black and white | alan frost photography

Kenna, LPOTY and London

Two trips to London in one week and this time to specifically go to a couple of exhibitions that I wanted to visit. For the first time in seven years the world famous photographer Michael Kenna was holding a retrospective exhibition of his work at Chris Beetles Gallery in Piccadilly, London.

Like many other amateur photographers I had always admired Kenna’s work. I guess he has inspired me with his square format, black and white images, often reduced to very simple and quite beautiful compositions, full of mood and atmosphere. Having looked at many of his images on a computer screen it was a real treat to actually see his signed limited edition prints. There were fifty on display including some of what must be his finest works. Seeing them for ‘real’ and I could fully appreciate the quality of the printing and the superb and at times subtle tones. Amateurs like me have a tendency to over sharpen their images but it was clear from Kenna’s work that whilst they were pin sharp and full of detail, they had not been over sharpened, but what do you expect from a master photographer who has been practising his fine art for many, many years? It was a superb exhibition and well worth the trip to the capital.

When I arrived at the gallery I was handed a price list. I knew Michael Kenna’s work would be expensive but naively I had no comprehension of just how much they would be. They ranged from £1,350 to £5,510 for one out of forty five limited edition prints, all signed of course. Fortunately these prices put temptation out of reach but it made the decision to buy a catalogue for £10 that much easier! Excellently produced by the gallery and including most, if not all the photographs on display, I will enjoy turning the pages in the days to come.

Next stop, the Landscape Photographer of the Year (LPOTY) exhibition being staged at the National Theatre on the South Bank of The Thames. This competition is in its sixth year and the standard of work is always extremely high. Not all the images which appear in the annual book are chosen for display, but those that are selected are printed big and large, in complete contrast to Michael Kenna’s work. He never prints larger than 7 3/4inches by 7 3/4inches. Unfortunately the competition this year was marred when the ‘winning’ photograph was disqualified for excessive manipulation after the public announcement and following publication of the book. The photographer David Byrne was therefore stripped of the title and his £10,000 prize fund. Just thought, he could have bought two or three Kenna prints to celebrate……. Why the judging panel did not take a closer look at the photograph before announcing the winner we will never know, but I doubt they will ever make the same mistake again. Next year’s LPTOY winner will have his or her image scrutinised by several microscopes.

Landscape Photographer of the Year Exhibition

This trip up to London was always going to be about visiting and spending time at these two exhibitions and not taking my own photographs. The Olympus OMD with one or two lenses were in the bag and as luck would have it I did have the opportunity to take one pleasing shot. As I walked across Hungerford Bridge to get to the South Bank, the late afternoon sun lit up St Paul’s Cathedral and the cityscape of London. The broody clouds contrasted well with the buildings bathed in warm sunlight. The camera came out of the bag, I attached the Panasonic 45 to 100 telephoto zoom lens and took one or two shots. Thats all I had time for, because the sun quickly dropped below the horizon and the magical light was lost to the night. On returning home the image was imported into Lightroom and converted to B&W in Silver Efex Pro2. I may never have a winning picture for LPOTY let alone reach the standard set by Michael Kenna but I can still enjoy taking pictures like the one below.

Late afternoon light on St Paul's Cathedral

…..and a colour version….as the iconic red London Bus enters the frame.

Late afternoon light on St Paul's - colour version

One final comment to finish. The two Kenna shots in this entry were taken with an iPhone 5 with very little post production. The LPOTY exhibition picture and the one of St Paul’s were both taken with the Olympus OMD. I have been toying whether or not to buy a full frame camera which comes with a huge weight penalty, not to mention the damage it would do to the bank account. Why I ask would I want to go full frame when Kenna never prints larger than less than eight inches square, and inferior cameras to my OMD were used in the LOPTY exhibition and blown up to A1 or even larger? The subject of a future entry I think!

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LRPS Distinction – I made it!

The title of this entry says it all really. After a few weeks of deliberating and getting everything ready, my panel of ten images were finally presented to the judges representing the Royal Photographic Society last Sunday. There were about thirty five entrants seeking a Licentiateship Distintion of the RPS on the day.

The judging started on time at 10.30am but I had to wait until just before lunch before my panel started to appear on the well lit display in front of the three judges and the chairperson. Up until this point the success rate had been about 50/50, so what was left of my finger nails fast disappeared once my photographs were all displayed.

After taking in the overall appearance of the panel the judges were quickly out of their seats to take a closer look. They quietly compared notes before one of the judges gave a brief summary about my work. She seemed enthusiastic so I was quietly optimistic of my chances. They returned to their seats, marked down their scores in the various categories before handing the results to the chairperson. After what seemed like a lifetime but was I am sure just a few seconds she rose from her seat and announced my name and congratulated me on passing. A customary round of applause broke out in the room and I sat back relieved to know my work had reached the desired standard.

