One of the books I bought recently from Neil at Beyond Words is all about shooting at night.

I’m predominantly a low-light shooter, and I do sometimes get towards the edge of darkness, but never really fully in it. So when I was looking on his store last month, and itching to buy some new books (a hole was burning in my pocket), I chanced upon this title and thought it might help me get out there and start to shoot the other side of the day that most of us don’t bother with.

Night & Low-Light Photography by Jill Waterman

In Jill’s book, she not only provides some reciprocity charts for popular films, but also goes well beyond the chart that I own for Fuji Velvia 50 RVP to show you what exposure times you need to get you into the minutes and hours territory of night shooting with that film (and others such as Tri X, T-Max, and some tungsten balanced films too).

Unsurprisingly, the forward to the book is written by Michael Kenna, who is perhaps the champion of night shooting, often making his surreal images from 8 hour exposures.

I’ve enjoyed reading Jill’s book. It’s very accomplished, makes you want to get out there and try stuff with your camera at night, has lots of tips and suggestions, and also has chapters by many of the photographers featured on the Nocturnes web site, which is highly recommended, just to give you the taste for night shooting alone.

So this book is a bit of a mixture of nice reading, without being too fast into the technical, has examples, some study cases by numerous photographers and every now and then, gets into the nitty gritty of how to do it – with a digital camera, film camera, large format camera, etc.

I highly recommend it, and as usual, if you’d like a copy of this book, then I do believe that Neil from Beyond Words can get you a copy or you can order it from him here*.

*Please note that I do not make any money from my recommendations to Beyond Words. I simply believe in supporting a good photographic book shop, despite the fact that I’ve spent a small fortune lately on some rather lovely books!

Just back from Glencoe where we had some amazing light this weekend.

I’ve just been playing with some of my ‘quick snaps’ with the GF1 in Lightroom tonight (I’m not that proficient with Lightroom, but it’s quite an easy application to get to grips with), and I’ve created some nice darkroom versions of some of the square aspect ratio images I made whilst on the workshop.

Click on to enlarge

I didn’t have this beastie tripod mounted, and in some instances, I didn’t focus it either. I was too busy running a workshop, but still, it was great fun to make some quick snaps with the camera and I have to say it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long while with a camera.

I don’t think the image quality is anything amazing, but to be honest, I really do think we get hung up on image quality a lot. Surely it’s to do with the mood / feel you get from the images.

I had a dilema recently. I needed to get a digital camera, something to use for arbitrary shots, to use on workshops to illustrate things and something that had video capability so I could make some videos while I was away on photographic trips – like my upcoming trip to Norway soon.

Pap Of Glencoe

But being the photographer I am, I knew I wouldn’t be happy with something that was a compact camera. I didn’t like the Canon G9. I also wanted something that was small, light, but had the option of taking different lenses. So last week, spurred on by a friend’s emails about the Micro four thirds format, I got myself a Lumix GF1 and I’ve not been able to stop playing with it.

The thing is like a tiny SLR! It’s amazingly beautiful, light and the lenses I’ve bought so far – the 14-49, 49-200 and 20mm pancake lenses are superb. I don’t see much (if any) barrel distortion in them and the image quality is somewhere in between compact and DSLR standards.

I’m pretty taken with the micro four thirds format. Why should cameras be limited to an historic format such 3:2 ratio anyway?

So tonight I was at the pap of Glencoe with a group conducting a workshop and just as we were leaving the location, I made the image above, hand held at the scene. It’s just so much fun having a camera like this. I can see myself taking it with me everywhere.

Ok, so sometimes you come across something and it just…. stops you in your tracks.

Neil from Beyond Words came round to drop off a pile of books I’d bought (quite a few lately, which I hope to review in due course – including a rather nice one about shooting at night). I bought Michael Kenna’s Mont St. Michel, Hiroshi Watanabe’s Findings (beautiful book), Camille Solyagua’s Collections 92-96 (she is Michael Kenna’s partner and a great photographer too).

But while Neil was here, he showed me this book and I had to hold onto it to look at it a bit more.

Love Point cover

Hiroshi Watanabe is not a photographer I know a lot about, but I find this book really quite compelling to view. Neil described the book as disturbing, but personally, I find it fascinating. In it, Hiroshi has taken pictures of dolls posing as real models and of models posing as dolls, and sometimes, it’s just not that clear what is what.

