“Flotilla” / Here Come the Swans!

February 14, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Swans on the Hogsmill where it joins the River Thames at Kingston Upon Thames. Another shot with my new lens.

Flotilla Here Come the Swans blog

Kind regards

Leigh

Something a little bit fishy

February 14, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

I took a new lens out for a stroll around my hometown of Kingston Upon Thames this morning. I already have a perfectly good fisheye lens which I very rarely use but I bought the tiny Olympus 9 mm fixed f/8 body cap lens and it is a LOT of fun to use. The images have a sort of film-like quality to them. It’s acceptably sharp in the middle, not so sharp in the corners, it’s manual focus, has chromatic aberration aplenty, it’s cheap , made out of plastic, the pixel-peepers out there would absolutely hate it and I LOVE IT!. The lens is marketed as a fun (not toy) lens and they got this absolutely right. When fitted to one of my OM-D bodies it’s possible to put the camera in a jacket pocket. Being so small and light it’s the sort of lens that you can have with you all the time and, therefore, use. Well done Olympus, like most things, if photography isn’t fun then you’re not going to get the most enjoyment from it and this lens has fun written all over it.

body cap lens

Something a lilttle bit fishy 1s Something a little bit fishy #2s All Saints Church s

Kind regards

Leigh

“Shot at dawn” – Urban Sunrise

February 14, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Shot this morning.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49532823613/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

As Van Eyck looks on

February 13, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Brugge, Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, Photography, Travel | 1 Comment

Hi everyone,

Another of my forgotten works of Brugge.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49529039803/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

A Forgotten Street Shot of Brugge

February 12, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Brugge, Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, Photography, Travel | 5 Comments

Hi everyone,

One of my shots of Brugge that I rediscovered.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49526534531/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

“A kind of symmetry”

February 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Prints, River, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Banks of the River Dee at Chester.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49521910943/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

All the best,

Leigh

These are a few of my favourite things!

February 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Photography, Photography equipment | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Don’t worry I’m not about to break into a medley of songs from the Sound Of Music 🙂 . These are a few of the things that I find the most useful (read essential) in my photography in no particular order.

Olympus’ amazing 5-axis image stabilisation which enables me to habitually and confidently take worry-free handheld HDR shots.
Viveza, part of the NIK Collection, now owned by DXO. Of all of the software that I own, and I own a lot, this software, one of my first purchases, singularly contributes the most to my work. The control point technology is a fantastic, incredibly powerful tool enabling selective image adjustments. Think of it like dodging and burning on steroids! and a lot more.
Olympus’ Highlight/Shadow display function. A fabulous tool in assessing exposure especially useful for HDR shots used alongside the camera’s histogram display.
Skylum Software’s Aurora HDR 2019. The best HDR software that I’ve ever used bar none.
DXO Viewpoint. A very useful and powerful tool for correcting converging verticals. I hate converging verticals, if the Mark 1 human eyeball saw things that way then that’d be a different matter 🙂 .

Tip, if you have a camera with a keystone compensation feature like my Olympus OM-D E-M1, and time to do it, then I occasionally use it to take a reference JPEG image before turning it off and shooting in RAW. That way it greatly helps to take the guesswork out of estimating if you’ve allowed enough room to correct verticals whilst keeping the desired framing or you can ensure that you allow enough room in the frame to correct later using Viewpoint.

I could just about live without everything else but these are essential tools of the trade for me.

I’ve used them all in this shot.

