I had great photographic plans this Christmas, which included taking shots of the kids enjoying themselves, opening their presents, and so on; but I came down with some sort of virus on the 22nd and haven't felt right since. As a result I haven't shot any new material, and don't expect I will for the next couple of days. So I've been archive raiding and constructed this one from a shot of some graffiti I came across in Leeds a while ago. If you're interested, the original is here:

.../iblog/archives/symbolic_gesture.php

As you can see, the version I've posted isn't much like the original, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out, even if it is more Photoshop than photography :-)

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2.51pm on 11/12/07 Canon 5D EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM 52mm f/3.5 1/60 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 200 no RAW C1 Pro absolutely no doubt about it ;-)

This is the second of the two shots I mentioned yesterday, taken in an out-of-the-way area of town. As a lot of the stuff I've been posting recently is processed a bit more subtly than this I'd be interested to hear what you think of this one.

Update: I forgot to mention that this is an HDR image, constructed from a single RAW file using Photomatix Pro.

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12.57pm on 18/9/07 Canon 5D EF 35mm f/1.4L USM f/5.6 1/50 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro perspective corrected

Normally, I have quite a large degree of sympathy for graffiti artists, but even I'm struggling to see the merit of this piece, mostly because of the message – "thug life" isn't exactly an endearing tag ;-)

Oh, and this is definitely one that benefits from the black theme.

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1.05pm on 18/9/07 Canon 5D EF 35mm f/1.4L USM f/6.3 1/250 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro minor

This week has been one of those that I'd rather forget. Libby and I have both had colds, as have Tabitha and Finley (our two youngest), and while neither of them have been particularly unwell, both have needed a lot of attention. Tabitha won't be put down, even for a minute or two, and Finley, in addition to waking us both up for the last few nights, hasn't been in an especially good mood the rest of the time.

And the hard drive in my laptop died which, given that it's only a few months old, is really annoying. What's worse is that I lost a fair bit of work too. I didn't lose any images, but I did lose the latest bit of the Tonal Range and Curves Tool tutorial and some writing I was doing for a client. I've also lost around the last six weeks of emails, so if you emailed me recently and I haven't got back to you, please send it again.

As for this shot: I know it won't be to everyone's taste, but I still find this sort of material appealing. I think that what draws me to this sort of scene is the way in which the various scrawls, scratches and letters build up over time, such that what was once a clear perspex window becomes a mess of unintentional colour and abstraction.

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1.41pm on 2/5/07 Canon 5D EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM 62mm f/2.8 1/1600 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

I met up with John today, which wasn't unusual, but we were also joined by Eric Kelley who runs conomocity.com. Eric, normally based in Charlottesville, Virginia, had been over in Ireland for a week but stopped off in Blackpool on his way home. We toured a number of my usual haunts, and while I don't think I managed any great photographs, we did have a good day. Cheers Eric :-)

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3.01pm on 6/6/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 27mm (43mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/250 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro 1x1

First: thanks for all the great comments on yesterday's shot: they were much appreciated, not least because I don't often post photojournalistic type material, so it's good to see that it was well received.

As for this shot: I find it difficult to resist taking shots of graffiti, but after thinking of the title for this one there was no way I wasn't going to post it ;-)

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9.29am on 26/4/06 Canon 20D EF 70-200 f/4L USM 140mm (224mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/2500 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro 2x1

I'm putting this one up early as a) I'm still not overly pleased with yesterday's effort, and b) I'm knackered: mostly from staying up too late postprocessing yesterday's shot (and the several million extra versions), but also because our two eldest and my wife seem to have some sort of stomach bug. They all seem to be on the mend – Camilla's now downstairs on the settee, Amirah is asleep, and my wife is dozing – but they weren't particularly well last night.

