After the ‘gentleness’ of yesterday’s entry (which, by the way, if you’re a regular visitor I’d like you to take a look at), I thought I’d go with something a bit more dramatic/harsh today. This is one I took about ten days ago, and I didn’t post it at the time as I thought I had better things to put up.

That said, it’s grown on me, and I now quite like its regular angularity … and it does make a pronounced change from yesterday.

And in case you’re wondering; it’s one of those large doormats that you find in corporate buildings (the ones with metal strips wth nylon(?) brushes in between) surrounded by various different bits of carpet. The image is a reasonably straight shot but the contrast and saturation were increased by the use of an unblurred duplicate layer set to overlay mode, and a reasonably strong Curves adjustment.

Last July I started adding some of my photographs to my (static) weblog, and in Autumn of the same year I set up two Movable Type blogs, one for writing and one for photography (called Synchrony). The latter coincided with buying a Powershot G5, and I was keen to get back into some reasonably serious photography after around ten years of just taking snaps, or nothing at all.

Around about Christmas last year I started having problems with my ISP, so I decided to move my blogs to a ‘proper’ hosting company rather than just use the free webspace provided by my ISP. As a consequence, this blog is now hosted by blogomania (who are excellent). However, one of their conditions is that you must have your own domain name. All the remaining domain names that contained synchrony weren’t worth having, so I decided to rename this site Chromasia.

So, 23 days ago, Chromasia was born. And one of the first things I did was register it on photoblogs.org. Since then 100 people have voted this site one of their favourites, so today is something of a celebration for me. In light of this I’ve spent some time today producing something a bit different from my more recent images. I can’t thank everyone who voted in person (as I don’t know who many of them are), but I can say thank you to those people who visit this site and leave wonderful comments on my images, and those who have discussed my site via email. And I can also thank my wife for putting up with all the time and energy that has gone into this project (including the recent redesign, which has taken up far too much time). And I would have bought you all flowers, but this will have to do instead :-)

So, many thanks to all of you for helping to make Chromasia a success.

I was going to leave posting this image for a few days (at least) as it really isn’t all that different from my entry from yesterday, but as often happens, the Photo Friday weekly theme comes along and something I’ve not long taken is appropriate (this week’s theme is Industrial).

In comparison to yesterday’s entry: this was shot with a slower shutter speed (1/30 as opposed to 1/80) so there’s more ‘movement’ within the image, but (I think) it does a less good job of conveying a sense of motion. This one is also less diffuse: from what I can remember it had stopped raining by the time I took this one, so the road spray was less severe.

My immediate thought when I saw this theme was to consider Industrial from the perspective of industrialization. I live in the North of England, in what was once a cloth producing town, and there are many interesting examples of former Victorian mill building dotted around the town and the surrounding countryside. Another time perhaps ...

I really have no idea whether this shot is any good as it took so much effort to get that I’ve lost any ability to judge its worth. It’s taken at one of the coffee shops where I work and it took four separate visits to get this one. The first one just didn’t work (the angles and composition were all wrong), I forget what went wrong with the images from the second attempt, and the third trip resulted in an image that looked ok as a thumbnail but didn’t work as a larger image – the top edge of the left blade of the tongs blended with the blown out highlights of the row of coffee cups in the background.

So, out of about twenty shots, this is the only one that’s half decent. The other reason that I’m not sure how good it is, is that it contains many of my favourite photographic elements; it’s quasi-abstract, there are multiple reflective surfaces, it has a shallow depth of field, and the colours are bright and punchy – all of which mean that I’m likely to like this even if it is fairly crap ;-)

My main reason for including it though is that I’ve realised that I’ve been posting rather sombre images of late (and have a few more in reserve) – so thought this would be a bit of a change.

I drive to work on the M62 over the Pennines, the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire, and it’s mostly an uneventful journey. And despite the fact that I’m hurtling along at 70mph+, in often atrocious weather, surrounded by drivers that seem mostly oblivious to their surroundings, skimming over the surface of the earth on a few square inches of rubber, I very rarely worry about what might happen, or what might go wrong – it just never occurs to me.

