Picked up some developed cross-processed film this morning that I'd shot last week on my trusty old Olympus. The first one was taken in Stockport, and the other was shot on the M6 in Cumbria at sunset. Both were taken out of the car window. I am a fan of cross-processing slide film, and the older the film the better. Though I am vastly depleting my stocks of out of date Fuji Provia. I managed to get 30 odd rolls from PFD in Manchester for a £1 each! But I only have around a dozen left. It's a very hit and miss exercise as I often find that some of the frames develop with large orange streaks across them. Why this occurs I have no idea, but its often Murphy's Law that this occurs on the best images on the film!! And a quick side note to finish off the post. Stumbled across a really useful article detailing a ritual that any photographer should add to their workflow - "10 steps to maintain your camera" - read it here.
Shot this on the local golf course again just as the sun was going down. With the right light there are loads of opportunities here, so you may see a few more 
 Just a quick post today. Interviewing for webdev contract roles later today, so a bit frantic prepping this morning. Shot this yesterday as day 2 of the new regime on the way to collect my car from a fault diagnosis session at Smith Knight Fay (its gonna be expensive  ). Also, Scott Kelby (who has some clout at Adobe) has compiled a list of the "Top 10 most wanted" Photoshop features to try and get the guys from Adobe to include in CS4. This list was compiled from readers of his blog. Check out the initial request for input here. And go here to enter the poll. Hey you never know, Adobe may actually listen to their customers!
 For those of you over a certain age, you may remember those good old Ladybird books that taught you to read. Amazingly, they're still going (my 3 year old son is a big fan). There's a new web site popped up at ladybirdprints.com where you can get prints or canvases from over 4000 Ladybird illustrations! They're marvelous and a great gift idea. I had to post this as browsing through some of the images took me back to shorts, bruised knees and stabilisers!
An A4 print only costs £15 which I reckon is really quite reasonable. Check them out for yourself.
It's been a while since I've posted any photographs on here, primarily because I haven't been shooting! I've been totally lacking in inspiration and motivation since my A-level course and my last webdev contract finished. It also doesn't help that I've been eating and drinking too much, back on the occasional smoke again, and doing absolutely no exercise whatsoever. So for the last few weeks, I've been finding myself feeling more and more drained. I still try to keep on top of the dozen or so photography blogs that I read daily, and there have been some very interesting articles posted lately which have started to get me thinking again. The post by Brian Auer at Epic Edits on "My weakest area of photography", another post here titled "Do you take or make photos?" and an interesting article at Photopreneur detailing a chat with the VP Marketing at stock library PhotoShelter are three that spring to mind. This combined with the fact that I've had enough of abusing my body (I'm no spring chicken anymore!) has led me to take a firm grip of myself, give myself a good shake and realise that it's time to take control again. So to this end, I've got myself a personal trainer who will be punishing me twice a week, I've changed my diet, stopped the fags, drastically cut down the booze, and I'm going to to force myself to get out and shoot again. I aim to get out every day come rain or shine and just shoot. Chances are that the majority of the results will be unpostable, but its the effort that it is important to me. How this will work, I'm not altogether sure. I may go out at lunch (though I'm not a fan of shooting in midday light), or I may jump on my bike after the kids have gone to bed, but the end goal will be the same. Shoot, shoot, shoot! Above is the result of day 1 of the new regime! It's shot on the golf course at the end of my street just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. HDR Processed using Photomatix. Incidentally the new version (3), is a vast improvement on the previous version I was using (2.5), and well worth the ££. It's so far ahead of Adobe's dabble into HDR in CS3!
I've finally been persuaded to abandon Google Bookmarks and switch over to using Del.icio.us. The primary reason being that I often find myself using different PCs and access to Del.icio.us just seems to me to be easier and simpler than using Google. I have also found the UI much simpler and quicker to use. I have been a fan of and a regular user of many Google services for a long time. I use Google Mail, Desktop Search, Google Web search, Google Reader, Google Toolbars, Google Earth, Google Maps and too many more to mention, though I have recently abandoned Google Reader in favour of NewsGator (which I find to be a far more user friendly and intelligent application). Anyway, all the links that appear on this blog, can be found in my publicly available bookmarks - which you can access here - http://del.icio.us/fabfilippini/?settagview=cloud You can also send me bookmarks to look at, though I've not quite figured out how this works yet....
I've been a bit quiet this last week on the blog front due to family issues, but I'm back now with a vengeance. I stumbled across the sublime work of Steen Doessing over the weekend. He grew up in Denmark surrounded by water - rivers, lakes & oceans, and manages to produce the most tranquil, calm yet dramatic images. He nearly always uses long exposures, from several minutes to several hours and uses a full frame Canon DSLR and a Hasselblad. Check out his work here - www.steendoessing.com - it really is worth the click.
