Well I s'pose as I've built the facility to have a photo blog I might as well get on with writing something!

My intention with my my blog is to muse over some of my thoughts regarding my photography, particularly my direction and style - something that continually occupies my thoughts. I'll also lend my opinion about equipment, other photographers and anything else that tickles my fancy really. As a fan of large format and medium format photography, I'll be commenting on the processes involved in the oldie-worldy process of using and processing film!

The blog is as much for me as anyone else who may find it, hopefully over time I'll be able to look back over my thoughts and allow me (and you) to track my progress and direction.

I set out to the excellent Millington Woods in the Yorkshire Molds today with my Hasselblad as my weapon of choice. This is a little unusual - I've been pretty much exclusively using my Chamonix large format over the past few months. So I decided the time had come to free up a bit and take to the woods with 'blad.

I set up my first shot and pressed the shutter - the shutter didn't sound right, so I tried again without the film back on and figured out the lens wasn't firing properly. Took it off the camera, fiddle about a bit and tried again - it still didn't fire and consequently got jammed on the camera. Damn.

So this is where my lesson begins - to free the lens you need to turn a small screw head in the camera. Simple - if you haven't left your small multitool in your other (large format) camera bag. Not simple if all you have as stand-in screwdrivers are car keys and twigs. So that was the end of my first outing with a Hasselblad fora a while. So, lesson one – take some basic tools out with you. A simple multitool, some gaffa tape, string... any other useful suggestions?!

Luckily all wasn't completely lost, at the last minute I picked up my little Ricoh GX100, and I also had my Agfa Isola in my camera bag - a very basic 6x6 camera which dates back to the 50's. I'd have rather had my Sony a900 with me but I was traveling light. So my second lesson learnt is to always have a back up camera with you. Whilst my back up cameras weren't ideal, at least I managed to make a few acceptable photographs, meaning I hadn't travelled 150 miles for nothing!http://www.peaklandscapes.com/new/html/blog.php?entry=9

If I find myself having to work for 12 hours solid I'm not particularly happy, if it involves staying up all night in the process I'm even less happy! But the prospect of having a long session of overnight landscape photography is a whole different matter!

So I find myself on the East coast of Scotland in June, where the sun sets after 10pm and rises at 4am, with a over an hour of subtle light either side too. In truth there's very little darkness, maybe a couple of hours.

I hatched a plan to visit Cove Bay near Hopeman on the Moray coast (also known as Cashach Cove). I hadn't been there before but had seen great photos from there, particularly by Joe Cornish in his 'Scotland's Coast' book and images by Ian Cameron. After soaking in the sunset I was to move on to Bow Fiddle Rock further down the coast at Portknockie for dawn and the sunrise. The last time I visited Bow Fiddle Rock was over the Christmas break, I was interested to see how the arch was lit in the summer with the sun rising behind it.

I set out at 7pm, laden with my Chamonix large format and Sony a900 digital, the Hasselblad also came along but carrying all three was impossible. I was also well packed up with some fine egg sandwiches and chocolate biscuits (thanks to the Mother (not quite) In Law) to keep me going through the night.

My plans were somewhat scuppered by the adolescent rave going on in Cove Bay, complete with marque and sound system (not exactly providing the best soundtrack to landscape phtography!). I must say though that the ones I encounter were surprisingly polite – I must be too used mouthy big city teenagers! I decided to stay at the Hopeman side of the bay and concentrate on compositions within the large pebbles and rock formations. The landscape here is quite chaotic, I think only repeated visits will uncover wider compositions – more to look forward to next time, I also think it would benefit from more sea – the tide was completely out. I made three large format images at Cove Bay, with a very golden light casting shadows on the rocks.

As the sun was setting, Cove Bay was cast in shadow and I moved around to the Hopeman coast where unusual rock formations are covered in crustaceans. I made a number of digital images as the sun fell out of site. It was perfectly safe to move around the rocks long after the sun had disappeared, I used the remaining light to produce some long exposure seascapes – no need for ND filters here, my 2 minute exposures were all natural!