But when I do think about it, it strikes me as quite bizarre that we would voluntarily put ourselves in such circumstances on a daily basis, and as I drive past the almost daily crashes (I exaggerate slightly) – overturned vehicles, jacknifed lorries, and various other assorted mishaps, I do momentarily realise that driving isn’t really the same as floating along in an indestructible armchair.

So today’s effort is an attempt to capture something of the less comfortable side of driving – something of the drama and power of the experience. Technically this image was a bit of a problem in that the original was extremely flat – road spray isn’t exactly a high contrast subject – so I used three duplicate layers, all set to ‘overlay blend mode’, with a final Curves adjustment to bump up the contrast. The foreground was also desaturated. A consequence of using multiple overlay layers is a dramatic increase in saturation: lin this instance this left the foreground an odd shade of blue (probably because blue light scatters more readily than other frequencies).

I was going to leave posting this one for a couple of days, as a) I have a few shots in reserve, and b) it really isn’t all that different from yesterday’s image, but I thought that it might be more interesting to post them consecutively. And this one, in case it isn’t obvious, was taken roughly 90 degrees counter-clockwise from the first.

On the whole I much prefer yesterday’s shot – it has a more open feel, and I prefer the lighting – but the few people who have seen both prefer this one, mostly because it seems “more interesting”. So, as always, please feel free to comment, but if you could say which ‘stairwell’ image you prefer, I’d be interested in your thoughts.

And finally, I don’t normally comment on what’s coming next – mostly because this is largely a day-to-day thing and I don’t often have tomorrow’s shot when I write ‘today’s’ blurb – but I have a couple more pseudo-abstract shots to put up then I think it’s about time for a change. I’m not sure what yet, but I think I’ve probably shot enough macro/abstract things for the time being.

After posting my last entry, and claiming that the image used was the only one from 44 I shot today suitable for posting, I took one last look through and found two more that are reasonably ok – both of stairwells. On this occasion I have post-processed the image more than usual. I've used a blurred overlay layer which a) increases the saturation and contrast, and b) adds a slightly ethereal quality to the image. While the original was ok in terms of composition, it was rather flat and lacked depth. I think this version is a little more interesting.

And I do realise that it’s only a few hours since I posted yesterday’s entry, but yesterday’ wasn’t all that interesting so I thought I might as well post today’s entry a little earlier than usual ;-)

I took 44 shots today, transferred 19 of them to Photoshop (on the basis that those thumbnails looked promising), and ended up with only one that I’m happy to use. I don’t know why, but some days things go right – and a good proportion of the shots you take can be used – and other days, despite thinking that you’ve taken some decent shots, you end up with virtually nothing – and it’s really frustrating.

So, this is today’s effort. I was going to colourise it to match my similar recent entry (the one of the wall, windowsill, and light) but it ended up looking far too cold and flat. So this one is colourised, but in a way that’s much more sympathetic to the original than it could have been.

On the whole I’m reasonably pleased with this one, and particularly like the texture of the wall and the rather odd splash of light from a nearby window. I would have preferred a slightly less utilitarian handrail to photograph though ;-)

This was another of the shots I took the other day and I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out – after all, a waste bin isn’t all that photogenic. But I think it’s reasonably ok, and captures something of what I was after.

One thing that did occur to me while working on this image (partially prompted by a comment on yesterday’s entry) is the line between what constitutes a relatively straight photograph and an obviousy post-processed one. Yesterday’s entry is clearly post-processed, but is this one?

All of my recent images started out as RAW images and thus require various adjustments – Levels, Curves. saturation and sharpness – but at what point does this become obvious post-processing? Clearly the image is post-processed, but this isn’t what people mean when they mention post-processing and digital imagery. For my own part, I guess I use what’s available to create the image that I envisage, or, more often than not, the image that emerges out of the process of working with the original.

This entry is a follow up to one I took a few days ago, and while it might not seem like an overly obvious choice for this theme, one of the reasons this subject interests me is to do with issues of status.

The notion of a ‘speak here’ grill immediately demarcates ‘us’ from ‘them’ – it establishes a physical and social boundary that indicates that our status is, at best, questionable, and at worst, positively alien, dangerous, and to be kept at bay. And the chances are, in many of these encounters, that the scope to interact as though we were fellow human beings are greatly reduced by such measures.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I can see why such measures might be necessary in security conscious environments, but these grills are now a relatively pervasive feature of modern life. Anywhere that you and I, as consumers, need to interact with ‘them’ – service providers, administrative personel, and other public officials – you’ll probably find a grill such as this. And you can bet, in the majority of these encounters, that your status is diminished by their presence.

