"Up, Up and Away"

"Up, Up and Away", originally uploaded by North Light.

A photography day, the light this morning was excellent, and, as I discovered once I got past Dunnet Head, the sea was spectacular.
I spent a very productive 20 to 30 minutes taking photographs at John O'Groats, with I think some excellent results. Note that it then took a large cup of coffee in the Cafe to warm my hands up!
I am still getting used to the Nikon, a process that will take some time, but I am not unhappy with any of the exposures, and continue to be impressed by the camera.
This image was created from a single RAW file, 5 exposures created at 1 EV steps using Camera Raw, then processed with Photomatix Pro, with some final tweaks in Photoshop, sounds long winded, but probably only took about 15 minutes to create.

Woops!

Waiting to be Eaten, originally uploaded by North Light.

I've been found out!
There's me thinking I could just quietly write a bit about my life, it would disappear into the ether on this internet thing, and that would be that.
But no, I should have known, you just can't hide any more.

I've been confused all day, the North Light flickr pages have been much more active than usual, could see no obvious reason and hence had resigned myself to waiting for the stats for the pages, and try and work out where the traffic was originating from.
Just doing a bit of surfing before I go to sleep, as one does, and visit Caithness dot org, scan the page, look a bit harder, clean glasses, no thats definitely the name of my blog, oh s**t what have I been saying in my blog?
No more anonymity, I'll just have to keep some of the thoughts to myself, guess I'll have to be careful with the pictures as well!

So a safe picture of apples and pears, can't be anything controversial about this, can there?

Well, I'll take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year.

Caithness Flag with a Seaweed garnish

Caithness Flag with a Seaweed garnish, originally uploaded by North Light.

The hotel is now entering the quiet spell, the New Year guests are all sitting having breakfast, cases are loaded onto the coach, and after a busy day putting the hotel "to bed" the next few months are not quite as frenetic.
The 2007 season was an odd one, in terms of tours, particularly from Italy and Germany we had a good year, but individual tourists was poor, the weather, interest rates and fuel prices I guess.
On paper we are already looking busy for 2008, but cancelations will start coming in during January, it will not be until April that we start to get a real feel for the season.
Now the important bits, Photography, I intend to spend a bit more time on photography this year, going to try and post a photograph a day, where I am unable to post every day, at least take a photograph every day. On flickr there is a new Set on my pages, 366, this will hold the daily images.
Time to do some work, so, wishing all the readers of this blog a very happy 2008.

Work and Play

Work and Play, originally uploaded by North Light.

A photograph from about 18 months ago, Cromarty harbour, Cromarty is a beautiful small town in Ross-shire on the Cromarty Firth.
A place we do not get to very often, but always worth a visit. The use of HDR on this image has worked well allowing me to pull a bit more information out of the shadows in the pier, where masking and using curves in photoshop would have been difficult.
Right, that's the play bit finished, now for work, time for a RANT!
Why is it that British tourists, particularly those at the lower end of the budget can be such a pain in the a***. We have a group of central belt Scots in for the New Year, and there are one or two who are going to make it painful. I was told when I started in this occupation, that other than our colonial cousins, the Americans, for whom a different set of rules apply, that the amount of hassle from the guest is the inverse to the amount they are paying!!! We were cold last night, there's a draft in the room, yup, the window was open! Probably because they had been smoking in a non-smoking room!

Megapixels

Winter Beach 3, originally uploaded by North Light.

Some reflections on cameras, very likely controversial!

The eagle eyed of you will have noticed that there is a subtle change in the photographs that have been taken since the 2nd of December, see "Taken On" or "Taken In" in "additional Information" on Images individual pages. They have a slightly different "feel" to them. I have decided to change the cameras I am using, so I have sold my beloved Canon 5D, and my back-up camera, a Nikon D80 and in the process of selling the vast majority of my lenses!
At the beginning of December I purchased a Nikon D300 and will slowly concentrate on building a new set of Nikon lenses. Why you might ask? the Nikon is a much more intuitive camera to use, it makes sense for both the main and the back-up camera to be identical, or very similar in operation, the mechanical use of the camera becomes automatic, and hence does not distract from the creative side.
So I have gone from a full frame sensor to a cropped sensor, a backwards step? No, the Nikon seems to be able to record a wider dynamic range, and with care is producing images of the same quality as the 5D. Will I not miss the 5D MkII, maybe, but I prefer the Nikon to use,If Ican produce prints up to A2 size I don't need more detail.
The image above was taken with a Canon D60, a 6 Mexapixel camera, it consistently produced high quality images as long as the exposure was well controlled, and I liked it much better than the Canon 20D, so much so that I kept the D60 as my back-up camera for about 2 years. The 5D as I have said produced stunning pictures, this was not that it produced more detail than other 12 mp cameras, but there was a different feel to its images.
So where is this ramble leading? What I am trying to say is that once a certain amount of image information is recorded, the real differences come down to the quality of information recorded, and the tools we use to produce the resulting image. I have used RAW files virtually from the start of using a DSLR, and now am enjoying the benefit of better image processing programmes to produce images such as the one above, it prints to A4 with no problems, with care and some up-sizing, I will be able to get a A3 print, which when viewed from "Normal" distances is perfectly acceptable.
So I look forward to 2008, learning how to get the best from the Nikon, and concentrating on the Image, not the camera.

Now for the toys!
What I have not found is a compact camera that I enjoy using, or like the results from, Sigma DP1 perhaps?

A Breaking Wave of Sand

A Breaking Wave of Sand, originally uploaded by North Light.

The day after Boxing Day, I am sat at Reception in the Hotel, its 8:30 am, my reception area is full of cases, yes the Christmas guests are going home! Peace for a few days. Then we are full again at New Year!
During the quieter moments over Christmas the eagle eyed of you will notice that I have been playing with Photomatix Pro 3.0 Beta, I have to say that I am impressed, although the user interface is not as polished as most programmes I normally use, it seems much easier to produce images that are less obviously HDR.
I hope to work with this a lot more over the next few months, and spend more time producing taking photographs to work with HDR.

Inspiration

Winter Beach 1, originally uploaded by North Light.

Photography is a funny thing! An odd statement?
For the last few weeks I have had no problem seeing photographs, working though my image archive has been equally productive, but I got home last night, cup of tea, and in front of my monitor started going through photographs taken in 2005 with the intention of creating a few new images for my flickr photostream, found four potential images, created bracketed exposures using Camera Raw, processed with Photomatix, and started to do the final work in Photoshop. I rejected all four!
Lack of inspiration, not seeing images, its not a new phenomenon, but why does it happen?
I was motivated, had no problems picking the images to work on, but the results were not in any way inspirational.
Yet 24 hours before I produced the photograph above, to me its the most satisfying image I have produced al month, yet in its original format I probably got very close to deleting it!
Thoughts to ponder on over the Christmas Season.