I was back the car by 11.30 and ready to move on to Portknockie, half an hour or so up the coast. There was a golden band of light on the horizon as I drove east, this never disappeared all night. After a break for an hour with the egg sandwiches and a flask of coffee, I decided to head out and make use of the limited light for more long exposure compositions whilst trying to capture the vivid orange band of sky. The dynamic range was too much for one shot, the orange band rendered a pale yellow, the Sony's sensor also struggled with the colour, the only way to achieve an image closer to what I could see would be to blend two images and adjust the colours to match my memory – still away from home I haven't managed to do this yet but I'm sure I got all I need for a good image.

As the clouds above me cleared, the glow of dawn began to light up the cliffs at about 3am, I positioned myself facing the Bow Fiddle Arch and made some test images with the digital camera, I wanted to get a composition I was happy with so I could set up the large format ready for the optimum light. I decided that was on a rocky outcrop which would provide lead lines to the arch itself. Getting to the outcrop resulted in a wellie boot full of water – wish I'd remembered to roll them up!

I was rather amazed as I looked round at one point just before the sun was about to show itself, and be greeted by the sight of a line of photographers up on the cliff-top looking down on my location – I thought I'd be the only one mad enough to be be there at 3.30am! I'm sure they were most disgruntled to see that I'd already beaten them to my prime location, positioned right in their field of view! Early birds and all that! On chatting with one of them later I discovered they were a group from the Netherlands on a photo workshop.

It was all a bit of a rush to get a few large format frames exposed, there was a fair amount of jumping around from the shore to the rock, hopefully I'll have exposed them correctly, and in focus! Being the kindly gent I am I quickly packed up and moved out of the way so that the Dutch party might get some decent images without me jumping about mid frame!

I finally moved up to the cliff top to make another image of the outcrop I'd previously photographed at 2am with the large format as well as the digital this time, before returning to the car for more coffee.

Not content with 10 hours of photography, I called in at Findhorn on the way back to make a large format image I'd perviously done digitally which I wasn't completely happy with, although after this long awake I'm not sure how it's going to turn out – it really was time for some sleep!http://www.peaklandscapes.com/new/html/blog.php?entry=10

I really have been slack when it comes to Blogging – there always seems to be too much 'other stuff' to do. But the time has come to make more of an effort and get some more words written before Tim Parkin covers EVERY photographic topic. I'll try and make a post or two a week from now on, they might not be overly deep and meaningful but hopefully of some use to some people out there.

So, to kick off I wanted to post some details of how I adapted my Chamonix 045N-1 to fit a Maxwell Hi-Lux screen. My decision to take the plunge and get a Maxwell screen was prompted by the much talked about (in Large Format circles) focusing problems with the standard supplied fresnel screen which was causing out of focus photos when they appeared in focus on the ground glass, particularly at bigger apertures. This is clearly not good! When you choose a to use a large format camera you do so in the hope that your transparencies are going to be as sharp as anything out there, 1mm of error focusing could easily compromise this.

I'd always wanted to upgrade to a Maxwell screen anyway just for the improved overall brightness, having now been out and used the camera with the Maxwell I have to say it's a huge improvement, it's a whole new level of brightness. For me it means I can sell my heavy Nikkor 90mm f/4.5 lens and replace it with a smaller and cheaper f/8 as I don't think I'll have any problem seeing and focusing successfully. The very fine fresnel circles are also much less intrusive than those of the standard Chamonix fresnel which also helps with focusing.