For me, one of the enduring fascinations of photography, though I guess this holds for other art forms too, is that it makes you look again: at all those things you might overlook, or walk past, or otherwise not notice as you rush around the world with your gaze fixed firmly ahead.

This wall is in the stairwell near to my office, and I must have walked up and down it countless times but, until yesterday, I never really looked at it. And it’s probably a shame that we’re required to live our lives at such a pace that we rarely notice what’s under our nose, and in front of our eyes.

I should perhaps also explain that this isn’t a shot of a downward pointing arrow – it’s a window-sill. As I know what it is, I didn’t see any ambiguity, but my wife was less sure – so I thought it might be worth explaining ;-)

As I had a bit of free time at work today I wandered around one of our more recent buildings. This one was built about two years ago and unless I’d been deliberately looking for shots I would never have seen this. It’s taken from a right-angled corner that isn’t on any of the paths, nor near a door, but I was determined to find an unusual angle.

What’s a bit odd about this shot is that aspects of it (to me at least) look faked (the strong while line between the sky and the edge of the building, and the underlighting on the wood), but, other than some Levels and Curves adjustment (and a very minor colour correction), it’s actually a straight shot.

And the building, in case you’re interested, appears to be made of some form of aluminium (or aluminium alloy). In this shot it looks almost plastic, but the light was quite amazing this morning, and it lit this building beautifully.

Well, it’s back to the drawing board tomorrow, as once again I’ve run out of photos to use. This is the fourteenth day in a row that I’ve managed to get something half reasonable posted, but it’s all been a bit fraught, and my admiration for those people who have routinely posted an image a day for many months goes up by the day, if not the hour.

Today’s image is one that I took about an hour before yesterday’s entry, more as a fall-back in case I couldn’t manage to find anything else (and I don’t think it’s anywhere near as striking as yesterday’s entry, but it’s ok).

I had intended to use another of the ‘speak here’ images today – square-on to the grill, with the staff and office out of focus in the background – but, sadly, I relied on the autofocus to lock onto the perspex grill. When I checked the shots later though, it had focussed through it, and the shots really didn’t work at all. So tomorrow, when I go into work, I’ll go and take some more. After that, who knows, hopefully I’ll find some inspiration and manage to get a few shots ahead of myself ;-)

It seems that no matter where you go the ‘speak here’ grill is a commonplace feature of many work environments. And while there’s an obvious logic for them in places like banks – where security is clearly an issue – there are many buildings where there presence says more about corporate culture than it does anything else. This one, for example, is embedded in the front window of our new departmental office – a place where students hand in their essays and ask questions such as “can you tell me where the Abnormal Psychology lecture is?”. And in the eight and a half years that I’ve been there I can’t remember a single hold up: “put all your unmarked stationary into this briefcase – now!”. It just doesn’t happen. So I don’t really know why it’s there.

That said, I think this is definitely one of the images I’ve taken recently that I’m most pleased with. Yesterday’s weighing-scale effort was a bit bland, my polygraph pictures were ok, but this one seems about as good as my vision will allow. I do have a thing for high contrast images, though there aren’t many on this site. But that’s more a consequence of not getting them quite right – normally. This time I’m pleased with the result.

Around the start of this month I decided that I’d make the effort, wherever possible, to post an image a day – and I’ve managed eleven straight days without too many problems.

But it didn’t seem that easy today. Maybe it’s to do with having a cold that’s broken my sleep for the last few nights, or maybe it’s something else; whatever – inspiration eluded me today. So, I’ve used another shot I took a few days ago that was never intended for inclusion here.

This started out as an exercise in lighting a high-key subject, and while some of the detail got lost in preserving the overall feel of the image (particularly immediately above the dial), I do quite like how it turned out.

I took this a couple of days ago: I’d just got my new 420EX Speedlite, and was playing around taking various shots of nothing in particular and caught our daughter as she momentarily paused for a while. She’d been alternating between shouting at her sisters and watching something on television, and then she just stood still for a while. I took a few shots, but wasn’t particularly concentrating, so didn’t check the settings on the camera as I had no intention of keeping any of them. This shot, as a consequence, was very flat and underexposed by about two stops (not surprisingly).

