Skatepark Shoot

New shoot up in the Sports gallery. Went down to Llandudno Skatepark and did a little self portraiture. Trying out some new editing techniques, using a new style for a (hopefully) upcoming skateboarding project.

Skatepark Shoot

Would you like a portrait in this style? Contact me and I can make it happen. I can do similar style for kitesurf, bmx, mtb, snowboard, or just a normal portrait, maybe at the beach, or in the forest.

£60 for a 3 hour session which includes 2 prints.

£35 for a 1 and 1/2 hour session which includes 1 print.

Additional prints may be purchased after the shoot.

Ideal as a gift for a loved one or friend.

 

For more information visit the prices page on my website.

Rallyfest images

All images from the North Wales Rallyfest are now up in sports gallery.
To view the all the images head over to the site, or click HERE to go straight to the sports section.

Rhosneigr Park Jam 2010 Video

The video edit is finally finished. Not in HD unfortunately because I was having all sorts of problems and so converted to.avi.

The video is on my website, click here to go take a look. Feel free to leave any comments, good or bad, on this blog post.

Also, new designs have been added to West Shore Clothing Company. Perfect xmas presents for the extreme sports lover in your life. Click here to visit the redbubble store and browse the designs. The designs are available in a variety of colours, and also different clothing items, such as tees, girlie tees, hoodies etc.
From the store homepage, click on 'View All Clothing' and then click an item's price to view the design in detail.

Video restart

Well I was having so many problems with editing HD video that I have scrapped the first attempt completely. After about 4 minutes of edited 1080HD my computer memory gave up the ghost. I tried to render the four minutes I had as a part 1, and was then going to edit part 2 seperately. I set it off rendering to 1080HD and left it overnight. When I checked it it was at 0% after 5 and a half hours. Estimated time remaining was over 10 hours and increasing by about 12 seconds every second. Even if it had managed to complete 1% after 5 hours it would mathematically take 20 days to complete 100%, for a 4 minute clip! There must be a better way of editing HD video.
Anyway, I have now converted the HD .mov files to high quality .avi and I'm going to start again. The system should have no problem now as the files are less than 1/10 of their original size. It does mean that the final product won't be HD but it should still be good quality (fingers crossed).

Print Sale!

Until 8pm Sunday 7th November all print prices are as follows:

12x8" £12
10x8" £10
9x6" £8

All prints from my facebook site and my website are eligible.
 
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Jonathan Carre Photography

Rhosneigr Park Jam 2010

Well I've just finished shooting/editing last week's Rhosneigr Park Jam event. It was a great week and I think Ben Todd and the rest of the team deserve a big pat on the back for all the hard work they put in to make it a success.
Unfortunately there wasn't much wind throughout the week, but that didn't dampen spirits, and with two jetskis on hand the week went ahead with engine power instead of wind power.

Rhosneigr Park Jam was sponsored by Flexifoil, Funsport, S2AS, Kitesurf Beaches and Anglesey County Council.

The images from the weeklong event can be found in the sports section of my galleries. Just click HERE to go straight there.

I still have a video to edit for the week, but that will have to wait until my week off next week.

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I also spent a few hours yesterday at Rhosneigr shooting a lot of windsurfers and kitesurfers who were making the most out of the awesome wind we are having this week. The shoot should be up soon.


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And last but not least, I will be in Cornwall next week (thursday to sunday) for the SKA Slider Jam event. Come say hi if you're around. If anybody would like some specific shots done whilst I'm there send me an email (addy on my site) beforehand and we can discuss your needs.

DCM Photographer of the Year shortlists announced

The final shortlists from this year's Digital Camera Magazine's POTY competition have now been announced.
Unfortunately none of my images made the shortlists, although I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who showed their support by either voting or commenting on my images, it is much appreciated.
Anyhow, there are some great images in the shortlists and well worth a look if you get a spare five minutes.

DCM POTY shortlist galleries

BKSA Kiteival Finals

Well I went up to Blackpool on Saturday for the BKSA Kiteival Finals. I got up there about midday and had two hours of shooting in really good conditions. Great light from behind, it really was great. Unfortunately the wind completely died at about 2pm (it had been forecast as very light anyway). That pretty much put paid to the rest of the day. I hung around for another two hours in the vain hope that the conditions would pick up again, but it didn't happen.
Nonetheless I got some nice images from the two hours shooting, no kitesurfers, all landboarders and buggiers. These should be up on the site shortly.

When I finish this post I will be uploading the latest shoot with Johara, not the best lighting for this one, so the images weren't as striking as I had hoped, but they're not too bad all things considered.

