New eBooks Released

Title says it all :-) I'm pleased to announce the release of the following e-Books.

Simplifying Composition - Aspect Ratios, in which I discuss the many aspect ratios and how they influence and affect your compositions. There is now a 'beginner' tab to the store and in there, I have the three 'understanding series' of e-Books about Exposure, Depth of Field and also Histograms and Bit Depth. You may know all this stuff already.... but then again, you might not. I put these books together to cover the basics because I've been very surprised at how many participants on my workshops for instance, didn't know how to focus their cameras.

I hope you find them of use to you. I tried my best to distill into a very easy to digest format, what I think we should all know.

You can get them at my store.

Night & Low Light Photography

One of the books I bought recently from Neil at Beyond Words is all about shooting at night. I'm predominantly a low-light shooter, and I do sometimes get towards the edge of darkness, but never really fully in it. So when I was looking on his store last month, and itching to buy some new books (a hole was burning in my pocket), I chanced upon this title and thought it might help me get out there and start to shoot the other side of the day that most of us don't bother with.

In Jill's book, she not only provides some reciprocity charts for popular films, but also goes well beyond the chart that I own for Fuji Velvia 50 RVP to show you what exposure times you need to get you into the minutes and hours territory of night shooting with that film (and others such as Tri X, T-Max, and some tungsten balanced films too).

Unsurprisingly, the forward to the book is written by Michael Kenna, who is perhaps the champion of night shooting, often making his surreal images from 8 hour exposures.

I've enjoyed reading Jill's book. It's very accomplished, makes you want to get out there and try stuff with your camera at night, has lots of tips and suggestions, and also has chapters by many of the photographers featured on the Nocturnes web site, which is highly recommended, just to give you the taste for night shooting alone.

So this book is a bit of a mixture of nice reading, without being too fast into the technical, has examples, some study cases by numerous photographers and every now and then, gets into the nitty gritty of how to do it - with a digital camera, film camera, large format camera, etc.

I highly recommend it, and as usual, if you'd like a copy of this book, then I do believe that Neil from Beyond Words can get you a copy or you can order it from him here*.

*Please note that I do not make any money from my recommendations to Beyond Words. I simply believe in supporting a good photographic book shop, despite the fact that I've spent a small fortune lately on some rather lovely books!

Beyond Words Book Shop

You may have noticed that i've put up a little banner for Beyond Words book store on this blog. There are not many good photographic book stores left, due to the onslaught of stack em high, sell them low operations such as Amazon and I feel that we're losing out on specialist book stores that offer us the chance to find out about books that we wouldn't ordinarily learn about.

I think it's important to support or endorse things that I believe in. So in an effort to do that, I've added the little banner onto this very blog to help encourage you all to go look, see if theres anything of interest in the shop and maybe even subscribe to Neil's news letter for upcoming publications.

Just so you know - I'm doing this out of an interest in keeping a good book store alive and by helping you guys learn more about other photographers too. I should stress that I am not making any money from this arrangement - it's just here for your benefit.

I should let you all know that I want to start to review books in future, time permitting of course. I'm going to start by plundering my existing collection but vie also just bought a small fortunes worth of books from Neil so I hope to review these as well, once I've got hold of them.

Learning about other artists and being able to disappear into the world of someone elses photographs can only be a good thing. I hope you will enjoy my reviews as and when they happen.

my first book

Just back from my Skye workshop. So i'm a wee bit tired, but the trip went well. I'm almost done writing the first draft of my very first hard bound book.

I'm hoping to have it released next year, but thought that I might release an e-book version of it before then (maybe for Christmas). The book will contain 40 images culled from my portfolio containing a mixture of landscape and portraiture from Easter Island, Patagonia, Nepal, India, Portugal, Iceland and of course Scotland.  I think it would be nice to release it as an eBook, but the idea is that it will come out as a nice coffee-table edition - roughly around the size and dimensions of an Vinyl LP. I'm hoping to release it as a strictly limited edition run of 3,000 copies, with the first 500 accompanied by a tipped in photo of the front cover image.

