articles/Landscape/introducingterrytucker-page4

Introducing Terry Tucker - part 4 of 1 2 3 4 5

by Terry Tucker Published 01/06/2007

About my Photography

When asked about photography, "it starts with a vision" does sound over the top, but assuming we have an impression on how an image looked or was designed to look when we captured it, we normally would like to have a reasonably faithful copy of that impression. Realising that impressions is what we photographers do, and sometimes it is our limitations, the equipments, or some other person in the chain usually at the printing end that gets in the way.

I belong to a band of people that think if you can appreciate photography and art then, with perseverance, you can take good photographs. I find that the way we are often taught is about controlling the camera and the output processes emphasise technique, rather than creative control. It overcomplicates the process of capturing an image. I am often asked "how do you make your photographs sharper?" or "how do you get more accurate or more vibrant colour but not about depth of field and exposure?" In reality, I think professionals, and enthusiasts, take a more creative decisionmaking route when deciding what to make sharp, colourful, textured, etc, then think how to go about it. My tool box is about light and colour, tone and contrast, sharpness and texture and it is these I am trying to control with my camera.

Picture Commentary

In Lyme Bay, the part of the Jurassic Coast, the mudstone called 'Blue Lias',is famous for the Ichthyosaurs fossils found in it. Photographing the 'blue' is difficult as any cliff collapses quickly oxidise to a brown colour. In direct sunlight the blue-coloured mud tends to look black anyway. Fortunately by choosing boulders near the shore line just after sunset, lit buy a blue sky overhead, increased the contrast between brown oxidised mud and 'Blue Lias'. I used a long exposure and neutral graduated filters to preserve tone and colour, hopefully to give a dreamy or surreal atmosphere.

I used to take black and white photographs and colour separately until after some testing I discovered that I could get just as good results from a colour slide with a good tonal range using the colour channels in Photoshop, in a similar way to normal black and white filtration such as yellow, orange, green and red. The black and white versions of Dunraven Bay is shown.

• Introducing Terry Tucker page 1
  
• Introducing Terry Tucker page 2
  
• Introducing Terry Tucker page 3
  
• Introducing Terry Tucker page 4
  
• Introducing Terry Tucker page 5
  

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