A Path Through the Dunes

There was some good weather during the summer and here is an image from one of those days.


We took a picnic to our favourite place, which is Llanddwyn on the island of Anglesey. Llanddwyn is an island in its own right being cut off from the mainland at high tide. There's the lovely woodlands of Newborough Forest to explore, long wild beaches that can be deserted, wildlife a plenty, rolling dunes with dense clumps of marram grass and super views to the Lleyn Peninsular. It's a great place for photography whatever the weather.


Paul Gallagher is a favourite photographer who works almost exclusively in black and white. He has captured some wonderful shots of the marram grasses on the coast between Liverpool and Southport. I'd been waiting for the right conditions to use some of his techniques and was blessed with a beautiful calm day with blue skies and wonderful cloud formations.


The image was captured using a polarising filter and Lee 0.6 graduated ND filter. I loved the savageness of the rocks against the softness of the marram and the clouds were just made to complement the image.

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The Evolution of an Image

During a few spare minutes earlier in the year I converted a colour image I'd posted here previously under the title "Holiday Homes". It was posted on my Fotoblur site under the title "Perfect Summer Day" and did quite well for itself being featured by the Monochrome group. Well, the same image has evolved still further!


I do love the square format and I wondered just how the image would look cropped to 5x5. I'm pleased with the result, which you can see below. It just goes to show that an image, like a painting, is never truly finished.

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The original mono conversion was hand done in Adobe Camera RAW and Elements using techniques from a Future Publishing black & white guide and at some stage during the long winter evenings I shall do a new conversion using Silver Efex2 Pro.

French Street Photography

It was a good Christmas with lots of fun, great food, lovely people and some super gifts. On the photography front I had another external hard disk for my ever expanding archive, a bean bag pod to support cameras, an Ansel Adams calendar and two excellent books, both by Henri Cartier-Bresson: 'The Minds Eye', which is a collection of his essays, and 'A Propos de Paris', which is based on the catalogue for his 1984 exhibition 'Paris at a Glance' (thank you Men, Lisa & Matt and Nik!). 

Getting the Paris book was a real treat because it was so unexpected. I have always liked Cartier-Bresson's work particularly his street photography, something that the French seem to be remarkably good at. I really have enjoyed looking at the photographs so much so that I also dug out my little book of Robert Doisneau's images, another accomplished French photographer whose most famous work is probably 'The Kiss' taken in Paris in 1950. There has been some debate in recent years whether this picture was posed rather than a candid snapshot. It matters not because it is a great image.

I was lucky enough to visit France in the summer of 2010 and took some street photo's wandering around Cahors, a delightful and very photogenic city. Trawling through the images  I found a picture that evoked the work of both Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau both of who captured French couples kissing. I didn't quite capture the kiss but it's close enough and, I think, an intimate shot.

'Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville' by Robert Doisneau (Paris, 1950)

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My image (above) is not posed! Converted to black and white using Adobe Camera RAW and cropped to 5x5.

This picture doesn't fit within the thirty minute rule and I hope you'll excuse me stretching the rules by which my blog usually abides by.

Holiday Homes 2

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Anglesey... a late August sunset at Tywyn Fferam on the west coast of the island.

I'd only just arrived on the island for the weekend when this stunning sunset presented itself. A quick dash up the coast to another favourite location and the fastest setup ever to snatch a few shots from the headland overlooking the beach. No filters were used and just a tad of under exposure with the merest tweak of the saturation in Photoshop Elements.

Holiday Homes...

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Okay, I admit it.... this isn't thirty minutes from my home, more's the pity! I'm lucky to be able to travel quite often so 'temporary holiday homes' give me endless opportunities to stretch the thirty minute rule.


This is the western end of Llyn Padarn at Llanberris looking east towards Pen-y-Pass and the Snowdon range. A lovely still summer afternoon, blue skies, fluffy clouds and perfect for landscape photography. I spent most of the afternoon here looking for the right picture. This whole area is a lovely part of the world.

Always Carry a Camera!

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It really does pay to always carry a camera with you... I was greeted with this line-up of Bentley's old and new outside the Bentley factory in Crewe when out for a stroll on a sunny summer day. You never know what you might see.

Little Moreton Hall

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Old buildings are another passion. They do so lend themselves to being photographed but often it's difficult to get an image without people admiring them. Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton, has a public footpath running right past its front door. On this occasion I was looking for something a little different so I ventured off the path a ways and used the reeds and moat as foreground interest. One of the finest Elizabethan timber-framed buildings in the UK, Little Moreton Hall is owned by the National Trust.