Chromagraph Photo Art Blog

Dung Fly  So, in my last post (sic) I talked about the difficulty of getting good, high quality macro images and I may have been rather gloomy about my prospects in the Nature Competition I entered in Wadebridge Photography Group this week. Well, I was surprised and delighted to find myself the winner in the PDI (Projected Digital Images) section of the competition in the face of some quite stiff competition, especially from Adrian Langdon whom I previously named as probably the best wildlife photographer in the County.  Tech stuff for the curious and the nerdy: Fujifilm XT-5 Zeiss Touit 50mm f/2.8 Macro Lens Single Image 1/125s @f/11 AK flash diffuser & Godox TT350f ISO 400 Location: Lanjeth Water Gardens So, a feather in the cap, but I need to go on refining and improving this techniques, particularly the AK flash diffuser. To that end, I've been working on my macro focus stacking in order to get quality results. For test purposes, I used seed heads which have developed...

  I've long been a fan of macro photography, but to date my attempts at this have been middling to poor. OK, some have been decent such as this image which actually made it into the Cornwall Wildlife Trust calendar for 2024.  Par Market Fungus OK, it's not really a macro image, but it IS focus stacked for increased depth of field and detail whilst still retaining an uncluttered background and I'm quite happy with it. Other trials have been less successful and whilst I have been able to turn out OK images of insects such as these ones of a Bumblebee and a Dung Fly below, they have not quite been of the stellar quality I have been aspiring to such as turned out by the Swedish Photographer Michael Widell and another teenage prodigy,   Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas who goes by the name of Naturefold on YouTube. Bumblebee at South Bosent farm Both these images have been submitted into the annual Nature competition of Wadebridge Photography Group, the club I joined this year. I...

...When Lady Luck Intervenes Analogue Photography can be full of uncertainties, particularly when breaking out a point and shoot camera unused for 4 years almost in desperation when my primary 35mm film camera developed a fault. Then loading it with a film considered cheap and developing that film in Rodinal, well known for it's prominent grain. The resultant negatives were thin and in need of some help in the conversion process from Negative Lab Pro. In defence of my Konica MT-9, it has been solidly reliable, always working without complaint on the rare occasions when asked to do so. Also, much of the problem with the negatives could be traced back to under-development. Still, what to do? Shrug and discard the images. Or take what I had and make something of them. I chose the latter course of action and the images presented here are the result. Are they great images? No, but they do convey a sense of place in a way that no other medium other than analogue monochrome photographs ca...

  Officially... Because there was an unlicensed release of two Beavers, back in 2022 at Breney Common and they now have two Kitts of their own. So the existing population is already four and with the release announcement yesterday of two further pairs by  Cornwall Wildlife Trust yesterday that makes eight in total. Brilliant news for nature, conservation and the environment! Why is this brilliant news? Well, Beavers are a Keystone species who manage wetland creating habitat for wildlife, reducing pollution and flooding in the process. They are industrious creatures and the two already at Breney common have now created an 11 hectare area of wetland in just a few years. So we can expect great things of the four now also released as they start to create their trademark dams. Of course the release also creates a lot of responsibility on the Trust to work in partnership with farmers, landowners and other interest groups in safely managing this introduction. There is a lot of wo...

 ...Which I'm not Good at Making So, I'm in the process of finalising my entry to a competition run by Wadebridge Photography Group and I need to chose which images to print or supply as a digital file. It's hard for me because the set subject is a loosely defined ' Scapes ' or basically any image that has a scene to look at. However, I had a range of possibles and after elimination of images that did not fit the brief, I was left with a choice between two, a scene showing the bay of Naples and the one below. Ultimately and after consultation with my partner the other image won out. As the competition is due to be this week, I am reserving that image until after the judging has decided whether it is a worthy choice. Or not as the case may be. So, on to the discarded image which I still feel has merit and may surface in various forms later on. Edwardian Seaside Shelter This elegant late Victorian or Edwardian seaside shelter at the English resort of Weston-Super Mar...

 After a Bad Day...  . ..At the office. But to backtrack a little, I had decamped to Godrevy in west Cornwall surrounded as it is by sand dunes and a nature reserve with the  Iconic lighthouse just offshore. Another blowy day in January was playing out, just after one of the many storms we have experienced this autumn and winter. So, no change there then. But I had my (probably not very) trusty Bronica ETRS Medium Format camera with colour film loaded in one back and black and white in the other. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, lots as it happens, both during and after the shoot. My composition skills were I think working ok, but the wind was playing havoc with my tripod's stability which meant that some images had less than optimal sharpness and my metering game was not on point either. The monochromes then suffered from inconsistent developing probably caused by me not securing the film's reel properly in the tank. This left the colour which I sent away to Analog...