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John Rylands Library by Neil Alexander

The other weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to get into John Rylands Library in Manchester on one of their occasional photographic tours. This means that you’ve got an hour to go pretty much where you like and shoot with whatever you like (lights, tripods etc). Normally you are allowed to take photographs inside the library, but tripods and strobes are strictly forbidden. The library was originally designed by Architect Basil Champneys in 1889, took 10 years to build and was commissioned by Enriqueta Rylands in memory of her husband John Rylands who was a Manchester based entrepreneur and philanthropist in the 19th Century.

John Rylands Library by Neil Alexander

The architecture of the building is absolutely stunning, and today it is operated by the University of Manchester as a public library. The same unfortunately can’t really be said for the lighting. Away from the fancy new entrance, its really quite dark and dingy inside. Right from the word go, I knew that HDR was the way to go – any scene you looked at was a combination of really bright highlights and dark gloomy corners. So these images are a series of 7 frames (a little overkill) tone mapped in Photomatix and then layered and tweaked a little in Photoshop CS5.

John Rylands Library by Neil Alexander

St Peters Square, Manchester by Neil Alexander

If you’ve been following this blog for more than a few posts, you’ll know that I’m immersed in an A-level photography course at the moment, and I’ve been so focused on it of late, that I felt I needed to get out and shoot something different for a bit of mental exercise.

Lately, I’ve been looking more and more into High Dynamic Range photography and found myself drooling over the work of Brian Matiash. He’s a “commercial architecture photographer, writer, and lover of all things social media” based over the pond in Framingham, Massachusetts and I absolutely adore his work. His modus operandi is to shoot specifically for HDR images with a tilt / shift lens and his blog is just a constant stream of inspiration. I’m also conscious of having neglected my Manchester Calendar for quite some time (The last cheque I got was for a sum total of 2 calendars!), so I figured the next available opportunity, i”d head into Manchester for dawn and have a play.

Typically, after all the beautiful sunrises and sunsets we’ve been having of late, the first available opportunity I get to do this is on what looks like is going to be a typical grey and damp Manchester morning. Armed with a fully laden CompuTrekker AW, my tripod and a flask of coffee, I headed into Manchester around 5am.

I had a pretty good idea in advance of what I was going to try and do, in fact I had two or three specific shots in mind. This is the first. Unfortunately it was clear from pretty early on that the best I was going to get was the occasional glimpse of direct sunlight, but generally the light was going to be diffused, soft and cold.

For this image, taken around 20 minutes after sunrise (about 10 to 6), I tried shooting St. Peter’s Square from the very end of the tram platform with the Sigma 10-20mm F4/5.6 right out at 10mm with a 7 stop bracket of a 1/20 exposure. I then processed the image in Photomatix. Unfortunately, as I don’t have the pleasure of owning one of Nikon’s stunning tilt/shift lenses, I ended up with a whole bunch of converging verticals. I just felt that I had to open up the image in Photoshop and apply a little “verticalisation” to it – looks a whole heap better if you ask me – my eye certainly didn’t see it and think “but those converging verticals make the scene look so odd”!

Oh, and I used the brilliant new content-aware spot-healing fancyness of CS5 to remove the cone in the foreground.

We’ve kept the online price at £14.99, and there’s now nearly 100 images to choose from, and as always the calendar can start in any month, and you can personalise as many dates as you like.

Order yours now….

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I had a late start this morning, again, as I had to run some errands and do a spot of re-cycling (I wish they’d take plastic and cardboard from our doorstep along with the paper and cans that they already do). I remembered from a while ago, that there was a rusty burnt out old Ford Ka near the re-cycling centre, so I thought I’d investigate it again. Foolishly, I had shorts and trainers on! The car was about 1/4 mile down a very overgrown wet path riddled with nettles. I made it through pretty much unscathed, though it did take me a while. But when I got there, the car was pretty much engulfed by vegetation. I got a few frames off, and then headed back the same way…. slowly! Don’t really feel that I got anything great though. The above is what I found when I got there! I’m trialling the Nik Software Silver Efex Pro and I thought I’d process this with it – interesting & pleasing results. It’s not cheap, but from everything I’ve read about it, it’s well worth the $$. We’ll see….

TTFN

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Well you just wouldn’t Adam & Eve it – for the first time in what feels like weeks the forecast last night for this morning was one of dry and bright, not warm but who cares! No rain and no grey skies! So I was up at half 3, out the door by 4 and in Manchester by half 4 – 30 minutes before sunrise. I shot for about 4-5 hours pausing briefly for a black coffee and a croissant in Starbucks with all the poor business types off to their daily slog around 8am. I had a blast! It feels like ages since I’ve put in such a concerted effort in what was pretty decent light. I whacked all 3 Baldelli mix albums on the iPod on repeat and I reckon I got at least half a dozen new shots for the Manchester Calendar. The shot above taken just round the corner from the Printworks was shot at F4.5 @ 1/100 sec. 200 ISO. I like it a lot, but its probably not a calendar image. The ones below are however. The first one is the tower of Manchester Cathedral, and yes that is the moon next to it (The moon was in the sky ’till gone 8am) shot at F8 for 1/100 sec and then “Selenium toned” in Lightroom. I like the feeling this toning gives the image, combined with the sunlight and the shadows gives quite a surreal effect.

