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  • Welcome to Gale Photography

    Hello, and welcome to my website! I'm Derek Gale, photography trainer and Fine Art photographer based in Worcester.

    If you are looking to improve your photographic creativity, skills or knowledge, check out the Photography Training pages.

    For beautiful Fine Art images that showcase my personal vision take a look at the Fine Art Photography pages.

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Look for images everywhere!

Thursday, January 23, 2020 Posted in black & white,Composition,Creative Photography,Landscape Photography,Mobile phone

I look for images everywhere, but the trouble that it can delay my non-photographic life.  Here’s an example:

Last week I was going back to my car from shopping at a local supermarket.  I pushed my trolley towards the trolly park and saw a long row of other trollies.  I saw a pattern, and wondered what they looked like viewed from a low angle.  It was easy to pop my mobile phone inside one of the trollies.

There was a great “to infinity” effect with the trollies’ metal frames.  I did a quick B&W conversion to remove a distracting background colour and to simplify the image.  I also did a Perspective Crop to make sure it all lined up nicely.

These trollies are clearly an inspiration, (or I spend too long lurking in supermarket car parks),  because a week earlier, on a very wet day, I had spotted a reflection in a big puddle in the car park.  I got low down to get a good angle and reflect the sky. I’ve inverted the image in post-processing.   The lower frames of the trollies look, to me, like the hammers in the video for Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”.

I do do more interesting things than shopping, such as the washing up, but once again I got caught by the seeing images bug.  One particular saucepan we have has a hole in the lid.  It’s just right to generate little bubbles when it’s put into the soapy water.  The bubbles formed a hexagonal-close-packed array.  It’s common in nature; think honeycomb.  I popped my macro lens on to my mobile phone got in really close.

I said that looking for images all the time can delay my non-photographic life.  Thinking a bit more about these images makes me wonder if I actually have a non-photographic life!

by Derek Gale

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Putting the graphic into photographic

Friday, January 10, 2020 Posted in Composition,Creative Photography,Mobile phone

This is a post about composing your image.  Some folks go on about the so-called “Rule of Thirds” as if it was the law.  Spoiler alert: it’s not!  By all means compose your images carefully, but don’t get caught by the “it’s the rules” trap.  Sometimes images cry out to be treated as graphic design rather than a record of what’s there.

Take this Christmas present.  The box was made from corrugated cardboard which picked up the strongly directional sunlight.  I placed the box so that a shadow fell across it.  The shadow starts from one corner and divides the image into two almost halves.   I’ve put the red label so part of it starts from a corner.  Making the label a semi-circle gives it ambiguity.  It’s now all about the shapes the things make and their relationships, rather than what it is.

I’ve used an extreme composition in this image of an oak tree.  The graduated blue sky makes a fabulous contrast against the branches of the tree.  Inverting the image means that it’s no longer clear as to what the scale or subject is.  Once again it’s about the design rather than the subject.  Those who love the “Rule of Thirds” had best look elsewhere…

 

by Derek Gale

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First (Street) among equals?

Thursday, December 5, 2019 Posted in Architecture,Composition,Creative Photography,Landscape Photography,Travel Photography

Last weekend I was up in Manchester for a social event.  I stayed in the First Street district, which is all shiny new office and entertainment buildings.  There’s a lot of glass, and a lot of rectangles.  I popped out one morning with my Lumix TZ-100 compact camera to try and capture the feel of the area.

Some of the architecture is a bit disturbing, such as this, the INNSIDE hotel.  It’s a bit odd standing underneath a large lump of a building that has no visible means of support.  I was careful to ensure I got a nicely symmetrical image.  It’s a shame the glass balcony didn’t quite line up!

Some concessions to aesthetics have been made with the frontages of some buildings.   These large blue glass panels contrasted well with the smaller panels on the other part of the building.  I zoomed in to simplify and abstract the image.  I’ve used Perspective Crop in Photoshop to get it all square to the image frame.

Later that morning I went to the Christmas market in the square outside the Town Hall.  From there I could see the sunlight shining through the roof “blade” of the 554 ft Beetham Tower skyscraper.  Exposing for that light, and letting the less lit areas go very dark, gave a composition of white, blue and black.  I was very impressed with how well the lens/sensor coped with the extreme lighting conditions, showing little flare.

It would be interesting to see how the area looks in softer light.  That’s for next time I think.

by Derek Gale

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Things are looking up, and down.

Friday, November 22, 2019 Posted in black & white,Composition,Creative Photography,Landscape Photography,Mobile phone,Movement,Travel Photography

A few days ago I was out for a walk in the glorious countryside near the UNESCO World Heritage site of Avebury in Wiltshire.  There are various Bronze Age barrows/burial mounds in the area, (some as old as the Pyramids!), that are almost ignored due to the amazing Avebury stone circle and Silbury Hill nearby.  Quite a few of them have clumps of beech trees on them, and they are atmospheric places to visit, especially on a cold and windy late autumn day.

I was carrying my Lumix TZ-100 compact camera, but I didn’t use it once.  My main photographic tool these days when out walking is my Huawei Mate 10 Pro mobile phone.  It’s so flexible, and the quality is fine for website stuff like this blog.  It’s got a relatively wide-angle lens, so it captures quite a lot of information.  Here I have looked up, always a good idea, and recorded the fabulous filigree patterns the autumn trees made.  Two trees still had leaves which broke the pattern.  I’ve cropped it so there is a tree trunk coming from each corner.  I like corners!

As well as looking up, looking down can be rewarding.  At the centre of this barrow there was a pair of stones, one of which had been broken.  it looked for all the world like an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture, but I suspect it was put there by some new-agey folks, or perhaps people who wanted a table for their sandwiches!  The arrangement of the rocks mimicked/mirrored the pattern of the trees a few yards away.  You can see another beech covered barrow in the distance.

It wouldn’t be a walk near trees without using the Hauwei’s wonderful “Silky Water” mode and moving the camera during the exposure.  I chose a pair of tree trunks to be in the centre and moved the camera up during the exposure.  To me it really captures the atmosphere of the barrow beech clump; are there dryads?

by Derek Gale

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