Posted on May 2, 2018
Frank wanted an image on the theme of ‘trip’ for this week’s Tuesday Photo Challenge. As he noted, this is open to various interpretations, although not not all of them are photogenic (and/or legal).
Geographically, the longest trip I’ve ever taken – apart from the time I measured my length on an unforgiving pavement in Confolens while in search of doors to photograph – is to Australia, over Christmas and New Year, quite a few years ago now.
Even though I’d been to Sydney on business a few times previously, this was the first time I was able to take a more considered view of my exotic surroundings. Imagine going all that way and then also having the opportunity to take a further trip on one of these fancy-looking boats moored in Sydney Harbour.

Category: Travel Tagged: Australia, boats, Exotic, fpj-photo-challenge, Sydney, Sydney Harbour, Trip, Tuesday Photo Challenge
Posted on December 23, 2016
On a very calm and sunny day in the harbour of St Andrews, this little fishing boat was reflected almost perfectly in the still water.

Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Reflections
Category: Black & White Tagged: Black & White, boats, Cee's Black & White Photo Challenge, Reflections, St Andrews, Water
Posted on February 19, 2016
I took this photograph of an upturned boat at Watson’s Bay, near Sydney. It was a bit of a snatched shot and while the subject is interesting, it’s a little frustrating because I didn’t capture the entire boat, cutting off the prow (at the bottom of the image) and the sides. Furthermore, the horizon (waterline) isn’t straight and the colours are rather bleached – partly because it’s a pretty weatherbeaten vessel in the first place and also because it was taken around noon – so I was probably on my way to lunch, which probably explains why it was a snatched shot.
Before

After

I cropped out most of the boat, the shoreline and the surrounding sand, and also added a light Vignette. This brought the real interest, the bottom of the boat, and especially the ‘trident’ effect of the struts, properly to the fore.
This produced an almost abstract feel, which was reinforced largely by reducing the Luminance and modestly tweaking the Saturation of the key colours, blue and orange
Category: Composition Tagged: ABFriday, boats, colours, Editing, Sydney, Watson's Bay
Posted on January 1, 2016
For the January One Photo Focus we were given this image by Laura Macky of Laura Macky Photography

It’s an excellent photograph as it stands: a well-composed image of an interesting subject. There seemed little to be gained from tweaking details like saturation; that would be more likely to detract than to enhance. So I decided to take just a part of the whole and turn it into something different.
The angle at which the boat is beached provided some interesting diagonals in the superstructure, so I cropped tightly into the subject itself. Although I like the colours in the original, I felt that it would also work well in black and white. A bit of work on the sliders brought out more detail in the peeling paintwork, giving it a more ‘weatherbeaten’ look.

Category: Before & After, Black & White Tagged: ABFriday, Before and After, Black & White, boats, Editing, One Photo Focus, Texture, weatherbeaten
Posted on December 10, 2015
To be honest, finding ‘ready-made’ images that occupy two-thirds of the picture was a bit of a challenge. That probably just goes to show that I am (or was) too wedded to sticking the subject in the middle of the photograph as a matter of course. Still, a bit of creative cropping did the job.
This week, I have three pairs of similar images illustrating the 2/3rds theme (hover over the image and caption for a fuller description).
To begin with, a couple of archways:
And here are two water-based scenes:
And finally (appropriately) two sunsets:
Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge: Using 2/3rds of your photo frame
Category: Composition Tagged: Abu Dhabi, Architecture, boats, Burano, Cee's Compose Yourself Photo Challenge, France, Oman, Reflections, River Vienne, seascape, sunset