david purdie photo blog and gallery news

  My review of Andreas Gursky at the Hayward Gallery London (till 22 April 2018) In February I went to see the Andreas Gursky show at the newly refurbished Hayward. His work sits between large scale abstract painting and photography. There is a lot to like about the show, the scale and presence of the pictures is arresting. There is an admirable seriousness of intention and ambition in most of them. A recent iphone picture view of the US midwest from a car (below) is terrific. A 4m long print of clubbers, seemingly shot individually, with very carefully controlled colour, is...

As I am always saying to people in the gallery, one of the keys to getting decent photos is persistence. I have been to Camber hundreds of times. Sometimes it is all grey or completely dark and nothing interesting is happening. Usually there is some combination of elements that makes the visit unique. Last night was somewhere in between the two, but as always worth checking, just in case. There was a standard-stuff type sunset.... A nice clear sky for reflection pictures... Stars to shoot through the dunes... And a few frames around the newly built lifeguard hut, lit from the...

Last sunday the clouds were looing good so I haede off to Camber Sands (the broomhill sands end - still camber?). Here's some of the results... The first is wide view more or less as I arrived..   it can be hard to decide what to focus on in a big landscape like this. Things are changing quickly....   I decided to use the steps I was on as part of the compostion. The white balance is hard to set on shots like this, if set to 'dalight' everything looked VERY blue, so I tried diferent levels of warmth...  ...

I always think that you haven't really seen a place until you go to take pictures, alone and with nothing else to do there. A visit with friends or family has way too many distractions and they aren't going to be amused with waiting hours so I can have a good look at the cliffs!  So yesterday I went down to the beach at Beachy Head for the first time proper, to take pictures, and got very lucky with the light. It takes some planning to get a low tide and decent light, and it's a good idea to leave before it...

NEW pictures - one-off non-edtioned signed prints, coming soon.....