So, given that I only had around three hours sleep last night I thought I'd put this one up while I'm still awake enough to type ;-)

Oh, and if anyone's interested I added a graffiti category to my entries, a gallery of which can be seen here:

.../galleries/graffiti_gallery.php

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12.34pm on 16/4/06 Canon 20D EF 70-200 f/4L USM 118mm (189mm equiv.) f/5.0 1/100 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

When I look back through the images I've put up over recent years it's plain that the majority of them have nothing to do with the darker side of life, and I often wonder why. It's not that I've had a sheltered life, nor that I want to pretend that the world's a soft and gentle place, it's just that I don't often focus on that side of the things.

On which note ...

I guess the thing about this scene for me is that it encapsulates something about the nature and futility of violence. Sure, it's a rabbit, and a graffiti rabbit at that, but there's something about it that drew me in; and while it's clearly not a pleasant image, I guess that that's the point.

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2.44pm on 8/4/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 17mm (27mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/60 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

Well, here's one that will irritate two groups of you: those of you in the "it's just other people's art" camp, AND the "that's not photography it's digital art" brigade ;-)

This one is a composite image: the left side is one image, the right side another, and they're merged using a gradient mask to gradually obscure one as the other is revealed. If you're interested I've put the originals up here:

.../archives/killa_bunnies.php

Oh, and the title refers to the Moloko track by the same name, from the album Do You Like My Tight Sweater?

Killa Bunnies #2, which I prefer to this one, will go up tomorrow.

I went out for a while this morning, despite the crap weather, as I've totally run out of stuff to put up. And I did come back with a few shots, but will probably only post a couple of them. This one, you'll be relieved to hear, is my least favourite of the two ;-)

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11.12am on 26/3/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 40mm (64mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/200 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

Inevitably, when I put up something like this, someone will come along and say (something like) "I don't like pictures of other people's art"; and for some reason this bothers me. I don't know why I feel compelled to justify this sort of shot – it's certainly not because I feel any sympathy to the "other people's art" argument ...

Anyway, I guess that a part of it is to document the transitory nature of these images. Take this shot for example: the markings on the crossing are now almost imperceptible, having been worn away by numerous feet and vehicles. So I guess that a part of me wants to record these images before they fade or are painted over. Also, I guess that I enjoy abstracting elements of grafitti from their surroundings; isolating one area as worthy of attention over and above the rest.

I guess the bottom-line though is that it's a topic that appeals to me, that I'll continue to shoot as and when I come across interesting stuff.

Oh, almost forgot, this is another HDR (generated from one original RAW file).

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9.42am on 12/3/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 23mm (37mm equiv.) f/5.0 1/200 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

First: thanks for all the great comments on my last two shots, they're much appreciated.

As for today's shot: it's another re-examination of something I took a while ago and decided not to put up, though in this case the manipulation is a little different. Rather than explain what you're looking at it's probably easier to show you the (partly post-processed) original:

.../archives/blind_alley.php

As you can probably work out from the original, this is a diptych, of sorts, but both images come from the same original: the image on the left is the leftmost two-thirds of the original, and the image on the right is the rightmost two-thirds, horizontally reversed. I guess my reasoning with this one is that I was trying to capture the vaguely enclosed, leading nowhere feeling of this alleyway, and I didn't think the original did this, nor was I particularly happy with the shot as a whole (a shadowy figure would probably have helped). This version, on the other hand (for me at least), accentuates the dead-end feel of this location and does a much better job of getting the mood of the scene across.

Anyway, it remains to be seen as to whether you think it's effective (and I bet that some of you will prefer the original), but it's something that I may well use more intentionally in the future. And no, it's not as good as the previous two shots, but I did think it was sufficiently interesting to put up.

