Shooting a VW Scirocco with small flash
Volkswagen Scirocco by Neil Alexander Over the last couple of years I’ve made several photographs of this Scirocco, but this time I wanted to try something different and really push my little flashes. I wanted to shoot into the setting sun and light as much of the car as I could with 2 SB900s (on [...]
The delights of the Cotswolds
This weekend just gone, my wife and I took the opportunity for a well overdue weekend away and headed down to the Cotswolds for a couple of nights. As usual, it was beyond my abilities to travel without a camera, so in the interests of marital harmony I travelled light – just my Billingham 550 [...]
How I plan a landscape shoot
Today I thought I’d write a little post around what I put into planning a day of landscape shooting. The first thing I’ll do before a trip like my recent trip to the Lake District is to check the weather, re-check it, and then check it again. The weather in the UK is so varied [...]
Winter sunset in Lymm, Cheshire
Well I hope you all had a fun filled an over indulged Christmas and New Year. I know I certainly did. The older the kids get, the more fun it seems to be. Can’t imagine that upward trend will continue forever so I make sure I enjoy whilst I can….. So to the photographs. These [...]
My favourites from 2011
It’s that time again…. In keeping with the last couple of year’s reflections on the year that was (2010 here, and 2009 here) below are my 12 14 favourite images from 2011. Slightly different from these previous entries though, I haven’t picked one image from each month, I’ve simply tried to pick my 12 (which [...]
European Christmas Markets, Manchester
Earlier last week, I took a trip into Manchester to shoot the Christmas markets, of which there are now so many it wasn’t easy deciding where to start! In the end, I plumped for the main European one in Albert Square presided over the an extremely large illuminated Santa perched over the entrance to the [...]
Derwent Valley in the High Peaks
Further to last week’s post on Stanage Edge in the Peak District, here’s a couple more images from that weekend that I’ve just processed. Multi-frame HDRs processed in Photomatix Pro and then tweaked in Photoshop and Lightroom. Got quite a few keepers that weekend, so there’ll be more to come…. Shortest post ever I [...]
Stanage Edge in the Peak District
Last weekend, I had the privilege to spend the entire weekend up in the Peak District. If you’d been following my tweets, you’d have noticed that Saturday, weather-wise, was a disaster. The day started off grey and miserable and ended up the same way, and to be pretty honest felt even greyer and more miserable [...]
The key to long exposures
I enjoy shooting long exposures. The longer the better, unless that is you’re stood on a very noisy motorway bridge in a very cold wind. I’ve posted on shooting long exposures several times over the years (for example “Silky Water Shots” and “Breathtaking examples of long exposure photography“) but as it’s something I really [...]
Blacko Tower, Nelson, Lancashire
This is a photograph that I made earlier this week up on the Lancashire / Yorkshire border. I had intended to try and get quite a bit closer to the tower, and did plenty of research before heading out only to find a large “Private Property – Keep out sign” on the gate at the [...]
Bridgewater Canal, Lymm
Last weekend I was over in Lymm by the Bridgewater Canal just before sunset where I made the photograph above. It wasn’t quite as still as this initially looks. It was actually a little breezy, but I wanted a silky smooth feel to the water for this, so I popped on my Singh Ray variable [...]
Bollin Valley
It’s been a bit of a manic week, so I’ve not a great deal to post today. Aside from overhauling the home page of my main website with some crafty jQuery as I’ve long wanted a full screen image slideshow (check it out here – I’ve still a little left to do, like overlay a [...]
A quick trip to Mars, Lancashire
Puddles in a field, New Longton (Click to view larger) A little detour on a trip back from Lancashire earlier in the week found me at the entrance to the field above just as the sun was setting around 6pm. The countryside around these parts is rather flat and uninspiring and it was hard [...]
More from the Lake District
I had intended this post to be a follow on from last Tuesday’s “4 Photography gadgets I couldn’t be without“, and was going to focus on “4 iPhone photography apps that I couldn’t do without”. But I’ve just gone over to the darkside and got myself an Android, and I’m still finding my feet with [...]
Ambleside, the Lake District
Last week I made it up to the Lake District again, and although this time I was up there for less than 24 hours, it proved quite a productive trip. The light on the evening I arrived was good. Not great, [...]
4 Photography gadgets I couldn’t do without
A productive weekend’s shooting up in the Lake District got me thinking about 4 gadgets / tools that no landscape photographer should be without and that I consider to be invaluable to my craft. The first is a right-angle finder. It’s a little gizmo that clips onto my viewfinder and allows me to look perpendicularly [...]
Slideshow presentation
This morning I had to do a 10 minute presentation so I thought I’d share part of it with you today. I’ve had to tweak it a little for the web, including change the music which I feel makes it a little less effective. If you’re viewing over the air, you may want to wait [...]
Do I miss film? Nope….
Digging through my archives I came across this image I made a few years back on my Hasselblad 503. It’s a scan of black and white negative that I developed myself. I miss the tactile nature of the process of developing film. I don’t miss the faff, mess, smell, stinging eyes, and did I mention [...]
Worldwide Photowalk, Manchester
Last weekend was the fourth annual Worldwide Photo Walk and as this was the first year that someone’s taken the initiative and decided to lead one in Manchester, I thought I’d give it a whirl. In fact there wasn’t one, but two this year! A bit like buses, or policemen…. Anyway due to commitments on [...]
Lydiate Lane Farm, Cuerdon, Lancashire
As I was headed up the M6 earlier this week, I decided to come off a couple of junctions earlier than I would normally and see if there was anything that caught my eye. I was specifically looking for old farm machinery and old barns with a particular project in mind. I took a couple [...]
Rhyl beach at dawn
At dawn yesterday morning, I was to be found on the beach at Rhyl in North Wales fully equipped with tripod and coffee flask. Disappointingly the tide was out and there is a whole area of the beach cordoned off for some construction work, so I could only really shoot out to sea or up [...]
The Greyhound, Ashley in the mist
It’s been a rather quiet week for me this week from a shutter actuation point of view, what with overhauling my galleries (check them out here or use the Galleries drop down in the navigation above) and uploading a decades worth of images to the US Electronic Copyright filing service but I did make the [...]
John Ryland’s Library revisited
As part of the reworking through my library I’ve found quite a few images of Manchester that I had initially discarded which looking at now, with a slightly older and more informed taste, I think are most definitely usable photographs. Both of these images were taken inside John Ryland’s Library in Manchester on one of [...]
Revisiting Vietnam
Short and sweet today. I shot my first and dare I say it, last wedding on Sunday which, as it lasted all day, means that my week is already a little out of kilter. I’ve also had hammered home this week the importance of key-wording, captioning and rating images as I go. I’ve had to [...]
