A charitable appeal

Today I would like to publicise a wonderful creative effort by my best buddy TJ. In April 2012 the dreaded cancer word came into his family. One minute he was sitting with his mother expecting a normal discharge from hospital, and then in the blink of an eye their world was turned upside down when they were told that his mum had bowel cancer. She has battled strongly through various treatments and is making a fantastic and full recovery, her whole family are so very proud of her. TJ decided to write a book and contribute the proceeds to the Beating Bowel Cancer charity. The book features a diverse collection of TJ's fantastic photographs, including the stories, ideas and technical approaches behind each one. The e book version on Amazon is only £1.65 of which the £0.97 he earns will be donated to the charity. It is for the Kindle, but there are freely available Kindle reader apps for Ipads, Iphones, android phones and computers! The physical book version can be now be bought from Create Space and is now available for £7.21 on Amazon. All physical copies will raise £1.00 for the charity.

His plan is to try and sell 1000 copies! Absolutely every penny earned is going to be donated to the Beating Bowel Cancer charity. To have any chance of doing this he is asking people to buy a copy, and help spread the word to as many people as possible through as many channels possible.

I of course bought my copy 2 seconds after release and I highly recommend it - its full of photographic inspiration and techniques as well as some touching and amusing stories of the photographer and his family. Buy it! you will love it and you will also be making a contribution to a wonderful and worthwhile charity!! :)

Floods by The Brunette

Like TJ I found it hard to take a shot of the flooding that would show that the water is not supposed to be where it was! I drive past the Thames on the way to work everyday and had noticed the water level rising day by day until the footpaths and some of the benches on them were entirely covered!! So I decided that that would show the extent  of the flooding. Luckily as I was taking a series of shots trying to show the path disappearing an obliging swan rocked up to demonstrate where a person would normally be enjoying a nice walk!! I liked his casual style, he looks just like he is out for a nice afternoon stroll, and behind him you can see the footpath descend into feet of water!!! The other shots (below) show some more attempts to portray the disappearing footpath, but for me the swan make the shot!

Floods by TJ

I was lucky on two fronts with my photo. Firstly I work very close to the river Thames so when the river burst its banks I did not have to go far with my camera. Secondly the flooding came level to and in fact past my work estate and we were only saved from flooding by being on slightly higher ground and some effect banking defenses. The scene is of what usually is a crop field, but for a while has become part of the river. One interesting question I posed myself was what happens to the fish in a lake back right in the picture that sits between the field and river? Until the river sunsides I will not be able to investigate and get my answer.... I found that capturing such a huge mass of water was not so easy as apart from having the tree in the centre of the photo it really was just a solid mass of water. So I decided to use the panoramic function on my camera. I held the camera in a portrait position as I wanted to get as much as I could into the shot, as my early landscape efforts didn't get as much of the scene in as I wanted. In the photo above there are seven photos stitched together. In editing the main effects I used was a pink tone, which I feel brings a nice atmosphere to the photo, and also a vignette effect to darken the edges of the photo.

I used the same effects in my other photos. Top left was a single shot of the tree in the main shot taken closer in. I like this picture and might have used it if the panoramic photos hadn't worked. Top right I moved around to the left and took a picture of the same flood from a different angle, and this was as far as I could go on foot. The panoramic shot at the bottom was taken using the camera held in landscape mode from the same position as the main picture and shows how the two photos differ. This photo had three photos stitched together.