Smile!

I mostly point my camera at things rather than people. People photography is an entirely different undertaking. The technical aspects are important but must be mastered and almost forgotten. From the moment a portrait subject steps into the studio the most important aspect of achieving a usable photograph is the photographer's ability to put the subject at ease and catch the most flattering and representative moments. To my mind, a good portrait does not just show the subject in a flattering way, it also shows something of that person's unique character and personal beauty.

How To Make The Stars Align

This is probably my most worked for and storied image. It was taken about the time of the summer solstace. This was the full moon closest to the solstace. I had been scouting the Corniche area and I had been examining different views of the museum, especially views that aligned the various faceted faces of it. Using a planetarium app on my iPad I worked out that the moonrise would very nearly align with a view of the museum that lined up nicely. I realised I would need to be ready because I would have less than a minute after moonrise to get a shot with the museum and the moon.

If you click through to my Flickr you can read a more full account. The only way to get pictures that have something extra is to do something extra in the preparation stage. In this case it was knowing where the moon would be and when. Another example might be arriving when the right light should be ready and recognising the seasons and weather in which light is best. Another might be scouting out areas where new things are being built or old things destroyed.

High Impact

Simple is high impact. Red is high impact. Neon is high impact. This photo is high impact.

Be Bold

The colours were great with the late light on this huge yellow word by the Corniche. Showing the whole word was not the best picture. What made it a picture was the bold shapes and simple colour contrast. This picture shows that.

Accentuate the Positive

The Qatar Museum of Islamic Arts is positively bristling with solid geometric angles. For me, the best photographic statements of this are ones in which the geometric lines so formed are in harmony. Often this means a long telephoto and the correct alignment.

A nice contrast in this particular image is the turbulent sea and chaotic huddle of boats at the bottom of the frame.

The Epic in The Mundane

The right lighting and angle can trasform something as mundane as a cement decoration on a flyover interchange.

The Photogenic in Everyday Life

A typical Doha street scene. Perhaps not the same as your local street...

Cupcakes

Taken as a "storefront" shot of my wife and daughter's new business, Cupcakes. Site: http://www.cupcakes.com.qa

Overlap

Seen at an underpass.

The Gift of God

Let's face it, sometimes God just gives you a gift. This whole picture was a gift. I was actually traveling to work early on a road I had never been on. I saw the sun rising and I got out. I saw these trees and vehicles and managed to frame the picture but I had no idea if it would even come out sharp since I was shooting handheld with a long lens on medium format. It wasn't until I got the film back that I saw the bird on the branch in the centre that really just pulls the whole picture together.

Give thanks!

Previsualisation

This is a picture that I literally saw from a distance. I saw the arrangement of the buildings from this vantage point and set up the camera to take it. It was a month before I had finished the roll and gotten the film back but it was exactly what I wanted to achieve.

The experience and confidence to visualise pictures like this can only be earned by constant observation and daring to take a picture of each interesting thing you see that you think might work out.

Film Highlights

This shot was actually overexposed. If you look at the actual piece of film it doesn't look as nice as this, it looks a bit washed out. If this were a digital shot it would be pretty much ruined. I'd have funny colour halos as the individual colour channels started to clip. If I tried to recover highlights from a RAW shot I could probably hang on to some detail but most of the colour would be starting to go grey.

Film has compression in the way it handles extremes of light. Whilst it handles changes in light level in a linear manner (well, technically, logarithmically) over most of its range it doesn't cut off hard. At the extremes it compresses at an increasing rate which prevents individual colour channels going weird and keeps some level of detail even in extreme areas. Because of this, the overexposed slide I took of a morning skyline scene has yielded one of my most popular images.

What Hides In Shadows

This is just a shot from the last car show I was at before my car got smashed between two trucks. Often it doesn't matter too much what you take the picture with but here it was very helpful that I shot it on Fuji Velvia. Firstly, the film has handled the weird lighting in a way that still looks attractive. Secondly, with a good scanner a great deal can be pulled out of those rich Velvia shadows.

Extraordinary Light, Extraordinary Picture

At night, the light sources come alive. Each artificial light source comes with its own colours. Add in the flames from a barbeque and even the garden wall looks great!

Something Old, Something New...

What should a girl have on her wedding day to make it special? And what lifts an ordinary photo? Is it the lurking muck and disorder in what first seems so orderly?

Time To Reflect

Bad pun? Yes. But good photo!

You Don't Have To Be Rich...

I took a lot of more glamourous subjects on this roll than this simple pile of bricks. However, this was one of the better pictures.

Look around you.

Controlling the Frame

There is no wasted space in this composition.

Basically, I have taken the very geometrical Museum of Islamic Arts and further deconstructed it to this very abstract assemblage of features which remains very recognisable.

Convergence

In the "being in the right place at the right time" department I submit the above.

What made me drive around and get out was what the sun was doing on the side of the central building here. What made me press the shutter when I did was the gift of the dhow passing in front.