What a week! Flew out of Inverness on the Monday to Birmingham, overnight in Birmingham and then a major board presentation, my hardest to date because I had to present about myself and my career plans. I hate talking about myself at the best of times, I far rather showing my ability through my work rather than waffling on it about it in front of an audience. But anyway, it went well and hopefully I’ll get some decent feedback.
Anyway, it did give me the opportunity to get out and about in Birmingham on the Monday night. The city has some amazing architecture, not least of which is the amazing Selfridges building pictured above. Birmingham city centre is the perfect place to de-stress, it’s easy to travel around and has some great photographic material. I took this just before a massive thunder storm blew through, it’s a HDR exposed 5 times from a single RAW file in Lightroom 2. I’ve become a huge fan of the ‘clarity’ slider in Lightroom, it’s basically a ‘make my shot cool’ switch that dramatically boosts contrast and adds a lot of depth to shadows. HDRs really pop with this.
Then it was on to London, a horrible journey in 30 degree heat on a train with no air-con made worse by the fact that it took 4 hours to signal problems…I was very grateful for my air conditioned room on arrival in Kensington!
After a much needed shower, I headed off to Westminster and battled the crowds to get some shots of Parliament, Big Ben, the London Eye and my personal favourite, this shot of a sculpture on one of the buildings in Piccadilly, I loved the realism of the dancers, and the 9pm sunlight really made them sparkle. My admiration for good street photographers increased 100% from my time in London. So many people, so much heat and so much to point the camera at, in the crowds you have the added paranoia of getting your gear stolen, which adds a lot of dimensions to an already complex aperture/exposure challenge! I love the blue of the sky, the shot is cropped but apart from that it’s just straight out of the camera, thanks Olympus!
Wednesday was spent in the London office, and then it was time to jump on a plane and head back to Inverness. I managed to get the Birmingham shoot processed and onto flickr by Thursday, and then on Friday it was off camping with my wife at Loch Fannich, a huge loch near Loch Luichart. Beautiful surrounds, lovely weather and the occasional fish made it a very pleasant end to a busy week!
The shot below was taking at about 7am on Saturday morning, I went for a black and white treatment on this one to try and bring out the relative ‘hardness’ of the mountains contrasted with the fluffy clouds. I’m pleased with how it turned out, apart from converting it to B&W I didn’t really do much in terms of post processing.
Finally, props to my wonderful sister who did the calligraphy that now adorns all of pictures following my copyright drama last week. She’s available for commissions as required!
This week looks set to another busy one…off to Cleveland (UK) not Cleveland, Ohio unfortunately! Hopefully a quiet weekend, I’ve processed about 300 photos over the last few days and I could do with a rest!
Lot’s of pics on the flickr feed and on Picasa as well – enjoy
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