49520971043_52f84c5ecf_c

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49520971043/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

“Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner”

February 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Now for something completely different :). London street scene with iconic black cab and red bus.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49520971043/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

ANTHOLOGY – My Flickr Explored works 2015-2020

February 11, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in art, digital art, Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Kind regards

Leigh

“Expanse” – (yet another river work)

February 10, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, River, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Landscape, River Thames near Sunbury on Thames.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49515017356/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Have a great day, best,

Leigh

As I sit here looking at my modern digital cameras I’m reminded of my first camera and, in particular, the first photograph that I ever took. Nowadays we take cameras and camera technology pretty much for granted but when I was a child I can’t remember many photographs. The only time our camera saw the light of day, and it had to be the light of day, as there wasn’t a flash, was on a few family occasions, the usual thing, school sports days, birthdays, etc.. My interest in photography didn’t start until my grandfather “loaned” me his camera to take with me on a week-long school trip, sleeping under canvas, in Snowdonia, North Wales. It was a somewhat battered old twin-lens reflex camera in which one looked downwards in to the viewfinder when taking a photograph.

I remember being very excited at being entrusted with the family camera, film wasn’t cheap and I had very little to no idea how to use it. The experience must have made some kind of impression on me as, after all these years, I still remember taking my first photograph. The coach stopped en-route at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill and it became the subject of my first photograph. Although, sadly, like my other photographs from the trip, it has long since disappeared, however, I really don’t need the photograph to remind me as the experience is indelibly etched on my mind. I wonder if this is perhaps where my interest in landscape photography stems from but that’s probably too much of an assumption. As far as I remember I was the only kid on the trip to have a camera, that’s how different things were, nowadays, just about everyone has a camera of some sort built in to their mobile phones. It also taught me to be disciplined to the point of being frugal when taking photographs as the trip was for one week and I only had a 12 exposure black and white film in the camera.

Some years later I really got the photography bug and bought my first camera, an Olympus OM-1 35 mm film camera and I went on to own their OM-2 and OM-4ti cameras and a range of lenses. Film was still pretty expensive considering I earned about £20 a week in my first job so I got in to developing and printing my own black and white and, later, colour films to help keep the costs down and make things more affordable. Not only did this experience teach me an awful lot about image-making start to finish, many of the techniques and skills that I learned in my makeshift darkroom, a small room adorned with genuine World War 2 blackout curtains fitted to keep out the light, another hand-me-down from my grandfather, these skills would re-surface and be invaluable some years later when I started working on processing my digital images.

I put myself through University as a mature student and I badly needed the money so I had to very reluctantly part with all my photographic equipment, but needs must. After I graduated I bought my first digital camera, a small fixed lens Kodak compact camera, reduced in a sale. It had, by today’s standards, a laughably small maximum image resolution of 640×480 pixels or, to put it another way, a stunning 0.4 Megapixels!. For all of this and further equipped with screw on wide angle and telephoto lens attachments, it proved to be a fabulous little camera which I took all over the place with me. Put simply, digital photography was a revelation, to me, no requirement for film, no real running costs and a lot of image capacity on a small memory card which I found absolutely liberating.

A few years before that I had discovered some free graphics editing software on the cover disk of a computer magazine and that started off my real passion for working with graphics and, ultimately, photo processing. So I then had all the tools I required to develop, pun intended and further, my interest in digital photography. Processing is where the magic starts for me, I am totally absorbed in and fascinated by the range of options that digital processing affords me. It encourages me, if, that is, I ever need encouragement, to constantly experiment with new styles, new techniques and is such an important part of my enjoyment and interest in photography.

I went on to own several DSLRs but, as I got older I began to find that they were simply too heavy and bulky. I switched over back in 2013 to Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. My choice of MFT system was heavily influenced by my experiences with my Olympus film cameras, maybe it was, in truth, part based on nostalgia that I decided on their OM-D system. As a landscape/travel photographer I have to carry my gear around all day and the weight and bulk saving is highly significant. I’ve been very impressed with the image quality of my Micro Four Thirds equipment, it has traveled with me extensively, never let me down and I have never had cause to question my decision to go over to that format.