At the beginning of the session the Chair had made it clear that any passes were only recommendations and that they needed to be ratified by the RPS Council before certificates would be issued. Until then don’t go printing new letterhead she had said! Thankfully my certificate arrived in the post a couple of days ago……so its now official – Alan Frost LRPS.

Although many of the images appear elsewhere on this blog here are the final ten. They were not diplayed with titles so I will not include them here. I will just let the images speak for themselves.

An Artist drawing one of the Silver Arrows

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LRPS Panel workflow

In the previous post I talked about my final selection for the LRPS Assessment day in just over a weeks time, so just for a bit of fun I thought I would capture on camera the workflow from my iMac, using Lightroom 4, to printing on a Canon 9000 and finally to mounting.

From the iMac

To the printer (if only they printed that quickly!

…..and lastly to cutting and mounting.

All the photos for this entry were taken on the Olympus OMD EM5 and Panasonic 20mm f1.7 prime lines

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LRPS – The Final Ten

In the last two or three weeks I have been deliberating which ten images should make up my panel for the LRPS assessement day coming up at the beginning of December. The easiest decision was that they should all be black and white photos; colour was never really on the agenda. The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) do look for variety of shot for the Licentiateship Distinction, as well as technical competence and the panel itself should be a cohesive unit. The eleventh image as it has been termed. With help from a fellow club member the final ten have now been selected and the layout finalised. It only remains for me to print and mount all of them and I will be set for the big day.

I also attended an RPS Distinction advisory day last weekend when two panel judges offered advice on a good number of ‘L’ and ‘A’ panels. Some were clearly of the standard required, whilst others fell short of the mark. It made for a most interesting time but fortunately it didn’t change my final selection. I did not have the opportunity to show my own panel for critique, so whether or not it will pass I do not know. I understand there are five judges and a Chairperson on the day itself, so when my turn comes it will be quite nerve wracking.

The panel is made up with a mix of people shots and landscapes, many of which have already appeared in this blog. Number one in the panel will be this shot taken of Stefan Majoram drawing one of the Auto Union Silver Arrows at the Goodwood Revival Meeting back in September. I used the Olympus EM5 and Lumix 20mm prime lens at f2.5.

It’s the first time I have printed this image and I am really pleased with how it has turned out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the judges will share the same opinion.

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‘To flip or not to flip?’ that is the question

In the past couple of weeks it has been suggested by two individuals on two separate occasions that I should consider ‘flipping’ one of my images. Their comments applied to two different photographs so it set me thinking whether or not I should apply this post production technique, as it’s not something I had ever considered doing before.

Obviously this technique could not be applied to an image with any writing or symbols, which when reversed, would no longer be legible and it would be clear to the viewer that they were in fact looking at the original image in a ‘mirror’. Neither could it apply to a recognisable landmark as it would no longer be a true representation of what the viewer expected to see. However if the image did not fall into either of these categories then what would be wrong with flipping? If the result is more pleasing to the eye, even though it no longer represents reality, then what’s the issue? After all the vast majority of my images are converted to monochrome because thats how I want my images to look. No one ‘sees’ in black and white so this change is applied for visual imapct. If I wanted my photographs to represent what people would actually see with their own eyes then frankly nearly all post production work would be a ‘no go’ area and even the choice of lens can distort what the eye actually sees, but thats a topic for another day.

Well, the only way to find out would be to try ‘flipping’ and to then compare and analyse the results.

The example I have chosen for this exercise is a shot taken at East Head in Wittering of wind swept sand dunes. The first image is the original photo followed by the flipped version. No other changes have been made.

…..and now the flipped version.

Sand dunes at East Head - version 2 'flipped'

So which one works best? Well in my view the flipped version is the better photograph, it’s more visually pleasing. So why should this be?

In my opinion its down to two main factors. Firstly when we look at an image our first inclination is to start from the left hand side and our eyes then move to the right hand side. Our eyes naturally follow this path as we read from left to right……it therefore feels comfortable to look at an image in this way. Our eyes are also drawn to the brightest areas of an image; in this case the sand in the lower half of the picture. So when the image is flipped, the bright area is now on the left and not on the right. The lead in lines of the sand, take our eyes to the right, the grasses are also being ‘blown’ from the left, and our eyes find it much easier to move around the image. In the original shot this does not happen and our eyes find it difficult to settle, with the result that we see a ‘busy’ image and one that really doesn’t work that well, or not as well as it could when flipped. As there is nothing else in the image which would give the ‘flipping’ game away, the final result is in my opinion perfectly satisfactory and an acceptable form of post manipulation.

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