And now it's probably about time that I shot some new material rather than trawling through the stuff I've previously rejected ;-)

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1.37pm on 17/1/06 Canon 20D EF 70-200 f/4L USM 94mm (150mm equiv.) f/4.5 1/60 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro 2x1/reversed

This image puzzled me; not the photograph, the image itself, and it's been kicking around on my hard drive since last September. But I didn't delete it. I have thought about it though – what it might mean, who might have created it, how it might be perceived – so I finally decided to do some research. And the net result of that search for an 'explanation', and the thoughts behind it, is that I decided to post it. Semiotics is an interesting subject and its relevance to this image is to exemplify that the interpretation of a visual image requires an understanding of context and purpose, both of which are difficult to fathom in this image.

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1.17pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 34mm (54mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/100 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

I'm really pleased with this one, but before I say anything else about it I thought I'd ask you all what you think.

On which note, you'll probably all hate it ;-)

Oh, and this one definitely looks best with the black theme.

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2.35pm on 7/1/06 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 17mm (27mm equiv.) f/4.0 1/60 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 200 no RAW C1 Pro minor

Update: chromasia's on hold for a couple of days as I have no new material to put up, the server's still knackered, I still have no ADSL and my wife is now ill with the bug that the kids and I had earlier in the week. So much for sticking to the image a day thing, but it's just not possible at the moment.

I've been reading The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton, and have a question for you ...

What makes a photograph worthy of consideration as a piece of contemporary art? Does it need to be a good photograph, whatever we might mean by 'good', or could it be that what we might otherwise consider to be a bad photograph becomes art when we come to understand the artistic context in which it was produced? I ask as there are a number of images that Charlotte uses to exemplify various categories of contemporary art that wouldn't exactly blow you away if you came across them on a photoblog, in fact, some of them I'd consider to be quite poor; in terms of both photographic technique and content and as exemplars of a particular artistic endeavour.

And I know, there's no answer, at least not one that we'll agree on, but it's something I'm trying to get straight in my own head so thought I'd mention it.

As for this shot <insert tongue in cheek> it's an acknowledgement of the graffiti artist's intention to i) highlight the demise of contemporary culture through the analogy of the multiple televisions washing down a drain, and ii) reference issues of globalisation and branding through presenting these icons of contemporary culture and its transmission as self-identical. Beyond this original intention though, this new piece recognises that such arguments are located within particular academic and artistic 'circles' and that mainstream culture will simply 'continue along it's way', stepping briskly across this zebra crossing, oblivious to the postmodern debates taking place in its midst. A key to the latter analysis is that this larger piece, this representation, draws attention to the original artist's failure to universalise these arguments beyond the narrow scope of artistic and intellectual debate – note how both the televisions and the drain are contained within one band of this crossing – while this piece shifts the horizon, relocating these arguments to the visual presentation of the context of that which the original work purportedly critiques. In other words, it steps 'outside the box' to provide an analysis of both the message and the structural milieu it inhabits, in this way reintroducing the notion that artistic critique is itself simply yet another artefact of postmodernism's ability to recuperate and reframe critique <remove tongue from cheek>.

Or not, ... take your pick ;-)

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10.30pm on 11/11/05 Canon 20D EF 50mm f/1.8 II f/8.0 1/80 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 200 no RAW C1 Pro no

Well, I didn't manage to get out and take any photographs today – we were busy this morning and it took all afternoon to sort out getting the car fixed – but, on the bright side, we now have four bottles of wine in the fridge ... so things are looking up ;-)

As for this shot: it's another that I took when I went down to London a few weeks ago. I would have preferred to have included somebody walking past, but it didn't happen, so you'll have to settle for a motion-blurred car instead.

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3.07pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 17mm (27mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/50 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

I'm afraid it's more 'archive raiding' tonight – I'll have some new stuff tomorrow.

Oh, and check out John's latest entry and see if you can predict his description before you read it ;-)

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1.22pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 20mm (32mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/100 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

Things have been really hectic at work for the last couple weeks so I'm really glad that I still have a few shots left from my trip to London a couple of weeks ago. After this one, I have three more, and then that's it. There are probably a couple I could rescue, but I'm keen to find a bit of time to shoot some new stuff.

