Happy Christmas

A photographer friend of mine told me about the work of Kevin Best, described as one of the top 12 photographers on Flickr. Take a look, it's worth it. He specialises in sumptuous still lifes in the style of the Old Masters. There's a certain richness and quality to his work, so I was intrigued as to how he'd achieved it. He uses medium format, Pentax I think, but he also knows a lot about lighting which is ultimately what counts.

It gave me an idea for a Christmas still life of my own and I thought I'd investigate the relative qualities of a dslr versus medium format to assess just how much advantage it gives and it's significant.

so here's the first shot on a Canon 5D Mark II

and the next on a Hasselblad H3D-39

The medium format shot is much more colour accurate, has a wider dynamic range - one of the principal advantages of this large sensor, and a beautiful tonal range. The web browser doesn't do it justice but look at the candle and the fir cones. There's more tones and shadow detail evident, plus it handles the highlights so much better.

Capturing the smoke was fun, fortunately I got the better effect on the higher quality shot.

Have a great Christmas!

Ode to Michael Kenna

I took the opportunity recently to visit an exhibition by one of my photographic heroes, Michael Kenna. It was held at The Brindley in Runcorn, near his home town of Widnes. I've admired his work for a long time - it's landscape based, characterised by an abstract simplicity devoid of people so no sense of scale is easily imparted. His work is often minimalist with a very small range of tones. He predominately shoots in black and white, often in the square format, a format I particularly like.

I know you shouldn't photograph other people's work but I do so here to explain a photo I took myself in a Kenna style. I hope he doesn't mind!

One of his major projects has been the photography of Ratcliffe Power Station concentrating on the impressive cooling towers. Whilst going round the exhibition I noticed the light on the distant cooling towers at Fiddler's Ferry and as it had just stopped raining the window was covered in an attractive pattern of rain drops. So I combined the two elements to make my own composition as my ode to Michael Kenna.

Awards Season

November is awards season and last month saw me busy again. The big ones for me were the Macclesfield and Wilmslow Business Awards and the Prospects Postgraduate Awards. You might think they are quite staid affairs but quite the opposite is true, so I always like to catch the atmosphere and the guests enjoying themselves.

Of course all the winners receiving their awards, a 'grip and grin' as we call it in the trade!

The comperes, speakers and singers doing an excellent job of holding everything together.

And anything else which catches my eye...

Congratulations to all the winners.