I’m back…

…from Grand Cayman, Alex Mustard’s underwater photoworkshop.

Had a great time with Rays & Sharks & Earthquakes. Will tell you all about it with a review once I have more photos to display.

(c) Michael Toye

Best Photos 2009

Well again I’ve really enjoyed the agonizing process of choosing my top photos from the year. I’ve picked 100 photos and put them in a gallery here:

http://www.pbase.com/suzy_walker/best2009

This year I found many photos to choose from that I liked so I must be getting better at this photography malarkey (I hope you agree).  Again, we had a great year photo-opportunity-wise, we went to Raja Ampat (Indonesia) & the Red Sea (Egypt). We had some murder mayhem at the start of the year and We wandered around London experimenting with IR (failed) and HDR (better) techniques. The now closed Shunt Lounge at London Bridge provided some fun challenges too. And of course it wouldn’t be a photography year for me without playing with a bit of macro in the flat.

I tried to be good this year and only pick the best (and not just favourite – see my blog post here about choosing) but I think I failed and just chose what I liked most anyway

So here are my top ten of 2009 (click them to see them larger):

#10 Angel in HDR. OK, we just moved out of London last week… I’ll admit it, I’m going to miss Angel. Probably not one of my best photos of the year but I wanted to mark the passing into our new life in 2010…

#9 Snapper explosion from Red Sea. See the full trip gallery here.

#8 James’ Mysterious device. See the full series here.

#7 Little fishy. Also from the red sea. These little guys are very quick but very graceful. I wanted to get a photo that showed that and I think this does.

#6 Mike & Suzy fish. Tiny glass fish blown into a glass fish bowl. Amazing item from Italy and I found it difficult to light.

#5 Fish tails. I loved the pattern they made. I’d have liked to get more in but the school was not really big enough.

#4 Leaf reflection. The Raja Ampat Mangroves were by far & away my fav experience this year! See the full gallery here

#3 Teeny Tiny bobtail squid. See Raja Ampat (not Mangroves) Underwater gallery here. This was a challenge & a 1/2! Night dive. Heavy lens & torch I could hardly hold up. Bobtail squid I could hardly see he was so small! Those white rocks in the photo are grains of sand & shell.

#2 Nemo. You know I cannot resist! I like the yellow he was on …

#1 360 degrees of paradise! Bit of a dodgy handheld panorama but it came out well …. click it to see a much larger size:

EDIT: a few people contacted me wanting to know why this wasnt on the list… so I thought I’d add it here as an honorable mention…

Choosing your Best or Favourite photos?

The end of the year is a time for reflection. It’s a time I like to go through all my images from the past year and choose a few to represent my photography from the year. Here is the rub though, am I choosing my best photos or merely my favourites – and is that the same thing? I don’t think so. You can have a favourite photo that’s rubbish technically but means something very special to you or a technically amazing photo that you don’t like as much. I’m hoping by writing this blog post I’ll clear my mind as to which I’m doing this year and perhaps give you all something to think about while you reflect on your year.

Assuming the photo is basically correct (not hideously blown out or completely out of focus – unless I meant it that way) when I look at my photos I ask myself these questions:

• Is the composition pleasing? Or could it be better? Is the light pleasing?

Are you making a statement with your composition or just playing it safe? Do it look balanced and feel right when you look at it? Does your eye want to take everything in?

• Does the photo speak to me? How does it make me feel?

Everyone likes photos that make them feel something – anything, personally I like to feel happy rather than sad though

• Is there a story behind the photo? Is the memory of taking the photo clouding your judgement?

Did you set up a little scene with a funny back story? Is the story better than the finished photo? Is this one of those – “you just had to be there moments” where the photo doesn’t do it justice?

• Was the photo challenging to take?

Did you have to trek 50miles for this photo? No one will know or care when they look at it but you. I’m guilty of this one. I often like photos of tiny things so small I couldnt see them in real life. Not sure that makes them good photos though!

• Was this part of an experiment?

Playing with HDR or some other technique and really happy with how it turned out? Does it actually make it a good photo or just impressive to you because you know it was your first go at that technique?

• Did I rise to a challenge?

Was this photo part of a themed challenge? Does it only make a great photo within that context or can it stand alone?

Well writing this post certainly cleared my mind as I’m am probably guilty of choosing all my photos for the wrong reasons. At the end of the day though it comes down to two questions?

1) Who is your audience? If you are only trying to please yourself you can do whatever you want! And everyone else it entitled to a different opinion.

and 2) Do your photos stand alone? Out of context (with no titles, back stories & explanations etc) when you see your photos do you think, wow, thats a great photo?

Now looking forward to the New Year and my blog post of best/fav 10 photos to follow shortly

Happy New Year everyone!

Color of the Year 2010 Turquoise

As you may know I’m a big fan of Mark Graf’s blog:  “Graf Nature Photography | Notes from the woods” .

Every year he does a Pantone Colour Of The Year post (I loved his Mimosa post last year). Well this year the colour is turquoise. A colour dear to my heart as an underwater photographer. Check out his post here. We all need a bit of tropical cheer in this snowy weather so here is a few turquoise images from me

Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2009 – Free exhibition

Oh this exhibition looks so cool! It starts today and its FREE! The Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition (organised by Future Publishing) group is hosted in the Mall galleries in London (off Trafalgar Sq so you can go and visit the queen just up the road while you are there). It’s a pity it’s not on longer (since I wont be able to get there and see them in person before the 13^th when it ends).

