Had a satisfying morning framing up a couple of paintings and then went on in the afternoon to plan what I’m going to do next week. I’d like to get one more picture done before the Easter holidays so I spent quite a long time printing out animal photos and then manipulating them on the computer.Digital photography has proved invaluable for my work as you can click away, delete what you don’t want and then manipulate the image as required. I used to have to take my photos down to town to get them resized but now I can do it all at the click of a button. Nor do I have to wait until the film is finished before I can show them to a client and we can identify possible poses. I reckon that I probably need to take 30 – 50 photos to come up with two or three which are really special, and the rest are invaluable resource material. Like people, animals have characteristic poses and expressions and I’ve learned to check which photos are representative of that particular animal.
I use three different cameras for different purposes – the Fuji digital for everyday use, an old Olympus SLR for recording each painting I produce (it produces much better close-up pictures than the digital and can be operated manually so that I can compensate for poorer indoor light) and an even older camera of my father’s which I use to take slides for illustrating talks.My biggest photographic problem is obtaining wildlife pictures that are of sufficient quality for my detailed work. I would eventually love a digital SLR with x8 optical zoom, but they don’t come cheap! People at art group are very helpful in passing on material which they think I might be able to use but I have to be very careful not to infringe copyright. I’m not in the league where I can afford to pay the going rate (about £70 I believe) for a photograph from a professional wildlife photographer. I have, however, teamed up with an amateur, but very gifted, photographer from Dronfield whom I met through an “A Rocha” Members’ day – an exciting Christian Conservation Charity. He, very graciously, lets me use some of his work for a nominal charge. Thanks to him I have acquired some lovely photos of birds, particularly owls, robins and kingfishers and some animals too.