This next shot features the corner of the M&S / Selfridges building and a tower from the Royal Exchange. Shot at F4.5 and 1/25 sec.

I’ve still more processing to do and these are just quick Lightroom exports.I reckon if the weather holds this week, then I should be able to get the updates finished

On a side note, I popped into the shop I got the D300 from whilst I was out to find out why the wireless remote (ML-L3) I bought for my D70s would not appear to work with the D300. It turns out that the D300 has no infra-red capability and that I need to give Nikon another 150 notes for another piece of kit (the ML-3). I nearly fell off my chair (or I would have done had I been sitting on one). How can they build a camera as cool as this packed with more features than you can shake a stick at, and not include Infra-red! Once I got back to the ranch, I did some trawling on t’internet and found a product called a Phottix Cleon wireless transmitter for D200/D300 & D3 that will work over a 10 times greater distance than the Nikon option and has a 2 second delay for use on the Bulb setting for the vast sum of…. £17.50! Ok, so it’s not quite as pretty as the Nikon option, but hey that’s like over £100 less! I’ll let you know how well it works when it arrives from Hong Kong – I hope its better than the last piece of cheap junk I got (a wireless flash remote for the D70 that worked once and then never again!)

And finally (I nearly forgot to mention) after 12 sessions with my personal trainer, umpteen visits to the gym, a complete change of diet and no booze over the last 4 weeks I’ve finally started to shed some poundage! 5 and a half last week to be precise. Apparently the result of sitting behind a desk all day for the last decade or so, and generally being a complete lardass has resulted in my metabolism slowing to the rate of a giant snail… with very large boots on. But finally it appears to have ditched the boots in favour of some trendy sandals and it’s actually on the move again! WooHoo!! Only another 20 pounds to lose.

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I set off just before dawn on Monday morning to head up the M6 to try and make some more photographs for the Service Stations project, but as I was heading up the M56, the sky suddenly began to turn a deep red. So I figured I’d swing by Manchester on my way. I shot this off the bridge over the Irwell near the Opera House. I timed it pretty well, as no sooner had I half a dozen frames in the bag, the sun appeared on the horizon, and the red glow in the sky disappeared. The latest results from the Service Stations project, being film based, will have to wait to be posted until I get round the developing the film. I don’t really have the facility to do any processing at home, film or digital, so they’ll have to wait until later on today.

Incidentally, I read about a new image search engine which is in private beta at the moment. TinEye enables you to find your photos in use online, attempting to “do for images what Google does for text”. The service offers various services which leverage Idee Inc’s image recognition technology which finds images in use in print as well as online. Their clients include Getty Images, Jupiter Images, Masterfile and SuperStock from the stock photography market as well as Adobe Systems, Associated Press and Digg. TinEye is the latest application of their technology and one which has massive and broad potential application. Although TinEye’s database contains ‘only’ 500 million images at this time, I was able to find a few examples of my microstock photos in use. It’s able to match partial and altered images. Searches can be made by uploading the image you wish to match, or pasting the address of an online image. TinEye then matches the image with those in its database. I’ve managed to get signed up, and test the service which is really quite impressive. There’s also a very handy Firefox plugin. Check it out for yourselves here: http://tineye.com

A 4am start on Sunday saw me in Manchester city centre shooting some new images for the Manchester Calendar. I was slightly later than planned due to too many Carlsbergs the night before, so I missed a gorgeous red sky at dawn, but I’m quite pleased with the images I did manage to get. I reckon there are about 8 or 9 new images that I can add to the 2 or 3 I got the other day.

I was also hoping to get some shots of the runners at the Great North Run which was to start at 10am. But as I had covered several miles by the time, my foot which I fractured on holiday (see earlier post) was beginning to give me some serious jip. I thought I’d move my car a bit closer and just jump out with the DSLR and a couple of lenses in a smaller bag. That was until I actually started trying to drive through Manchester. As a result of road after road being closed off, I ended up on the outskirts of the city centre trying to get back in again. All in all it was a disaster. Even when I did manage to sneak through a few roadblocks and back roads, every last parking space had been taken. With hindsight (Hah) I should have stayed exactly where I was and just taken my time hobbling over to the nearest point on the route. But ho hum – I’ll be better prepared next time!!