Behold the art

Sometimes I just want to write a post on this blog to mark something that made me happy. This is one of those, so feel free to tune out if you're looking for something something data technology management leadership.

Anyone left? Cool.

For reasons that escape me, I was asked to show some of my photographs at a local exhibition of creativity and art. I have been a keen photographer for many years, but I've never really thought my pictures rise to any kind of display standard. However, others did not share that opinion so I was pushed into creating a display.

It went well!

And my photos of the whole event are here.

I actually got some really good comments. People loved the theme coming through the writeup and apparently some people got quite emotional when I wasn't there. In addition to the disease itself, the COVID lockdown has left some deep wounds and it does seem weird to me that, unlike other national emergencies (eg the war) we don't really talk about it much. Some of life has changed, some of life has reverted to as it was before. But in the main we're just carrying on. Certainly in my head unless I properly think about it, lockdown was ages ago now and something that happened over a couple of weeks. Clearly, that is absolutely not true, and I find it weird how keen we are collectively to put it to the side. Perhaps this is our way of collectively dealing with the trauma? It seems we should have a national memorial day or something?

Anyway, before this becomes a post about lockdown or COVID, just a few notes on how this was pulled together.

Obviously, the photos were taken years ago. They were part of a wider set (which was on the projector above, and is in the embedded carousel below) depicting light in the darkness of those times. This set is also on Flickr and that creates a slideshow which could be put up on screen. These pics were made into a book years ago, so I got one of the owners of that book (my parents) to pick their favourites and, after a spot of measuring and checking the DPI I calculated they would work at A3 size. Sadly, the local print store has shut down so after a spot of Googling, I took my flash drive to Ryman and was very pleasantly surprised that their photo printing is (to my amateur eye at least) really very good. If you are in Bath and need something printed well, you can do a lot worse!

One Flickr link, six pictures and a short write up combined to what you see above. I was really quite pleased with the outcome and makes me think I would like to do a bit more of this kind of thing. Of course that means I need to do some more creative work.

Since this blog is usually about the tech industry - I also met someone who is a developer looking at their future in the industry and gave them some sage advice (lol). Seriously, no idea if I said anything valuable or not, but I am always open to opportunities to help those coming through and give back. In fact, there is a post on this coming soon...

And to sign off - here is the full set of images from the display.

Another year, another post about fire

My favourite annual festival is bonfire night. It's an event which knows exactly what it is, hasn't really been corrupted by commercial interests (cough Christmas) and is very local - that is, it's done at a village level and keeps its small-scale feel. It also comes with fireworks and a bonfire. I love it.

Every year I look forward to heading to my parents' village for their event (living in a historic city, there isn't much taste for huge pillars of fire ... go figure) and every year I take a load of pictures of the bonfire, trying to capture the flickering tongues, the heat and the evocative nature of a pile of burning wood in the dark.

This year, we had the fun of the bonfire going up rather quicker than expected resulting in a huge cloud of steam and smoke washing over the crowd then a fireball which was gloriously hot before the marshals hurriedly made us retreat, pushing back the safety rope.

For the photos, I tried a variety of approaches. I wanted to capture the moving tongues, so shooting a fast moving target, but it was all at night so I needed to be mindful of light capture. This year I got best results with a high shutter speed, to freeze the movement, and then countered the limited light by pushing the ISO up to very high levels to pick up everything I could. Obviously the flash was of no use and there was only so much I could do with a wide aperture.

I was pretty pleased with the results, and I always enjoy the technical exercise of trying to figure out how to set up the camera to take these shots as effectively as I can.

I also took a few with my phone, which went with a similarly fast shutter, but instead of pushing the sensitivity just applied AI and fixed it up in post. I think. Pixel photos are somewhat magic.

Anyway, here are the results:

And if you're interested, this is last year:

Which was set up in a similar way, although using less of the extreme settings.

Maybe one day I'll figure out how to capture fireworks.

A return to filters

While everyone else has been learning to speak Esperanto and discover their inner sourdough, I've been working on my photography. I have been taking #nofilter pics for a long time, focusing on the details of composition and playing with light however I've been looking at at the pictures taken by a friend of mine and she uses a lot of editing and filters to make colours pop in a way that has left me somewhat envious. She was kind enough to give me a tutorial in her techniques and, while I certainly haven't mastered them, I have had a go and managed to create some interesting effects.

