Pebbles From Paradise

We’re to be found at Netsel Marina playing hosts to the joint exhibition we’re hosting with Michael Eldridge. As a result we meet more people, but see less of Amazon.

S. J. M. Bray is examining test prints in preparation for the ‘Trees and Sky’ exhibition later this month.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Leibovitz for ‘In Response To Place’ the film she made about why she photographed the Shawangunk Mountains.

Trees and Sky is a remarkable evolving exhibition of photographs by Michael John Eldridge, and Stephen Jeremy Maxwell Bray. An expanding work the first exhibition will take place at Netsel Art Gallery, Marmaris, Turkey for 28th May until June 10th.

I try to standardise on Olympus equipment these days. If it’s good enough for Bailey, then it’s certainly good enough for me. Currently I’ve five Olympus bodies, if you include my OM-1. The menus of all are similar, but the E-P2 has a few quirks that I’ve yet to assimilate.

The digital negatives DNGs from which these pictures were made is 233 MB in size measuring just of 40 megapixels. I won’t go into the details of how I produced them except to say I used my F 2.4 Carl Zeiss Flektogon Lens at around f 8.0 on an Olympus E-3 digital camera.

The average punter, when they see a striking image, exclaims: “Oh it’s been Photo-shopped!” And they do so in such a disparaging way that infers that anyone can take a file from their digital compact, load it into their preferred editing program, and come out with a masterpiece.

Networking with others in your chosen profession is always thought provoking and usually helpful Recently S.J.M. Bray met with Birmingham based photographer Pete Ashton whose images are refreshing and seem ultra low thech. But are they?

Unfortunately I hadn’t set the E-3 to RAW capture, and instead took a series of SHQ jpegs, which aren’t really the same thing. As a result I doubt if this image will feature in the Exhibition Mike Eldridge and Stephen Bray are holding at Netsel Gallery later this year.

Michael Eldridge It seems amazing that it was 35 years ago when I enrolled for a photography class and Michael was my tutor. Last week we met for the first time since those early days in Dorset, yet it seemed like yesterday. The week has passed so rapidly yet we have achieved as much as [...]

Photographs from Le Marche by S. J. M. Bray.

Jeremy Maxwell, (S.J.M. Bray), photographer continues to prepare for the ‘Tree and Sky’ Exhibition in Marmaris in May 2010.

A varied, but vibrant, photographic exhibition is currently at the Moseley Exchange featuring the work of Emily Quinton, Dan Burwood, and Pete Ashton.

The beauty of the Art Filter is that once you have recorded an image in Olympus Raw Format (ORF), it’s a matter of seconds to render it into an entirely new look.

One of the photographers whom I most admire is Nitsa who lives in California. It was she who coined the term ‘non-photography’ and she wrote a book about it. Hannah has a copy that I sent her for her birthday a year, or so, back and I’ve been reading it. Nitsa likes to do things [...]

Any surface can reflect coloured light. In this instance a red curtain has dramatically changed the tone of a white wall.

The Papaya, (Carica papaya), isn’t native to Turkey but may be grown here under controlled conditions. The leaves of this tree were decayed and asked to be photographed in the style of Irving Penn.

When Irving Penn set out in 1948 to photograph La Sagrada Familía for American Vogue little did he suspect he would be met by Salvadore Dali and a funeral cortège.

There’s always an opportunity to take photographs, even after dark. They may not be ‘art’, or of general interest, but they are an opportunity to excercise your skills and think about how to make your images as attractive as possible.

Sketching helps me to see people and things more clearly, and for a photographer that skill is essential. After I scanned the images into Photoshop I just couldn’t help editing them a little, either by applying some Photoshop filters, or by using some layers to edit the final image using a lightpen.

This water fountain sits on a quiet road high above Turunc.There are many such points throughout Turkey where anyone may obtain free drinking water from natural springs. It’s common for a benefactor to either commission a tap, or trough, or perhaps for their family to create such a point as a memorial.

When elegant backdrops aren’t available Jane Bown will use a plain wall, or surface as a background for her portraits.

Jane Bown’s early images depict a relationship between people and nature, rather than being landscape images per se. Even the photograph, or rather portrait, of the Molly the cow is an image of domestic livestock.

When walking with a camera it’s often easiest to photograph what’s under your nose. This was Jane Bown’s discovery over sixty years ago.

By combining images in the computer it’s mossible to obtain incredible definition and dynamic range from the Olympus E-3, or any other camera come to that?

I found this tree on the road to Turunç from Içmeler. The chevrons create a kind of joke. The tree points upwards whilst the man made road-sign points sideways. Image copyright S.J.M. Bray.

A tranquil Marmaris Seascape photographed by S.J.M. Bray.

If you want to know if it was Cartier-Bresson or Winnogrand who inspired me when taking the image above just click on it. It will take you to the original photograph I had in my mind to precede it in my presentation.

Jeremy Maxwell, (A.K.A. S.J.M. Bray), and Michael John Eldridge are planning an exhibition to take place at Netsel Gallery, Marmaris. The dates are 28th May, 10th June 2010.

Using a wide portrait lens and monochrome media can make a poor photographic context into a great one.

When photographer Stephen Bray started collaborating with Michael Eldridge he breathed new life into some of his favourite images.

I’m collaborating with Michael John Eldridge who taught me most that I know of making memorable images some thirty, it seems, or so, years ago. Bibble Pro lends itself to such manipulations and none more than the latest from Bibble Labs, Bibble Pro 5.

When Görel and Roger Wallis crashed Ali Arbi’s party few realised they were entertaining such distinguished guests.

I’m unsure when this 1950s Mercedes last ran, but I am told she is nearly 100% original!

When I’m walking I am not looking for anything in particular to photograph. Sometimes, however, a particular feature will grab my attention and when this happens I do my best to capture it’s image with dignity.

Irving Penn is able to find bits of rubbish in the street and photograph it in such a way as to dignify and beautify it, without subtracting anything from its essential identity. Sometimes I’ve gone out looking for such opportunities, but most often they just occur as I’m walking along. It’s great to photograph the mundane just as-it-is!

