Review: Mastering Photography by Andrew S Gibson

When I was a lad, photographically speaking, Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson was pretty much always recommended to those new to using the camera creatively. I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with me but I didn’t really get on with it. Perhaps my mind has been fogged by time or I wasn't ready for it at the time. Obviously others think it’s great, but it’s not a book I could recommend based on my personal experience.

So I’ve been on the lookout for an introductory book covering the fundamentals that I could recommend to workshop participants and others starting their journey. Several weeks ago Andrew S Gibson released an eBook called Mastering Photography which claims to do just that, so I thought I’d give it a look. Note this post includes affiliate links which means I receive a small payment for any purchases made via my site. It's by no means megabucks so it doesn't affect the objectivity of my reviews!

Andrew released a near identical book last year called Understanding EOS which is the Canon-specific version of this book. The same comments as below apply with more specific instruction on operating a Canon camera. If you're a Canon-user and want to buy the book, then buy Understanding EOS instead.

As a slight aside I think the name of the book could be a little more modest. To my mind mastery isn’t something that you can learn from this or any number of books (my bulging bookcase is testament to that!). It’s a result of years of practice and experience (and lots and lots of failures). It’s only a minor quibble and in fairness a less bold title would be unlikely to attract attention on a noisy internet, but I thought I'd mention it in the interests of expectations management.

Creative Triangle

The book opens with a discussion of what Andrew calls the 'Creative Triangle' - Composition, Lighting and Technique - and I like that from the outset he sets the tone that there's more to making a great image than just camera skills. The book mostly covers the Technique corner of the triangle, likely because without technique and understanding of our equipment we will struggle to explore the other components creatively. I'm hoping that Andrew will release future volumes to accompany this one to complete the creative triangle.

We're then shown a number of inspirational images with the back story and the photographer's thinking. I always enjoy reading these and find them helpful. Personally the thought of the wire wool burning shot terrifies me (yes I'm a scaredy cat!) so perhaps a more accessible image would've been better. Nonetheless it's a lovely image and certainly serves the purpose of inspiring! There are further illustrated examples throughout the book explaining the thinking that went into each.

Exposure Triangle

We're then into the guts of the book - how to get off of Auto mode and start using the camera more creatively. We start fairly logically with the 'exposure triangle' - aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Here I think Andrew does a great job of explaining these and the relationship between them in a way that I was looking for when I first picked up the camera.

He uses good examples to illustrate the effects and he doesn't just talk about what they are, but more importantly how to use them creatively and some of the decisions involved in doing so. Related to this is how you use the less-auto modes of your camera - programmed auto, aperture priority and shutter priority - and that's well covered too. If you've been struggling to understand the effects of aperture, shutter speed and ISO and the relationship between them required for a good exposure, then I think this will be of help to you.

There's then a discussion of in-camera Picture Styles which is useful if you don't intend to post-process your image on a computer. Personally I encourage people to do their own processing as I think it's a key part of image making. But for anyone that feels a little overwhelmed starting out, understanding Picture Styles can certainly help to reduce the number of things you have to worry about and it's well covered here.

White Balance and Histograms - My Favourites!

The book then covers White Balance, and I was particularly happy to see Andrew discuss the merits of using WB creatively. For me white balance isn't about making whites white, but a key control in conveying mood in images. Andrew explains WB well and includes some good examples that show the effect of different WB settings.

There's an explanation of Histograms and I've discussed my love for them on this blog before. They can be a little intimidating at first so this is a good read if you need to get your head around them.

Finally there's talk of Colour Management. Many find this a daunting subject (including me! :)) but he's right to highlight its importance. I'm not sure it's a key concern for the beginner photographer, but it's certainly an important - and in truth relatively straightforward - step to perform as you improve.

Summary

"You won't become a master just by reading a book but it's certainly a step in the right direction."

And there we have it. Pretty much all of the key things you need to start using your camera more creatively are covered here, with good examples and good explanation of the exposure choices made by the photographer. While much of this information can be found on the internet it's not presented as clearly and beautifully as here. It's certainly the sort of resource I wish I had when I was starting out.

You won't become a master just by reading a book but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Given it's also only £7 it's certainly one that I'll be recommending to people in the future. Even better if you use the code july2 by 31st July it's only £5 - bargain! You can get the book here. Remember if you're a Canon user you want to get Understanding EOS instead.

Be the First to Know!

I will announce all of my workshop dates via my newsletter and places will be filled on a strict first come first served basis. If you're interested in joining me on an image making adventure then please sign up to my mailing list. Don't miss out!

You can find a list of my current workshop dates here. I am also available for 1-2-1s and online tuition, details of which you can find here.

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Lee Universal Hood: First Impressions

This Christmas Santa was kind enough to leave me a Lee Universal Hood and a Heliopan 105mm polariser (must've been a good boy!). I know a few people have asked questions about the hood so I thought I'd share my initial experience with it as well as the polariser.

Prior to buying this combination I had a 77mm polariser which fits the filter thread of my Canon 24-105mm lens. As I've said before I'm increasingly using prime lenses and - surprise, surprise! - they have different filter threads - 67mm, 72mm, 82mm, everything but 77mm! This basically mean that when I wanted to use a polariser I had to use my 24-105mm. Indeed the polariser became pretty much permanently attached to that lens which in effect made it a very expensive polariser!

When using a polariser it's very difficult, in some cases impossible, to use it with a lens hood. Often the lens hood is so narrow and deep that you can't get your hand in to turn the polariser.

Even without a polariser, I use filters most of the time when I'm in the field and these absolutely rule out the use of the standard lens hood. If you don't know, with the Lee filter system you basically attach a big filter holder to the front of the lens which means there's no way to mount the lens hood on the bayonets.

I get by without using a lens hood but there have been more than a few occasions where I've had sun flare causing me problems. I could try to hold my hand in position just out of frame to block it but more often than not I'd wobble (especially with a long exposure) and my hand would come into frame. Not quite what I'm looking for!

So I went for this combo so that I could use a polariser on any lens, and I could shade my lens whilst using my filters. Winner!

What's In the Box

Ok, more like what did I get:

• Lee Universal Lens Hood (e.g. here)
• Heliopan 105mm Circular Polariser (e.g. here). Note: "SLIM" fit.
• Lee 105mm Front Ring (e.g. here)

The hood itself looks like a regular Lee Foundation Kit (the normal holder) with 2 slots behind the hood which work as you'd expect. It clips onto the adapter ring on the lens in exactly the same way. Indeed, it's pretty much a Foundation Kit with a bellows hood attached to the front. It comes with a case which is pretty handy as normally my foundation kit just rattles around my bag.

The front ring goes inside the hood. You have to unscrew the 4 screws holding the filter holder together, put the ring in place and then screw it back together. The ring comes with a little screwdriver to let you do this. It's a good idea to note what bits go where before unscrewing so you know how to put it back together again!

Although I also got longer screws the ones that come with the hood were long enough. If you wanted to add another filter slot, you would follow the same procedure as here or for the Foundation Kit: unscrew, put extra holder retainers in, and screw it back together. The kit doesn't come with extra filter retainers and you'd need the longer screws (5/8" ones for 2 slots + ring, so it would be the 3/4" ones you need for 3 slots + ring).

The ring itself is nothing more than a metal 105mm filter thread and the circular polariser is no more than a regular screw-in 105mm filter. There's nothing special about the Lee one or the Lee system here, it's just giving you a filter thread in front of the Lee filter slots to screw another (in this case non-Lee) filter into.

That's all you need. Pretty straightforward.

First Impressions

I love how the hood looks (note: looks!). Really love how it looks. With its bellows arrangement it looks like something you'd use on a "proper" camera. My wife even said "did you get that to make your camera look older?". It's a cool looking bit of kit.

Simple things perhaps but I have a love of things that look and feel "proper". Well engineered and crafted. I'm not saying that the Lee one neccesarily is (time will be the test there) but its got that feel to it if you get what I mean.

One of the main draws to me trying film is enjoying the engineering quality and aesthetic of the equipment. I remember Bruce Percy letting me have a go of his Hasselblad on his workshop. Aside from the fact that the viewfinder was enormous, the whole thing just struck me as a beautiful instrument. Controls were crisp but fluid, it was cold to the touch, it felt well engineered. And the noise of the shutter? *swoon*.

Anyway I digress. The bellows hood makes me feel a little more part of that world without all of the faff of having to develop film and what-not! :)

Positioning

The point of the bellows is that you can extend or retract the hood to suit the lens you're using - hence why it's called the "Lee Universal Hood". With a wide lens you have to retract it most of the way. With a longer lens you pull it all of the way out.

This presents the first problem for me. With a regular lens hood, it's designed to be be just out of frame when fitted. You don't have to check that it  actually is out of frame, it's designed to be.

Not so here. With the Universal Hood you decide the position of the hood and so you need to check that the hood is in the right position.

Of course the right position isn't just "out of frame", it's actually "out of frame, but right on the edge of out of frame to block the light". So there's some guesswork and jiggery pockery required to get it just right.

On several occasions I've thought it was positioned correctly only to then find that it had crept into the side of the frame. I hadn't noticed because the hood is black and the camera is black and so the hood coming in just looked like the frame edge. Of course that is very much user error but it's another "faff" to think about and pay attention to.

Fully extended the bellows is about 10cm long. My 24-105mm is about 10cm long, my primes are shorter, and so it's kinda big! And this probably points to another, at least potential, problem - wind.

It's big, it almost doubles the size of the camera and lens and being cube shaped, it's not what you would call aerodynamic. Also being mounted on the end of the lens it's at the furthest point from the ballhead to offer resistance against anything pushing on it (i.e. wind). Think of a door. It's easiest to push the door furthest from the hinge, and so the wind blowing the (lightweight) hood will have more of an effect than if it was blowing something directly on top of the tripod.

I haven't used it enough in breezy conditions to draw a definitive conclusion as to the extent of the effect in practice, though I did shoot a couple of 1 minute long shots with a stiff side wind that showed noticeable shake that I would attribute to the hood.

Polariser Access

It's easy enough rotating the polariser by putting your hand in the front of the hood. A bit of a bonus with the Lee system is that - if you're not using grad filters - you can rotate the holder itself rather than the polariser which is much easier.

I have had the polariser get stuck on the thread a couple of times. I think because of the hood coming up from the sides, it's difficult to get my sausage fingers in and screw the filter with it perfectly flat. I think I'm applying some vertical pressure onto the filter threads which make it stick that little bit more. It's sortable by using a rubber band, but I wouldn't screw it on too tightly!

Water Drop Protection

One of the things I wanted a hood for is to keep stuff off the front of my lens. I seem to spend my entire life wiping water off of my lens and filters. The hood does help here, particularly with snow and rain which is more or less vertical.

In the case of (the more usual?) horizontal rain when you're shooting into the wind then obviously it doesn't help. I've had very mixed results with keeping splashes from waterfalls off. Given the trajectory of these splashes they tend to arc horizontally, and so the hood tends to offer little protection if shooting in the direction of the fall. Bit disappointed with that, but predictable I suppose.

If you are using it to keep rain off then note that the regular filter slots aren't covered by the hood. This means rain can fall between the slots onto the filters without you realising. Also if the holder gets wet then you tend to get water smears on the filters as you put them in or out.

This is true of the Foundation Kit too, but the hood doesn't completely save you in these circumstances as you might otherwise hope. Doug Chinnery (@dougchinnery) put me onto these chamois from Skyeskyns. They provide similar protection to rain covers but are a lot more versatile and a lot less faff. In problem rain I'll drape the chamois over the camera including the filter slots to stop water getting down there. Oh and offcuts are awesome for absorbing water on the lens! :)

Vignetting

I've talked about the need to get the hood in the right position so it doesn't encroach on the frame.

As you might expect at 21mm you can see that fully extended the hood comes all the way into frame. Retracting it to about halfway takes it out of frame.

This is true at 24mm as well - in fact, it encroaches more. How can that be you may ask (I did)? I believe it's because my Zeiss 21mm holds the filter holder tighter to the lens than the 24-105mm does. You can see this when I mount the polariser as well. At 24mm the polariser encroaches into the corners (note not evenly which I found odd, not perfectly seated?). At 21mm it's out of frame.

For a little additional info, I have a Foundation Kit with 3 slots and another front ring - with the polariser at 24mm it was very noticeable in the corners. By removing one slot from the holder the polariser was not longer visible. I presume the extra layer of metal that forms the back of the bellows sandwiched between the ring and the filter slots moves the polariser out that little bit more causing the polariser to encroach. 

Oh one other thing related to the metal plate at the back of the bellows. If you have a 100x100 filter such as a full ND, it's better to put this in the slot closest to the lens. Otherwise this metal plate makes it difficult to get the filter out whilst mounted on the lens. This is good practice anyway to minimise light getting in behind the ND filter.

Fully extended at 35mm there is slight encroaching of the hood when fully extended. At longer lengths it can't be seen.

With respect to vignetting (rather than "encroachment") I tried shooting at different positions with different focal lengths and didn't see the more common "shadowing" in the corners. Thinking about it, I'm not sure if this is normally a problem with lens hoods rather than with the lens itself. It certainly seems that either the lens hood is actually visibly in frame or you don't know it's in use, I haven't noticed any other effects in between the two.

Flare Protection

One of the main reasons to use a lens hood is to reduce flare. Does it work? I wouldn't know as I haven't seen the sun for about 5 weeks!

In seriousness I've not had many situations so far where I think it would add much benefit so I'm not in a position to say at this point. I certainly expect that it would given that you can adjust it to literally the edge of the frame. It should work fine. The only potential concern would be with the shape. The lens hood is square and the lens is round. I don't know if the corners of the square would let in light that a regular lens hood would otherwise block, or if that would be a problem. I'll find out in time.

One source of "flare" that I find annoying is where you have a bright object just out of frame. It can have a "bleaching" effect on the frame edge. For example if you want to exclude the sky and crop it just out of frame, the glare from the sky still has an effect on whatever is below. I didn't expect - but hoped - that the hood would help too much with that. And it doesn't. Oh well.

Final Thoughts

Firstly I'm glad to have the polariser. I haven't had too much opportunity to use it so far but glad to have a more flexible option than my 77mm in my armoury.

The Universal Hood I'm a bit more ambivalent about. It's got its good points. I'm sure it will do what I need in terms of preventing flare and it keeps stuff off the front of the filter in vertical rain. But in a wind it's going to cause problems, and doesn't do a great job of keeping water splashes off. It's something of a faff to use and I dislike having to faff.

At the end of the day it's good to have in the bag. I'm not sure in general usage it will offer me better results than the regular, straightforward Foundation Kit. It will certainly be situationally useful but, on balance, considering the money, I'm not sure it's that great.

I'll see if my thinking changes with more experience.

Have you had similar experiences? Or do you have any questions about the hood (or even the Lee system) that I haven't covered?

 

Given I had the images, for a laugh I put together a short stop-gap video showing the "extending nature" of the hood. The captions seem to have gone a bit screwy on upload but hopefully the video gives an impression of how the camera "grows" using the hood.

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/58658481]

Lightroom Presets (and a Review of Sorts of Skyline Media's)

To me post-processing is an essential part of the image making process. Many bemoan post-processing (summarised as "Photoshopped!") as if the camera takes a true representation of a scene (which it doesn't) and that post-processing is the work of the devil (ignoring the fact that every image in history has been processed in one way or another!).

I'm not really going to argue any further in this post than to say that for our images to really say what we want we need to take control of that post-processing. David duChemin sums it up best for me when he says "there are three images that go into making your final photograph. The first is the image you visualize – the story you are compelled to tell. The second is the scene you capture with the camera. The third is the image you refine in post-production."

Post-processing is something that I really enjoy. That might be the tech geek in me, but I like to see images "finished" and meeting a vision. It's something like drawing a line under the image making process, seeing it through to its ultimate conclusion, and is also a bit more considered and less "snapshotty".

My Initial Experience of Lightroom Presets

I use Adobe Lightroom for most of my post-processing. I think it's a great tool that makes the process of importing, organising, cataloging, processing and outputting images a joy rather than a total nightmare.

It wasn't long after I started using Lightroom (way back in version 1) that I became aware of "presets". Presets are basically a recipe of  processing steps, storing the particular values for any number of the processing controls - from exposure to clarity to chromatic aberration to camera profile - that you can apply to an image without manually dragging sliders and flicking switches. The idea behind them seems to be to recreate a certain look consistently.

I started out with a selection of free presets and started to use them. Once the novelty of various "funky" styles wore off I decided that I'd make my own presets to recreate a certain look from one image to the next. And then sometime later I realised that my images all looked the same. And they all looked odd! Sometimes the preset would suit an image, but e.g. applying my high contrast, high saturation preset to an already high contrast, high saturation image turned the image into a big mess of garish blackness.

For some reason I thought using the preset that made some of my original images look great (hey, relatively!) was "right" and that these less successful nay downright awful images were either right (in a "I guess that's what they should look like" way) or that the captured image was a failure. It took me a long time to realise that different images require different processing, one or two presets should not be applied over and over, and that actually taking control of the post-processing was required to get the best result.

Incredibly obviously but a bit of a penny dropping moment for me was learning to "trust my eyes". If something looks crap, it's probably crap. "Proper photographs" aren't intended to hurt your eyes. People "who appreciate art" (whoever that might be) have the same visual systems to us and so if it looks odd to us it probably looks odd to them too! And so learning the art of post-processing, being a little less one size fits all and heavy handed I think was an important part of my advancement.

I've gone off at a slight tangent. In summary, I felt that presets were a bit, well, rubbish. They didn't really help get a consistent result, and when the result didn't work I'd be scratching my head about how to get what I wanted from that point without just hitting undo or reset. It just seems easier to me to start with a known clean slate and add adjustments rather than apply a bunch of adjustments in a preset and then work out what bits didn't quite work to undo them.

(As a side-note I wonder if presets would work better if the adjustments contained in them were relative rather than absolute. Doesn't really make sense to me for a preset to change the exposure to e.g. +1, when the exposures of a bunch of different images would need adjusting differently. It would seem to make more sense for me to get an evenly exposed image using the regular controls, and then apply a preset to apply the adjustments relative to that point.)

Taking A Second Look - Skyline Media

However I do like to reconsider my thinking from time to time. I'm not always right, and things change so I may be right one day and wrong the next. Just ask my wife!

A blog I follow was recently talking about these awesome presets from Skyline Media and I found a bunch of other reviews on the internet talking them up. Plus, Skyline have a Colin Prior "Signature Series" with quotes from him about how great and very professional and time saving they are. If it's good enough for Colin, it's good enough for me.

Lightroom is on version 4 now, so maybe both it and the presets have evolved to be a bit more useful than my past experience. I'm happy with the style I'm pursuing but I'm always on the look out for further inspiration. So I thought I'd give them a whirl and got their bundle including Essentials Toolbox, Classic Presets, Fun Film Pack and Film X-Process, as well as the Colin Prior Signature Series. Total cost £21.99 with a discount they're running at the moment.

Skyline Essentials Toolbox

The first mistake I made was thinking that the Essentials Toolbox was anything more than other, sometimes free, preset "toolboxes". There are dozens of presets in the Essentials Toolbox pack which sounds great.

But this works in the same way as many of these "toolboxes", they provide a preset that affects one particular slider by a certain amount. So for example you might have 4 presets that gives you +0.5, +1.0, +1.5, +2.0 to exposure, then 4 presets that give you -0.5, -1.0, -1.5, -2.0 to exposure, and then you have another one to set it to 0. 9 presets. Or...you could just drag exposure slider from -2 up to +2 and anywhere along it if you like.

This is touted as a time saver, and maybe for some people it is. My view is that most of the time I don't need precisely +0.5 or +1.0, and so I'm going to end up refining the exposure using the slider anyway. So I think using the preset makes this a longer experience.

When you add in a similar number of presets to adjust contrast, clarity, vibrance, vignettes, etc you have dozens of presets that adjust a particular control by a particular amount. And you have so many presets that you end up scrolling up and down the list looking for the exposure one, and wondering where the vibrance one is, etc. I figure if I'm going to scroll up and down I might as well be sliding the sliders left and right.

I'm not saying they're totally pointless, I think some of them do provide a handy one click alternative. I do like the vignette and lens correction ones as these controls appear at the bottom of the develop controls in Lightroom, so it's quicker to apply a preset than to scroll through the develop controls. Otherwise the presets seem nothing more than a less refined alternative to the standard Lightroom interface - you click on a preset rather than drag a slider. If you like clicking rather than dragging maybe they're great.

But here's something to think about. I could switch on lens correction, then save a preset that only registers the lens correction setting, and have the exact same preset. I can make the preset myself in seconds and have an identical result. Again there are dozens of presets so maybe this would take maybe an hour to do by hand for all of them? £7.99 for an hour's work maybe doesn't seem so bad, or does it? Myself, I'd rather create the few presets that will save some time or inconvenience such as different vignette options, and then use the sliders for the more common develop controls.

The Rest of the Skyline Bundle

The other presets in the bundle - Classic Presets, Fun Film Pack and Film X-Process - don't really have much interest for me (so why did I buy them right?!). They have some funky effects but on the whole don't seem of particularly much use for the landscape photographer.

That has got me wondering if perhaps (penny drop?!) presets are better suited to alternate forms of photography, in particular people photography. There the "starting point" is more uniform (you'd typically want a person's skin tones to be well exposed), you probably have greater volumes to apply the preset to, and maybe the different styles provide a fun twist rather than the totally alien look they give to my landscapes.

Skyline Colin Prior Signature Series

Finally this leads me onto the Colin Prior presets which is what I'm most annoyed. The blurb for these talks about the "Colin Prior look" and applying that style to a multitude of cameras and crops. A key point to note here is that the crop can't be stored in a preset, so the preset name gives you a hint of what the crop should be (I don't massively see the point of that but anyway!).

Ok, so we're left with the Colin Prior "look" across a range of cameras and films. The Skyline Media website says the following:

"This Pack contains over 30 preset variations for both 35mm and MF cameras including the following emulations:

■ Fuji 617 shot with Velvia 50 [3:1]

■ Linhof 617 Technorama with Velvia[3:1]

■ Linhof 612 Technorama [2:1]

■ Hasselblad X-Pan shot with Velvia 50 [3:1]

■ Linhof 612 Technorama [2:1]

■ Phase One MF Digital [4:3]

■ Leica S2 MF Digital [4:3]

■ 35mm Digital [3:2]"

Now if you were to try applying the different presets to one of your images you might not see much in the way of change. And that's because there isn't one.

Looking at the develop settings that are actually applied, from the list above, the only one that has any significant difference from the others is the Leica preset. The only other preset with any variation is the Phase One MF preset which has an imperceptible sharpness boost relative to the others (I guess to emulate a Phase One back you just need to add a wee bit more sharpness!).

All of the other presets are identical in all but name.

The 35mm Digital preset gives an identical result to the Linhof 612 preset, to the Hasselblad preset and to all of the others. Which leaves the crop factor in the presets name as the only differentiator which the user has to apply themselves anyway!

(I should add that the presets come in groups of three for each camera - standard, postive contrast and negative contrast. This is basically the same preset again with either positive or negative shifts on the contrast slider.)

When I realised this (and verified by looking through the details in the preset file) I was less than impressed. The regular price for this is £9.99 for which you get basically one preset plus the Leica one. Labelling this as 30+ presets is incredibly underhand if not false advertising. And then for Colin Prior to put his name to it, well, I just don't understand that.

I put my case to Skyline Media and asked for a refund which to their credit they did without quibbling. Though they took it on trust, I've uninstalled the presets as can be seen in the screenshot above. Apparently I'm their first dissatisfied customer which leaves me with one of two conclusions:

1. I am (was) their only customer
2. There are a bunch of people using these presets without realising or caring (this is even more worrying!)

Normally I don't complain too much when I find something that doesn't work so well, I take it as a life lesson and get on with things. My modus operandi is "live and let live". But in this instance I'm so disappointed with what I see as a misleading product offering little content or value. Frankly I think it's a bit of a ripoff and I felt I would be doing the community a disservice by not sharing what I found and experienced.

Summary

In conclusion, based on my albeit limited research, my original view on presets still holds.

• They can provide some novelty and fun that may be better suited to other forms of photography.
• Rather than provide distinction, they can make your images look a bit samey and indeed pre-canned
• They may provide a starting point, but to me they rob you of the vital creative process of organically evolving your image and understanding the tools and processes required to do that
• They are either awful and free, or awful and paid. Even if they are relatively cheap they represent incredibly poor value for money especially when you consider you can create your own "toolkit" with zero expertise.
• In general they promise much and deliver little.
• They won't make your images better.

I have learned my lesson again. I will stand by my earlier assessment and won't bother with precanned presets, at least for my landscape photography.

One interesting thing to note - when you think about the whole "Colin Prior-style" thing - even if the presets worked as advertised, why would we want our work to look like someone else's? Starting point or not, dependence on presets lead us down a creative cul-de-sac. They rob us of a key step in the process of expressing ourselves through our own images with our own style. Obviously there's tips and tricks to pick up from others but trying to copy their look is not really a worthy endeavour in my book. We need to find our individuality and that doesn't live in presets, no matter how good or bad they turn out to be.

Have you had similar experiences with presets? Or am I missing something? Have you found that presets are a vital part of your process, perhaps being the ingredients you mix into your visual recipe? I'd love to hear your views echoing or disagreeing with my conclusions in the comments.

Happy (1 month) Launch Birthday to Me!

My website is now a month old. Several months in the making I was daunted, nervous, excited, anticipating, a little tired, and pretty scared!

[Apologies if this post appears a little self indulgent. One of my goals is to chart my progress, perhaps helping those walking a similar path now and in the future. I think building, launching and maintaining a website is a pretty big deal for most people - not just photographers - so I'd like to share my experience to help give people some idea of what to expect.]

The thing I was most scared of was apathy, of no-one caring. Why pour your heart into something that no-one looks at? Apparently there's something like 700 million websites on the internet. Why on earth would anyone want to come and visit my website? But then, being a photographer is pretty daunting anyway. Last year there were a reported 6 billion images on Flickr. 6 billion! Just on Flickr. Why would anyone want to come and look at my photos?

I think the answer is if you've got something to say, either through words or pictures, you will always find people that are interested. It may not be millions, it may only be 2 (one of whom is a dog), but it's an audience, someone that is interested in what you do. To me, that's pretty damn cool.

Of course, we should not pursue our art for other people. We all want some acknowledgement, some enouragement and even some adulation but if we're only in it for that then we're probably on a pretty short road to disappointment. Regardless, knowing that someone other than yourself enjoys your creative output is pretty uplifting. And one of my ambitions for this site was to try and help people in my own little way. I hope I've done something that someone finds useful.

Some Stats

I thought I'd share some stats from the 1st month with you:

• Blog posts written: 23. Some of these were written pre-launch (11 of them to be precise), but that's still more than 2 posts a week.
• Words written: 15,682.
• Images uploaded: 17. Not all of them shot within the month of course.
• Total views: 2,217. Wow!
• Busiest day: 30th August with 456 views. This was the day Bruce Percy shared my workshop review and I also posted my Guide to Long Exposure Photography.
• Average views per day: 59. I haven't had a day where I've had 0 views (thanks mum!).
• Geography: visitors from 35 different countries, including Luxembourg, UAE and Estonia.
• My most popular posts: 1) Bruce Percy workshop review, 249 unique pageviews. 2) 10 Ways to Improve Your Landscape Photography, 90 unique pageviews. 3) Guide to Long Exposure Photography, 82 unique page views.
• Mailing List subscribers: 5.
• Total comments: 19. Thanks to those who have contributed!
• Total spam comments: 128. Where on earth do they come from and why? Thanks to Akismet for blocking all of them! My personal favourite "You are taking a risk unless Marijuana has power" - ok...
• Total number of prints sold: 0. If you look at my Prints page you might understand! I've had several friends enquiring about large prints for their houses though. I think the website has helped me look more "serious" or "professional".
• Total number of eBooks sold: 1. Yay!
• Total sales: £1.19.
• Total profit: £0. Profit? You're kidding right?! :)

What Have I Learned?

Quite a few things:

• Launching a website is relatively easy. If you have WordPress and a bit of tech nous it's pretty straightforward. If you want one, there's no real reason to be put off.
• Launching is the most important thing. Things will always evolve over time and things will never be perfect. It's better to get something good enough and change it as you go than to wait for it to 'be right' (it never will be). Don't launch something half arsed but don't over invest upfront. Why build Old Trafford when you've only got 13 people coming to watch you play? Get it good enough and then show it to the world.
• I enjoy writing. I was worried (and still am!) that I would start out with a flurry of activity and then run out of steam when the initial enthusiasm wore off. I'm still in the honeymoon period, but I'm genuinely enjoying writing posts, thinking things through (teaching - or writing - is the best way to learn things yourself), thinking of interesting topics and getting the voices out of my head.
• People will find you. Sure the interweb is a big place, but as long as you've got something to say and act like a decent, social being then you will find an audience for your work.
• It's not a competition. You always worry that people will beat up on you for not being good enough. I dreaded getting a deluge of "u n00b" and "your images suck" comments but I've had nothing but support. On the whole you should believe that people - even strangers - want you to succeed. Sure there will be assholes, but that's life so don't stress about it.
• Although photography is a pursuit of isolation, I've found sharing and engaging with other photographers very rewarding. I do like spending time on my own whilst out shooting, but the website has given me extra encouragement to get involved in the wider photographic community. I've made new friends in real life and online through Twitter, etc that make my photographic journey all the richer.
• My expectation of not selling any prints has been realised. On the plus side this wasn't for "you suck" reasons. It may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn't expect to sell any so I didn't invest time in a shopping cart (and my Prints page kinda sucks) or pushing prints on people. I'm cool with that for now, I think it will be a slow burner anyway. However if I expect to make any sort of money from photography I'm going to have to get serious on the business side soon, so that's something to work on over the next few months.
• It's given me ideas. I've got ideas of things I want to do to the site, for blog posts, for images, for locations, for ebooks, for future business that the website has helped me realise. I think it's to do with my RAS (Reticular Activating System), the more aware and alert you are to things the more you see them. It's kinda been a little like 'waking up' and seeing the wider world and its possibilities.
• It gives me somewhere to channel my creative energy when I'm not shooting. I can't shoot and edit all of the time, but I'm always thinking about photogaphy. This gives me somewhere to put those thoughts. Sometimes I feel conflict between 'doing photography' and 'working on my website', this was especially true with the work going in pre-launch. I tell myself that my website is a window into my photography and hat without my photography I have nothing (or at least no website!) so the photography always comes first.
• My writing is getting better - I think, or at least hope! I'm certainly becoming more aware of when I'm rambling without a point. I'm still trying to transition from my "matter of fact" teacher/manager voice to a "funny" friendly, coaching voice but that will come with time I'm sure.

In short it's been a promising start to my little corner of the internet. I've enjoyed it, I've learned stuff, I'm more engaged with fellow photographers and I feel I have a reason to be here. The stats above will surely suck relative to other sites, even similar sites to this, but the fact that anybody is interested in what I have to say here is surely encouraging. I'm actually pretty happy with how many views the site has received. I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who has visited - both pre and post launch friends - and hope to share more good stuff with you in the future.

To anyone that wants to start a website and is in some way scared, don't be. You will find an audience and there will be people that will support you. It may not be an overnight success, it may not make you money (ever) and at times it will probably feel like an onus or commitment you'd rather not have, but if you feel the need to put yourself out there then just go and do it!

Thanks all,

Dunc