Author: Nigel Williams

Photographers on Photography

Posted on by Nigel Williams

These are some of the most interesting thoughts of photographers on photography, expressed as quotes.  Some of them I agree with, some I don’t – but they are all thought provoking.  I restricted myself to one quote per photographer, which in many cases, such as Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson, was difficult.   In the next post I will collect the thoughts of other creatives such as artists, film makers and writers on the same topic.

Ansel Adams –  Landscape Photographer

“Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.”

William Albert Allard – Documentary Photographer

“What’s really important is to simplify. The work of most photographers would be improved immensely if they could do one thing: get rid of the extraneous. If you strive for simplicity, you are more likely to reach the viewer. ”

Diane Arbus – Documentary Photographer 

“I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favourite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”

Richard Avedon – Fashion & Portrait Photographer

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ”

David Bailey – Fashion & Portrait Photographer

“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.”

 Margaret Bourke-White –  Photojournalist & War photographer

“If anyone gets in my way when I’m making a picture, I become irrational. I’m never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do – only that I want that picture.”

Brassai – Photographer, Sculptor, Writer & Film Maker

“Chance is always there. We all use it. The difference is a poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.”

Andri Cauldwell – Photographer

“To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.”

Robert Capa – War Photographer

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” Continue reading “Photographers on Photography” →

The Beauty of the Long Exposure

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Road to nowhere - the beauty of the long exposureI have seen some astonishing black and white photography that uses very strong neutral density (ND) filters such as the B+W ND 110 to blur cloud movement using a long exposure.  I wanted to get some shots with the same effect into my portfolio.  The B+W 110 is not for the faint hearted because it is so black the camera typically can’t meter or focus through it, but I’ve tried lesser NDs and they are just not strong enough for the full effect. The real full on long exposure effect can be stunning, and I obtained reasonably pleasing results on the shoot, so I’m going to keep going. The picture on the left is entitled ‘The Road to Nowhere’ and is a small road that runs just off the A41 between Aylesbury and Bicester towards Brill, where I also shot that day.  After some experimentation I found the following to work quite well:

  1. Ideally you should shoot on a cloudy day with strong winds so that you can capture the movement as a blur. The direction and speed of movement of the clouds is of interest as movement across the frame versus towards or away from you look quite different.
  2. Set up your camera on a tripod. Make sure it is really secure, especially if you are in a high wind. If you have a strap attached to the camera make sure it is not flapping about. Ideally you should be using a cable release or remote to release the shutter.
  3. Compose a test shot without the filter, in aperture priority mode – setting the desired aperture, which will typically be small (I mainly used f16). Typically you will want to set a low ISO, shoot using Raw and disable lens vibration reduction as it is not helpful on a tripod.
  4. Focus using auto focus and take note of the shutter speed.
  5. Next, screw in your B+W 110 10 stop neutral density filter, and switch to manual focus and manual mode.
  6. In Manual mode set the shutter speed to 1000 times the shutter speed of the meter reading for the test shot, keeping the same aperture setting and using the bulb setting if necessary.
  7. Take the shot and look at the result. Adjust the shutter setting as desired until you get the exposure you want.
  8. Take off the ND filter, flip back to aperture mode and autofocus and take a bracket of 3 shots that can be used with the long exposure to create a properly exposed image.

 

Route 66 & Monument Valley Road Trip

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Route 66 Ranch House CafeThe typical advice you will find on the web about combining Route 66 and Monument Valley on a trip is ‘don’t’, and I will admit that we (myself and two old friends) cranked out some substantial mileage in 8 days to accomplish this (2,232 miles in all, taking in Antelope Canyon and Death Valley for good measure).  It was well worth it.  Taking a large vehicle like a Chevy Suburban (in FBI black) helped.  My gallery for the Route 66 shots is here.  Our planning was sketchy, but here’s our itinerary:

  • London to Dallas/Fort Forth
  • Margaritas and dinner at Javier’s, Dallas, which is a fine establishment.
  • Morning in Dallas, visited the 6th Floor Museum, which is sombre but well worth the visit.  None of us give much credence to conspiracy theories but all agreed something wasn’t right with the conventional story.  18 witnesses disappeared… Our taxi driver, Charlie Ratcliff, of Cowboy Cars (+1 214 284 9919) was a witness who didn’t disappear.  He saw the shooting as a boy and can be seen in the Zapruder footage with his father.  He gives tours of the city, though we were pressed for time and could not take him up on his offer.
  • Drove to Amarillo, Texas.  Passed the leaning water tower at Groom, Texas (this is 1 of 2 things to see or do in Groom according to Trip Advisor).  We had dinner at the Big Texan, a well known Route 66 waypoint.  Kitsch does not do it justice, though the steak was a little disappointing given the hype.  We were taken to and from our hotel in a battered town car with steer’s horns on the front.  We avoided the 72 ounce steak challenge.
  • Headed back onto Route 66 and stopped at Tucumcari, New Mexico to take some shots and have a coffee at the Circa Espresso Bar.
  • Drove to Sante Fe, New Mexico.  Our route took us through Gallup and stopped to see the El Rancho Hotel, another Route 66 waypoint.  On arriving at the beautiful city of Santa Fe we sampled the fine beer and pizza on the balcony at the Draft Station with a view of the plaza.  We stayed at the La Posada de Sante Fe, which is highly recommended.  It is haunted though, apparently…
  • Drove to Monument Valley – we were all blown away by it.  Breathtaking is an overused word but it is fair in this case.  We stayed at Goulding’s Lodge, which nestles under the cliffs and has an old world charm. It is one of only two hotels in the valley.  We enjoyed the local Navajo bread as part of dinner, but missed a beer as the reservation is dry.
  • Took a tour of the Loop Road, Monument Valley and saw the breathtaking John Ford’s Point – complete with a Navajo man on a horse on the point.  He had been hired by a Japanese photography group.  The shot is on the home page a couple of images in.
  • Drove to Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon near Page and took a photographic tour with Adventurous Tours.  The canyon is absolutely stunning, though difficult to photograph because of the intense light and shade.  Our guide was very knowledgable and this helped a great deal.  Interestingly he had been into the canyon with Peter Lik, who shot the world’s most expensive photograph, The Phantom, there.
  • Drove to Flagstaff Arizona, which is great base to explore the Arizona section of Route 66 from.  We stayed at the Little America Hotel and played Pool and Shuffleboard at Uptown Billiards before dinner at a good noodle bar, Sosoba.
  • The following morning we walked the Ponderosa Pine trail at the back of the hotel and saw – in addition to quite a lot of pine trees, various kinds of ‘critters’, none of which we could identify.
  • Headed to Williams, Arizona – my favourite town on Route 66.  Stopped at the ridiculously named ‘Bearzonia’ on the way.  The bears and wolves most impressive – especially an evil looking wolf we nicknamed ‘Evil Dick’.  We met some great characters in the two Western outfitters in Williams and had a burger at the Cruiser Cafe.
  • Spectacular drive along Route 66 through the Black Mountains (listed on dangerous roads) to the Ghost Town of Oatman, where 100 or so people hang on in a place barely changed since the 1920s and wild burros wander the streets.  We had a beer at Judy’s Saloon and wandered through the town – it is quite something to behold.
  • Drove to Las Vegas, Nevada.  It’s not my favourite place, but it was on the way and we had a good dinner at Sushi Samba.
  • Visited the impressive Titanic Artefact Museum in the rather oppressive Luxor.
  • Headed out to Death Valley equipped with very little in the way of a plan or provisions – which is not advisable.  Stopped at Furnace Creek and Zabriskie Point.  We were all surprised by how beautiful the scenery was.
  • Arrived late at night in LA having skipped both lunch and dinner in the name of mileage.
  • A final breakfast of Eggs Benedict and saw a little more of old Route 66 on the way to LAX airport.

Hours in the car – around 40, photographic keepers about 30, fun – almost unlimited.

The Cuban Jungle in a ’55 Chevy

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Chevy Bel Air Column ChangeIn 2014 I visited Cuba. I had been shooting with professional photographer Ramses Batista for several days in Old Havana when it occurred to me we should take a trip out of the city into the jungle in one of the old American 50s cars that still do service as taxis in that city.  Over a beer we discussed this and Ramses, who is something of a fixer, knew a driver with an immaculate ’55 Chevy Bel Air.  He suggested we took this out to Soroa, where there is a picturesque waterfall.  En route we would stop at a former coffee plantation and later take in an abandoned villa out in the jungle.  The next day our driver, Joe, pulled up outside my hotel with his gleaming wheels. It was immaculate and had been modified to hot-rod specification complete with a chrome skull on the end of the column change.

I declared it perfect. We set out and drove to abandoned coffee plantation.  We parked the gleaming Chevy and set off on foot.  Vulcher like birds circled above us as we took in the views of the valleys below us.  As we walked I could hear the sound of distant drums and enquired where they might be coming from.  Ramses pointed out some buildings far below us ‘It’s a kind of community’ he said.  Voodoo, I thought, unreasonably.  To be fair, my overactive imagination had been fueled by a couple on incidents during the trip.