Doorways and gates have long been favourite subjects in photography. For amateur photographers they provide a tame subject that lacks timidity, or aggression. Professional photographers usually have a few gateways in their files because they are sometimes used on bookcovers when the subject of the text is about self exploration and discovery.

If you spend any time in Cappadocia it’s quite likely that you will have seen some of Ramo’s art but not known it. He’s incredibly talented both as a painter and as a stonemason and sculptor whose work isn’t just to be found in galleries, but also as drinking fountains, and shop signs.

Cappadocia: What mysteries will be revealled to you in Ortahisar?

The Carl Zeiss Jena M42 Flektogon adapts well to digital use providing sharp but delicate images.

Sometimes a monochrome image better conveys reality than one imbued with full colour.

Yachts at Kumlubuk Some of my regular visitors are complaining that there’s been few posts recently. The fact is I’m busy on many projects but I did manage to catch this image recently when beachcombing at Kumlubük.

It’s been some months since I had a chance to post here because my time has been taken up studying Internet marketing. That’s been a huge learning curve partly enjoyable, mainly labour, but now at last most of the ‘grunt work’ seems over and I’m showing some small reward for all my effort. Today I [...]

Jacob Marley’s Ghost The ‘tweet’ has replaced prose, or so it seems this year? Wot’s a tweet you ask? Oh, dear pilgrim, you’re not wired, plugged-in, connected, take your pick fo the expressions that indicate that you’re embracing Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the place to which the Internet has evolved. It is to your [...]

That Old Boat at Kumlubük I wasn’t entirely happy with yesterday’s image of that old boat so today I decided to attempt to split-tone it in Adobe Photoshop. It gives the image an entirely different feel, but I’m unsure that I prefer it to yesterday’s image!

Lentil Soup ~ E-400 Found Image It’s well known that Henri Cartier-Bresson made most of his photographs with a Leica rangefinder camera. He started with the Leica II, was often photographed using a Leica M3, and is said to have enjoyed the Leica III series, which pre-dated the M series and for a while was [...]

This lens really feels very different to handle than my OM Zuikos. It could be the weather, which currently is quite changeable, but it seems to require a different metering technique too. Images seem to look their best with around two stops less exposure compensation dialled in. The .jpgs straight from the camera then come [...]

Le Marche” © Copyright Michael Eldridge 2004 For the past couple of days I’ve been in contact, after nearly a lifetime, with one of the people who made a positive impact upon my life. Michael Eldridge was my first tutor in photography when I enrolled for a course at Weymouth College more than thirty years [...]

I confess, I think improving upon nature fails for two reasons. Firstly, although we may be able to reinterpret nature using paint, or digital art, the real thing is undoubtedly more complex and beautiful. Secondly, I think of myself as a part of nature, rather than apart from it. If nature is improved by my [...]

225cms x 175cms No, this isn’t about the new 12 Megapixel Sensor in the Panasonic G1, or the Olympus E-30. This picture was taken with my Olympus E-3. You may not think there’s anything remarkable about the picture but in fact the image is a little over 1 : 1 in scale. That’s to say [...]

Yesterday I wrote how I wanted to reach a high ranking in Google, at least for the name of the new web site, without posting a link to it here. Today I am very pleased to find that I achieved that aim within 24 hours. There is still no link from here to the new [...]

I’ve recently spent some time creating a new web site to showcase my photography. I don’t intend to link directly to it here because I want to see if I can get a high ranking at Google for it without using this blog. If I mention the URL here I’ll send the spiders straight to [...]

A gnarled tree in Kumlubük I didn’t see this image, it was Irem who noticed the gnarled shapes to the branches of this tree. But when I photographed them they really looked rather flat and uninteresting when I looked at the digital file. A few minutes in Lightroom and Photoshop soon had the branches rendered [...]

Sometimes I think I would like to have access to a proper studio. I love the idea of soft flat lighting provided by softboxes but not as much as that of gilded models that may be Photoshopped to perfection. But I’m just a street-dog really. Nothing wrong with that. Helmut Newton favoured the street to [...]

Baz takes his shot! The British photographer Jane Bown is renowned for eschewing gadgetry in favour of having an eye for light and an interest in her subjects. Using either a twin lens Rolleiflex, or an Olympus OM-1 each equipped with a standard lens she is able to capture the essence of the situation, and [...]

Part of a recently renovated stone house The trick of photography is to keep taking pictures and whilst doing so attempt to keep the quality of your images high. It’s not always possible to find dramatic, or unusual subjects however. For this reason many photographers revisit the familiar attempting each time either to improve upon [...]

A ‘Minor’ Masterpiece, Methinks? There is much that is beautiful about Rhodes, and a little that is, somewhat, tawdry. I came upon this ‘street art’ in the old city that I find quite amusing. It must have a story but my Greek is non-existant so, unable to discover its history, I will let it speak [...]

Not a flower portrait, and not by Irving Penn For over forty years the venerable Irving Penn has been photographing blooms. Penn has the ability to make anything look dignified in his photographs, even death and decay. This perhaps above all his other talents is his genious. I read recently that David Bailey sometimes spends [...]

The light, and symmetry between the two boats makes this shot work. Over the last four years I must have taken at least a dozen pictures of this footbridge. All have merit in their own way, even when taken at different times of the day, or year, with alternative cameras and settings. This is the [...]

“PLEASE, do me the greatest favour by removing those ghastly weak photo’s which you have used on your website”, wrote Sally Soames. Then to rub salt in the wound she sent me an example of what a gritty image really can be.

A Common Sight On the Amos Estate Sometimes the most commonplace objects provide suitable subject matter for photography. For instance these berries are to be found everywhere on the Amos Estate yet their rich colour and uniform proportions can make for a suitable subject for a photograph.

