david purdie photo blog and gallery news

  On last Friday's workshop day I noticed that the remains of Smeaton's Harbour were more exposed than usual at Winchelsea beach, so I went back last night to shoot it at dusk. If you don't know the extraordinary story of Smeaton's Harbour go here. I did some long exposure stuff as it got dark and some side on telephoto pictures to include the headland at fairlight in the background. Later on I got some shots of Jupiter rising over the sea.

On the way home from the gallery today I had to pull in to take a shot of this very dramatic sky. I had been plannng to do some test shots with my new 16-35mm f4 sony/zeiss zoom, but this was 2 frames on a 50mm lens, stitched together. So kind of a 35mm shot but with the top and bottom removed.     I did get to try out the new lens later, in this shot of a somewhat dilapidated farm building. This may from part of a new project I am thinking of doing, of old functional buildings, sheds,...

  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...  ...