I am continuing to update the site.  Have corrected a few typos today and I have added a further 307 images to the gallery database.  I have also rearranged the collections in the gallery, to what I hope is a more intuitive arrangement, which will make more sense to my site visitors.  What I am trying to achieve is to group the images into collections that reflect my artistic intent when I am actually taking the photos, but which also allows the whole gallery to gel into a cohesive whole and at the same time is conducive to both casual and more focussed browsing and searching.  I want the collections to make sense but also allow the visitor to find the kinds of images they are most interested in.

The landscape panoramas (mainly 360 degree panos), which were buried deep in the gallery, now appear on the first page, as does a brand new collection of little planet panorama projections.  I moved these up because panoramas are a favorite format of mine as they capture a full scene in a unique and fascinating way, and the overall effect is simply stunning. The production of these images is an example of the exciting new possibilities presented by the landslide move from traditional slide&film cameras to digital, as well as the availability of super fast modern personal computers and amazing new graphics software.  The major advantage of digital is not that you can “cheat” and make a silk purse out of a sows ear (which in all honesty you cannot), but rather that there are now a huge range of extra processing techniques which allow further options for creative expression as a photographic artist.  The basic challenge is still the same as it always was, to take the best photographic images that you can but now there are also so many more options for turning a great capture, hopefully already a work of Art, into something else entirely.

To pursue the example of panoramas a little further: In a panorama (with field of view of 360 degrees), You see the whole world at a glance.  The relationship between one object in a scene to all others, most of which would be above, below or behind the field of view in a normal photograph, becomes the main point of the image.  It is a technique which virtually forces the viewer to reinterpret their understanding of the relationships between the objects and subjects in a scene. The little planets give the impression of looking down the local scene but are in fact just a re-rendering of a standard 360 degree stitched panorama, the individual photos for which were taken at ground level. The final images are exciting and fun.   It is still a version of reality but it is a reality that is distorted in such a way as to present it in a completely new light.  A hyperreality.  A blending of the literal and the real with the fantastic, whilst preserving a sense of believability.  A panorama is an image which is of real scene, taken with normal photographic technique and equipment, that is not digitally manipulated to the extent that fake elements are removed or added but that is finally projected with a totally false perspective.  The images are real and true but the perspective is fabricated.  You cannot see the scene in nature, it does not exist in this form.  In a way is what all good photography does.  It takes a natural or posed subject or scene and presents it from a perspective, in a composition and maybe using various photographic techniques (Depth of field, focal plane, shutter speed, lighting etc.) that is unusual or creates an impact that would normally be missed in every day life.  It is not a slavish representation of the real world that is obvious to all.  A photograph is not real in any true sense.  It captures a moment in time in such as way that it focuses our attention on the subject in a very concentrated and often unusual way.  Photography normally captures a fleeting moment but when we look at it, we stare and stretch out that moment for maybe minutes at a time.  Even if we only glance for a couple of seconds, this glance is almost always orders of magnitude longer than the moment captured,  and again the image becomes a kind of dramatic hyperreality, visually concentrated and temporally protracted.  Sometimes we purposefully prolong the capture moment to see the cumulative effect of the passage of time in a single frame.  The blur of motion or a brightening of available light after dark.  In virtually all cases, the photograph is showing us something that we think we normally see, but we do not. We are normally too busy keeping track of the present to see the short individual moments in detail.

Note:

I am fully aware that you can capture panoramas directly, using specialist equipment such as a rotating panoramic camera or a set up using a hemispherical mirror and lens combination.  A computer is therefore  not absolutely necessary to make full 360 panoramas but I do not use these methods and don’t have use of this kind of equipment.  You certainly cant make a little planet without a computer.

Have just realized that the key-wording on some of my recent additions is a little off and this may require me to re upload the effected images.  I love taking photos and even like messing with the website design. I am not a big fan however of the tedious and repeated checking needed to make sure everything is working smoothly. Any comments in this regard will be gratefully received.

Hopefully, you will not have noticed any disruption from my ongoing tweeking.

as always, comments welcome.

J