A Supermarket, (Not by Andreas Gursky) I understand that at one time the interior of an empty supermarket photographed by Andreas Gursky and printed as a giant Cibachrome was the most expensive photograph ever sold. I never thought much of that image, but some of his more recent sets, for example of stock exchanges across [...]

Any object may be made to look beautiful when photographed sympathetically.

The Gates of Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul. Probably ‘job’s worth‘ is more apt as the subject of this post rather than popinjay but popinjay will do and makes for nice alliteration! You see, gentle reader, whilst it’s possible to photograph the official guard at Dolmabahçe Palace, as you can see in the image above, when you [...]

Olympus E-3, 1/3 sec, Summilux 1.4 D at F 2.0, 800 ISO Most people keep their digital cameras set on ‘Auto’ with the consequence that as soon as dusk falls the camera will automatically make a burst of flash whatever the subject. Whilst I have a number of flash units I rarely use them except [...]

Miley Cyrus by Annie Leibovitz America has always been more reserved than Europe when it comes to nudity. This photograph of teen idol Miley Cyrus, which appeared in a recent edition of Vanity Fair magazine has sparked an amazing controversy. Perhaps not since parents demanded the burning of ‘Beatles’ and ‘Stones‘ merchandise during the 1960s [...]

Normally the nearest thing to a mall that I get to is Umranye Carefour but today Amazon’s older relatives are in our charge and they have brought us to Cevahir Shopping Mall. These young scamps seem to have a purpose! Where are they taking us? Fortunately Granny is the treasurer At last all is revealed [...]

Olympus E-400, Zuiko D 50mm (Crop). No this isn’t original Cappadocian art, it’s contemporary art hanging on Yengicim‘s wall. Bizarre perhaps but strangely balanced and although grotesque alarmingly reassuring. A real artistic paradox. I sat opposite most of yesterday whilst reading a thick tome on Cappadocia. Outside the window this chap maintained his perch for [...]

Sir Roy Strong doesn’t care for Norman Parkinson‘s triptych portrait of our Queen, her mother, and sister but I think it pure theatre, human at its best, and far better than more recent works by Rankin and Leibovitz. I tend not to pose people for my photographs but managed to catch this image on the [...]

Amazon and Hannah ~ Blowers! Here are my two small chick-a-dees. They’re Hannah and Amazon who share a Dad but look different due to his profligate behavior. What are they up to? The fact is that they are under the influence of Pete Horsham a post-modern artist and musician also known as Kraymon. Kraymon is [...]

I think Amazon must have overdosed me on cartoon animations!

Lone Pine! I like taking black and white photographs, especially in the summer when there is strong differentiation of tone. The image above says it all about this tree, and no amount of colour could improve upon the aesthetic of this image. The image below, by contrast, has been improved by being in monochrome. In [...]

The Shoreline At Kumlubük Do you ever wave Mrs? No I don’t mean do you wave to people from the window of a train, or the back of a limousine, what I mean is do you ever take the time to switch off your Blackberry and stare at waves lapping on the shore. I found [...]

The Kumlubük Plain In Monochrome Digital photography rules, O.K! In just a few minutes I can achieve what used to take hours in the darkroom. And imagine how impossible it would be to escape from the reality of business pressures by entering the darkroom, mixing chemicals, getting the temperature right, focusing the enlarger, washing and [...]

I have been so busily playing ‘Owned‘ on Facebook recently that I’ve forgotten to blog! Owned is a truly addictive application, which is only likely to be surpassed by the new virtual business game that is shortly to be installed at The Family Business School as part of the continuing build of the web site [...]

If you have a moment go to PicLens.com and download the PicLens plug-in for your browser. PicLens is a 3d browser that creates a wall of photographs on your screen. It’s an indescribable experience. You appear to be floating between images! When you’ve installed PicLens navigate to Google image search and type in pebblesfromparadise.com. Click [...]

Stage6 To Close! Stage6 who are owned by DivX and host movies made in the DivX format are closing later this week. This has come as a shock to the DivX community, although the DivX player and movies will continue to be available via other web sites, including pebblesfromparadise.com. Nevertheless people who have devoted time [...]

BRAY by AMAZON John Bergin, my art master at Blandford Grammar School, taught that according to the rules of perspective verticals are always vertical. I generally adhere to this principle and therefore correct the perspective of over 90% of my photographs in Adobe Photoshop. Amazon, (4 years) has no such sensibilities. For her the world [...]

Yesterday when I was writing about ‘Ebru’: Reflections of Cultural Diversity in Turkey by Attila Durak I was a little surprised that I couldn’t find a listing for the volume at Amazon.com? Okay, you retort, it’s a Turkish book so why would anyone in the USA, or UK be interested in it? Well, although it’s [...]

Inkilâp Bookshop Window, Before I Bought One Of The Volumes The last time I was at Ümraniye Carrefour I happed past the Inkilâp Bookshop’s window and was seduced by a wonderful image of a Tibetan girl as photographed by Steve McCurry. The dimensions of McCurry’s volume, although nowhere near rivalling Helmut Newton’s Sumo, are by [...]

Straight E-900 JPG Capture Here is an image of Irem and Amazon captured as a JPEG on the Fuji FinePix E-900. It looks a little flat and dull. We could do lots of different things to improve it but here are two quick tips to make shots like this much better. I went to the [...]

A Yacht At Anchor In Marmaris Outer Harbour The first thing my father ever told me about photography was always to have the sun behind me when taking a shot. It’s pretty good advice but like all rules sometimes it pays off to flaunt sanity and convention. I love the quality of silhouetted images such [...]

A Neighbour’s House

I was looking at an old book by Professor Hedgecoe on colour photography recently and noticed that the colours of images reproduced seemed somewhat more muted than those that we are used to today. Initially I put this down to the use of film, rather than digital media, and there may be something in that [...]

Turunç with its Habit, and other bars is very 1960s. Laid back, fairly quiet, good for families, not good for loud music and clubs . . . you must go somewhere else for all that! Anyway, just to put an end to my personal 1960s revival precipitated by photographing Turunc’s Classic water bowser I leave [...]