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2.56pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 36mm (58mm equiv.) f/4.0 1/100 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

Ok, here's another interesting question that arose during yesterday's discussion: what makes a photograph a piece of art (rather than, say, a documentary record, or snapshot, or something else entirely)?

Tim commented yesterday that my photography was "... certainly not art", rather it is "sentimental craft—pretty colours and nice lines, but no feeling, no heart, nothing that challenges ideas and preconceptions". So, for a photograph to be considered art it must demonstrate feeling, or 'heart', and it must also challenge the viewers ideas and preconceptions about the world in some way. Personally, I think this is an overly restrictive and highbrow definition, but I know what he means – this isn't an uncommon view within the art (critic) world.

As for how I think my work relates to his point: sure, I wouldn't claim that everything I put up could meet these criteria, and not every shot I put up even aspires to them (there are many reasons to take photographs, and many forms of photography), but I wouldn't want to concede that all of my images "... are not art [and] never have been". So, back to the question, what makes a photograph a piece of art?

Oh, and the title for this one shouldn't be read as a commentary on the above: I'd named this one prior to knowing what I was going to write this evening.

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3.04pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 17mm (27mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/25 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro minor

Tobias made an interesting point yesterday, when he commented on my entry:

"I mean a Banksy image (www.banksy.co.uk) is considered art but you wouldn’t post it as a photograph on your site because that would be considered plagerism"

And I assume that this can be applied more generally: graffiti is art, therefore its reproduction is a form of plagiarism – claiming somebody else's work as your own. Now, and this is an issue that's been raised before on chromasia, clearly I don't hold this view – if I did I wouldn't post this sort of stuff – but I thought it was probably something that we could discuss. Is it theft/plagiarism, is it simply a form of documentation, is it something else? I'll write more about my own views – either in the comments or on tomorrow's entry (another graffiti shot) – but I'd be grateful if you could let me know what you think.

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3.42pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 37mm (59mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/125 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

I've had a cold all week, and feel crap this evening, so I'm putting this one up early and chilling out this evening. As for this shot: it's another from my recent London trip (of which I have another ten to put up) and like yesterday's, was taken somewhere between Liverpool Street tube station and Brick Lane.

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1.19pm on 24/9/05 Canon 20D EF 17-40 f/4L USM 17mm (27mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/160 aperture priority -1/3 evaluative 100 no RAW C1 Pro no

I'll add the EXIF data and write something about this one tomorrow (well, it's a bit late going up so what I really mean is that I'll write something later today). Right now though I'm too tired. We drove 270 miles this evening – from Canvey Island to Blackpool – and I'm washed out. Hopefully I'll have a few more shots from the trip to put up but I haven't really had much of a chance to look through them yet. And I may well alter this one slightly as I'm beyond caring what it looks like this evening. Oh, and thanks for all the comments while I was away. I did log on a couple of times but I haven't really had the chance to look through them all yet.

I had hoped to try and find some time to go out and shoot today but, what with one thing and another, it didn't happen so I ended up trawling through the shots I took last week. And oddly, when I looked at this shot last week, I didn't much like it, but today it suits my mood a lot better.

As for post-processing: the vaguely cross-processed feel is the result of changing the colour balance of the shot with the Curves tool, and the contrast and saturation are the result of duplicating the image and setting the blend mode to overlay.

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2.43pm on 2/12/04 Canon 20D EF 70-200 f/4L USM 145mm (232mm equiv.) f/5.6 1/500 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 100 no RAW DPP minor distortion

I thought I'd posted all the decent grafitti shots I took a while ago, but I took another look at this one and thought I'd put it up too. It's not quite as interesting as some of the others I've put up, but it does share some of their qualities. And, more importantly, I've run out of stuff to put up – hopefully it won't be raining tomorrow ;-)

On another note: I think the recoding for this site (other than the archives) is now finished (for the time being at least) including some changes to this popup. I'm fairly sure that there aren't any problems with it but if you do come across anything that doesn't work as expected please let me know.