The problem is that the Maxwell screens come with a cover glass which is 1.8mm thick, this means that the replacement Maxwell screen isn't just a straight swap, the problem being that the four metal fittings that hold the glass in place don't lay flat on the new, thicker cover glass. (pic1)

Now it is possible to screw the existing clips in place with the new cover glass fitted – the screws just about bite into the wood and the retaining clips sit at an angle. My advice is DON'T do this! In my haste to get out and try the new screen, I did and two of them ended up falling off without me noticing, resulting in my lovely new Maxwell falling to the ground and getting permanently scratched – not happy! Even if you can get the clips to stay in at an angle you'll find that the screen protector plate won't hold in place because the grooves in the retainers will be at an angle and the protective cover needs these to be parallel to hold. Hugo was kind enough to get me some replacement clips and screws sent over from the Chamonix factory.

So this leads me to this Blog – an explanation of how I converted the retaining clips so they sit properly against the new Maxwell cover glass and hold everything in place securely and we can use the protective cover again.

The answer is to cut a small bit of the metal retainers away to accommodate the new cover glass – a pretty simple job that only took me about half an hour to do.

The first step was to drill a hole in an off-cut of wood which would snugly fit a retainer clip, I drilled it just deep enough to leave the retainer sticking out by the amount I wanted to remove (I had to drill a couple of holes to get this right as you can see from the pic (pic2). I held the block steady in my vice. I used a 12mm forstner bit to drill the holes as they leave a smooth, flat bottomed hole. I used the screw that holds the retainers in place on the camera to hold it in place in the hole (pic 3). I found that there was still a bit of movement to ended up G-clamping the retainer in place too.

Right – time for some butchering!

I used a thin metal cut off disc in my Dremel (pic 4). These things are pretty fragile so expect to get through a couple in the process of cutting the chunks out. If you haven't got a Dremel I suppose you could use a small hacksaw to do the cutting – the Dremel makes it much quicker and easier though.

First I cut downwards – you don't really need to do any precise measuring and marking to determine where to cut, as long as you're removing enough material it doesn't need to be precise. I cut just to the side of the screw hole, leaving just a bit of metal between the cut and the hole (pic 5). I then cut horizontally to remove the chunk – as I'd set the retaining sticking out by slightly under the thickness of the cover glass (which is 1.8mm) I just cut level with the wood block, removing the correct amount to retainer metal (pic 6).

This leaves a rough chunk removed from the clip (pic 7) , the next job was to smooth the cut up, I used an abrasive disc on the Dremel first (pic 8) and finally used a needle file to do the final finishing (pic 9). You can be as neat about this as you like – you can't actually see the new cut surfaces when they are re-attached to the camera so if you're lazy like me, you'll do just enough to take any sharp edges off. That's the clip done – now all we need to do it put them back on the camera.

I filled the existing screw holes with a bit of wood calved down to a point – a match stick will do (pic 10). I then cut it off level with a knife (pic 11). All that's now left to do is put the screen in place and screw the clips back on, leaving a nice level retaining clip and a securely attached Maxwell screen! (pic 12)

An added bonus of using a Maxwell screen in that there's a recess left on the inside of the ground glass where the old fresnel used to be housed. I find this is a great place to slot masks – I almost always shoot square these days so I made a square mask out of some thin black plastic sheet, I can bend it slightly and clip it in where the fresnel used to be – this works excellently as the out facing surface where you focus is free to focus on, unaffected by the mask. The mask is easy to remove by just removing the screen back and popping it out. (pic 13).

I'm rather fortunate to not only have a girlfriend with great parents, but also a girlfriend with great parents who live somewhere that's great to photograph! This means it takes no persuading to get me to agree to a week's visit. So I find myself up in Forres on the Moray coast in Scotland again for the Christmas period – camera packed and ready for a change of scenery.

For the past couple of months I've been working exclusively close to home in the Peak District on a project that is going to take all year, I won't be releasing any of this work until its completion, so it's good to have a break and get the chance to make some images that are independent of this output.

The 23rd of December and I've been offered the choice to go with the rest of the family to see the pantomime in Inverness – or go out on my own to do some photography all day. So I was up bright and early ready for a day out at the pantomime...Oh no I wasn't...