Image © Hiroshi Watanabe

An interesting pose for a doll. But what about the next image? Is this a doll, or a real model posing as a doll?

Image © Hiroshi Watanabe

The photos challenged me and I must admit I found the experience interesting because It’s not often I look at a photo book and come away from it feeling as though I’m going to be pondering the images for days to come.

I love books that do this, and I think this book is not really a book about pictures of dolls and models, but more a way of questioning how women are perceived at times. The word ‘doll’ for example, suggests that a woman is not real, is a fantasy and I couldn’t help but look at the pictures of some of the mannequins here and almost try to wish them to be real (often something that is not real, but has the form of a human, can be slightly disturbing).

But surely, isn’t that what photography has to be about sometimes? To challenge us?

The copy I was given is a nice small edition and it comes with a tipped in photograph. You can get it here if you find it as compelling as I do.

I’ve not got a lot to say at the moment, but I am off to Norway soon, so I hope to have a few images from my trip to talk about when I return at the end of March.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy a bit of Scotland’s countryside, filmed on some DSLR’s and from the viewpoint of a rather amazing cyclist…..

Danny MacAskill – “Way Back Home” from Dave Sowerby on Vimeo.

I’ve just had notice of a last-minute cancellation for this weekend’s Glencoe workshop.

If you are interested in coming – more information about the trip can be found here.

Pap of Glencoe

I subscribed to AG Magazine this month and I’m just home from the north conducting a photo workshop. So it was with glee that I found the first copy of it on my door mat.

Inside the very first issue I’ve subscribed to was a really lovely portfolio of jonathan Luckhurst’s work. I wasn’t aware of his photography until I got the magazine, but I’m glad I know about it now.

mudbank ii © Jonathan Luckhurst

Jonathan is a film photographer and chemical darkroom printer. His photographs are in my opinion, really beautiful and it’s really refreshing for me to see someone approach the traditional medium of film and trad darkroom to create a look that has a timeless quality to it.

As he explains himself, he tends to focus on the anonymous scene, often trying to remove any hints that will allow the viewer to recognise the location. He also tends to show the human form as a distant figure in most of his work. I see on his web-site that he has a book coming out later this year (which I will be keen to get a copy of).

Mudbank-v, © Jonathan Luckhurst

From looking at Jonathan’s portfolio, It’s clear to me that he has a very strong identity to what he is doing and where he’s going with his work.

It’s an interesting topic, because I feel as photographer’s we should be striving to create our own vision of the world. And in Jonathan’s portfolio, he’s doing just that.

I was sent a link to this site last night that looks pretty good for giving predictions on the Aurora. It stated that they predicted an activity level of 4 on Thursday night and they even have a graph to show what a level 4 activity level translates into.

As you can see from the map – the aurora oval was much higher than all the press coverage here was suggesting.

Image © Geophysical Institute

But Simon, who was on my Skye workshop last December is currently up in the far north of Scandinavia, so he should have a much better chance than any of us living here in the UK will by the looks of it.

Good luck Simon! :-)

I didn’t see any trace of the aurora last night from Findhorn beach in Morrayshire. An astronomer friend of mine sent me an email just shortly after and he said:

“Sorry Bruce, I meant to mention this month & next months full Moon are the largest & brightest of 2011  being closest to Earth, we just need aurora to happen nearer new Moon.
Well just checking the current readings…
 
Activity level 4
Magnet field +5 (best to be 0 or minus figures)
Solar wind speed very low
 
Doesn’t look like the solar gust has hit us yet but if it were not for the current Moon then between the hours of 10pm & 2am is usually the optimum time for aurora watching.
 
Frustrating game this astrophotography eh?  ;-)”

Maybe you’ve had better luck, but based on what Mike was saying to me, it sounds like the press coverage is undeserved? I would love to hear from you if you managed to see something last night, or tonight.

Due to th sun throwing out a solar flare yesterday, there is a very high chance of seeing aurora for the next 48 hours.

I’m up in Inverness today and the forecast is for a clear evening here. So I’m heading out to Findhorn beach tonight.