Since yesterday’s post read as if I were under the influence of recreational pharmaceuticals, (I wasn’t, it was illustrative of my natural state), and the photographs seemed stone-cold sober, even prosaic ~ today I have cross-processed the image of the Turunç water-bowser in order to create a 1960s style image more in keeping with yesterday’s [...]

Amos Without Tourists, Perfec’ Another image taken with the E-400 and the Olympus OM 24mm lens, via an adapter. The RAW file was converted in Bibble Pro where the colours were optimized before a curves adjustment was made in Photoshop to emulate Kodachrome 25. Kindly note: Photoshop and Kodachrome are trade marks of Adobe Systems [...]

Unprinted File From Digital Negative Scan Until recently I thought that the differences in quality between different brands of Photo Inkjet Paper to be exaggerated. No doubt this is because I have been used to using the paper by whatever brand of printer I owned, I have had Canon, Epson and now have pretty much [...]

Scan of Monochrome Image Made On Schoeller Acid Free Watercolour Painting Paper I spent yesterday continuing to attempt to come to grips with the HP B9180. When I purchased it last month there wasn’t any photographic paper in A3 size at the stationers so I bought some large Sulphur Free Watercolour paper for painting manufactured [...]

The incredible New Yorker Dave Beckerman recently invited a number of his blog readers to submit photographs of their work stations. Just a few responded, with yours truly a late entrant so don’t expect to find this image in his collection yet. Star Ship Cockpit!

I was looking at the work of New York based Platon, an Anglo-Greek photographer with a portfolio of portraits that include George Bush Snr. and Vladamir Putin. Platon has opened his home to meetings of a group of around 20 photographers who discuss their work together. Unassuming as he may be I am sure he [...]

Oh Dear . . . I don’t believe it! Back in Amos once more and coerced into applying the little grey cells to the creation of stuff for others. It’s all Irem’s doing. Life would be so simple were it not for her. She finds people, talks to them, brings them into our life and [...]

Drift Wood On Amos Beach Living a reclusive life on a small estate might appear to provide limited opportunities for photography, especially when the weather is inclement. It’s true that living here does little to further my ambition to make images like the late Helmut Newton, however that aside, there are many opportunities to photograph [...]

There is a man in Scotland named Colin Jago who writes that he takes photographs in order to see more. I never had this motivation until I read his words. Indeed I always believed that one had to have a ‘good eye’ in order to make any sort of images, either using photography or other [...]

Punk Rocker Off Duty! Cross processed, Dear Reader, not cross-dressed, although looking at Irem it isn’t a dress that she wears but a boyish bomber-jacket! This image was taken with my latest combination, an E-400 digital body fitted with an OM to E-System adapter, an OM Zuiko 24mm, (Manual Focus Lens), and a Katz-Eye Focussing [...]

Near The Jetty, Behind The Point Centre, Marmaris. I found this miniature bandstand on the seafront just behind the Point Centre. I guess it serves as some kind of booth in the summer, but it looked pretty bedraggled when I came upon it last Sunday. Nevertheless I liked its lines, the shadows and the fact [...]

We all take photographs of family members and friends. Some of us may even venture into photographing the occasional landscape, or a picture of the hotel where we stayed on holiday but photographers tend to eschew such subject matter. This is a pity since photographer’s family albums tend to be filled with dreadfully composed images [...]

Yesterday I was remarking about how the technicalities of photography sometimes seem to impinge upon the art of making images. Make no mistake the technical aspects of taking pictures are important, even in these days of automated cameras. Indeed, unless you always want to produce bog-standard images, some degree of camera control is essential. There [...]

For me photography is a pleasure, but it wasn’t always so. Of course when I first realised that images weren’t something mysterious that could only be developed at the local pharmacy I became excited. I must have been ten, or eleven years old. But then the nightmares began. Firstly there were all those numbers on [...]

I have a new photographic hero. His name is Alfred T. Palmer. I came upon his work by chance whilst looking for some border masks to use on a portrait image I made some time ago of Damla. Damla As An Albumen Print From Damaged Glass Negative, (Circa 1860) A quick image search via Google [...]

Last month I compared a number of RAW editors. A RAW editor takes the file made by a digital camera, but before any processing has occurred in-camera, and enables you to manipulate it on your computer. This enables you to have maximum control of the qualities of your final processed images. With film you have [...]

The Rock Is Familiar, But The Shadows Change Throughout The Days And Years I like to play with shadows. Often I will be captivated by the way shadows transform the quality of some common-place object or scene. My mind has grown accustomed to imagining forms as-they-are, and how they may be altered, or enhanced using [...]

Because it was taken on a film, nice innit! Olympus OM1. Kodak Gold 400, processed and scanned in a Fuji Mini-Lab. Pretty good stuff really! No really it is. Far more depth even at an 8 bit bitmap than a 16 bit digital capture. If an OM-1 can achieve this I wonder how a half-plate [...]

Good Lor’, I’m appearing on my own blog! I am really proud of this portrait, and not simply because it’s a picture of me! You see it was taken by my youngest daughter Amazon a few days before her fourth birthday. She takes lots of pictures these days, and indeed has requested her own camera! [...]

Not exactly round, more sort of bun shaped . . . Giotto di Bondone wasn’t Turkish, but rather a great Italian draughtsman and painter. I remember from Miss Hart’s history lessons at Blandford Grammar School that he once drew a circle with a piece of chalk, or was it charcoal? Apparently this impressed his Italian [...]

Highly Saturated Colour . . . Usually when I carry a digital camera I set the preview to monochrome. There are images that work simply because they are blocks of bold colour, but most good pictures rely on compositional form in order to succeed. Of course even when capturing a black and white .jpg most [...]

An Unexpected Visitor To Amos! After the recent storms I ventured down to the beach to see if any damage had occurred. The boat moored in the bay was still afloat and safe at anchor. This ‘stranger’ however had washed ashore at the foot of the beach steps. I love the muted quality of this [...]

