Three seminars by eminent photographers were planned; the first, with David Clapp at Imagine Publishing's stand, was interesting and gave some new ideas for future pictures. Paul Gallagher gets a link from this blog (see the links on the right) so any chance to listen to him, see his work and listen to how he gets the effects in his wonderful monochrome landscapes is a must do. He didn't disappoint. Paul really does have a minimalist approach to image editing! After scanning large format negatives he sets about enhancing them with small selections using the lasso tool and curves in Photoshop. What he achieves is quite remarkable and, in his words, it's little more than dodging and burning he would do in the darkroom. Finally, and in a change to my programme, I sat in on a macro photography lecture from Heather Angel on the Nikon stand. Wow! What fabulous images and such simple techniques.
In between seminars I wandered about looking at new toys to add to the wish list, played with a few bits and bobs, made a few purchases and picked up a few freebies - calendars, pens and the like.
I've been looking to get more into monochrome photography and had been looking at Niksoft's Silver Efex Pro, recently updated to version 2. Well, dear reader, I bought a copy and having only briefly played with it I can tell you that I'm very impressed with it. I've only tinkered with one picture so far, which is the bicycle picture from Bridlington posted a few entries back. I thought when I took the picture that it might make a good monochrome image and I'm not disappointed with the results. Only a tad of additional tinkering was made and the addition of Kodak's ISO32 Panatomic X emulsion, a lovely black and white film that I used in the past. Here's the updated picture:
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| Click the image for the bigger picture |
All in all, a very good day out.
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