Andy Brown (mrbuk1)'s photostream  

There are whisperings afoot.

Muted, conspiratorial, secretive mutterings ruing the all evasive popularity of 10 stop filters and their overuse in contemporary photography abound. Perhaps as recently as a few months ago those who turned to the Black Glass would have jumped for joy at the sight of a minimalistic seascape opportunity. Jetty? Check. Pier? Check. Groyne? Check. Yet now, many find such things almost recoil as they are approached - stalwart tripods and cable releases seemingly betraying intent upon arrival. Throw into the mix a mono conversion, a 1:1 crop, a spurious title and copious amounts of virile cloud and the disgruntled murmurs are reinforced with accusatory finger pointing.

(EDIT: At this juncture, if you're stumbling across my photostream as a newcomer then there's no need to look to page 2 or beyond. Be assured you'll find no such offending material there - just lots of pet photos and glamour models. Oh, you looked... It was the glamour models, right?)

Some were quick to foresee the simmering backlash and fled the beaches, turning instead to architecture for refuge and solace - how different the facade of modernity's brick faschia to the milky sheen of the ocean after all? Yet they too are now threatened, and every twist and turn of the way finds a new pretender swearing allegiance to Lords Lee, B+W and Hitech, infiltrating each subtlety and nuance of original subject matter...

Where will it end? Will 10 stops go the way of their ill-fated brethren, the starburst and tobacco filters of yesteryear? Derided and snubbed, their welcome revoked by the dictates of fashion? I certainly hope not. There are of course genres of photography that will never (can never) disappear, although their credibility fluctuates with trends. Portraiture, reportage, still life, abstract, nature, and landscape to name but a few are constant mainstays. It could be argued long exposures are a sub-genre, and 10 stop enabled ultra long exposures an addendum after that fact. Two days ago, I spent an unhappy few moments studying and weighing up the options presented me by three adjacent jetties running out to sea. I couldn't bring myself to shoot any of them, and instead wished I'd found them some short time previously before the nagging voices arose. I argued recently that there should be no taboos - all things are fair game and ultimately it boils down to the skill and vision of the photographer to make a scene work. I stand by this, but while I have no inclination to move the majority of my work inland let's just say it's getting harder to find subjects that work for me - and that's genuinely who I shoot for first and foremost.

I think it will be interesting to see what direction those of us who use ultra heavy neutral density filters take over the next year or so - I have to say when done well I still find the results some of the most compelling works I've ever witnessed. Perhaps some of you already have your own ideas, exciting little concepts and notions to be squirreled away until they reach fruition. Or perhaps some of you are just like me - stumbling along! Whichever, I hope the whole thing doesn't just come to a grinding Big Stopper. (Sorry!)

On a side note, many thanks to Martin Mattocks for accompanying me when I took this shot, and also to Andrew Gibson for including another of my photographs once again ('On Mill Pond' - elsewhere on my photostream) on his blog post www.andrewsgibson.com/blog/2012/01/40-beautiful-square-ph... focusing on square format pictures. It's really worth checking out as there are some terrific images featured. Great to see several of my contacts represented there too - looking good guys!

My tripod died yesterday. I was beneath a footbridge on Torquay seafront late in the afternoon, about to set up for my first shot and one of the legs kind of... fell off. It being Friday 13th I suppose it was appropriate somehow - following a couple of hours in the early morning when I'd driven around like a loon chasing forecast mist and fog that failed to make an appearance quite where I wanted it, and several hours at my mother's house lifting floorboards and replacing a section of wastepipe from a sink that had leaked on to the ceiling below.

Mind you it's not all bad, I've been using the same relatively cheap simple pan and tilt model for the last few years and it was due for replacement. I've put up with it's occasionally sticky leg locks, the lower central column section I lost ages ago having removed it during a night shoot after being distracted by a chatting passerby, the main column's lack of appreciation for the word 'rigid', and the encroaching salt deposits from hours spent in and near the sea - despite several baths once home! But, I liked that tripod all the same - it was familiar, comfortable, and although too heavy for some felt reassuringly weighty in my hands. I knew it's inconsistencies and eccentricities, was well versed in all of them, yet all the same it felt like a trusted confidante in an odd kind of fashion. I'd resisted the urge to splurge on new technology (which is unusual as I normally can't), and had by and large ignored the rigours and dictates of fashion - even gaining some smug satisfaction (no, I'm not proud) when encountering the 'all gear - no idea' brigade...

Oh, I know expensive equipment does not a good photographer make, but looking rather forlornly at my apparently inoperable companion I have no option but to retire it despite long and faithful service. So now I have a good reason to spend. I've watched incredible cloud skirt hurriedly across the sky all day and have been unable to take advantage, so as soon as I've finished this post I'm putting in an order for a new tripod. I've done my research, and hopefully within a few days will have a lovely new carbon fibre model with a quality ball head. Well, I never said I was completely immune to the fancies of progress!

So, it's a dark and windy start to 2012 - and a dark and windy (as in curvy!) first upload from me for the beginning of the year.