I've certainly seen a change in my photographic subject matter over the past year. In some way this has been a conscious decision – wanting to focus more on the Peak District – my local environment. But I've also found myself wanting to move away from seascapes. Maybe I've seen enough wide angle, slow mo, golden seas now to put me off. Of course it is possible to produce lovely coastal images – I love the work of Andrew Nadolski for example, but for now, I think I'll be keeping away.

So for a change I found myself not heading off to the lovely Moray coast on this visit. There had been a lot of snow in the Highlands prior to our visit so I decided to head inland to Dava Moor, through which the Forres to Grantown-on-Spey road passes for my day's photography. On the way over on Monday we had driven along the side of Loch Ness (no we didn't see it) and the snow on the trees was magical – I was hoping to find something similar on today's outing. I had also noted a couple of lochans on the map just off the road that I thought would be interesting given the frozen conditions.

I has very disappointed to find it had been raining overnight, so as I set off out of Forres, I was gutted to find the snow had been washed off the trees. Thankfully as I pressed on, and the road became more and more challenging to drive on, I realised all was not lost and there was some scope for snowy photography.

The next problem I encountered was finding somewhere to park, the lay-by next to the first lochan was deep in snow and was completely unusable. After a couple of passes up and down the road I managed to find an area that looked OK to pull off the road on to, I parked up and set off through the snow to the lochan. This wasn't easy as the snow came to well above my knees (and up to my waist at one point).

I made a number of images here, drawn to the patterns of snow and frozen ice. I've stuck mainly with the square format I'm favouring these days, I have a square mask on my large format camera which allows me to use the whole width of the 4x5 sheet. I also did some comparisons with Fuji Astia and Kodak E100G, the Astia results being much more desirable. The E100G has a decidedly blue cast and would have benefitted from a warm up filter.

After a flask of coffee and a sandwich in a more usable lay-by I headed up to the Blairs Loch on the outskirts of Forres – as it has started snowing again I didn't want to venture further afield.

I was instantly taken with the contrasting leaf colours in the plantation that boarders the path to Blairs Loch and made a number of images that highlight the lingering golden leaves contrasting against the snow covered ground and the evergreens behind.

The loch itself wasn't too interesting, the fading light (at about 3pm at this time of year) wasn't doing a great deal. Still, I made a composition with the lovely reeds in the frozen water and then had a walk around the loch and enjoyed the scenery.

As I was heading back to the car the sky had turned a wonderful deep pink colour in the opposite direction to the sun set. I managed to quickly find a suitable foreground composition and with no time to set up the large format camera before the colour faded, I made a couple of exposures with my digital SLR, the results of which you can see below.

All in all a great day out, I'll be posting new images from this and a couple of other days out in the Recent Work Gallery over the next week.

I have a vision of someone I envy, I have no evidence but I’m sure this person, exists… This person, a photographer, lives in a world which isn’t governed by the internet, they make photos for the love of the art, hopefully they sell prints and their art is appreciatively hung on many a wall.

Unfortunately I’m not that soldier. When I set out on the path to become a landscape photographer I started uploading my photos to Flickr in the hope to gain some recognition from my fellow photographers. This can be an addictive practice, collecting “wow” comments and icons of waving kittens can certainly boost the ego of the budding photographer.

Thankfully, as I’ve developed as a landscape photographer I’ve kicked the Flickr habit and only post there occasionally now with the aim of showing some of my Flickr friends what I’ve been up to and to get feedback on some of the photos I’m undecided about.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I decided to join 1x.com which for those of you who don’t know, is a similar site as Flickr except for the fact that all the photos that are submitted are judged for worthiness by the site’s moderators. Other 1x.com members can also vote on whether a photo is worthy of inclusion.

At first inspection this does make for a website with generally impressive photos (I only looked at the landscape section but I’m sure this is also true of the other portfolios). But, and it’s a big but – the body of work there suffers from the same problem as all the other online social networking photo sites, its pretty much full of photos with an instant hit of ‘wow’. It’s the photography equivalent of eating bag after bag of your favourite flavoured crisps – great to begin with but sooner or later you’re going to get sick of them (perhaps not the best analogy, I can eat A LOT of crisps before I get sick of them!).