Anyway, for those of you who are Ansel Adams fans, you've probably noticed that the title is identical to his. This is in part homage to him, and also because I think it's a great way of representing what I do, under a first edition book.

First eBook on iBooks

Just a quick entry today to let you all know that 'Simplifying Composition' is now available on Apple's US iBooks store.

If you have an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone and live in the US, then it is now possible for you to download the ebook to read in the Apple book reader app.

I've also been told that the remaining four technique eBooks are with Apple and will take the usual 2 weeks to get through their approval process.

If you want to read the nice review - just click on the image for a larger version!

UPDATE: My eBooks will Initially be available only in the U.S. but my distributor is expanding to all territories in the next two weeks. The current iBookstore territories are: U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, and France.

iBooks

Things are moving swiftly, and I should have my eBooks up on Apple's iBooks store soon. In the meantime, here are a few snaps showing you the eBooks on the iPad.

New eBook - Visual Sense Released

I'm just back from the isle of Harris. I must say, it's been all go this week...... But I'm pleased to now tell you all that my new eBook, which covers 'visualisation' is now available for purchase on my store.

Please note, you may need to refresh your browser!

It has been an interesting project working on this one, as I feel 'visualisation' is a much more abstract subject to discuss than say, composition. Once I found my thread though, things just seemed to take on a life of their own. Anyway, the subjects discussed in the eBook include:

* Converting a scene from 3D to 2D * Visualising in the aspect ratio of your camera * Understanding lens characteristics and their role in visualisation * Translation of a moving scene into a static one * Visualisation is tightly coupled to Style * Automation and lack of engagement encountered * Reasons that visualisation may fail

This is part 1 of an intended set of 2 eBooks about visualisation. Part 2, will discuss the printing techniques I use in the digital darkroom to realise the final image. But that's a long way off at the moment, so I hope you'll be happy with Part 1.

You can buy The Visual Sense here while I'm off now to have a cup of tea and a well earned rest :-)

Visual Sense

I've been busy writing an eBook about 'visualisation', to compliment my existing ebooks, which I am pleased to let you all know that I've currently finished the first draft of. It is now in the hands of some reviewers to proof read it and also, to get back to me on what they feel may be missing. Writing about what you're passionate about is an enjoyable endeavour. But like anything creative, it takes time to distill ideas, to put things in the right order, to let it be born correctly.

Over the past few years that I've been doing my workshops, I've found it immensely helpful to myself to 'understand' why I choose certain compositions over others, or why I'm drawn to one subject over another. It's helped me become a stronger photographer. I understand that there is a relationship between vision and your own style (or 'voice' as others like to call it).

Take this contact sheet for instance.

This is a collection of images I made whilst in Bolivia in 2009. One thing I've learned about visualisation is to be able to visualise my imagery in a style that suits what I do. That *is* what I do. We should not be only striving to create good images through visualisation, but we should also be striving to create a body of work that has a cohesive feel to it. Everything must sit together as part of a whole. I like the idea that the final collection is greater than the sum of its parts.

Having a strong sense of your own style helps you form your vision, helps you visualise just what it is you want to do, and where you need to go with your own photography. We only reach that by being able to interrogate ourselves, analyse our previous efforts and find out what our style is.

Often I hear participants on my workshops tell me they don't know what their style is, or if they even have one. I think this is down to looking at your own work and filtering it down to what matters. What you are left with should indicate your style, what you're drawn to, and also, where you are probably heading too. Just don't forget that visualisation and style are interlinked.

I'll let you know when my new eBook is out. I hope to have it out end of this month, depending on any amendments or further things come my way that I'd like to add :-)

New Store & Monographs

Just a quick note to let you all know that my 'Store front' has been redesigned. You will find all my eBooks split into featured / technique / monograph sections. There are some new features - each eBook has a little slideshow showing you the contents of the books so you can get an idea of what is inside them. The technique eBooks also have a sample page you can download so you can check out the quality of the images and also the quality of my writing. I hope you find these features of use to you.