The competition features creativity from photographers of all levels from amateur to professional, from a variety of categories:

•          “This is Britain” sponsored by: SkyArts
•          “World in Motion” sponsored by: Telegraph.co.uk
•          “Man-made”
•          “Planet Earth” sponsored by Photoradar.com
•          “Destination Everywhere”
•          “Fashion”
•          “Landscapes” sponsored by: Epson
•          “People and Portraits”
•          “Black and White”
•          “Digital Vision”

With Jessops as the official partner and in association with the Royal Photographic Society, the competition, now in its sixth year has once again attracted entrants from across the globe. Obviously its the “Planet Earth” category that I’m the most interested in… Here are some of my favourites

Overall Winner and Planet Earth Winner: Partners –  Bragi J. Ingibergsson, Iceland

Planet Earth 3rd Place: My Journey - Bayu Husodo, Indonesia

Landscape Winner: Abraham Lake Ice – Chip Phillips, United States

Peoples Portraits 3rd Place: Fearless – Janet Shui Kee Yim, Hong Kong

Peoples Portraits Winner: Dikke Dennis – Thomas van Beek, The Netherlands

World in motion Winner: The Pacu Jawi (cow’s race) – Muhammad Fadli, Indonesia

Digital Vision Winner: How Mountains Are Made – Sabina Dimitriu, Romania

Official info…

Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2009 – Free exhibition
Wednesday 9th December to Sunday 13th December
Mall Galleries, The Mall (near Trafalgar Sq)
For directions: http://www.mallgalleries.org.uk
£FREE 10am-5pm
For more information visit: www.photoradar.com

The lovely folks at Future Publishing allowed me to publish these images here, please respect the copyright of the photographers mentioned and don’t use their work for anything other than promoting this exhibition.



Wintery Updates

Ok, I’m usually a tropical sort of person but its winter holiday time again and wordpress has added a new feature to make it snow on your blog so until January the 4^th this will be my little winter corner!

If you want to make your blog snow here’s the link…

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/a-little-snow-for-the-holidays/

Dont worry I’ll bring back the sun in January when I come back from Cayman with some more tropical underwater photos!

In other news my pc has died (booo!) so I wont be able to update my facebook photography page until its fixed (both facebook and Redbubble are now banned at work)!

New facebook fan page

If you are over on facebook why not stop by my page and become a fan?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Suzy-Walker-Photography/142248119589

These are some of the new photos I’ve uploaded:

New Raja Ampat uploads to the bubble

Red bubble is an online store that sells cards & prints etc… I’ve added some more to those available here:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/muzy/art/

North Red Sea 2009

I wanted to tell you a little about our recent trip to Egypt (as promised).

As usual, click on the images to see them at a larger size.

This is our second trip with Alex Mustard this year (our 1st was Raja Ampat in Feb) but this one was a full on photo-workshop.

We Flew to Egypt on Monarch (groan) into Sharm El Sheikh, luckily we didnt have to stay there, our liveaboard was waiting for us at the Military port. MV Whirlwind of the Tony Backhurst fleet was a very comfortable boat.

Alex runs this workshop trip ever year at this time to try and see the huge schools of snapper (& other large fish) that come to spawn in the area on these weeks. It was a little daunting as these fish are HUGE and because of the properties of the fisheye lens I was using I had to get very close to them! Also, strangely for this time of year the visibility wasn’t that great. Usually in the Red Sea the water is gin clear and you feel like you can see for miles. In amongst these snappers I feel like I was in a snow flurry so I am surprised I actually got any good photos of them.

We also head over to Tiran Island for a bit (since we weren’t having as much luck as usual with the Snapper). This trip was primarily a wide-angle trip but those who know me know I don’t go on any underwater jaunt without my trust 60mm macro lens. I tried to “go-wide” with that too this time to shoot some fish portraits but I couldn’t resist the odd tiny macro fish or occasional abstract.

We also saw a rather large amount of shipwrecks (this is the North Red Sea after all) including the Ghiannis D, Thistlegorm & Yolanda.

This was actually a treat (even though I’m not fussed about wrecks usually) because Mike has never seen the Thistlegorm & I’ve not been back since I first learnt to dive. I enjoyed seeing all the Motorbikes, trucks & things but I was still really spooked by the wellies. It was nice on the Ghiannis D too since we had Mr Alex (Magic Filters) Mustard himself with us to give us guidance on how to use them effectively. I still dont think I got the hang of it properly but it was good fun to try something new.

One of the things I really like about going on photo workshops in a group is you tend to meet really nice people. Everyone helps everyone else out. Julian ended up giving a load of us a Lightroom tutorial or two (and also taking me under his wing for my 1st snapper experience) so many thanks to him. Also, I’d like to thank Robin for being an excellent model & stand in buddy. And many thanks of course go to Alex for giving us such a great trip.

The only thing I was disappointed in (apart from getting really sick on the last day when we stayed in Sharm) was the poor moray eel I found who had a giant hook in his mouth C’mon people this is supposed to be a protected marine area! I guess the usually vigilant Egyptian authorities must have missed this one (or else he swam into the area from outside).

my full underwater gallery can be found here. Mikes above water gallery can be found here.

I’m Back…

Just come back from Egypt. Went on the Alex Mustard June 2009 Ras Mohammad Red Sea Photo workshop. More about that later as I’m processing the photos now.. Heres a taster of what we went to see, snappers in action!