Harry's Blog

The Photography Monthly magazine redesign is truly awful. Hardly any content now (I think they must have sacked most of the team) and what remains is presented in huge text to hide its brevity - like a magazine for primary school children. Used to be a great magazine - just a few months ago. No I won't be renewing my subscription.

The last few issues that have popped through my letterbox have been absolutely dire. If you were willing to actually read every word I think it'd probably take you 15 minutes. There is very little in there worth looking at.

Grumpy Bob has gone, for example.

It was the only photo magazine I subscribed to and it is now a shadow of its former seld. I keep getting emails and mail inviting me to resubscribe but I won't be wasting any more money on the magazine. A real shame - because it was once a great mag.

A bit of a wander around Forston starting in Charlton Down. This is the first time I'd explored these public footpaths. It didn't go entirely to plan - the map was rather confusing at one point and lead me half a mile across the wrong field. I then had to trudge back again.

But I had a good walk over three and a half miles, with all the rough ground and up and down it felt much further.

All of these pictures were taken with the rather wonderfully sharp Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

Photos appear after the jump...

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A Sunday drive along the coast between Abbotsbury and Burton Bradstock.

It was quite hazy so I've processed most of these shots with a high-contrast filmic look.

I'd love to go back to these locations at a more photogenic time of day - but having small children does often make that difficult.

Photos appear after the jump...

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Low cloud made for a poor grey spectacle at the air show today - and it kept many planes from flying. The poor light and ugly grey sky meant that of 300 photos these are the only ones I thought had much merit.

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Dorset Sunset 2, originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

This is very close to what came out of the camera as I tried to capture this sunset. The photograph was taken handheld and I had a soft ND grad filter on the lens.

However I did develop the shot three times with Canon DPP at different EV levels then recombine them - the aim being to capture what I saw rather than create a HDR monstrosity.

The result is actually so close to the image that came out of the camera I probably could have achieved the same result by fiddling with curves.

Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Lens: Tamron 10-24mm

Pushing Up Daisies (Reprise), originally uploaded by Harry Neary.

Another shot of the gravestones here at the bottom of the hill in Charlton Down, Dorset.

I'm assuming there are no actual graves here anymore, especially now the chapel is a fitness centre. But the stones themselves have been left here.

There's something oddly beautiful about them.

I snapped these few shots this evening - I've not had chance to get out and about with the lens yet. All shots were taken on a Canon EOS 50D and developed using Canon's DPP software set to the Faithful picture style. The only post processing has been to resize the images and then add a little unsharp mask.

Photos appear after the jump...

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