I meant to post this over the weekend, but what with family commitments and post processing a couple of shoots I did towards the end of last week, its been somewhat delayed. Better late than never anyway.... 1) David Ziser's turns out some really insightful articles amid his relentless posting and here's another discussing 9 important business strategies for quoting for that big job you're just dying to get. Read it here 2) Dean at Photopreneur provides a quality article discussing why its really worth taking the plunge into professional shooting. Read it here 3) Another interesting article from Photopreneur on why using Flickr is really quite a good idea. Read it here 4) Mike Johnston from the online photographer runs through the top 10 digital cameras of 2008, from the D3 to the new PhaseOne digital back, to the latest entry level DSLRs. Read it here 5) An interesting article from Lee Torrens over at the Microstock Diaries showing how some of the Pros really do earn some big money from shooting specifically for stock agencies. Read it here
I can safely say that initially I'm very pleased with the results. Reproductions on both glossy and matt paper are very impressive indeed. The product was well packaged and very straight forward to set up.... However, it took me ages to work out how to get the list of possible papers to display anything other than the bog standard photo papers. It was only after some serious googling that I tried chaning the black cartridge from Photo Black to Matt Black. Then I saw a completely different list of possible papers. However in the process of changing the inks, the printer does a whole re-calibration routine or something that uses a whole heap of ink. Even though I'd only made a couple of prints, after changing the cartridges, all bar the Matt Black were showing a quarter used. Whether this is just an inaccurate reading or not I'm not sure, but I haven't yet dared to change the blacks back again. I'll be printing primarily on Matt fibre papers anyway. Once I'd got all this sussed, I tried printing some test images on the sample Epson Archival Matte paper that came bundled with the printer. The quality of the print itself I was very impressed with, but I seemed to get lots of streaking / smudging along one edge. I tried various different settings but to no avail. I then popped over to Jessops and got some Harman Matt FB paper 310gsm (which is very nice BTW - read more here), but still I got the smudging. 
(This hasn't scanned very well, but you get the gist) It was only when I tried loading the paper in the top of the printer (I had been loading it in the front as per the "thick paper" instructions), that I saw the option to "Fast Print", and lo and behold the streaks have gone. Therefore I can only deduce that for some reason in the blacks, the printer is putting too much ink down on the page. This doesn't seem to happen using the glossy papers and the Photo Black cartridge, so maybe I'm doing something wrong. But I've scoured high and low, tested every possible configuration and used a stack of paper already. However after all that, I am still very impressed with the results of the print once I do actually get rid of the streaks. I'll be trying some A3 paper shortly for a display I have coming up, so it'll be interesting to see how they pan out. If anyone has any pointers on getting the best out of fibre papers on this printer, I'd be very keen to hear from you.
A quiet weekend all in all, though I did make it into Trafford Park for dawn on Sunday. I've not spent much time with the DSLR & kit for a while, so I thought I ought to take it all for a spin. Though I felt particularly lacking in motivation and inspiration and the light got quite harsh rather quickly. So I'm afraid the results haven't rocked my world. Though the image above did rather tickle me. These two fellas were just standing next to the bus stop waddling around. I dived out of the car and rattled off a dozen frames or so before they scarpered. The shot below is off 3 rusty unused tanks of some description. I was drawn to the patterns the rust has created. And the final image is of containers at the container port by the canal. The reflection was what caught my eye. 
This article was originally published by Martin Parr in the Sunday Times and details Martin's favourite photography books of the last year. Click here to read it. An interesting and insightful article by American portrait and wedding photographer, David Ziser, on how to build your photography business. Click here to read it. A brief article by Damien Franco over at yourphototips.com on "Does shooting film make you a better photographer?". The simple answer, I believe is "yes". And which kinda photographers shoot more film than digi? Just check out the real pro landscape photographers - They all use film! Click here to read it . I continually strive to expand my creative talents, and flowers, although a tad cliched, are an area that I would like to pursue, even if only briefly. I was looking for inspiration, but a guest poster over at DPS has already done some groundwork for me! I love the internet!! ;-) Click here to read it. I want one, but can I really justify yet another camera bag??? Click here to read Matt Kloskowski's review of his Boda bag. Most importantly, are we all going to be arrested as terrorists?? & - WTF??? - - How can I t-shirt possibly be a security threat??? The world's gone mad! Harlan Ellison - Prolific American writer of short stories & screenplays. He wrote for the original series of Star Trek and has won many acclaimed literary awards. Check this video rant out. Good point, well made!
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