Better late than never I'm publishing this blog entry to announce the release of two calendars featuring some of my landscape photographs. I have 6 photographs in the 2010 Eastbourne calendar and 1 photograph in the 2010 Sussex calendar. The calendars are published by J Salmon Ltd in the UK and are available at various outlets. Locally I have seen the calendars in Sussex Stationers and some smaller shops around Eastbourne.

They make great christmas gifts so why not pick your calendar up today?

A quick blog to just explain my recent apparent absense from the website. Summer is always a busy time and unfortunately photography has taken a bit of a backseat whilst we carry out some major renovations at home. However next week we are heading up north to the Lake District for a week of hopefully decent weather and walking. I'm sure I'll find a few scenes to point the camera at and despite them not being susex based I'll get them online once I'm back.

After a bit of a mistep by myself when making some site changes the other morning I managed to display all updates on my blog. I think I've now got the problem resolved (as can be proved by the appearance of this update) and I plan to backpost a few saved entries in a short while.

I've implented the first verson of my online shopping code to the website. This will allow for the purchase of unmounted prints only at this time but will be upgraded at a later date to include other products. Below each photograph in the gallery there will be a list of available sizes which can be then be added to the shopping cart. At the checkout you can adjust the quantities and make payment via PayPal or log the order and pay by cheque.

I'm aware of a few minor bugs with the code at the moment and will work hard to get these fixed ASAP. I have many other improvements in mind for the site and for the shopping system so will continue to update the site as these become available.

While it's not exactly landscape photography related I wanted to post this update about the Biggin Hill airshow that took place over the weekend. I returned for my second year as one of the officer photographers for the organisers Air Displays International and had a fun couple of days in the heat and sunshine. It was an exciting line up or aircraft both new and old and as always was well managed on the day. My highlight's were finally getting to see the Vulcan flying after many disappointments during 2008 and I was also impressed by the Virgin 747-400 flypast with the Red Arrows. In particular the Boeing's final "dirty" pass was a great moment on the Sunday and it wowed the huge crowds.

I've not got the task of sifting through and processing the best of the hundreds of photographs taken over the weekend which will keep me busy for the next week or so. After that I hope to catch up on some landscape photography which has taken a slight backseat recently due to other comittments. I've got a nice backlog of landscape shots to process as well but they can wait until darker days as the current weather is too good to miss.

My growing gallery of shots from Biggin Hill can be viewed on my other photography website at http://sjgphotography.co.uk/Gallery/gallery.aspx?id=50

Last night was my first exhibition at Eastbourne Framing Centre and both I and the shop owner Lucy were very happy with the turnout. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and the feedback on my photographs was very nice to hear. A big thanks to everyone involved and all of the visitors to the exhibition. During the evening I snapped a few photographs of the event.

Last night I made my second trip out in search of some poppies. After seeing some interesting shots from a field near Falmer I decided to give it a try, despite some rather bland blue skies. Don't get me wrong, sunny weather is great, it's just that I prefer some detail in my skies. In the end the trip was quite successful and I got a few shots I was quite pleased with. It's certainly a location I'd like to return to again given a chance, although I'm not sure when my next oppotunity will be as I'm working as official photographer at Biggin this weekend. I may try for a dawn shoot if the forecast looks promising.

Below are a couple of the photographs I've processed so far. The first is from my first trip to the field near Firle Beacon and the second is from last night near Falmer.

Path to Poppies

Falmer Poppy Field

Just a quick reminder blog to anyone in the Eastbourne area on Wednesday evening. I'll be at the Eastbourne Framing Center from 7pm taking part in the "Sussex Scenes" exhbition. I should have approximately 22 photographs on display from my collection and I hope you can pop in to say hello and have a quick look. As well as my photographs Jon Cornford will also be displaying some of his work on canvas and there will be some wine and cheese (for as long as it lasts)!

Yesterday evening Rhiannon and I took a chance on a possible poppy location near Firle, along the A27. We didn’t have a great deal of time and opted to set out at 5pm since there were some nice high clouds adding some interest to the blue sky.

We followed the lane that I’d already checked out on Google Maps and were soon rewarded with a sight of red flowers just off to our right. We parked up and set about taking some photographs. The skies were great but the angle and height of the sun wasn’t perfect for the shots we were after. We intend to return nearer to 7-8pm one evening this week to capture the scene with a lower more golden light from the setting sun. I’ve also pecked the location as possibly being suitable for a sunrise shoot as well

Despite the sun’s position some angles were still workable and the scenery was fantastic. After much searching I was just excited to have found my first field of poppies!

