Mar
23
Recent work gallery
The trouble with only releasing new portfolios of work once or twice a year is that it makes it difficult to keep my website images fresh, so I’ve added a Recent Work gallery. The idea is to keep it up to date and constantly changing with new work.
(Having fun during the recent ‘bad’ weather!)
It’s a bit of a mixed bag in this first gallery. The recent wild weather has made for some great days out in Skye, the Cairngorms and old favorite Northumberland. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of monochrome printing recently, partly in response to the highly variable weather, partly a desire in myself to explore new avenues.
It seems the trick with monochrome is not so much in the taking, but in the making. Producing a high quality monochrome print is a lot harder than a good quality colour print for some reason. The journey has taken me down new avenues in monochrome conversion (using a mix of Nikon CaptureNX to produce a high quality RAW conversion, FDR tools to blend exposures to produce a good flat toned file for conversion, and then finally Photoshop for monochrome conversion and local controls), then exploring RIPs to drive my Epson 4800 printer (which it appears produces great quality monochrome prints by itself with RIPs adding little noticeable difference) and new papers, including the addictive Ilford Gold Fibre Silk. After three months I can produce a print that I am reasonably happy with, but I think there is a lot more to learn yet.
Let me know what you think of the images, or if you have any tips on your own monochrome workflow.