Rustic Stuff On The Amos Estate I was walking around the estate recently looking for good specimens of flora to photograph for my on-line gallery when suddenly I noticed this arrangement. As the Olympus E-400 was fitted with a prime macro lens I shot this with the FinePix E-900 compact. For some reason the highlights [...]

Red Berries and . . . Oh God, not more trees and flowers you say. Well yes ladies and gentlemen for your absolute enjoyment and edification, presented in dynamic digital colour it is my pleasure to offer you not only some berries, but also the humble pine cone! . . . ever so ‘umble indeed! [...]

Cyanactitic Wonders! Of course there’s no such thing as a cyanactite. There are stalactites, which are rocky formations that grow due to precipitation from the ceilings of caves; and then there are cyanotypes, which are photographs made by an ancient chemical process that result in a cyan/blue print. As It Is! I had just parked [...]

Turunç: A Classic Pastoral Scene Today I am in Istanbul indulging in some street photography, but this time last week I was parked at the southern entrance to the market. Suddently I looked from my window and realised that I was looking onto a classic pastoral scene. It’s so easy to ignore the obvious, especially [...]

Irem in a reflective mood I suppose most of us have taken holiday snaps. We go somewhere nice for a meal and then ask the waiter, or a passer-by, to take our photograph in front of our lunch, or some exotic background. And why not? But when you study the images of great portrait photographers [...]

A Power Retouche ‘Platinum Print’ Platinum printing is a process requiring funds, skill, patience and most probably a sense of humour. The chemicals used must be prepared in the darkroom and applied to the paper using a brush made from goat hair. The process was first used by C. J. Burnett in 1851, and a [...]

Photographed earlier this year! Here’s another shot for Peter and Pat. It was taken earlier in the year, and I simply hadn’t got around to using it. It was taken as an in camera .jpg and then adjusted very slightly in Adobe Photoshop®. A question is now emerging in my mind about the plethora of [...]

R.I.P. This can, that looks to be past sell-by-date beanz, is one of the saddest fine art images that I’ve seen on the Internet. You see I have spent many happy days working in lunatic asylums, and grown fond of many of the characters therein, both staff and patients. This copper can is the grave [...]

  Can an apple a day keep Dad’s Photoshopping at bay? Don’t think about Leica sharpness, my Leica IIIa is equipped with a sixty year old F-2 Summar. It is notoriously soft when wide open and since it has many cleaning marks even at F 5.6 it suffers somewhat. Also don’t think about film-grain, which [...]

Olympus E-400, Leica/Panasonic Summilux 25mm at F4 Above is a quick snapshot of Amazon. The Olympus RAW file was converted to monochrome in Bibble Pro version 4.95, using the Andy plug-in, simulating Agfa-AgfaPan 25 with a number 2 filter for the paper. So far so good. Tightly Cropped The great British photographer Bailey had a [...]

Kumlubük: It’s nice to be in your embrace! It was once a fashion in photography to warm landscape images using an 81c warm-up filter. This emulated the colour temperature of evening light in an attempt to take a mediocre photograph and make it more appealing. It rarely worked, except when done by true landscape professionals [...]

Olympus E-400, an eighth of a second at F 1.4 This portrait of Irem’s brother Emre was taken by the light of three small light bulbs enclosed in decorative coloured filters similar to these: Decorative Lights For Sale In Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar Own A Camera? If you found this article of interest you may wish [...]

When my Dad was about the age that I am now we bought a Gnome Beta II enlarger with a moderately good lens and set about processing our own films and making prints. Truth be told it was far easier to process films at Blandford Grammar School’s Camera Club than at home because the school [...]

Power Retouch Simulation Of A Paladium Print Amazon, Irem and I are in Istanbul and on the rounds of the family icons. Ismet Hala is Irem’s aunt, and the oldest member of the family on her father’s side. She is a wonderfully cheerful and sanguine character whom I always enjoy seeing. Today was no exception [...]

One of the things I enjoy about Turkish Cities is the juxtaposition between the cultures that subsist within them. Here I am drinking Turk Kahve at a relatively smart cafe when in the distance I spy two traditionally dressed women sitting under a tree. All around them appears to be litter, blown or dumped, in [...]

poster design by Art Machine, A Trailer Park Company Yesterday I was reminiscing about how Sally introduced me to Bob and Bob, in turn, introduced me to Leonard Cohen’s music. He also introduced me to the songs of Melanie, a woman with an equally soulful voice as Cohen’s. These were the days of the first [...]

1966 Vauxhall Viva HA . . . but in the life of our planet it is a blink. It seems like yesterday but it has been half a lifetime. Am I being nostalgic, I think not? These were simply the days of miracle and wonder, but it’s not Paul Simon I want to write about [...]

Haute Cuisine Maybe? I was cleaning out some files on the computer today when I came upon this ‘still life’ image. What can this meal be, you may ask? In fact it’s no meal at all, it’s a joke! Earlier this year, when my mother-in-law was staying with us, I attempted to explain to her [...]

H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, (Sans Crown) by Annie Leibovitz Mr. Keith Nolan recently referred to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a ‘pompous old biddy’. His comment was made at the ‘State Of The Art’ web site. Naturally as an ardent Royalist I have done what The Lord Chamberlain should have done, and replied to [...]

A simulated platinum print using ‘Tony Real’ You may have noticed that I am into monochrome at the moment. Long ago we used to mix our own fixer at Blandford Grammar School Camera Club, but we always bought our ID 11. I once won the prize in the photographs junior category although I had inserted [...]

Why Is Irem Looking So Chipper? It’s because not only was she able to spend time on the mat yesterday, but today Gaku Homma Sensei came to Amos with the Marmaris Aikido Group and spent several hours with us here. Why then, you may wonder is the main photograph of Irem? It’s very simple really [...]

Reality, or Bedroom Fantasy? Just when I thought I had seen everything my big brother Eric sent me a panorama he made of a bedroom. He writes: “When taking interior shots I usually try to take a variety from every available angle and then use a piece of software called Panorama Plus to bring out [...]