As promised here is one of the photographs from my recent sunset shoot on Windover Hill. Due to the extreme range of exposure between the sky and the foreground I used 7 shots combined to produce this HDR (High Dynamic Range) shot of Firle Beacon with the setting sun. I'll try to post a few more from the trip as they are processed.

If you want to visit this location for yourself it can be easily accessed from the A27 by taking the Wilmington turn off between Lewes and Polegate. Follow the country road past the Long Man of Wilmington and continue up the hill until you come to a small chalk parking area on the right, with views across to Alfriston. From the car park cross the road and go through the gate which puts on onto the path up to the Long Man. A few yards after the gate on your left you will find the discarded farm machinery used as foreground in this photograph.

I have marked the parking area on this map from Google

Firle Beacon Sunset on the South Downs

The weather has been fantastic recently, although the skies were a bit bland for any exciting photography. Clear blue skies whilst nice for walks and days out are just not as exciting as those filled with wispy or fluffy clouds. This combined with numerous PC problems meant I hadn't gotten out much, but last night I was finally able to fit in a trip to the South Downs.

I started my journey by visiting a new location I've been working on up behind Alfriston. I arrived at about 7:45pm and the sun was just starting to produce the low golden light that I was looking for. My goal was to capture the rolling landscape bathed in the warm light. I ended up trekking up hill towards the South Downs way before finding a spot that seemed to work. After spending some time with a couple of compositions I wasn't that enthused by the shots I was taking.

Instead I decided to revisit a location on Windover Hill by the Long Man to capture the sunset in the distance behind Firle Beacon. I arrived as the sun was rapidly sinking and had to move fast to start the walk up the hillside. After passing through the first gate I spotted an old piece of farm machinery next to the path. It had been there for a long time as it was a nice rusty colour and somehow I’d never really taken it in before. The sun was perfectly placed behind the plough and the opportunity was too good to miss.

I was using my trusty 17-40mm lens on the 1D MkIIN with mirror lockup and shutter release. As a side I really need to replace the shutter release cable as the wire must be damaged since it only fires when held at specific angles. Initially I fitted a Cokin P121 ND Grad filter hoping to hold back the bright sun to retain some foreground details. It was however not enough to balance the exposure and since I’ve not had good results by stacking filters I decided to instead go for bracketed exposures instead.

This process required a bit more work to get it right and more processing afterwards to combine the exposures but it is much better at handling greater extremes of exposure. I removed the ND Grad filter and whilst working AV priority at F/14 I went about making a number of exposures of the scene, adjusting the exposure compensation by 2/3s of a stop each time. After completing 5 or 6 frames I moved onto the next composition.

Having had a quick review of the shots this morning I think I’ve got one workable sequence that looks pretty good. I’ll need to spend some time processing the RAW files and merging the exposures to complete the photograph.

After capturing the sunset I waited a few minutes to see if the sky would provide any further excitement but it was obviously not in the mood so I packed up and set off for home. Passing the Long Man through Wilmington village I spotted an unusual scene which I had to shoot. The nearly full moon was out and up behind the hillside in the perfect spot to capture with the Long Man. Since it was only a few minutes after sunset there was enough light to capture the scene with a long exposure.

I parked up at the car park and jogged onto the Long Man path looking for a spot to set up the tripod. I didn’t have time to fully close in on the Long Man so I picked a spot very close to where I was shooting a sunrise a month or so ago. Again I needed to bracket the shots to capture some foreground detail whilst retaining detail in the moon. Having reviewed the shots I’m not sure I underexposed quite enough but since I work in RAW I have some latitude for correction. For my foreground detail shots I was shooting at 2 seconds to capture enough light. I think the shot may work but if the composition is not right I’ll certainly consider returning sometime soon to try a re-shoot, perhaps when it’s actually a full moon behind. I can’t recall ever seeing this scene at dusk or night so I’m quite driven to try and photograph it.

I’ll try to update this blog with some of the final shots once they’re processed. Until then remember to put the 24^th June in your calendar as I’ll be exhibiting around 24 photographs at Eastbourne Framing Centre on the corner of Grove Road and Terminus road, by the mini roundabout and Eastbourne library. I hope to see you there.

This post is not directly photography related but worth a mention as it should allow for quicker email response times and website updates. I'm with the network provider Three for my mobile contract and since my free upgrade was long overdue I called up last week to arrange my new deal. After a lot of negotiating we agreed that I could get the Nokia E71 handset on my contract with unlimited internet usage. As such I am now able to recieve emails on the move and I also plan to try and twitter more from location to pass on interesting tips and ideas as I think of them.

So far my experience with the handset has been pretty good and my emails seem to be working properly.