So this brings me to Mr(s) Internetless, a photographer who doesn’t seek recognision from social networking sites, someone who has enough self conviction to believe in their own creative skill, someone who doesn’t feel the need to churn out endless dynamic clichés to please the eye of the internet gallery visitor. The problem for me is that these internet ready images only really work on the internet, do people actually put these things on their walls? I for one, wouldn’t want an instant hit photo in my lounge, shouting at me every time I walked in the room.

I would much rather have a piece of work that operates on a subtle level, a quiet image that portrays a mood and has feeling, something I want to keep coming back to – something wowless! That’s what I aim to do with my own photography, I aim for a subtle pallet, tone and balanced graphic compositions (I’m not of course saying that I always achieve it!). My desire to find my own set of rules means I often ignore the obvious – golden hours, thirds, digital aspect ratios. This does mean that I stand less chance of being accepted by the moderators as 1x.com but so what!

I urge any photographer to seek out their own way of seeing, develop their own style and photograph what they find interesting, if that isn’t starburst suns kissing the horizon over a time blurred sea that’s all good – embrace the wowless! And if your more subtle photos don’t attract waving kitten awards on Flickr, don’t be disheartened, sooner or later your work is going to start to attract the attention from people who appreciate the considered subtleties of your work. http://www.peaklandscapes.com/new/html/blog.php?entry=13

I know that we all go through those periods when we fall out with our photography. We struggle to see what the point is, why we're doing it and we wonder if we'll ever make a decent image again. Couple that with the inevitable destructive practice of comparing our work with others and that's it – photography depression.

Well, I've been suffering with this for the past few weeks, after a good period of photo-making running up to new year and a burst of enthusiasm for all things creative in the new year, things have gone a bit.... flat.

So this morning, having woken up late having not slept well last night, I was feeling rather miserable. I didn't want to stay in and work on stuff I didn't want to work on, I was sick of sitting about not wanting to do anything so, by midday, I'd managed to muster the motivation to go out with the camera.

I was out with Paul Arthur a couple of weeks ago at the Roaches at the south end of the Peak District, where I thought I'd made a good photo only to discover when I processed it that something had gone horribly wrong with the exposure (I'm guessing I'd nudged the aperture ring round to the wrong setting, I couldn't have got the metering that wrong!). So I decided to return there for another go as near by webcams were showing up some fog which I needed to make the composition work.

Although there was no fog when I arrived, meaning my second attempt at the photo wasn't going to be today, my little outing made me realise how important landscape photography is to me on a number of levels.

It's easy to get dejected sitting at home, thinking about creative direction, about the next stunning location where your most brilliant photograph is waiting ready for you to rock up and take. The fact is, it's not going to happen, imagine all you like, you've got to be out there, and chances are, the next great photo you make is probably not going to be something you've pondered over, it's just going to be something that arises from being out in the field, working at a composition that's presented itself. So I realised whilst I was out there today, standing in the rain, that new ideas present themselves whilst your out 'in the zone' – forced to look for new ideas due to the weather I decided to make some black and white images which I think could make for an interesting series of photos. I wouldn't have come up with that sitting sulking at home watching re-runs of the news on Sky and eating mini chocolate eggs!

Photos aside, it's just good to get out there, it's great to see how the colours of the moss and heather intensify in the rain – and there's no cup of coffee like the one from a flask after you've climbed your way up a muddy slope :o)

Another good thing about getting out there to do some photography is the drive there and back – it's a great opportunity to have a think about life and get some ideas going in your mind about how to get things moving and how to get yourself out of your creative hole.

So hopefully by motivating myself to get out for the afternoon I've come back with a couple of decent sheets of T-Max, if not, I've got myself an idea for a project and I got some exercise out in the rain!

I’m in two minds about writing this blog post –it’s something I really should be keeping to myself. But oh well, hopefully you won’t believe me anyway!