This is probably the darkest shot I've done to date in terms of tonal balance, and for those of you familiar with the zone system pioneered by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer, I really wanted to reduce this image to a fairly basic construct by representing the wall and ground primarily in zones 1 and 2. Accordingly, whereas I often might strive to process highlights (particularly specular ones) closer to zone 9 or occasionally 10, here the whole scale was anchored much lower, hence nothing other than the brightest tones of the light hitting the top of the wall itself register between zones 7 and 8. Of course, unless you're viewing on a properly calibrated monitor (you are, right?), then much of this is meaningless...

This created a problem for me when preparing the JPEG for web display. I'm not sure whether there is some sort of algorithm that works on increasing overall contrast of photographs once uploaded, but certainly I see a noticeable difference between my web-hosted JPEGS and my original files unless I prepare a tailor-made JPEG, to resemble the original as closely as possible. Unless I'm losing the plot entirely (which admittedly is a distinct possibility), it seems to me that very dark/bright tones are more obviously affected. This is a complete pain in the proverbial when you primarily work in a mono colour-space where tones are so crucial. For this JPEG, I had to work on reducing the contrast below the horizon quite significantly in order to best replicate the original. I got pretty near in the end, but not without some effort - and I'd still feel much happier were I able to wave a proper print under your nose!

I appreciate there are all sorts of issues with internet colour-space, JPEG compression and suchlike (anybody else slave for hours on a shot only to see the web carve up your sky with banding?!), but does anyone have tried and tested workarounds or workflow solutions that they believe help and would care to share?

I shall be producing some... lighter shots as the year progresses (alongside some black ones!), but if I've whetted your appetite for The Dark Stuff then perhaps the question should be just how dark can you go and still get away with it? Well, maybe this example from one of my absolute favourite photographers on flickr, Jeff Gaydash, demonstrates better than I can express in words. Or, how about this one from the incredibly talented Joel Tjintjelaar. Enjoy!

Shot on a trip with Jeff Morgan, the Technical Editor for Canon-centric magazine Photoplus.

This being my final upload for 2011, I'd like to voice a wholehearted thank you to all of you who have taken the time to follow my photostream throughout the year. It means a great deal to me that so many of you continue to do so, and I enjoy reading each and every single one of the comments you thoughtfully leave!

Photographically, it's been a fantastic year for me. I realised one of two goals I described right back at the start - having been published not once but four times - with ten of my shots appearing across four magazines. I narrowly missed out on a front cover, but succeeded in having the same image commended in a major competition (with a second shot being shortlisted in a second large contest), published in the associated awards book and exhibited in London. I've been fortunate to be featured in several blogs, had seven images appear on Explore's front page, am now contributing to an online photography magazine and have produced maybe half a dozen photographs that I'm really happy with. In addition, and perhaps best of all, I've been privileged to witness some of the truly astounding imagery that many of you have been producing. This spurs me on perhaps more than anything else to push myself to take pictures, and I'm sincerely grateful to you all for the constant inspiration. Happy New Year to all of you - here's to creativity and vision in 2012! I hope the Mayans were wrong...

Incidentally, one or two of you may just about remember the second goal I wanted to achieve this year, which was to get my own personal website up and running. I've been lapse with regard to this, but do have plans to address it come the spring - watch this space...

When it comes to family holidays, my wife has an uncanny knack of deciding just where it is we end up. Exactly how is it she always manages this? No sooner have I even given the matter some thought then air tickets are booked, the hotel/cottage/apartment (delete as applicable or add a random variable) are reserved, suitcases are packed and an unwilling volunteer has been given the onerous task of caring for our four cats.

So it was then with our jaunt back in early October to the Languedoc region of southern France. I don't really mind of course, because as far as I'm concerned any part of the world offers fresh and potentially exciting photographic opportunities that I may never see again. Frustrating then, that while the family lapped up the first four days of 100% blue sunny sky following our arrival, my camera stayed sulking in it's bag like a petulant child! However, come the fifth day and promising banks of cloud began to etch themselves slowly across the sky. Practically skipping with joy, knowing by then I'd earnt enough to warrant an escape into the great unknown, my beloved and I (My wife? No - she stayed by the pool with the others, why do you ask?) headed off alone in search of vistas wild and untamed...

Now the problem with being in a strange area is not knowing your way around particularly well. I had perhaps at best three or four hours with which to find something worth shooting, and as my father-in-law was the sole named driver of our rental car, only a very limited radius with which to succeed on foot. So it was that I covered rather more ground than I thought possible, traipsing through mile after mile of vineyards and villages. Every turn was a dilemma (just what was around those corners I dismissed?) and the glare from the mediterranean sun - still strong even in October - was threatening to bleach all detail from what landscape was on offer. I saw a great deal that afternoon, and even though much of what I discovered ultimately wouldn't lend itself to being captured well, it was great to be out. I couldn't help noticing, and not for the first time, that it's not just cultures and customs that are different in a foreign land - it's the factors affecting photography too. Light, cloud, air clarity - the typicalities of many things that I'm used to at home and take for granted seem skewed when abroad.

This was one of a very few images I took that day, and this is maybe my third attempt since to process it. In some ways it's a little different from much of my work, as perhaps befits my unfamiliar surroundings. I'm glad though - as I mentioned, I may never see this again...