I have fond memories of holidays as a child in Cornwall here in England.
As I grew those holidays continued with friends and I eventually found myself living in the area for a brief time.
It was around this time (the early 1990s) that I started a project to capture portraits and images of Cornish fishermen.
Flight-at-the-beach
Back at the end of November last year I was contacted by my client Receipt Bank and asked to look over a location-based advertising photography brief they needed shooting.
To give you a brief overview Receipt Bank produce an app that allows business owners to easily scan their receipts avoiding spending valuable time manually entering them into spreadsheets.
The brief was simply to capture three business owners at their places of work with the final images being printed on the walls in Receipt Bank’s London offices and potentially other media.
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I recently rediscovered this image in my archive and decided to give it some TLC and publish it here.
It was taken near Gaios, on the island of Paxos while on a boat tour in the summer of 2006
I would not state this image as a particularly amazing piece of creative travel photography in fact the image was simply a grab shot
to look back upon and enjoy as a memory of our trip.
If you critiqued this image you probably say the lighting here is a little bland (it’s overhead) and pretty harsh in contrast (it’s a fairly cloudless summer sky) and certainly not the time of day that most photographers including myself would choose to produce creative travel photography.
However, I’ve always said there is no such thing as bad light it just depends on your personal style or what you decide works for a particular image or a clients brief.
On the plus side, in this image, that same bland hard light gives some amazing punch to those blues which for me are a strong signature of Greece along with incredible mountains and historic sites of interest.
Once again we see that rules (or guidelines) are often there to be broken and even encouraged for creativity especially when it comes to photography.
If you want to see some wonderful images by a master photographer who is often known for their use of razor-sharp light and contrast I’d recommend checking out Albert Watson’s work especially the images in his wonderful book Cyclops.
I started Life in a Somerset Landscape as a personal project with the aim to capture various people and wildlife in the Somerset landscape.
The images are inspired by the county I grew up in and in which I learnt my craft starting back in the late 1980s
I’ve always been drawn and somewhat intrigued by the history of the land and the people who work it and wildlife that lives there so the project simply evolved from that.
The images are approached by me either simply documenting what I discover while others are created to produce a vision I have for that particular location or person within it.
The project is ongoing as I have time to pick it up and continue.
View project Life in a Somerset Landscape
Do you know of someone or somewhere in Somerset that you feel should be included? Please email me and let me know. [email protected]
Mud-horse-fisherman-Hinkley point
Swan Flying Over Somerset River
Banjo player maize field
Photography & Retouching Simon Plant / Cgi and Rendering: J3D Imaging
This was the reason I found myself one cold November morning on location standing on The Charles Bridge in Prague.
I had completed my background plates and 360 HDR dome shots and decided to stay on for a couple more days to shoot some other images without the need to concern myself with composition being suitable for the placement of a truck or car.
Prague is the furthest in Eastern Europe I have travelled and it was a hauntingly (especially pre-dawn) beautiful location to shoot.
As Time Passes By
How picture retouching enabled an uncluttered view.
I remember first being at this location photographing this tree high above Lyndos town in around 2004 when I was still capturing the world on film.
13 years later I found myself once again in the same spot admiring the same tree and the amazing views that this ancient citadel offered of the stunning coast below.
I couldn’t resist capturing the scene again but I soon remembered as I composed the image through the viewfinder the same problem I had experienced all those years ago it was very cluttered.
To capture the tree and wonderful view meant a messy composition consisting of branches from adjacent trees and there was no other angle or option despite my efforts.
I decided to capture the scene and reconfigure a few elements later in post-production to get the image I had visualised.
The picture retouching work was pretty straight forward consisting mainly of removing the obtrusive branches and replacing the sky which was the only element not from the original scene but captured a mile or so away on another day.
Original Scene
Scene Post Some Trimming.