Rather than just delete these test shots I had a quick look through them and really liked this one. The end result is more to do with the magic of Photoshop than anything else, but it does capture something of the elfin nature of our daughter – sometimes she can look quite unbelievably ethereal.

And finally, after some gently prodding from Neil Bayliss (pixpopuli), I’ve amended my templates so I can use bigger images; i.e. 700x525px (landsape format). I’ve put up new versions of my most recent images, and may get around to doing some of the older ones at some point soon.

I know that I said there wasn’t going to be any more shots in the polygraph series, but I couldn’t resist including this one. I decided to take one last look through the various ones I’d taken, and thought that the composition (if nothing else) warranted this one’s inclusion.

That said, as I look back through my previous entries, I can see that these images haven’t been overly popular (if the number of comments are anything to go by) so I will refrain from posting any more of them ;-)

And this is marginally related: I had an email a few days ago from someone interested in buying the polygraph. He’d done a google search for ‘Grass Model 7B polygraph’ and came across the first image in this series. Unfortunately, it isn’t mine to sell, as I imagine – given its complexity – that it’s worth a reasonable amount of money ;-)

<edit> Oddly, as with my entry for the Emptiness challenge, the Photo Friday theme has come along, and something I posted just hours earlier has been ideal. This week’s theme is Abstract, and six hours ago I posted this entry in my abstract category – so here it is :-) </edit>

I usually include a description of how I took each shot, and when there’s any ambiguity about the subject matter, I normally explain what the shot is of – but this time I’m not going to. And it might be obvious what this is – it’s always difficult to tell whether an abstract image is really abstract or whether the subject matter is obvious to everyone else – but I thought I’d leave you to guess on this occasion ;-)

As an aside: one thing I’ve been thinking about is the layout of the site. Each entry has three images associated with it; the large image, the smaller images that appear for entries two to ten on the index page (and are used on the monthly, category and individual archive pages), and the 75x75 px images that are used at the bottom of the main index (and, additionaly, provide a feed for my other blog). And the problem I have is that sometimes I’d rather not include a commentary – but that would totally screw the layout of most of the other pages (in particular, the entries on most pages would overlap with one another, and the individual archive page would have a large hole where the image description bit goes). So, in light of all that, if you have any comments or suggestions regarding the layout of this site, I’d be interested to hear from you.

Hmmm … I can see a redesign lurking just below the horizon ;-)

This is the last in the Polygraph series as the rest of the images I took really aren’t worth putting up (you can see the ones I did use here, here, and here). And while I like the techno-brash feel (for want of a better expression) of the first three, I think this is my favourite in that it’s a much simpler and ‘cleaner’ image.

It’s also a bit more in line with the sort of photographs I want to take – clean(ish), tantamount to abstract, strong composition ... and so on. But the problem I have is that I keep getting distracted by other things like leaves and daffodils ;-)

Oh well, it’s Photo Friday tomorrow so there’ll be some more photos to take ... and I hope it’s a bit more inspiring than this week’s theme – Glamour. My entry, while moderately amusing, wasn’t exactly my best work ;-)

I had decided not to post any more ‘postcardy’ pictures of flowers, and to concentrate more on things like form and lighting rather than just generating ‘nice’ images, but I got a new toy yesterday and wanted to try it out.

One of the most irritating things about my camera (Canon G5) is the onboard flash. With a guide number of five it’s really more of a liability than a useful photographic device, and after trying one or two shots with it when I first got the camera, I’ve turned it off and refused to use it. But yesterday I got a Speedlite 420EX (that has a guide number of 42) – and it’s truly amazing in comparison.

This shot was taken late last night under normal room lighting in macro mode – the flash was bounced off the ceiling. And while it isn’t a brilliant shot it does demonstrate the flexibility of a ‘proper’ flashgun. So, I’ve included it more because I’m pleased with myself than I think it’s a good shot. Though all that said, it did turn out reasonably ok ;-)

I very nearly didn’t use this image as when I first looked at it I thought that it lacked detail and wasn’t worth doing any work on. As I shoot most of my images in RAW format there isn’t a quick way of previewing them – I use Canon’s File Viewer Utility, which is a) slow, and b) generates rather small thumbnails. To view a larger preview takes around 30 seconds on my machine, and it takes a bit longer to convert and transfer the image to Photoshop, so, on first glance I wasn’s sure that it was worth bothering with.