I saw this image last year with Hannah at the Tate Modern Istanbul Modern is worth a visit when you’re in the City. Much of the top floor houses works by a number of Turkish artists dating from the mid nineteenth century. Frankly I thought much there wasn’t really up-to-snuff, but here and there some [...]

I went along to Istanbul Modern today and was frustrated to find it closed. It apparently never opens on Mondays! This meant that I had to make do by looking at an exhibition of pictures by the Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk.The Museum’s information of Tunbjörk says: “Tunbjörk emphasises the complacency as well as the dangers [...]

Early morning on Istiklal Caddessi A few months back I visited Istiklal Caddesi with the Canon 20D. As I recall it was a damp, overcast day and the images taken required some post processing to add impact. Today was quite different. I am armed with the Olympus E-400 and the Panasonic/Leica Summilux 25mm. As you [...]

Michael Mallows, Writer, Broadcaster, Therapist, and Wit I recently e-mailed Michael Mallows on the subject of using literature in training people in the art of therapeutic communication. I wrote: Very pertinent comments about projections! Years ago in college I suggested to a tutor that we might learn something by discussing literature rather than therapeutic techniques. [...]

The Party On The Patio Yesterday I was bemoaning the loss of my old home town. Today I am rejoicing in the acquisition of a new one. We’ve lived here full-time for around three years now and are getting to know far more people. Due, in no small measure, to this journal we also find [...]

The late Gregory Bateson when teaching art students matters of epistemology was fond of presenting them with a boiled crab and asking: “I want you to produce arguments which will convince me that this object is the remains of a living thing. You may imagine, if you will, that you are Martians and that on [...]

After a complete rest, and then finding time to check that Phillip’s fridge door had been left ajar when he departed for England last week, I returned today to making a photograph of the tree. This time I took my shots with the final monochrome image in mind. Also I took the photograph with my [...]

Your Hero, His Wife and Her Grandfather at Ankara Opera House. When Europeans think of Ankara they tend to think of a sterile place somewhere in the Gobi Desert, probably created by Stalin and carved out of solid concrete. Nothing could be further from the truth! Ankara is a European cosmopolitan city in central Turkey [...]

Nearly Finished! At last I’ve managed to get the tree project finished ~ well almost. I have yet to take the finished file to the printer, but I am confident that a print 40 inches wide will be possible. It will have to wait for a week though as we are off to Ankara today [...]

The final version will look something like this. It was too windy to photograph the tree yesterday. The ISO needs to be set low in order to capture as much detail as possible on the E-400. My test images show that the Summilux must be stopped down to F 4, or even F 5.6 in [...]

A Second Study Yesterday I spent two hours communing with The Sacred Tree. Whilst I was doing so the mini bus from the garage arrived and my communing became a public display before the driver and passengers. Before you exclaim that ‘Poor Stephen has gone bonkers!’ I would ask you to look carefully at the [...]

A First Study! Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889-1982) was an English forester, environmental activist, and author who contributed greatly to worldwide reforestation efforts. As a leader, he founded an organization, still active today, whose many chapters carry out reforestation internationally. As an expression of his spiritual bent and his broad humanitarianism, he became a Bahá’í [...]

Trees by Frank Horvat I have been commissioned to photograph an ancient tree to be found in a secret location on the edge of Turunç. The tree is extremely ancient and, believed by some, to be sacred. To be asked to make a portrait of it is a great honour, if also a challenge. The [...]

Models Of Times Past And Present We have started learning about family trees on the Family Therapy Training Course today. These make the structures and histories of families easier to analyse, but at a risk of reducing real people who are living, or once lived, to graphic abstractions. People were, of course, just as much [...]

Is it Art? I’ve been playing with some new toys today. Yesterday I collected the Panasonic Leica Summilux 25mm prime from UPS in Marmaris. This is a very fast, (and Large), standard lens for the 4/3 system built for use on Panasonic’s LC1 SLR, or its Leica equivalent the DigiLux 3. Of course it also [...]

Zeynep İşçen and Ergun Ozek playing a delightful medley of English Country Music Tomorrow is National Children’s Day in Turkey but Netsel Marina arranged some entertainment for young people and Amazon, Irem and I went along to watch. Poor Levent was having kittens. A magician called Mandrake Kemal set up his stage right inside Levent’s [...]

Sunday Morning Regulars here will recall how my sister-in-law sent me a card featuring a print by Alan Fearnley entitled Sunday Morning. I sent a photograph of the print to an Internet address and after four weeks I received an oil painting from China of the scene, modified to suit some personal whims. Last night [...]

A 1969 VW Beetle I think most people know that when the Weazleys rescued Harry Potter from Uncle Vernon’s house in Privet Drive they did so in an enchanted Ford Anglia. The Anglia was perhaps a curious choice for J. K. Rowling to suggest as the enchanted vehicle, for aside from the Morris Minor, (designed [...]

A Serious Lens For A Serious Portrait! As soon as I collected the E-400 from Marmaris’ UPS I fixed the 50mm Zuiko Digital lens to it so I could test both the camera, and the lens. The camera, (touch wood), seems fine and the 50mm lens is a joy. At F 2 it’s quite fast [...]

What a wonderful writer Zadie Smith is. I enjoyed her first novel ‘White Teeth’ enormously and having purchased a copy of ‘On Beauty’ from the Turunç Cat’s Protection League stall I now fully appreciate why The Novel was short listed for the 2005 Booker Prize. Here is an excerpt: “Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking [...]

The Landing Stage Amos Restaurant I’ve been thinking, somewhat, about photography whilst under the influence of some strong antibiotics. That’s not why I’ve started taking pictures in monochrome. What I notice is that many colour photographs these days seem to be in-your-face images of people making strange expressions, or utilize bold colour to make statements, [...]

Frank Horvat This past week, whilst I’ve been laid low with the flu, phlegm and flob, I discovered a remarkable web site belonging to Frank Horvart. I had never heard of Frank before this week but I saw immediately that he is one of the all-time-greats of photography. His picture taking career spans sixty years [...]