The first had been a few day’s previously on a quest to shoot angels at Havana’s fine old cemetery (Cemetario de Colon).  On the way out the boot of the car was searched by the man at the gate.  ‘What is he looking for?’ I asked Ramses.  ‘Human bones’ he replied. ‘There are old religions in Cuba, and some need special ingredients like animal blood and human bones.  He’s just checking we didn’t take bones with us.’  A little bit of web research introduced me to read about Palo Monte, one of the darker of Cuba’s syncretic religions which uses these ingredients to enlist the help of deceased ancestors.  The second was when I saw a tethered goat in the street in Old Havana.  When I commented on it Ramses told me it was most likely a sacrificial animal.  Given these two recent experiences I suppose it wasn’t entirely surprising the distant sound of drums in the jungle prompted me to think of voodoo.

As we walked Ramses pointed out some jungle fruit and explained how to eat it without ingesting any germs from the outer shell.  I was skeptical but it proved to be delicious.  Returning to the car we drove on towards Soroa and parked up near a jungle restaurant.  The scene, was pretty bleak; a man sat in the remains of a house near an abandoned ’50s car.  Walking away from us were two men wearing filthy vests and carrying machetes.  ‘Don’t point your camera at anyone unless I tell you it’s OK’ said Ramses.  I nodded, feeling that this was an entirely reasonable request.

Lunch was better than I expected, and after we had eaten we walked down a flight of twisting stone steps to see the waterfall. I hadn’t brought a tripod with me, so I couldn’t blur the water the way I wanted to, but it was still very picturesque. We journeyed on to the abandoned villa, which looked to be of relatively recent construction, though it was quickly falling into disrepair. The entrance proved to be a good spot to shoot the Chevy, though the cloud cover was becoming an unfavourably uniform white by that time of the afternoon.

Our last stop was a bar, a place so remote I was surprised it would ever attract custom.  There was a little podium near the bar with the holy trinity of Cuban cocktails on it: the Mojito; the Daiquiri and the Cuba Libre.  Given the heat and humidity we opted for cold beers, which were very welcome.  We returned late in afternoon and followed our normal ritual of a review of my shots over another beer with a commentary from Ramses, which I always found helpful.

Cuba is an incredibly vibrant country, but in 2014 I did feel an almost post-apocalyptic vibe about the place.  Scarity has created a culture of ingenious and almost endless recycling, particularly with vehicles, that, with the benefit of replacement engines and transmission, go on almost indefinately.  Things are changing now in Cuba, and hopefully for the better, but I am keen to get back before it loses that extraordinary look that is the result of all that ingenious recycling.

Darkness at Noon in New York

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Darkness at Noon in New YorkThe Chrysler Building in New York is a favourite of mine, and a great subject for black and white photography.    The metallic exterior, the sunburst on the crown and the metal eagles make it an architectural wonder for me.

The Chrysler is a reflection of both the Art Deco era and the machine age and has strong automotive accents.   at 319 m, it was was briefly the world’s tallest building before that honour passed to the Empire State Building in 1931.  It was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 until the mid-1950s and is still the tallest brick building in the world, albeit with a steel frame, and the 5th tallest building in New York.  The corners of the 61st floor are decorated with those fabulous metal eagles whilst replicas of the 1920s Chrysler bonnet ornaments (aka radiator caps) adorn the corners of the 31st floor.

I took the shot you can see here on a Nikon D300 with an 18-200mm lens at 112mm.  It was shot from 42nd Street in New York City at ground level and the picture was taken in broad daylight, in the early afternoon.   This statement sometimes results in disbelief, but at night what is most visible of the crown of the building is the triangular illuminated windows, so the building appears quite unlike my picture.    A quick search on Google Images for ‘Chrysler Building at night’ will confirm the difference.  The effect you can see here, which I refer to as ‘Darkness at Noon’ relies on  a good quality circular polariser, the nature of the camera’s light meter, and an underexposure/red filter combination during mono coversion.  Let me break this down step by step.

A circular polariser is an indispensible piece of kit that increases color saturation and decrease reflections.  It is also one of the only lens filters the effect of which cannot be replicated by editing.  Importantly, it can also darken skies, which is what I was using one for in this instance.  I used a Hoya Pro-1, which does the job very well.

The second part of the equation is not a technique but a property of the camera, whose reflective light meter wants to average out every scene to middle grey.  What this means in practice is that the brighter the subject (building) is, the darker the background (sky) will be.  This is why the sky looks dark blue in many Mediterranean holiday photos – the white buildings darken the sky.  I took a lot of shots of the Chrysler (around 50) and one in particular had a brighter building and a darker sky, as it had caught the sunlight particularly well at that moment.  So, I took the best shot I had, in which the sky was already dark blue – helped along by the circular polariser – and did my raw editing in Aperture, adjusting the curves into a gentle ‘S’ shape to make the image more punchy.

From there I moved on to Photoshop, to perform the mono conversion.  I use the Silver Efex Pro plugin, which is an amazing bit of software – it has a powerful set of options but also a rich variety of presets, which makes it easy to use.  I selected the ‘underexpose’ preset and added the red filter, which together will turn a dark sky pitch black, and the image was complete: a silver building on a black background.   Or perhaps, a silver building caught in a flash of darkness…

The Streets of Old Havana

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Che Mural, CubaOld Havana is everything it is reputed to be and more.  Travelling to the city from the airport on back roads, it felt like I had travelled into an era 50 years on from the apocalypse – with everything in a state of decay and recycling a major part of life.  Old Havana, with its faded and crumbling colonial architecture and many ’50s American cars, is more of the same, and the feeling of being somewhere utterly different is reinforced by the suffocating heat, the noise and the slightly intimidating street life.

I spent five days with Ramses Batista – www.ramseshb.com, a professional Cuban photographer.  We shot mainly on the streets of the city, but also drove around other parts of Havana and out to Cojimar and Soroa in Pinar del Rio.  Ramses was a wonderful tutor and compañero and I was really happy with the shots I brought back with me.   We spent a lot of time setting up street shots – something Ramses excels at.  One of my favourites is shown here – Ramses told me about the Che mural, which was just around the corner from my hotel, the excellent Saratoga, and we flagged down a suitable vehicle for the shot – which shows the driver walking back to his car.   I’ve used a lot of contrast and brought out as much of the structure of the road, building and car as I could.  The mono conversion plugin Silver Effex allows the placement of selective control points, which can be used like spot lights, so I lit the wheels and the pillar slightly as as they were a little too dark without a bit of extra lighting.  As to what the white substance on the road is, I have no idea, but it all adds to the tone and texture.

I’ll describe one anecdote from the trip that highlights how different Cuba is: Ramses and I went out to Colon cemetery to shoot Angels (entities which are well represented on this site at the angels gallery).   As we drove towards the gates on our way out a security guard stopped us and searched the boot.  I asked Ramses why this was necessary  and he told me that the guard was searching for human bones, which are much prized for use in ceremonies in some of the syncretic religions of Cuba…

My Nikon D600 was reliable but suffers from a sensor that is astonishingly sensitive to moisture and dirt, so I spent a lot of time cleaning up spots from the images whilst editing them.  I also took a trip over to my friends at T4 Cameras in Witney for yet another sensor clean.  I was in similarly poor shape as I managed to put my back out travelling in the jungle in some rather dilapidated car seats (I felt we had to take a 50s car for the trip) and I picked up a nasty bug from the same locale – but it was most definitely worth it.  I want to go back and see the rest of the island as soon as I can.

The Walls of Ávila

Posted on by Nigel Williams

Avila SpainThis is the oldest picture on this website and the beginning of my black and white photography journey.

It was taken on 110 film in 1987 and originally shot in colour.

The mono conversion came about because a friend at work was attending a photography class and was asking around for pictures he could use.

I had recently visited Ávila whilst in Madrid, staying with friend who had moved out there. This shot of the walls was the best I could find.  I was amazed by what he did with it.  He cropped it, converted it to monochrome and added some additional grain.   At the time I just took snapshots, so this was a revelation to me.  I consider this my first decent picture and my first step into black and white photography – a medium I have come to love.  I still like the image; the absence of anything else in frame, the brooding sky, the way the walls stretch off into the distance and, of course, the subject itself, the mighty, pristine walls, are what make the picture work.

Ávila, the ‘City of Saints and Stones, was founded in the 11th century to protect the Spanish territories from the Moors.  It is the capital of the province of the same name in Castile and León in North West Spain, 110 km from Madrid and separated from the capital by the Guadarrama mountain chains. It is 74 km from Segovia.  At 1,126 meters above sea level, it is the highest provincial capital in Spain and sits on the top of a rocky outcrop in the midst of a barren, stone covered plain.

The medieval walls were built between the 11th-14th centuries and are astonishingly well preserved and the most complete fortifications in Spain.   They stretch for 2.5km, stand an average of 12 metres in height, enclose area is 31 hectares (77 acres) and have 9 gates.  The Old Town of Ávila has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, largely due to the walls which are its most impressive monument but also for its 12th Century cathedral and Romanesque churches. I want to go back and shoot Ávila at night, as it is beautifully illuminated – apparently it is the largest fully illuminated monument in the world.