Lastly, Rhosneigr Park Jam 2010 starts tomorrow and lasts all week. The forecast is for good westerlies and dry weather all week, so it should yield some great chances for some good photography. I'm going to try and get in the water with the kitesurfers and try the new Aquapac housing for my DSLR. I'm eager to see what results I can get from this kit.

Blackpool

I have been trying to organise a shoot with Johara recently but the wind is a bit on and off at the moment. We have a great idea for a portrait shoot that we are hopefully going to get a shot at (no pun intended) before she goes away for the winter.
Other than that I've been a little quiet of late. I do have a trip to Blackpool scheduled for this Saturday to photograph the BKSA Kiteival Finals. Hopefully get some nice shots to show you all.
I am still trying to finish an edit of a shoot with Johara from last week down at Aberffraw. What with work it is slow going, but hopefully it should be up in the next few days.

Unfortunately neither my Darwin's Chimp image or my damselfly image made it to the final shortlist for this year's DCM Photographer of the Year Competition. Guess I'll have to try even harder for next year's comp.

Gallery update

The images from the recent shoot with Johara Freedom Sykes-Davies are now up in the September 2010 gallery. Just follow the link to go to the relevant webpage.

Johara Freedom Sykes-Davies.

Extreme sports project is a go!

A bit of a teaser image from the first shoot in my new project. The project is looking at the extreme sports scene in and around Gwynedd, North Wales.

This is West Shore in Llandudno. The kitesurfer is Johara Sykes-Davies. I am lucky that this pro-kitesurfer (British Champion and 5th in the world in 2009) lives just down the road from me in Llandudno and she let me photograph her the other day. She was very friendly and was willing to chat and stuff.

There will be some more images to go up in the next few days, I got some real crackers, but just this little teaser for now.

New website

OK, so technically not a new website, but a revamped one with a brand new look and feel, so I'm calling it new. Head over to Jonathan Carre Photography to view the new look site. I would appreciate any feedback you may have about the site, good or bad, and you can leave any comments on this blog post.

Thanks in advance for any critique you may be able to offer.

A photographer's responsibility

I just saw an image that raises this interesting debate. It is a picture of an orangutan in a zoo, and the image is shot to emphasize the creature's 'sadness'. The image is Photo of the Day over at Photo Radar and you can see it by clicking here.
The image description states how the photographer visited the zoo and was aware of how sad the animals looked. Now 'looked' is the key word here. This was my response -

'This shot emphasises sadness, but is the subject actually sad? Photography is a powerful tool but do photographers always choose to portray the true message? This image is clearly a case of anthropomorphism. We assume the orangutan is sad because of its slumped stance, its downturned mouth, and the lack of 'nature' in it's enclosure. However, a downturned mouth in primates does not indicate sadness, it indicates relaxed facial muscles, which in turn indicates a happy, content primate. An agitated primate would be active, baring teeth. The slumped stance shows the same, relaxed muscles, showing a relaxed primate, rather than an active, agitated one. We assume that because the orangutan isn't in lush vegetation it must be somehow worse off than its wild counterparts, do you really think that the orangutan cares if he/she is swinging from real vines, or ropes and straps? Zoos work very hard to recreate an environment in which an animal can act as it would in the wild, which is why they come up with complex enrichment items, allowing animals to search and forage for there food, puzzles to keep them occupied and mentally stimulated, as well as a host of other things.
The problem with humans is that most of us see ourselves reflected in these animals, especially primates who are so similiar to us. Because of this we anthropomorphise and make assumptions about an animal's welfare/state of mind based on an equivalent human expression without fully understanding the animal itself. As I said before, this is a great photo, but it really calls into debate the issue about a photographers duty to represent the truth, rather than an askewed view of it, altered and affected by human perception. This image will no doubt be debated till the cows come home.'

I would love to hear everybody's thoughts on this. It could very well be an interesting debate.

Weather warnings in July

I'm so glad I moved to Wales, but weater warnings for my area in July! I had plans to go out but they're a bit scuppered. On the plus side, I have just got my weatherproofing for my 7D, so I'm hoping to be able to use the bad weather to my advantage and go out and shoot landscapes and wildlife images that other people might not get out and capture. Always look on the bright side.

Help required with competition

Hello all

Last week I spent a couple of hours one afternoon photographing damselflies. Well, I am particularly pleased with one image (see the thumb below), so I have entered it into Digital Camera Magazine's Photographer of the Year competition. The competition is still open for entries and you can see all of them as they are uploaded by visiting the POTY site.