I've created a few images and here is a gallery of the before / after shorts. They are arranged newest to oldest and I think even over these nine images there is a notable improvement. As I uploaded them to Flickr, I tried to explain why I added the filters to each picture and the most important improvement is with the intent behind the edits. Earlier on (the later pics in the gallery), the picture have been edited because I was just pushing buttons to get the technique in my head. Later on (the first three pics in particular), the filters were applied with a specific intent for the end results and I think the results are a big step forward.

I think my favourite is the sunset - it is certainly the best example of why I wanted to learn how to do this. Behold:

Now, for some technical talk. I take the majority of my photographs on my phone (a Huawei P10 plus) and all the editing here was done on the phone using the (free) Snapseed application. To get these effects, there are a few base steps (and again - credit to my friend for this!). 

1. Apply the Accenture style to make the colours richer.
2. Switch to the Tools tab and in the Details tool pull the Structure up to nearly max. This highlights the details by enriching the colours saturation and darkening the edges (apologies to anyone who knows their stuff - I'm sure I'm mangling the terminology). 
3. Then in the "Tune image" tool, pull the Ambiance up to about 60% to bring the lighter shades back in. 
4. At this point go to HDR-scape and apply whichever filter looks best. 
5. Finally go back to "Tune image" and play with the Warmth, warm or cool depending on the effect you want.

I find these steps give a good base - creating a rich, slightly unreal image with lots of potential for further tweaks to create the specific effect you want. The thing to watch through these steps is the imaging graining. These steps seem to work best highlighting texture, and on big blocks of colour (eg a cloudless sky) they can add their own, breaking down the imagine.

Moving forward, I play with other options in the Tools menu. Drama creates some interesting effects but mostly I stick with the other options on the top row (Tune, Details, Curves, White balance). I can't say I understand them well enough to know what I'm doing yet - at this stage I fiddle and hope!

To finish, a Vignette can bring focus to a particular part of the image and smooth over some graining around the edges.

I really like this technique. It's a relatively simple way to create very different looking pictures. While I will be primarily sticking to my own style, it has been fun challenging myself to create something different from my usual output and I'm very pleased with the results. I will keep playing with it, because she gets some amazing colours out of her work!

Remember remember

Let's talk about fire.

I've always loved bonfires. They are primal and evocative - beautiful pillars of light and movement shining bright in darkness. So what does that mean for photography? Taking a picture of a bonfire is both an interesting technical challenge and an exercise in trying to capture the emotion of the moment.

Breaking down the requirements in photographic terms, what do we have? The fire is moving so you need a fast shutter speed to capture the tongues of flame. The scene is dark, but with a bright light source so you need to control white balance. A fast shutter means a higher ISO, to make the camera more responsive to the available light. A wider aperture allows more light in, but also restricts the telephoto options. So a first guess leads to something like:

• High shutter speed
• High ISO
• Wide aperture

So something like this:



Nice and warm, but the body of the fire is over-exposed.

What happens if we drop close the aperture and rely on a crazy-high ISO to capture the available light?



Loses the warmth, but now we can see into the body of the fire.

I wonder how important the ISO is in practice? What is we keep a wide aperture and fast shutter and drop the ISO?



There is more definition on the tongues of flame here when we zoom right in. Pushing the ISO distorts the image so this is a good change.

I started taking these pictures trying to logically get to some decent manual settings. Out of interest I brought out my phone and took a photo then looked at the results:



Huh. Seems nice. Settings?

• Medium shutter speed
• Tiny ISO
• Wide aperture

So the phone decided aperture was the key to sorting out the light capture, and didn't think the movement of the fire was too much of a big deal. Next step was to try this collection of settings on my big camera:



Different again. More warmth, losing definition on the tongues of flame.

And for a last hurrah, how about a different framing - adding some zoom (which narrows the aperture) and correcting a bit with ISO and shutter:



I have my favourites. It's very interesting seeing the same fire depicted so differently just by fiddling with some settings. I'm still calibrating my mind - looking at the subject and trying to imagine the different photos possible with different settings. The first few here I can say I thought through logically but I'm not sure I'd have got to the settings chosen by the automatic mode on my phone. I suppose I'll have to go to more bonfires and keep practising. Such a shame.

All the photographs taken that evening, including some different attempts at fireworks, are in this album: