Self Portrait?

 In all the Pictorial Guides of the Lakeland Fells, Wainwright did a sketch of himself in at least one of the scenes. As part of the Wainwrights in Colour project I decided to emulate his idea so instead of putting him in the scene I will add myself to the spot where he was standing/ sitting.
 In the Central Fells (Book Three) AW places himself on the edge of the cliff of Raven Crag overlooking Thirlmere. I personally think he just added himself at a later date and didnt have a photo of himself actually standing there. Possibly there was no one to take the photo for him "on location" and also his camera didnt have a self timer. Fortunately I usually carry a tripod and my camera has such a facility.

Thirlmere from Raven Crag

Ok so its not a brilliant self portrait but surely you recognise that stance and of course the lack of head hair? The trees on the left have now gone and the once on the right have seen better days. Non the less, this is a fine place to stand and admire the view.

Evening on the Howgills

Too nice an evening to miss the chance to get a short walk in so I headed off west to visit the Howgills, the range of fells between the Pennines and the Lake District Fells. Wainwright even wrote a book on walks in these quiet hills so I took the chance to follow one of his shorter routes from that book. Very enjoyable it was too, easy walking but with some interesting geology, wildlife and views. The walks in the Howgills and in AW's other books such as Limestone Country and the Outlying Fells of the Lake District will all be covered by members of the Wainwright Society as part of this years "challenge". Why not check it out, a good chance to explore different areas and raise money for a good cause at the same time?

Yes, I mean "Ewe"!

The photos from this evenings outing can be found by clicking here and following the Fell End link.

In the picture

 As a result of my postings on my "On Location" pages on The Teesdale Gallery website I have been asked about aspects of my photography. This Blog seemed a good place to answer some of those questions.

 I am fortunate enough to be able to venture out onto the fells and dales on a regular basis all as part of my work (someone's got to do it (lol)). This is with the intention to obtain references for my paintings, especially at this time for the "Wainwrights in Colour" project but also for future work. In such great surroundings it is not too hard to come away with some pretty good photographs.

In answer to some of the questions, it is not my intention to branch off into the photographic print market, this field is already well catered for by some brilliant exponents of the genre. Besides, I'm a "fell-walking artist" not a "fell-walking photographer", I'll just stick to paintings. With regard to my cameras: The camera used for all the digital shots up until October 2009 was a Fuji S5500,

It is a fairly simple and light camera to use and has given some great results considering it only is 4MP. Normally it has been set on auto and with the occassional use of a polarization or graduated Neutral Density filter. It has just about clocked up 20,000 shots.

 Last October I added another camera to my kit. I wanted a smaller compact camera so I opted for the Samsung WB500.

This is a super little camera and now is with me constantly. Its 10MP quaility and 10x optical zoom makes it ideal to have to hand and its already racked up several thousand shots. It also takes HD video with impressive results. Check out my You Tube page to see a few short vids shot with this camera.

  As for post production: I use photoshop to crop and "tweak" some of the photos but only about as much as I would have done in the old Darkroom days. I am not a big fan of some of the photo-enhancing techniques such as HDR or exposure fusion. Used well these tools can adjust and improve colours and exposure in images but many cases that I see the end result that has a "fake" and un-natural look to the photographs. Maybe its just my "artists" eye and of course it is my own personal opinion.

 Having already stated that I will not be going down the photographic print route we do of course sell a small range of cards here at the gallery taken from some of these photgraphs. They are proving popular and were originally intended to fill a space until cards are produced of some of my paintngs. We may expand the range of these cards in the future. In the meantime you can see the full current range by clicking here, this takes you to the page on the gallery website.

I am just about to re-design my "links" page on the gallery website but if you like good photographs of the Lake District you may want to check out these two other websites:

Striding Edge- Sean McMahon's excellent site of photgraphs and walks in the Lakes.

My Wainwrights- Gary Richardson's website, covers not only the Lakes but also walks in the Dales etc.

more links will be on the website soon.

A day out on the Eastern Fells

 The forecast looked good so an early start saw me and the dogs heading up Deepdale just as the sun rose. This was a route I had planned to do last month but I aborted the idea due to poor weather. This time it was different, a glorious Spring day so I made the most of the conditions and managed to obtain quite a number of references for the Wainwrights in Colour project.

As usual, my route was rather unconventional, taking time to visit the places from where AW took his photographs. An excellent day out for me though. The photos are now online at : http://www.theteesdalegallery.co.uk/ and check out the "on Location" page.