The images can be voted on by viewers, and the more votes an image has, the more likely it is to garner the attention of the judges. Here's where you come in. If you think my image worthy of a vote in the competition then I would love for you to go and vote for it at the below link. You would really be helping me out and I would be very grateful. While you're there check out some of the other images, there is some cracking photography being entered into the competition.

You have to register to vote but it's real easy and takes just two minutes. Also, they don't send you any email, spam or otherwise, so you don't have to worry about that. Registering just ensures that each person can only vote for an image once.

Anyway, just CLICK HERE to go to my entry, and if you would like to vote, just click on 'Vote to like this' below the image (after registering).

No Hawks, so I climbed a mountain!

I'm a little behind with my editing at the moment, I have just today been editing a shoot from the 18th June at Cwm Idwal. I went down to Cwm Idwal early in the morning (I arrived at about 7.30am) with the intent of waiting around for some RAF Hawks to fly through the Ogwen Valley on their training runs. Unfortunately the cloud cover was so dense that there was no hope of any hawks doing low level flight training, so I decided to scramble up Glyder Fawr, one of the highest peaks in Snowdonia (the fifth highest, over 3000ft!).
It took me about 50 minutes to climb up, I came up from the Cwm Idwal side only to find when I reached the top that there is a path on the Tryfan side, I was hit with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and despair at the same time, I couldn't believe I'd put in all that energy when there had been a path all along, at least I'll know for next time. Anyway, from near the top there were some fantastic views, when I could see them, the cloud cover was insane! The wind kept blowing it over Glyder Fawr, one minute I could see some lovely views, with some great low cloud to boot, the next minute I could barely see 5 feet in front of me! It was a little disconcerting being someone who suffers from vertigo, 3000ft odd up in the air, near the edge and not being able to see 5 feet! Anyway, I ended up with some good shots (well, I think they're good) which will be posted to my flickr account soon, I just thought I'd post this one up so you can see the conditions. This was from near the top of Glyder Fawr looking over Cwm Idwal to Y Garn, you can't see Llyn Idwal or the rest of the recess of Cwm Idwal at all. For a comparison, this is a shot of Cwm Idwal and the lake Llyn Idwal from lower down the side of Glyder Fawr on a clear day. I was higher up the slope, and Y Garn is the peak to the left of this image.

I did get some aircraft shots just before leaving for home, but they were of a couple of helicopters rather than jets. The RAF were out training some of their defence helicopter pilots. I'll be going back for the Hawks.

Cwm Idwal

Well I just spent the evening at the absolutely beautiful area of Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia. I got there at 6.30pm but because of the high altitude and high terrain around the area the sunlight wasn't falling on the areas I had planned to photograph. Still, I got some nice images and will be revisiting, but in the morning I think, to make the most of the direction and softness of early morning light.

I will post the images in the next few days once I have completed edits. I am still editing a few shots from our trip up the Great Orme the other day.

North Wales

Well the move is complete and we're mostly settled in. I love it up here, there is an absolute abundance of different locations to explore and shoot. I have started and look forward to continuing. From countless different castles, to some of the most beautiful coastline I have ever seen (with the exception of some Jurrasic Coast sites), to Snowdonia National Park, the possibilities are endless. I think I'm going to enjoy it here.

Keep up to date with all my photographs by following my flickr account.

Dorset

Headed home to Dorset for the weekend just past. Was a chance to see the family and do a bit of photography before the move to Wales next week. I can't believe I'm going to be six hours away from my lovely Dorset, and Devon for that matter. But I will be right on the border of Snowdonia National Park, and there's also some beautiful coastline along the North Wales coast.

There are a few images below, but check out my flickr account for all the images.

An update on our lizards

Just found out today that the two Blue Spiny Swifts mentioned in the previous post are only 3 weeks old! Not happy at being told they were 12 weeks old. Mortality rate for reptiles and amphibians drops after about 3 months, if you can get them past this point you stand a much better chance of seeing them to adulthood. I don't know why the guys in the pet shop told us they were 12 weeks when we have a VERY good friend that also works there, they must have known she'd tell us. I could have them done for it, it's crazy. Anyway, our friend was so furious that they had misled us that she gave us the three surviving youngsters from the clutch. One of our original was (and still is) looking weak, and two of the latest three don't look too good either, but the other two are very active and alert. Looks like we may lose up to three (partly because the guys in the pet shop were trying to feed them crickets that were FAR too big for them), but the other two are looking very strong. I'll keep you posted on how they're getting on, and hopefully have a few images up soon.

New Lizards

Danni and I picked up two 12 week old Blue Spiny Swifts (Sceloporus cyanogenys) today. They are only a couple of inches long at the moment and still quite fragile so I won't be pestering them much. I do hope to get some shots of them in their viv in the next few days though. They do habituate to handling well at the moment but are incredibly quick, so will have to be very alert when I do finally get them out properly.

Digital Camera Magazine POTY

I am entering some images into this year's DCM Photographer of the Year competition. To see the images go to my DCM Profile. To comment you will have to register, this is free and quick and they do not spam your inbox. If you like the image then could I ask you to just please click the thumbs up icon below the image next to the share button, this would help me out a lot. Any views and comments will also help me out as it will bump my images to the first few pages in the relevant section.
If you have any questions or suggestions for me about the competition or my choice of images then just note me and I will get back to you.

Thank you all in advance for any help.

An eventful day

We've had pretty much non-stop rain for about two weeks here in Plymouth now. I have two days off and I was hoping to get to Dartmoor but the forecast gives rain until next Tuesday! Well I was going to give it a miss when I saw the weather this morning, but then it got to midday and I thought 'Sod it, you're not going to beat me Mother Nature' and I drove to Dartmoor. I had a shot in mind that I wanted to do at Leather Tor which the clouds might actually benefit the image, and I wanted to shoot at Black Tor just down the road so.....

It was dry when I left the flat and in the half hour it took me to get to Black Tor it had started to rain. I sat in the car to see what would happen, well within 2 minutes it was lashing it down and it was so windy on the moor that the car was being shaken violently. I decided to sit it out. An hour later the rain started to ease off and I decided to chance it, so I grabbed my gear and made the five minute walk to Black Tor. The wind was ferocious up there today, it was so bad my eyes were watering, I actually had to hold my tripod steady to take my shots, but it stayed dry for a while with the odd light shower and I was able to get a decent amount of shooting in so I walked back to the car and drove up the road a little bit to Sharpitor.

I parked up and walked up past Sharpitor towards Leather Tor. The rain started. Only a light drizzle so I continued. I climbed up to the top of Leather Tor to scout the shot that I had been after, shot a few compositions and started to head back, I wanted to stop on the way back to get a full shot of Leather Tor so I kept my camera out attached to tripod and started heading back the way I'd come. I did a few compositions of an interesting tree and halfway between the two tors the heavens opened! And I'm talking major hailstorm, ouch! I was cursing at this point, legging it back up to Sharpitor so I could pack my gear up in a little bit of shelter. I fully intended to call it a day at this point but just as I unscrewed my filter system and put my grads away it suddenly stopped hailing and the sun came out (one bonus of the strong wind I found, it blew any bad weather over you before too long). It was magnificent, I was treated to a short spell of beautiful golden sunshine so I made the most of it and took some shots of Leather Tor, which I'm quite excited about. They looked great on the LCD so I'm hoping they come out well.



I am so glad I went out today, I feel refreshed and so alive, and I am glad I didn't get my kit packed away quicker and miss that sunshine. So I got wet, had to sit in the car for an hour, stung my eyes with the wind and stung my face and hands with hailstones, but it was one heck of a day, one of the best I've had in a long time.

Goings on

I've been a little quiet. I am busy though. The website is being redesigned so hopefully by the end of next week there will be a site that is more user friendly.
Also, I've been working towards some new images for this year's Exo Terra Nactus awards. http://www.exo-terra.com/en/photography/nactus_award.php
I am working towards some new portraits and if I can, some behavioural shots. I will be posting some images up as they are edited for you all to see.
So, lots going on, even though the site seems a little inactive.

The Faux Furs

I had an enjoyable evening last night photographing local band 'The Faux Furs' at Annabel's Cabaret and Discotheque. Below are a few images from the gig, to see the full set head over to the Events gallery on my website.

Calcifer

Impulse buys are going to kill me. Well, technically speaking, Danni (my partner) is going to kill me because of my impulse buys, but it amounts to the same thing. I picked up a new baby American Grey Tree Frog today, we have named him (or her, it is too young to sex at the moment) Calcifer, after the fire spirit in Howl's Moving Castle. Anyway, I set up the studio for a few shots when I got him home.

The plan......

The plan, the plan. The plan is to use this blog to keep anybody that may be interested in my photography (there might be one or two of you out there) up to date with what I'm doing, where I'm going, and just my general musings on photography, art, the weather etc.

The likelihood is that this blog may get updated once a month if I remember. I'm attaching it to my website, so that it may aid my memory each week or so..... we shall see.