2016 LPOTY Success

Posted on October 24, 2016September 17, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 2016, commended, competition, Landscape Photographer of the Year, lpoty, Take a View10 Comments

2016 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition

I am pleased to announce that I have had some exciting news about this year’s ‘Landscape Photographer of the Year’ competition. I had five images shortlisted this year, and three have been commended by the judges and have won a place in the awards book. One of these images,

My picture of Caister-on-Sea has also been chosen as the winner of the Adobe Prize, a twelve month subscription of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software. This photograph will also feature in the exhibition at Waterloo station in London.

It is only my second year of entering LPOTY, so getting five images shortlisted itself was a huge achievement for me, so I am even more happy that three have been commended, and one has won a prize! The exhibition will be at Waterloo station in London and run from 21st November 2016 until the 5th February 2017. The accompanying book is available to purchase from today. The full list of the winners can be found on the ‘Take a View’ website.

Caister

Caster – Commended and winner of the Adobe Prize.
2016 Landscape Photographer of the Year, ‘Your View’

Softly

Softly – Commended, 2016 Landscape Photographer of the Year, ‘Classic View’.

Autumn Luster

Autumn Luster – Commended, 2016 Landscape Photographer of the Year, ‘Classic View’.

Landscape Editions Volume 6

Posted on October 22, 2016September 17, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

Woodwork

I am proud to announce that a collection of my local woodland images, is going to be made into a book. The book is be being published by Kozu books and will be volume number 6 in their popular Landscape Editions series of books.

My book along with volumes 7 and 8 form Lee Acaster and Matt Botwood, are available to pre order and will ship in November. Visit www.kozubooks.com for more information.

The books cost £10 plus P&P, and are design to be affordable but still using high quality materials and processes. The editions are limited to 100 copies, and come with a free print. So grab your copy before they sell out.

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Winter Branches

Spring Greens

Buying a Hasselblad 500cm

Posted on October 16, 2016September 13, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 500cm, film, hasselblad, medium format, photography, v system2 Comments

The choices I made when I bought my Hasselblad system.

I have been looking at Hasselblad cameras on and off for several years. The design of the V system has always appealed to me, but I always seemed to talk myself out of buying one.

500c/m

Back in August I found a nice 500c/m body at a reasonable price and decided to snap it up before I could talk myself out of it again. Of course, the body is only part of the system. I would still need to get a lens, a viewfinder and a film back. So I started my search for all of the pieces to put my system together. The beauty of the Hasselblad V system is that it is a modular system, so you can pick and choose what you add to the body. The system dates back to the 1950s and Hasselblad only stopped producing its latest model in 2013. This means that plenty of different options are available and the prices can be very reasonable for the older versions.

So what did I decide to buy? The body as I mentioned before is a 1974 500c/m. I know it is over 40 years old, but these things are built like tanks. My body looks like it has been well looked after and has only had light use. The more modern versions are much the same but carry a higher price tag. The A12 film back was easy to source as there seems to be an endless supply of them. All I had to do was choose one that was in good condition and had a matching insert. For the viewfinder, I have always had my heart set on a waist-level finder. I know that this is not everybody’s preferred choice, but I love the look of them and how they fold down to nothing. Again this was easy to find a nice example that was in keeping with the age of the body. The biggest decision was what to use for a lens. Hasselblad has always used Carl Zeiss lenses, so I knew whatever I chose would be good quality. I opted for a 150mm f/4 Sonnar C type, then a few weeks later I found a 60mm f/5.6 Distagon for a low price.

Now that I had everything together I had the decision of what film to use. Considering that most people are now shooting digital I was surprised how much of a choice there still was. I knew I wanted to shoot in black and white, so that made the decision a bit easier. I opted for a roll of Ilford FP4 as it ticked all the right boxes, especially the part about the enormous latitude for exposure error. This was important to me as there was going to be a certain amount of guesswork in my exposures. Armed with a homemade notebook for recording all my data, I set off to try and make the most of the 12 shots on the roll of film.

To be continued…