Heather Angel

I was lucky enough last week to go to a talk by Heather Angel at Guildford Photographic Society.  Heather gave us a beautiful slide show showing her macro and wildlife images and provided us with some much valued "pearls":

Macro:

• Work hard on backgrounds - they can make or break a photo
• If no flash - can use camera bag to cast shadow to make background black
• Use diffuser to reduce light on subject
• Metering pale or dark subjects - spot meter an average tone
• Use a reflector to bounce sun into flower centres
• Use a light tent for photographing individual flowers - produces even lighting - botanical painting effect!
• Bright colours with dark areas - use flash
• Fibre optic light good for texture
• Black velvet and plamps to create black background
• Focus stacking to create total depth of field

Wildlife/travel

• Expect the unexpected
• Meter off neutral tones if subject mainly black or white  

And of course I bought a few books, particularly in preparation for my forth coming trip to Skomer to photograph puffins :-)

 

Landmark: the Fields of Photography

I visited the Landmark: the Fields of Photography exhibition at Somerset House a couple of weeks ago.  Very interesting!!  These were not your usual landscapes - each one had a twist: beautiful, macabre and bizzare - scars, change and beauty all combined.   Curated by William Ewing, the images had been grouped together in themes: Sublime, Witness, Pastoral, Datum, Landmark, Scar, Delusion, Control, Reverie and Hallucination, but I found that walking through, I didn't pay much attention to the themes - I was so captured by the strength and overwhelming prescence of the photography.

Here are a few of the images (amongst the very many) that I particularly liked:

I was particularly keen to see the image that had been used for the advertising - Nickel Tailings # 34 and also # 35 by Edward Burtynsky - interestingly a Prix Pictet shortlister up for the Water portfolio:

Nickel Tailings # 34 and # 35 (c) Edward Burtynsky

Of course these images are about contamination but they are stunning. Simple, effective, limited colour pallette (which helps make the red more striking) - they remind me of a river of blood.

Less disturbing and significantly calmer is the image from the "We English" series by Simon Roberts: South Downs Way:

South Downs Way (c) Simon Roberts

This is a sight I often see in Cumbria with people jumping off the fells sides and parachuting down to the ground.

I found the images by Peter Bialobrzeski about urban wasteland transformations - this image from the Lost Transition series is almost ghost like:

Transition # 20 (c) Peter Bialobrzeski

Moving on to extreme weather photographer Mitch Dobrowner; to say this image is stunning is an understatement!  The small detail of the lit trees brings perspective and context to the overwhelming storm clouds - I love the composition in this image with the storm occupying the bulk of the frame:

Trees-Clouds (c) Mitch Dobrowner

Being a big fan of polar landscapes (and desperate to see in real life) I loved the work by Olaf Otto Becker from the series "Above Zero"; again limited colour pallette, simple composition, strong graphic lines - seems to be a winning formula for landscape photography:

River 1. Position 7.  Greenland (c) Olaf Otto Becker

Another limited pallette, "The Upside Down House" from the project "Tethered to the Polestar" by Ivar Kvaal, obviously a scene of destruction, but also of calm - an "after the storm" feeling:

The Upside Down House (c) Ivar Kvaal

These are just a few of the amazing scenes that were on display; I realised that in picking out hte images that most appealed to me, I was drawn to limited colour pallettes, strong graphic lines, and quite simple compositions.  These are themes I should explore through my own landscape photography!