Gully Jimson could have painted this. Before my readers challenge your learned diarist by stating that all entries seem to be photographs of his ‘chickadees’ I decided to provide some travelogue for those surfing this web site in search of tourist destinations. Here is the electricity sub-station situated in the car park to Tespo, which [...]

Michelle Penny’s New Web site Michelle Penny recently launched a web site to showcase her poetry. The web site, which like Pebbles From Paradise uses WordPress to sort its input, is certainly eye catching. This should be of no surprise since Michelle is also the brain behind England’s rising design house ‘Grounded Vertigo’. Michelle has [...]

Are you an artist? Can you draw the pirate? I have to thank Gary Bencivenga for alerting me to today’s story. Gary is a marketer and copywriter who from time to time gives away free tips which he calls Bencivenga’s Bullets. One arrived today, it was about well lots of thing really but it concluded [...]

http://thewomaninwhite.info Just to prove that there are people who read this journal, and also visit some of my other websites I reproduce here a recent communication from reader Eileen: Hello, I came here via your Woman in White site. I thought you might be interested in my podcast. Basically I read works from the public [...]

The Budgieman, Great Family Entertainment Here I am on day two of my adventure in London rediscovering Hannah. I’ve felt a lot more relaxed today, we both now know each other. She is no longer discomforted by moustache and I have adjusted to the slight Derbyshire drawl to her accent. Indeed I think it’s true [...]

This unicyclist performing at Covent Garden Market ate an apple whilst juggling it, plus an indian club and a lethal machette My trip to London to meet Hannah has coincided with a second piece of family news. My eldest son the intrepid Ollie Bray has officially launched his domain www.olliebray.com. It’s extremely well made and [...]

“A Man Comes” “He travels swiftly“ “He bears passion and love” Kindly note: The images on the entry are the copyright of US Games Inc. They were originally painted in 1974 by the Scottish Artist Fergus Hall and used in the Eon Productions Film ‘Live And Let Die‘ which was based upon of Ian Flemming’s [...]

Ready For The Oven, And Now As Floyd Would Say: “Time For A Slurp!” At last it’s happened! Mehmet phoned yesterday to say that he had caught an enormous fish and he invited me to photograph it for his new brochure. Amazon, Irem and I hot-footed ourselves, actually we took the jeep because I was [...]

Time And Eternity, by Coşkun Çankaya Last night we were delighted to have a rare visit from our friend Coşkun, who is a local artist. It was he who corrected the painting I commissioned of a Bentley Motor Car, which had some distortion to its perspective. I’m still delighted with Coşkun’s restoration but last night [...]

What Famous Leader Are You? personality tests by similarminds.com Yesterday I discovered that I was an ‘Easy Rider’, according to an impressive personality test at the SimilarMinds web site, which analyses your answers to a bank of questions and reveals the movie to match your personality. I also completed a second test to determine what [...]

In The Glade Something Stirs! In the past two weeks I’ve remembered a past life, and no I’m not referring to my experiments with hypnotic past life regression, but rather I have been remembering a life that excited me throughout my late teens and early twenties. I’m referring to attending music festivals. The catalyst for [...]

Here are some negatives of 4 of the world’s most glamorous women, can you guess who they are? In my posts here about epistemology I’ve pointed to the fact that the colours we see are a function of our neurology, rather than just being out there. When I used to print my own colour negatives [...]

Norman Parkinson and Henri Cartier-Bresson are two photographers whom I admire. They followed very different careers and had different motivations and ideals, yet they were both masters of photography. Parkinson is best known for his fashion and portrait photography, particularly pictures of the Royal Family. Cartier-Bresson is better known for photographing ‘ordinary’ people going about [...]

Yesterday, I wrote of the difficulty attempting to learn about photography using books, films, or linguistic annalysis. All of these may help us achieve the kinds of photographs we might wish to take, but on their own our pictures will be incomplete. Norman Parkinson had been apprenticed to the society photographer Speight for two years [...]

Readers who have come to expect content about photography in this journal may by now be considering abandoning my writings. I urge you not to do so, but it’s up to you – apparently In 1953 the great street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson acquired a copy of ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’ by Eugene Herrigel. [...]

Yesterday in discussing the physicist John Wheeler’s ‘Delayed Choice Experiment’ we approach a problem that most people prefer to ignore. If the world is ultimately manifested from quantum objects, (particles rather than atoms), which only exist in the perception of observers whom rational science informs us are also made of quantum stuff then something like [...]

Guy Bourdin: Pizza, (note the masterful sloping horizon in this top photographer’s shot). I found this image by Guy Bourdin on one of his fan sites. Here are two powerful-looking women eating Pizza in front of a tropical seascape. Could we do something like this for The Amos Beach Club, I wonder? There’s nothing overtly [...]

When Guy Bourdin or Helmut Newton were commissioned to photograph fashion, or even make pictures of cars or other machinery, they always managed to inject a sense of the macabre into their work. Of course they’re both dead now which is pretty macabre too! But when I get summoned to take a photograph of the [...]

  There are over 600 illustrations in colour and duotone in the retrospective tome ‘Henri Cartier-Bresson: the man, the image & the world‘. Only three need concern us here. How is this possible considering the vast number of images in the book are images photographed by the Master himself? He claimed to have never been [...]

Amazon watches the recording she made with Baz of the kitten at Pineapple Restaurant, Marmaris When he was here in Amos Baz, who is a keen video photographer, sometimes remarked that although I write about the FinePix e900, and also carry it with me, he never saw me take a photograph with it. The truth [...]

Guy Bourdin Rejected Transparency File It seems like yesterday that I was writing about how American Photo suggested that top photographer Annie Leibovitz was inspired to create a cover for Vanity Fair by the painting Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe by Eduard Manet. In fact it was two weeks ago! Time passes quickly here in Amos. [...]

