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Listing of All Assignments (Last First)

I set up just after dawn on a marathon route and waited for the runners to appear. During the wait daily life started and this was a quick grab shot of a very typical roadside food seller off to offer his wares. A quick guesstimate that 1/60s should get some panning blur, and still hopefully result in a steady image proved to be about right. I waited some more - and still no sign of the runners - turns out they changed the route.

For an assignment simply entitled "Beer" I could not think of one original image. Studio shots of beer, in bottles, in cans and everywhere else was too obvious an option. I know a fair few bars around that have beer proudly displayed in their titles, and on a cruise around the streets I decided that this one had the most potential. I like the simplicity of it - but I did have to shoot it at 6am to get a clear shot - and avoid worrying the patrons. As seems to be the way in the earlier hours of the day, I took the Lumix. As the bar is dark the Lumix needed 400 ISO which of course led to quite nasty noise, so I added to film grain in PS to make this more appealing - and then tritoned it to give it that real rough around the edges look. The bar seems to suit it.

During my tests with the Lumix I discovered a pleasant beach nearby. I had to return with a "bigger gun" and took along the 24-70L. The sky promised a good sunset, but right up to the last moment appeared that it was not going to materialise - then just for a few moments the sky lit up. The 24-70 and SLR sensor certainly capture more resolutution (as one would hope) and the noise is in a different league - and that is with the outdated 10D. However, the Lumix can and generally does go everywhere with me; a SLR with "L" lens is not exactly a pocket setup.

I am lazy. So carrying around a SLR with a number of lenses does not come easy. Not so long ago I purchased a pocket digital point and shoot to replace my aging 1.3 megapixel Casio. The Panasonic Lumix returns good shots - for such a small digicam. On this occasion I wanted to test a new B&W converting workflow, so the outright quality of the images was not so important and Lumix was chosen. Naturally lens resolution cannot compete with an SLR, but if you don't look too close the Lumix prints acceptable 5x7" prints. "Convert to B&W Pro" was the package being experimented with, and a delight to use it is. Although you could carry out the same B&W conversion using PS internal tools such as channel mixer, CBWP certainly takes the hassle out of the task.

The qualities of a shot taken with film add appeal to many images, while digital images generally appear too clean, sterile and possibly overly accurate in certain cases. The easy solution would be to shoot with film - but with no possibility for a darkroom in my current location, it is left to digital manipulation to try and recreate certain characteristics of an emulsion. This shot taken directly from the camera was certainly never going to be a colour candidate - the contrast was too high and the highlights all but blown out - but it did offer mono possibilities - and from there toning and softfocus effects.

Sometimes with such an open assignment brief you are so spoiled for choice it is difficult to focus on one idea. I had many ideas that sprang to mind but they all seemed to have been done before - so I ended up shooting something that sits next to my computer day in and day out - my floor fan. The strong green/cyan reflections come from some plastic parts nearby the grill I shot - enhanced by the use of a green gel on the strobe.

The brief for this assignment was simply "Abandoned". I had to fight off urges to take photographs of empty buildings and deserted environments as I thought they were a bit too obvious - also the abandoned places within close proximity to my location are fairly dull - although plentifull. Whilst contemplating many possibilities I noticed that I was running out of time, so with hours to go and poor weather it was going to have to be a studio shot. I thought this image of yesterday's technology demonstrated abandonment, and the inclusion of a 35mm roll in the shot is slightly controversial. The question is whether the roll is being added to the collection of obsolete media or being recovered?

Photographing a computer may not seem at first to be a difficult task. However, it was suspected that lighting the casing well AND ensuring that the computer's own light sources (coloured LEDs) were not swamped by the strobes would be a carefull balance. This suspicion proved to be true, with added aggravation coming from a strobe firing twice on long exposures. The completion of the assignment required producing a specification sheet, produced in Photoshop with some help from Xenoflex.

It turns out that there is an active motorsports society in Thailand and with only one dedicated racing circuit, it was not too difficult to find them. Unfortunately my only long lens produces very soft images (a common problem with that particular type of lens, I found out after buying it) and as at all motorsports venues, getting close is not possible. In fact the images produced this day were not as soft as some others from this lens, probably because of high light levels - but a generous use of sharpening software tools was still required in processing. During the day I was a little confused over the format of the days racing, as they appeared to start from the pitlane, and with no commentary and my Thai not being good enough I just assumed that was the way it was in Thailand. Turns out the whole day was a practice day, there were no races - I am looking forward to going back on a race day.