So my 50-plus year photographic adventure has led me from twin-lens reflex and single-lens reflex film cameras to digital cameras, from stumbling around in a dimly-lit darkroom to working with my images on my computer. I’ve heard it said on occasions, including a comment I read some while back by a very famous photographer, that cameras being so much an every-day item now and available in mobile phones etc. devalues photography. I feel quite the opposite, I firmly believe that it empowers everyone with affordable technology to take photographs and enjoy photography and that, in my opinion, is fantastic. Although I’ve very much enjoyed my personal photographic journey I do confess to feeling a slight tinge of regret that the technology wasn’t available when I started out but one can’t put the clock back and I intend to keep on embracing all these great technological advancements, experimenting and enjoying my work.

Cameras:

Olympus: OM-D E-M5 Mk II (titanium) & HLD-8G grip, OM-D E-M1 Mk I (black) & HDL-7 grip, OM-D EM-5 Mk I (silver) & HDL-6 grip, PEN EPL-5, PEN EP-5 (silver) +VF-4, PEN E-PL8 (Silver) +VF4, Tough TG-5 (red), PEN-F (silver), Canon Powershot G10, Nikon Coolpix A100

Lenses:

Olympus: M.Zuiko: 12 mm f/2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25 mm f/1.8, 45 mm f/1.8, 30 mm f/3.5 macro, 9 mm f/8 body cap fisheye, 15 mm f/8 body cap, 9-18 mm, 12-50 mm, 12-40 mm f/2.8 PRO, 14-150 mm II, 40-150 mm II, 12-45mm f/4 PRO, MCON-P02.

Sigma: ART 60 mm f/2.8.

Samyang: Manual focus 7.5 mm f/3.5 fisheye.

TT Artisan: Manual focus 17mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4.

Panasonic Lumix: 14 mm f/2.5, 20 mm f/1.7, 12-32 mm x2 (black and silver), 12-60 mm, 14-42 mm II, 35-100 mm, 45-150mm.

PEN E-P5, 9-18mm,12-32mm, 40-150mm II. A lightweight kit with virtually continuous coverage from 18mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto.

OM-D E-M1 I, 14-150mm II, 12-40mm PRO. . Heavier than my other kits but with complete weather-sealing. Coverage from 24mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto with some overlap for backup.

OM-D E-M5 II, 17mm, 35mm, 12-60mm. A balance of two fun manual focus lenses with a weather-sealed body and zoom lens.

PEN E-PL5, 9mm, 15mm, 25mm, 60mm, 12-50mm. Another lightweight fun kit with a zoom option.

TG-5, OM-D E-M5 mk1, 7.5mm, 12mm, 17mm, 45mm, 30mm macro. M-CON.

PEN-F, 14mm, 20mm, 12-32mm, 35-100mm. Probably my favourite lightweight day-to-day kit. Two fast primes and two zoom with almost continuous coverage from 24mm wide angle through to 200mm telephoto.

Software:

Corel: Paintshop Pro Elite 2020 & Video Studio 2019.

Skylum Software: Aurora HDR 2019, Luminar 4, Luminar AI and Luminar Neo.

DXO Labs: PhotoLab 5 Elite, Viewpoint 3, NIK Collection 9, Film Pack 8 and PureRAW 6.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

Topaz Labs: Studio 2, Sharpen AI, A.I Gigapixel, AI Clear, AI Adjust, DeNoise AI and Various legacy plugins.

Adobe: Lightroom.

GreenScreenWizard Studio Pro.

Serif: Affinity Photo

Microsoft: Image Composite Editor (Free).

Darktable (Free).

Olympus: Olympus Capture, Olympus Workspace and Olympus Webcam (Free to Olympus owners).

Sony: Movie Studio Platinum.

Lighting Gear:

Godox TT350o flash, Godox X1T radio flash trigger, Godox Lux Junior flash, LED ring flash, GVM RGB LED light, Olympus MAL-1 Macro Arm Light. Two Godox LED36 lights, Godox Litemons LED6R light. Three Bowen studio flash heads, barndoors, honeycombes, umbrellas and flash meter.