The main issue was an apparent lack of clarity, but as I’ve almost run out of images to use this week I thought I’d have another look at it.

And while it isn’t quite what I was after (I initially wanted more detail in the shaded areas of the image) I do think it’s turned out ok – mostly as a consequence of using a slightly stronger unsharp mask than I might have used normally.

While I’m not convinced that anyone else shares my passion for polygraph machines – well, this one at least – I thought I’d post these two anyway. And I do have one more that I’ll use some time over the next couple of days, but that’s it, there’ll be no more after that ;-)

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying to work out why I’m so drawn to this machine, and I haven’t really been able to come up with an answer. It’s been in our department since I joined eight years ago, and I think that it was used up until fairly recently as an EEG machine – now replaced by a rather boring plastic box hooked up to a computer. And while I think it’s an intrinsically interesting item to photograph, it also seems a really impressive piece of equipment. All that said I think this may just be to do with the fact that it seems i) really well made, and ii) extremely complex ;-)

I did think about posting these two shots as seperate entries but the top one isn’t all that dissimilar from the first one in this series. And I think that the two images work well together but are, perhaps, a little weak on their own.

I did have great plans for this week’s Photo Friday challenge – Glamour – involving my wife, a pair of high-heeled boots, some lacy underwear, stunning makeup, and some contrasty lighting. And if this was Photo Some-Time-This-Year rather than Photo Friday, we might have managed to get it together in time to take the shots. But, what with one thing and another this week, it just isn’t going to happen.

So, on the basis that various other people have taken a rather light-hearted approach to this week’s theme (e.g. Gregz), I decided to use this one. It was taken about a year ago and is a shot of our daughter (who was eight at the time) looking ... well, not exactly glamourous, but she was definitely posing. And in case you’re interested, she’s ‘modelling’ one of the hats she had when she was a baby – though I can’t quite remember why.

I should add that I did ask her if she was ok about me using this (as it certainly doesn’t show her at her best), and she seemed to think that the idea was reasonably humourous – so here it is. Thanks Mim ;-)

Incidentally, my two favourites this week (of the ones I’ve managed to look at so far) are the entries from Il Polemico (which is refreshingly different) and Judith Polakoff (which is a beautifully crafted ‘classic’ interpretation of this theme).

I still have a few more pictures of the polygraph to put up but realised that that I’ve only posted bits of machinery and technology in the last couple of days so thought it was time for a change.

I don’t know about anyone else but I find it much easier to both conceptualise and shoot inanimate objects than I do people. This is probably more to do with the obvious fact that something that doesn’t move is just inherently easier to photograph, but I think it’s probably also a question of preference. With objects I can often ‘see’ the finished result as I take the picture, but struggle to do so with people.

All that said, I think that one of the benefits of digital photography is that it really doesn’t matter how many bad shots you take. I have a 1GB microdrive in my G5 (which will hold around 219 RAW images) so have totally stopped worrying about taking multiple shots of the same scene. For this shot I had 19 originals, but for the various shots of the polygraph I took around 60 or 70 shots. I know, by pro standards, that that’s still very few, but as an amateur it’s not all that easy to justify using a whole roll of film on one subject ;-)

During the few days that was site was offline, and as I prepared to move it to a new host, I spent some time thinking about redesigning this site to incorporate larger images. I’ve looked at a lot of sites recently and three in particular have caught my attention – chromogenic.net, pixpopuli, and way to blue – all of which use predominantly landscape format images from upwards of 700px wide. And the images look stunning. Perhaps this is just to do with the skill of these photographers (i.e. the quality of the original images), or maybe it’s just that I’m not all that good at downsizing images (after all, the images on emese’s photo blog are quite small, yet pin sharp), but either way I’ve been tempted to redesign my site entirely.

Here, I’ve tended to use images no wider than 540px, and they really don’t look the same. But I don’t have time for a major rewrite at the moment, so I’ve tweaked my css (a little) so I can comfortably incorporate 600x450px images – and these do look a lot better.

