F-2's photostream  

1. Vitamins & Iron, 2. DAY 8: Fives?, 3. Salisbury Cathedral (HDR), 4. Christmas Day Sunset, 5. Plunging Grape, 6. Fruiteeeeful, 7. Cup of Tea, 8. Speeding Train (Salisbury Train Station), 9. Boat Overboard!!, 10. Romantic Rose, 11. Blue Flame, 12. Pink Elegance, 13. Solitary Endurance, 14. Sunflower, 15. Ivy, 16. Glorious Sunset

F-2 Art Director

What kind of images do I produce here at F-2?
I enjoy lots of different forms of photography including studio, still life, architecture, HDR and portraits. Striving to make the ordinary less bland is a trademark of my photography and hopefully this shows through in my image making. When learning photography I was taught: “some of the best images you take will be within a mile of your home.” This taught me that you don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth to take images full of impact.

Basically though I’m an image maker using every tool available to me to create the images you see here on my flickr stream. Not many images are straight out of the camera, all images will have been processed in Photoshop CS3 in some way. Though I use Photoshop CS3 there is always a desire to make any images I produce look natural and not overdone.

This approach applies to my HDR images too where my aim is to make the image like the scene appears to our eyes, thus overcoming the limited latitudes of cameras in general. Furthermore the vast majority of my images are in colour because I love working with colour images. Sometimes I produce Black and white images if things suit a particular image, but in general black and white images do not excite me in the same way as colour ones.

The words which accompany images describe the scene which has been created in the image, sometimes based upon multiple personal experiences combined together. Images and words are an important part of my artistic style and can have a powerful impact upon the viewer. While I totally agree that a picture can be more powerful than a thousand words, a few accompanying words, properly chosen, can have an impact far in excess than a library of books.


How did I become involved with photography?
Became serious about photography in 1994 when I purchased two Sigma SA300 SLRs and some Sigma lenses. I added some Bronica medium format cameras to this later on and concentrated on learning my photography skills. I enjoyed working with Fuji, especially Velvia, which explains my love of saturated images.

These days I use digital SLR Canon cameras and high quality Canon lenses for my photography. I love taking studio images and have a fondness for images of toys and flowers. All my images are taken from my powerchair and this limits me because I cannot get up stairs etc, but it has the advantage of giving me a lower perspective to my images. When I'm unable to get out and about, usually during the winter months, I take lots of images in the studio.

When I am able to get out then my Sigma 15mm fisheye lens gets lots of use, along with my other Canon lenses. During 2007 I have been taking images using HDR (particularly at Salisbury Cathedral) and experimenting with combining my fisheye with HDR, which has produced some interesting results.

Photography helps me to cope with my disability and for this I am very grateful. I remain strictly an amateur photographer and have not made any financial gains from my photography to date. I'm not seeking to change this situation and enjoy doing photography for fun, instead of trying to make a living from something I appreciate greatly.


Health Problems
Health problems are taking up much of my time and energy these days. I am trying to take images when possible, but sadly not the same extent I was once able. I still love working with my Canon 5D camera in a number of situations.

In the local area around our new home I have found locations during the past year to take images and return in different seasons and conditions etc. I have posted the results on my Flickr stream when they have been processed.


Adobe Photoshop CS3, Lightroom & Illustrator CS3
After a long period of retraining I have been using the knowledge gained to process images and experiment with images – producing mixed results?!? I always take images using RAW and still use Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3 and Lightroom 2 when processing my images.


Photography Competitions
My images have received a number of awards for my child portrait photography and during the first half of 2007 I devoted a considerable amount of energy entering images into Worth1000 competitions, where my images won 14 golds, 6 silvers and 4 bronze, mainly in advanced competitions.

Worth1000 helped my photography to progress greatly and in particular my successful completion of the 2007 Worth1000 30 Day Challenge “Things Children Play With” (new picture had to be taken each day to a very high standard) in April/May 2007 was very beneficial.


The Small Print
1. Copyright Information: All f-2 images on this flickr stream and/or originating from this stream of images are internationally copyright protected "All Rights Reserved" - no image may be used for any purpose without written permission from the photographer of f-2 images. Using copyright images without permission is stealing. You are NOT allowed to download, blog, use in a mosaic, use on a forum, distribute, change, manipulate any of our images for commercial, private or non-commercial reasons. If you do use our copyright images without authorization then we will take severe action against you.

2. Invitations to Groups: We really appreciate being invited to post our images with the many wonderful groups here on flickr. But because of the extreme limitations imposed by flickr on the number of groups we can post images to, we cannot post images to all groups. Indeed sometimes we leave images for a while on one group and then remove it from that group so it can be posted to another group. Hopefully at some point flickr will realise the folly of this restrictive measure and change it.

3. Commenting: Thank you for taking the time to comment on our images, we always read all comments and appreciate your support. But please ensure that your comments are free of profanity, things of a sexual nature or anything political, racist etc because such comments are removed and the person posting it blocked.

4. Posting Images: There seems to be a trend on flickr for people posting an image from their stream with their comment. This is a practice we do not engage in ourselves. We would ask visitors NOT to post their own images on our stream because we regard this behaviour as spam and such comments are always removed. If someone wants to visit the stream of someone who has made a comment then they can click on that person’s avatar.

5. Notes: While we enjoy reading the comments people leave on our images we do not like notes because they look awful and obscure the image. So, please do not put notes on any f-2 images because all notes are immediately removed.

6. Contacts Please Note: f-2 is a family friendly flickr photo stream, where children are welcome and are protected from anything unacceptable. If your flickr stream images contain pornography, violence or are simply weird, and you make us your contact, comment on our images or fave our images, we will block you. We check every comment and fave!

7. Purchasing Our Images: Please note that f-2 is a totally amateur photographer and we do not allow images to be used for any commercial activity so please do not ask. We are not interested in selling any prints of our images.