Sussex Photographer Bernie Greene scratching out a tune while trying not to fall off the roof

Aled and Tommy

Thanks to a booking that didn’t happen I had my student Aled with me who had come along to assist last night. He has this amazing Tommy gun. Couldn’t resist really.

My Daughters

Thought it was about time I let you know I’m still alive even though I haven’t posted for a very long time. So here is a pic of my daughters to celebrate that I will be taking them off on their holls in about a week or so.

It was a few days ago but I only just found out myself. Brian was one of the great English fashion photographers of the 1960s. There is an excellent documentary about him and some of his work here. I liked a lot of his work and the way that he worked too. Although I called him a fashion photographer he was not someone who stayed within such silly labels. Some of his advertising work in the 80s is particularly memorable and fun.

Westfield

This was shot back in February. It is a three exposure HDR picture. HDR stands for high dynamic range. It is a way of capturing a lot of detail in all areas of the picture. It is a technique requiring special processing. This image could not have been shot in a way that would have allowed me to show as much detail in all areas without making three seperate exposures; one for shadow or poorly lit areas, one for mid tones and the last for the highlights. One exposure alone would have allowed good detail in either the lower level or the upper level but not both.

Westfield Shopping Mall in Shepherds Bush London is apparently the largest shopping mall in Europe and could probably fit every shop in the whole of East Grinstead into it with room to spare. An interesting place to visit.

room pano

This is an experimental picture of one of the more exotic rooms at ARTS House in Sharpthorne. It was made for day 32 of the 365 but never got posted.

I have decided to stop the 365 after 76 days. I loved doing it and it did me a lot of good creatively but it was also distracting me far too much from my business as a photographer.

One thing I found detrimental about it was that I am not a good instant editor. Editing is a very different hat to image making. Both are important. I found my editing job was suffering because of the daily deadline. To edit correctly I need at least 24 hours to go by after a shoot before I put on the editor’s hat. There were many times in the 365 when I made a bunch of shots and chose one that looked good at the time only to find a day or so later there was a much better one I had overlooked. This is obviously not good for clients or promotion of my work.

But I still want to post more or less daily. Well there are a lot of pictures that haven’t had an audience purely because they were made in the past that can now have that audience. The picture above for example.

This was made about 6 weeks ago as an experiment. I wanted to see if distortion was a necessarily “bad thing”. The cheap kit lens that came with my camera creates distortion at wide angles that other, more expensive, lenses I have don’t. Lines that are meant to be straight come out bent to a slight degree. I don’t use it when straight lines are important but that isn’t that often and I still like and frequently use the kit lens. But the above pic was distorted in a different and far more exagerated way.

This image is made up of nine seperate images using a relatively long focal length instead of one wide angle shot. The nine images were then “stiched” together with specialist and very time consuming software.  The software is called Hugin and you can get it for free on the internet if you want to have a play with it.

maybe I can help.

Framed Portrait

I currently have a particular interest in bringing out and showing off to the world the evil characters within us. I am not afraid of the dark. In fact I love to explore it.

If you’d like an evil looking portrait to bring a bit of Feng Shui balance with all the pretty things in your home you can get an 8×12 inch print to frame yourself from as little as £50. As long as you desire to have a wall hanging picture the session is free and you don’t have to buy anything at all if you don’t like the results. Not a bad offer eh?

If you make a booking before the end of May 2010 you will get 25% off whatever you buy.

The session can take place any time over the next three months.

The session can take place in your own home, on location, or secretly at my studio. You can call or text me in confidence on 07549 224079 or email me at bernie at imageconjurer.com

sun on wall

The blinds weren’t completely drawn and a little bit of sunshine made it through into my world today. Never mind. I’ll be making sure the blinds are fully closed tomorrow in case it happens again.

I was going to write “by popular demand” but I didn’t think one email would justify such language. But I did get one request so that is a good enough excuse so I am hereby posting the “evil” Gary Byrne which I have now come to prefer anyway.

the evil gary byrne

Gary Byrne

Sometimes being a geezer and a photographer is tough. As a photographer I think this guy is really good looking but as a geezer it just isn’t something I would openly admit. Such is life. Mr Byrne came to ARTS House today to meet someone. While he was waiting I grabbed about three minutes with him in the studio. We made eight shots. Any one of those eight could have been the chosen one. In the end I narrowed it down to two; the one above where he looks kind of like a good guy and another where he most certainly looked like a bad guy. It was a toss up. I chose this one mainly because I usually would have chosen the other.

So what of the 365 you ask. Well it’s back. Sort of. I like the project far too much to just drop it but I’m not going to continue it with subjects that aren’t really my bag. So if I don’t get to shoot someone or something that I want to shoot then I won’t post one for that day. It is still a 365 project but it might take 465 days to complete.

The project has a lot of value to me personally but it was becoming too expensive to maintain. It has already achieved a purpose I didn’t have for it which is to show me where my main interests are. These happily coincide with what I want to trade. But there have been many days where I was shooting stuff for the project that was not the kind of thing I want to trade. So I had some choices to make. I didn’t want to be posting stuff on my main website that I didn’t want to be shooting professionally. And I didn’t really want to start posting the 365 stuff somewhere else after having started it here. So the above is a workable compromise for me.

Louise

Had a fun session with Louise Taylor on her roof last night. Here are some of the results.

Louise Taylor 2

When she started getting cold we went inside.

Louise Taylor 3

Not because she was cold but because it is a lot of work to retouch goosebumps.

Louise Taylor 4

She did her own makeup and wardrobe too.

What’s happened to the 365? Not sure yet. It is currently suspended while I catch up on some more urgent work. But I also have to figure out if it belongs on this site.