As for this entry, it’s another shot of the Grass Model 7B polygraph (here’s the first in the series. This shot is of one of the more mechanical bits of the polygraph, and the wires you can see in this image connect to the graphing arms; i.e. the bits that draw the trace.

I was going to post another shot of the polygraph today (I have another three or maybe four shots that are worth using) but I took this photograph instead and decided I’d rather use it today – the other shots can wait.

In case it isn’t obvious, it’s a shot of the grill on the front of our car; the one immediately in front of the windscreen. The original was supposed to be red but, stupidly, I still had the camera set to a custom white balance from when I took the shots of the polygraph. And as those shots were taken under fluorescent lighting it really messed up the colour balance of this one. I did try to get it to something approaching the original scene but it came out either too pink, or the wrong shade of red. So I gave up trying. And, having seen the original, the blue actually works a lot better.

While you’re here – if you have the time – I’d like some feedback on my alternative individual entry archive page, the one you get to by clicking the display image only link. When I first created this site I thought the picture frame effect worked quite well, but now I’m wondering whether something a bit more minimalist might be better (e.g. something like brownglasses or pixpopuli). Anyway, I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Regular visitors to my old site – synchrony – will know that I’ve had various problems with the site, including: slow access or no access at all, very long delays in posting comments, and so on. Last weekend the whole thing fell apart completely. My ISP (who hosted the old site) swear blind this was nothing to do with them, but I lost all access to my MT configuration, and when I did finally manage to get back in, two days later, my database had been corrupted. So, I decided enough was enough and moved the site to blogomania who seem really well set up for supporting blog software. And so far they seem really great.

However, one of the things I had to do to use them was set up a domain name (the old site just used my ISP’s server address), and as all the decent ones containing ‘synchrony’ had gone I needed to pick something else. So, after some head scratching and flicking through the dictionary, the site was renamed chromasia. If, by any chance, you had my old site listed as a favourite at photoblogs.org I’d be really grateful if you could vote for this one as well.

As for this image: it’s one of a series of shots I took a couple of days ago of an old Grass Model 7B polygraph that sits in one of our labs in our department. It hasn’t been used for quite some years and I thought I better photograph it before someone decides to get rid of it. I’ll post some more shots over the next few days.

Oh, and if you subscribed to either the main news feed or the comments feed of the old site the new ones are:

http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/index.xml
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/comments.xml

Update: I’m really pleased to be able to say that this picture got awarded a noteworthy in the Photo Friday challenge – Emptiness. So many thanks to everyone who voted for this image. And if you’ve got the time (or inclination) you could always add me to your favourites at photoblogs.org :-)

<edit> A few times in recent months the weekly Photo Friday challenge has come around and something I’ve posted only a few days previously has been ideal – but I’ve resisted the urge to use it and have either taken something else, or used a photograph from my archive. But this time I’ve decided to break my own rule and use the image that I posted yesterday, a) because it’s only around twelve hours since I took it, and b) because I really think that it fits this week’s theme – Emptiness. </edit>

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks worrying about things like resolution (or the lack of it) and the problems of trying to take good photographs with anything less than a DSLR, and finally realised today that my worrying has nothing to do with what constitutes good photography. Sure, without a 1Ds (or other camera with a massive resolution and lenses to match) I’m not going to produce landscapes that rival an Ansel Adams (but then I strongly suspect that even with an 8x10 plate camera and all the time in the world I wouldn’t get close anyway), but that shouldn’t be an issue. Taking good photographs isn’t only/even about resolution (though it obviously helps) ...

Anyway, today I remembered that photography is about vision, and imagination, and capturing the world in a way that you might not normally see – so I decided to stop worrying about the technical limitations of my camera and start taking more pictures. I also decided that I’m going to try and concentrate a bit more on the form of my images rather than their content. So, today’s effort is a move in that direction – a simple (perhaps overly simple) exploration of light and shape. And for anyone who’s interested: it’s a shot of an uplighter (about 14 inches diameter) with minimal post-processing and no colour correction.

Incidentally, I finally got around to sorting out my links to other sites. For months I’ve been collecting bookmarks but haven’t incorporated them on this site, nor have I voted for them at photoblogs.org – I’ve now done both. You can see which sites I visit in the dropdown menu in the sidebar of this page.