Under The Sea?

Film has so much range.

In the film days people used to complain about slide film, especially high-contrast slide film, for its unforgiving short exposure range. This is because the negative film that most people used had such an incredibly high usable range that people could be four or five stops off on their exposure and still walk out of the lab with a stack of beautiful prints.

Now that digital is mainstream everyone knows that you have to get the exposure perfect. Exposure is so unforgiving on digital that even high contrast slide film looks positively generous in its exposure range.

I underexposed this shot very badly. I'm not sure how much but to the eye this frame looked almost completely black. However, after about twenty minutes my scanner ate through that darkness to reveal an extremely usable and lovely image. Viva the revolution!

Colour And Mood

Colour and mood are all that are on show here and also all that are needed.

Look Back

When I visited Zubara fort I took a number of photographs that I thought were good. I then packed up my stuff and left. But I looked back. I stopped the car. I saw this and I took it.

Do look back.

Light And Shade

This photograph is something that caught my eye on my way to work. I was caught by the texture on the sail. However, developing the photograph to highlight that would have lost detail in a number of other places. To keep the detail in the shadows as well as the bright portions of this picture required a fair amount of work boosting and subduing the light at various levels. Does this sound unnatural? The picture doesn't look unnatural.

The reason is that when we look around a scene we adjust the "exposure level" of our eyes. We reduce our sensitivity to brightness when we look at something bright and we boost it when we look into somewhere dark. And we do all of this as we glance around a single scene.

What Is The Difference Between Film Grain And Digital Noise?

Film grain (even in colour film, even in extreme cases like this) doesn't suck. This looks more like an impressionist painting than a photograph.

Lest We Forget

We can buy the best equipment, learn the best technique and walk around the most beautiful areas. However, ultimately a good landscape photograph is a gift of grace to the photographer.

Defects

As a rule I am not one of those people who look after camera faults to create interest. Sometimes, however, a defect can add a certain something to a picture...

This is taken with a small pocket camera that seems to have worn out light seals.

Format and Composition

In a way that I have yet to really understand, different cameras incline you to different sorts of pictures. This is a scene in Education City I had often walked past which never really seemed to lend itself to photography by any of the SLRs I was ever carrying. One day I walked past with my new pocket camera and bingo.

When The Sun Finally Rose

Well, that was pretty special too. Same morning as the two below.

Home By The Sea

And another from the same morning.

Readiness

This is one of the more striking of a series of pictures I took early this year on a single trip out with the family. We went to Zubara Fort because we had been nearly seven years in Qatar and never seen it. We then camped at Fuwairait. That evening and morning saw some of the most amazing sky I have ever seen in Qatar. As it happened I was well placed to capture this divine gift as I had all of my camera along.

Did I know what was coming? No. Fortune favours the ready.

Banality

As photographers we all love the epic scene. The dazzling sunset or the moment frozen in time. However, some "snapshot" sorts of pictures can also carry power.