Lastly, I'd like to tell you that I've got 3 new monographs up on the store now:

Easter Island, Patagonia and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. All of these monographs contain some short essays on my experiences at each location along with some nice high resolution images from each portfolio.

I'm busy working on an eBook about Visualisation. I hope to have some further news about this by the end of this Month. Suffice to say that it is turning out to be a lot easier to write than I had anticipated. I had so much procrastination - often I find with any new project that I do, it's hard to get the ball rolling, but once the inertia has been breached, projects just take on a pace and spirit of their own - often dragging me along with them !

Thanks to all of you who have bought my eBooks to date. The interest has been something I didn't quite anticipate (otherwise I would have done them much sooner!).  :-)

Barra is still cloudless by the way. Excellent 'summer holidays' weather, but crap for photo making. So I'm just taking the time out to enjoy myself.

Enjoy the eBooks!

A new eBook, HD Podcasts & eMonographs

Over the past few years, I've noticed that the internet seems to be changing. With social networking coming more to the fore, it almost feels sometimes, that there's a lot of information out there, but it's hard work to find what you want.

With that in mind,  I've been wanting to share more of my experiences, share more of my thought processes and perhaps pass on a thing or two to you all.

I'm very passionate about what I do. Making photographs is only part of it, but I love to teach people, help them on their way if I can, and feel I've contributed in some way. I do this by running workshops, which can be immensely satisfying. They're a great way to spend time in a small group of like-minded people who all share the same enthusiasm for photography, and learn some new things. I find the trips great because not only does everyone pick up new things, I get to learn more too.

But It's become more evident that some of you can't participate and perhaps some of you are not sure if a workshop would be right for you, so what better way to pass on a bit of my experiences and tips, than in in the form of eBooks?

With all this in mind, I've been busy putting together a lot of e-Books for you all. I wanted to share my images in a better viewing experience than just a gallery on the web, and I also wanted them to be inspiring in some way. I've put together some short stories in the monographs (picture books). Hey, it was great for me to do this - getting to review what I'd done, relive my experiences was fun and I'm sure you'll get a lot of inspiration out of the results too.

So with all this in mind, I'm pleased to let you know that the e-Books shown in the above picture are available now, and I intend to add a lot more in the coming months too.

You may notice there is an 'HD movie' icon in the above illustration. In case you didn't know - I do a little podcast for iTunes (see the subscription link on the right hand banner to this page). The podcasts are a great way for me to share what I do and try to give you an insight into the experiences I had whilst out shooting in some place like India or Iceland.

The podcasts are something I care about deeply. Due to the bandwidth nature of iPods and iTunes, the quality is, to me, somewhat lacking. So I've prepared some HD versions of the podcasts for you too. They let you see the images in full resolution on a nice big monitor while you enjoy Hi-Fi quality sound too. Trust me - it's a much improved experience from looking at them in a tiny iPod screen or in low-res on the web.

Lastly, I'd like to let you all know about my latest 'technique' book - 'Nocturne - mastering low light photography'.

This eBook covers the essentials if you are to go and make some nice dreamy otherworldly landscape images at the edge of daylight.

I've had a lot of folk over the years ask me how I make some of my images. Why is the light the way it is for example. I've covered some of this on this very blog, but I feel that sometimes, a blog isn't really the best mode of communication. Now that i've discovered the power of the eBook format, I think it's a great medium for sharing my technical experiences and tips with you. You can find out more about it here.

I hope you're all as excited as I am about where this is all going. Being able to communicate, share ideas, teach, inspire - it's all wonderful stuff and I think that with all the new mediums that the web is now starting to provide - it's just getting better and better.

This'll probably be my last post on the blog for the next week as I head out to the Isle of Eigg this Sunday. A whole week of workshop teaching, good eating, great beaches and good company I'm sure, await me. See you all in a week or so's time.