There’s a lot made of film expiry dates – there’s fear about colour shift, increased grain… fears that after the use by date has passed film is fit for nothing but the bin.

It even goes beyond use by dates, if your precious collection of Fuji Velvia is tucked away next to the chicken drum sticks in the freezer it’s feared the emulsion will melt away into the heavens leaving you with a box of expensive but totally useless sheets of plastic.

I’ve never really followed this way of thinking, 4x5 sheet film is expensive stuff – a sheet of Fuji Velvia is currently around the £2 mark, Kodak E100G around a massive £4 a sheet – you don’t want to be leaving your shutter open by mistake when you’re using that stuff! I always keep my eyes open for expired film – there’s some bargains to be had out there (possibly partly down to the very paranoia I’m talking about here!), and the truth is, as long as it’s not been stored on top of a radiator for the past 10 years, chances are it’s going to be fine.

You normally find that film that is sold on auction sites has been stored in either a freezer or at least in a cold place. A lot of this stuff comes from people who have been stupid enough to give up film and move over to digital (don’t worry, they’ll be back ;o) so they’ve been pretty careful with the storing of their film. Of course there’s nothing to stop them saying it’s been frozen when it hasn’t but that’s just a chance you’ve got to take.

I have a few boxes of Velvia 100 Quickload, dated 2006-8. I got them early on when I moved over to large format before I realised the error of my ways! As I didn’t really care much for it I wasn’t going to bother taking up any more freezer space to store it – I’m told the film to food ratio in our freezer is tipping too heavily in the favour of film as it is! So it’s been lying around the house, at first in the outside storage cupboard and then in my office room where it’s pretty warm. Generally not ideal places to store film.

When I came to use it a couple of months ago (I find it’s good for autumn colours if nothing else) the resulting 4 years out of date, stored in a warm office transparencies were absolutely fine, just as good as the in date Velvia 50 sheet I exposed at the same time. 

I also tried out a couple of sheets of Astia which I found lying around in a double dark slide the other day, no idea how old they are but they’re going to have been in their a long time, and the double dark slide had been stored in the office for a at least a couple of years. Again, the results were fine – no obvious colour shift, no excessive grain.

As my much loved Fuji Astia is cruelly being taken away from me very soon I’ve been stocking up, I’ve got in the region of 1,200 sheets so far (if anyone has any they don’t want, do let me know!). This has included buying up some out of date boxes, the oldest one of which ‘expired’ in 1998, remember way back then – Billie at number one with “Because We Want to”? With the last remaining boxes of 50 sheets of Astia going for $90, this box of 50 was something of a bargain at $6.17! I was told it had been stored in a refrigerator but 12 years out of date – even I thought this might be pushing it.

So this weekend I did a test – I loaded up a Grafmatic with a sheet of 12 years out of date Astia, one sheet of Quickload (expired 2005) which I removed from it’s envelope and put in the Grafmatic, and a sheet with a use by date of 2010. The Grafmatic let me fire off 3 shots in quick succession of the same scene and then processed them all together in Kodak E6 chemicals.

The results are pretty amazing – the 12 year old film is very close to being identical to the 5 year old film, slightly less saturated maybe, grain is fine. And compared to the in date Astia – well there’s very little difference. It’s actually closer colour wise to the 1998 stock, the 2005 having a slightly bluer cast. Of course we’re also comparing 2 different version of the film here, the 1998 and 2005 film is Astia 100, the 2010 is 100F – so this may account for any differences in colour – the 100F does look more neutral.
The fact is, if you didn’t have the others to compare them with you wouldn’t see a problem. So my $6.17 box of 50 sheets were a bit of a bargain!

So… I’d rather you didn’t buy out of date film, it would leave all the more for me to pick up cheap! If you must follow my example though I would recommend testing a sheet before you have to rely on it. And if colour is critical use your film that’s closer to being in date. For me any slight colour cast you may get isn’t the end of the world, it’s all fixable.