is apparent in 35mm film triptychs, camera-less daylight processes silver images and through my 21st century digital work. The process is rarely hidden in my work and the photographically literate will make the connection of sprocket holes on the edge of a triptych or the hard, unblended, edge of a frame seen around the outside of a huge cave interior landscape.

The presentation in Okehampton was split into two parts; the first being key images in the progression of my work over the last 15 years. Then, after a tea/coffee break, the technical considerations of making these images was discussed and illustrated.

The animated gif above shows the constructing of an early image made in North Devon. This is named ‘Shipload Grotto’, a cave in the difficult to get to Shipload Bay, close to Hartland Point. I should really make an up-to-date animation to illustrate the using of ‘photomerge’ in Photoshop; this one was made using a 2003 Sony Cyber-shot which served me well at the time but it’s lens was prone to chromatic aberration (the coloured edge seen where the contrast between very dark and very light is at the most extreme, like the entrance of a cave). The finished imaged was made from 51 separate frames.

Prior to my talk at the Club, I got a chance to witness their annual show, held this year at the Museum of Dartmoor Life, in Okehampton. This was a great way of getting to know the photographers by their photographs. I was really encouraged by the overall quality of work and the emphasis the club has for creativity and experiment; members seem to be developing their own styles which enhances the overall experience of the exhibition. The show continues until 29th September.

Further reading....Writing this blog I just remembered a hidden page I have on my own website which some of you might be interested in. On it I write about the techniques used in making triptychs and constructed images. It isn't up-to-date but find the page here, it's called secrets.