A Simpler Childhood, Maybe? Just a couple of days ago Phillip and I were making light over the excessive cardboard packing used in the mail order business. We suggested that maybe people could live in cardboard cartons, or even eat cardboard. It is salutary to have recently acquired a copy of Restless Spirit: The Life [...]

80% satisfaction, maybe? The Internet provides a fund of interesting, and irrelevant information. For example when you enter my niece’s name into Google she comes up on page one as the chairman of a select group of auditors, but nearby, (but now falling down the Google Charts), we find her globe trotting with her beau [...]

Lesley from the Borg Collective The last couple of weeks featured a number of entries about my little niece Lesley. She is in fact the oldest of my nieces, but also the shortest. Add to this an admission that she dyes her hair ~ need I say more? What more is there to say? On [...]

Stephen continues his rant about gas guzzling motor monsters, but admits a soft spot for the classic Bentley 4.5 litre.

Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe by Eduard Manet According to American Photo Magazine top photographer Annie Leibovitz is being called out for borrowing compositional ideas from no less a personage than Irving Penn. If this is true then she is in good company, for we too have borrowed from the Venerable Penn and published the results [...]

An Unlikely Sign? Seth Godin published a useful link in his journal today. It connects to a nice article about logos and brand identity. It makes the point that a good logo won’t support a weak product, or service. True as far as it goes no doubt? To my mind those commissioning a logo, are [...]

At Siegfried’s coming of age he accepts the gift of a sword from his tutor Wolfgang Marmaris are currently staging their 3rd National Ballet Days. The Turkish National Ballet is performing between the 14th and 28th June. We went to see Swan Lake performed by the Izmir Ballet Company. It was a thoroughly professional performance [...]

An Unexpected Suprise! Last evening I made some prints in order to experiment with the PowerRetouche toning utility. Alpay Bey’s portrait from the photograph illustrating a recent piece about Henri Cartier-Bresson and The Snow Leopard worked well when toned to resemble a platinum print ~ the kind favoured by Irving Penn. This morning Amazon and [...]

Power vs Force The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour According to David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D, consciousness may be quantified by a numerical value. There is a logarithmic progression between energy values of the numbers in the scale he invented which is calibrated in numbers between 0 to 1000. Several individuals operating at the lower [...]

A 1950s image for today’s postmodern world As it’s half-term in the U.K. Jocelyn, Becky and Josie are at Amos this week. They arrived here this morning at around 4.00 am. They brought fine beers from Thwaites, and Fullers. Fine Port from Warres and Bombay Gin to fuel Damla’s Martinis. Most importantly they came themselves. [...]

Simple, Timeless, Elegant. In his twilight years my eldest brother Nick once remarked: “of course you had old parents.” I confess that I never really appreciated that they were old parents until I came into my teens when my father’s and mother’s idea of what constituted fashion, or good taste, clashed violently with what was [...]

Irem Bray At Home Here is yet another photograph of Irem. I took it today with the Fuji Finepix E900 using my Ebay purchased 2x Telephoto lens convertor. The result is a perfect soft portrait image. The reduced depth of field has thrown the background out of focus. Exposing for the skin tones has effectively [...]

Domestic Nudes, Turkish Style The Hon. Helmut Newton wrote that his ‘Domestic Nudes’ series began by his wanting to photograph the rooms of the Chateau Marmont, Hollywood, where he spent his winters for the last twenty-six years of his life . . . . . “but who would look at my pictures of empty rooms? [...]

Living in Turkey under what President George Bush, His Name Be Praised, considers to be a secular fascist Muslim dictatorship it’s easy to miss the odd festival such as Christmas, or Easter. But I guess all people celebrate the harvest like Europeans, but that won’t happen until the autumn. I was therefore truly grateful to [...]

Perfect composition and light make this a successful classic photograph In the race to obtain the ultimate photographic machine many of us forget that it’s not the camera but the person using it that makes a good photograph. What utter bollocks! It’s true that the great Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote a book called ‘The Decisive Moment’ [...]

The Inimitable Marlene Dietrich, As Photographed by the late Sir Cecil Beaton Hurrah! Today through the post I received Portfolio No: 40 in the Stern series Fotorgafie. It is devoted to the work of Sir Cecil Beaton. Beaton was one of the Great British ‘Fay‘ Photographers who worked extensively for the Conde Nast Journal of [...]

As Advertised In ‘The Slingshot’ Regular readers of these august columns will note that we frequently carry an advertisement from ‘The Slingshot: The Great British Magazine for Young Chaps’. One might think that The Slingshot might be confused for that other English institution ‘The Chap’, which is a more contemporary read offering advice about how [...]

Joiner Photography is a term coined by British artist David Hockney. It involves gluing several different photographs together,

View Of The Amos Estate From Near The Ruined City Every day or so Amazon, Irem and I walk from Amos to Kumlubük. Amazon likes to play ‘Pooh Sticks’ in one of the streams and Irem and I just fancy the exercise. On the way an opportunity for a photograph usually presents itself. Sometimes it’s [...]

My Father’s Paintbox [Not by Irving Penn] I’m unsure if I’m disappointed, or delighted by ‘A Notebook At Random’ by Irving Penn? I’m probably a little of both . . The write up in American Photo asserted: “Books that describe the creative process of an artist are often intriguing, and books that do so graphically [...]

Continuing the search for beauty in a postmodern world.

The venerable Irving Penn who continues to take his work seriously even after a career spanning sixty years once produced a collection of images entitles: ‘Cigarettes’.

This entry reviews Helmut Newton’s autobiography. At £7.99, [from Amazon.co.uk], it’s exceptional value and essential reading for the would-be photographer.

Continuing the exploration of art and aesthetics ~ where this is going I know not?

Stephen continues his exploration of art and aesthetics.

Continuing our search for aesthetics in the Ukraine!

Click Here For An Oaty Surprise When Irem removed a cereal packet that Amazon had fetched to the breakfast table this morning she asked her daughter: “Do you mind if I take this back to the kitchen, it clutters the table and is unaesthetic. Aesthetics are very important, you know!” I was amazed at her [...]