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Canon G5 2.18pm on 30/4/04 f2.8 1/200 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 9.1mm RAW auto

This is the last of my recent graffiti shots and is rather more abstract than the other shots. This one was taken at the intersection between two pieces; i.e. where two different pieces meet and overlap. As with the other shots this one also has quite an unusual luminence and again, this is probably a consequence of the even but bright lighting and the metallic paints used for this piece of art.

On the whole I think I prefer the other four shots to this one, as they were about the art as well as the peculial colour and light, but I do quite like the abstract nature of this image.

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Canon G5 2.16pm on 30/4/04 f2.8 1/250 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 14.4mm RAW auto

This is another of my recent graffiti shots (I have one final image after this one) and I thought I’d put it up today as a) I much prefer posting recent stuff so don’t want to sit on these shots for too much longer, and b) until I can find a bit of time to actually go out and take something else I don’t have too many shots left anyway.

Of the five shots I think this one may well be my favourite – there’s something quite wonderful about the light in this shot. The day I took them it was overcast, but very bright, and the smooth flat light has given this shot an almost luminous feel. I would have expected that strong lighting would have worked better, but I suspect that the metallic paint photographs much better under a gentler light. Anyway, let me know what you think.

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Canon G5 2.15pm on 30/4/04 f2.8 1/200 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 12.7mm RAW auto

This is another of the grafitti shots I took last week (I have two, maybe three left that I’ll put up at some point) and is the only one of all of them that displays an entire piece. What I like about all of these shots is the vibrancy of the colour, which is mostly a consequence of the artists using metallic paint for portions of their work. But what I like about this one is the grass and weeds at the bottom of the image. For the rest of the shots I focussed much more sharply on the work itself, this one contains a bit of the surrounding scene. And I guess that the reason I like it is to do with the contrast between the sharp industrial feel of the graffiti and the contrasting softness and delicacy of the foliage.

Alternatively, it may just be that the greenery provides a bit of balance ot the orange/red/yellow of this piece of work ;-)

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Canon G5 2.14pm on 30/4/04 f2.8 1/250 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 8.0mm RAW auto

As promised (albeit a day later than advertised), here’s the larger version of this “piece” (see the day before yesterday’s comments for a definition). I don’t have a great deal to say about this other than that I like the vibrancy and the composition – other than that though, I think it speaks for itself.

On a largely unrelated note: I don’t know how many of you used the thumbnails page (the one with 75x75px versions of all my images) but, for the time being at least, I’ve disabled it. Over the last few weeks traffic to this site has increased to the point where I’m in danger of exceeding my 16GB monthly bandwidth (I’m getting around 800-1000 visits per day). So, on the basis that the thumbnails page probably accounted for around 2.5GB of traffic last month, I thought I’d get rid of it for the time being. Hopefully that wont inconvenience anyone too much, but I can’t really justify another hosting package at the moment :-/

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Canon G5 2.26pm on 30/4/04 f2.5 1/30 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 7.2mm RAW auto

After a week of really struggling to take anything decent I ended up taking six shots yesterday that I’ll put up over the next couple of weeks – various shots of some graffiti reasonably close by to where we live. Normally, graffiti in the North of England is of the “fuck off”, “daz luvs sharon”, or “I woz ere” variety, so I don’t often come across any that’s worth photographing. On this occasion though I found what seemed to be a partially demolished building – three walls, open to the sky – painted on both sides, … and some of it was really well done.

This shot is a close-up (not a crop ;-) of the one I’m going to put up tomorrow, and is a part of the tag of a larger piece of work. Incidentally, I suspect that there’s probably a word to describe an individual piece of graffiti … I just don’t know what it is ;-)

camera capture date aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO focal length image quality white balance

Canon G5 11.29am on 30/4/04 f2.5 1/40 aperture priority +0.0 evaluative 50 17.6mm RAW auto