Imsticking's Leica D-Lux 4 Blog

I post it here and it sticks.
 

The Hand That Feeds

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Prima 'paca

OK, so lets answer your first question first. They're Alpacas. They look a lot like the common dromedary camel because they share the same ancestor. I'll spare you the natural history lesson, mainly because I want to spare myself from the same. They're much smaller and better behaved than what we just refer to as a camel though, so quite popular. I didn't see a single one of them spit or foam at the mouth, and it's not as if they didn't notice me enough to get all riled up at the sight.

I've been threatening to post these images since my previous post "To Win a Bear" who's images were taken on the same day at a street fair in the town of Alton, Hampshire. "Where exactly were they?" I hear myself think one or two of you may ask. To the left of the war memorial in front of the Town Hall.   

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What you looking at?

Well, what you're looking at is the penultimate post here on imsticking.com. Don't get too excited, I'm not actually going to stop blogging about photography. I will reveal all about this in my next and final post here. I started this blog a little over 2 years ago purely as a personal extension to Twitter's 140 character limit, but soon became fascinated with the technical principals of photography, and even more so with visual composition. I find the ability to lead the viewer's eye through the art of composing and capturing moments in time, beyond my control, that can then be further developed before being presented to, or rather inflicted upon, an unsuspecting public, very satisfying. It's a wonderful way of implicitly defining your experiences in this world in a way that makes you feel as if your life has more meaning to you, than it does when reflecting on the often repetitive grind of daily life. 

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Burrow Down

Don't forget to get your entries in for the London Street Photography Festival's International Street Photography Award 2012. The deadline is Thursday 5th January 2012. The 1st prize includes an Olympus PEN camera and £2000 in cash. Oh and you get international recognition! Let's not forget that part, ha.   

This will most likely be my last post of 2012, so I'd like to wish you all a very merry holiday season, and Christmas if you do celebrate, as well as a happy and healthy 2012. May we all live in peaceful times. Bloggin inspiration provided by the super talented Richard Marx with Christmas Spirit

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The Self-Conscious Close-Up

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Chasing The Hand That Feeds

Filed under  //   Hampshire   Leica   Street   photography  
December 23 2011
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To Win a Bear

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Score Over One

I was heading to my local cafe on Sunday to work on the preparation of my iPhone app for submission to the App Store. And then things got a bit out of hand. It seems there was some sort of street carnival on. No one had told me, however. My usual parking spot was gone, I had to queue for a coffee and sit on what can only be described as a bar stool to drink it. Meh. 

All was not lost, as I had my Leica D-Lux 4 camera with me. I really wasn't in the mood for shooting and I really, really wanted to get some work done. After throwing back my coffee I ventured out to see what was actually going on. It was mad! There was a blow-up slide thing taller than any building in the town. Double-story's as big as it gets I think, but still. A mini Disneyland, so small it's called Disney Cottage, and people as far as the eye can see. These images don't show the madness. Which in a way is quite cool.

It was chaos and taking photos in those conditions doesn't really grab me, but I found myself grabbing the opportunity. I have more images I'll post soon, once I've found time to process them. Some cool shots of Alpacas to come! 

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Hey Mickey!

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Disney v0.01

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Quality Time

Filed under  //   Hampshire   Leica   photography  
December 5 2011
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Come Sundown

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Come Sundown

I woke up this morning and was pleasantly surprised to find the weather making a mockery of the predictions for the area of Hampshire I live in. Fantastic because I really did think I would be spending 3 hours in the wet on my mountain biking today. I took these shots on my way home from a village called Binsted. I've discovered that buying a Leica camera means you have almost no need for Lightroom at all beyond image management. While trialling Lightroom 3, I've found the image adjustments to be of little use.  So much so that this image above is just out of Capture One PRO after a white balancing and changing the colour profile to that of the Leica M9. Every change I tried using Lightroom simply made the image look unrealistic. 

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Today, December 3rd, 2011.

The one above was processed using Silver Efex Pro and bears little resemblance to what I saw. I guess hounds would disagree. There are some seriously old buildings around this area, and unfortunately they are not on public property or I'd love to take some images of them and send them back in time. Both of these images were taken with my Leica D-Lux 4.

Filed under  //   Hampshire   Leica   photography  
December 3 2011
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Champagne Life

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Champagne Garden

This is a series of images I wanted to share with my post entitled "How to Unwrap Christmas". They didn't quite fit with the colourful images of that blog post and I don't like overwhelming readers with bad images, so I thought I'd split them across two posts. As is typical with not blogging about images as soon as you're done importing and processing them, in my memory, scenes from the occasion seem to vanish which makes writing about them a challenge to put it mildly. This top image always makes me think of champagne and the styling is a deliberate attempt to hint at that, without shoving it in your face. 

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If Wishes Were Filthy Cars

So while viewing these images may well be the lowlight of your photography experience this week, I can at least point you to the highlight of mine. BBC 4 aired a documentary called "America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine" last night. It was hosted by Rankin and although I was skeptical before I started watching it, I was soon put at ease by the sight of a Leica camera. It was actually a very good documentary as Rankin tracked down some of the photographers who used to work for Life magazine and they were very candid and open about what it was like working in an era where getting a gig shooting film for Life magazine turned you into a celebrity. Some of the most iconic images of the 20th century were shot by photographers working for Life magazine, and I'd be lying if I said Life's black and white images of Marilyn Monroe weren't a strong influence in me picking up a camera and choosing to shoot black and white most of the time. There's something timeless about black and white. It removes some of the clues I guess.  

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Working Hard

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Gramps 

Filed under  //   Leica   London   Rankin   photography  
December 2 2011
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