Owls in Monochrome

I have added a Gallery of Nature Monochrome images to my website today. The medium certainly suits these nocturnal raptors.

Monochrome nature

As part of a talk I am giving on Sunday, I have been working on some images that I have always thought would be best in monochrome. I have not been disappointed as these four images have very much more impact in monochrome than their colour counterparts. My next task is to prepare a webpage with the addition of few more of these conversions

For Wendy

Five images taken in Clare College this morning with the infrared camera. All taken with f1.8 and showing very limited depth of field.
The final image is from Queens' College.

Bright sunlight in Cambridge

A couple of images from Cambridge on a bright morning after a lot of rain has cleared the air.

Anglesey Abbey

Beautiful spring-like day today at Anglesey Abbey - couldn't resist mirror imaging the birch trees.
The witch hazel and dogwoods in the Winter Garden were particularly colourful and there were even a few snowdrops in full bloom.

Cambridge Infrared

I took a short trip into Cambridge this morning with my infrared camera. The first two are monochrome conversions showing wrought iron gates and how using the infrared camera lightens the backgrounds. With the image of the two couples, I have swapped the blue and red channels while the aconite has colour added to the image. It is great to see the first spring flowers already in full bloom.

Colour idea for print

I do not know if a grey ink can be used in silk screen printing but I like this mockup. I have not been able to find two colours that I like together so it may have to be light blue for background with darker blue for midtones.

More on the printing

These notes are to remind me next time what I did to make the silk screens for printing from a photograph. Instead of using the posterisations as tone separations, which was my original thought, I made three separate separations for the background, midtones and black areas using colour range. They were adjusted to the required size (A3) at 600 dpi, gray scale and bitmap and printed out onto digital transfer film on an Epson 7600 printer.

I then added some texture in the white area of the midtone positive by applying waste black toner suspended in water. As it dried, I moved the film around to create interesting patterns.

The next stage will be to make photographic negatives from these positives which will be applied to the silk screens.

Printing Presses

Three images of the beautiful presses at St Barnabas Press.The gold decorated one is dated 1854, many are much older.

Printing Course

I am doing a course on silk screen and other types of printing this year and am using my old favourite Winslow edge as the starting point for silk screen printing. I made three tonal separations with different posterisation levels. As an experiment to see what colours might work, I have used each of these as mask for fill layers. I included two extra layers - one as a dissolve blend to give some texture to the background.

Horsey Sunshine

After a rainy start to Saturday, the skies clear in the afternoon to give some lovely light at Horsey. It also brought out the visitors to the beach. I was amused and distressed at the number of people walking with their heads in their mobile phones oblivious of the beauty of the sea and dunes around them. How quickly we can lose that simple enjoyment that the two children were having, lost in the natural world.

Seals in Norflok

Some images of the Grey seals that come ashore on the beach at Horsey each year to have their pups. The pups cannot join their parents in the sea till they have lost the white fluffy fur so spend a lot of time lying around. They gradually lose the white fur and become sleeker. The adolescent males were constantly arguing and sparring!
These images are from small jpegs - I will replace when I can process the raw files.

Images from our London Trip

The apartment that we stayed in before the New Year was in the Bayswater area. As always, the internet descriptions of the flat turned out to be somewhat optomistic though the Bayswater area was a very good centre and the staircase up to the 4th floor impressive.

Madingley War Cemetery

Three infrared photographs from a visit to the war cemetery on a particularly dismal New Year's Day. There was still ice on the ponds and the water lily leaves were hardly visible under the ice. Taken in infrared they show up remarkably including all the veins and details.

Into the New Year

This bronze sculture by Epstein is the image that I have chosen to lead into 2011. It has such great energy reaching forward with enthusiasm and not backward with resentment; it symbolises perfectly my thoughts of what we should aim for in life.

The Bowater House bronze sculpture, The Rush of Green depicts family and their dog rushing towards the park to enjoy the fresh air and green spaces. Pan is depicted charming them away from the shops and offices behind. Sir Jacob Epstein was 79 and working on this sculpture on the day that he died. It was cast after his death. I love the energy of this sculpture and enjoyed seeing it having read about it at the Epstein Collection in Walsall Museum in March this year