If you want to make a photo into a line drawing here’s an easy and effective way to do it. (Just hold on… why would ANYONE want to do that? Lots of reasons, like making a colouring page for children, or creating artwork for a website…)
Here’s how I do it:-
A wee day off on Easter Tuesday and Janette and I took a wee trip down to Banbridge and a walk along the ‘Boulevard’ – the new name for the outlet centre. After all it was a wet day, with thunder storms and hailstones, and the Boulevard is covered, at least in part, and that meant there were quite a few people about to add human interest. Needless to say I brought the Fujifil X-T2 camera, and made a couple of exposures as we walked around.
Q. What does a photographer do on his day off?
A. Photography.
With no studio appointments on a Friday, and lured by the prospect of a decent spring day, and with another matter to be attended to in the area, I travelled to Ballinderry. It’s a rural area in Co Antrim, between Moira and Crumlin.
To be more precise, my real destination was Upper Ballinderry –
(There was a yarn – about a Ballinderry man who wanted to travel home from Japan, and who went to a travel agent in a small remote Japanese town, and asked for travel to Ballinderry. With oriental inscrutability and precision the clerk replied, Yes sir. Upper or Lower Ballinderry?)
He’d find it hard to travel to Ballinderry by train now as my first stop in the village proved. NIR has mothballed the line between Lisburn and Antrim and Ballinderry Station is now a shadow of its former self. The Antrim bound platform has been dismantled and the station building allowed to decay. The entrance to the station is now blocked. The track is still in place, – it was always a single track line, – but the passing loop has gone and the line seems to be used now as a siding. Today it had goods wagons sitting on the track.
On a recent visit to Killinchy I travelled on down to the shores of Strangford Lough at Whiterock Bay. The Lough is splattered with islands at this point, and closest to the shore, joined by a causeway, is Sketrick Island, with its distictive castle.
The castle is a 16th Century Tower House, a defensive position which saw battle in the 17th Century. Originally four storeys high, part of the castle collapsed in 1896, and what remains is now curated by the NI Communities Historic Environment Dept.
Men! Your New Fiancee Will Love Secret Photographs from Your Proposal!
It’s true. Your girl will love photographs of your proposal almost as much as the engagement ring, in fact almost as much as she loves you!
It is one of the most special days of any woman’s life and it really is worth capturing the memory for ever. She will always cherish it.
A visit to Kellswater in Co Antrim.
Kellswater Reformed Presbyterian Church, near Ballymena, Co.Antrim. Built in traditional ‘barn’ shape in 1806. The congregation dates to 1760 making it the first RP Congregation in Ireland, and still singing only the Scottish Metrical Psalms in worship.
Tiger’s Bay – a working class area in North Belfast, now rebuilt as a modern housing estate. The streets give a view over the harbour and shipyard areas of the city. I visited the area on a sunny winter day with my Nikon F100, loaded with Ilford Delta 100.
Baby James visited the studio today with Mummy and Daddy to pose for the camera. It’s his third visit as part of his ‘Baby’s First Year’ photography package. What amazing childhood memories!
Here’s Baby Isla, visiting our Dundonald studio for the second of her Baby’s First Year’ Photoshoots.
I’m still playing with the new Fufifilm X-T2, so today I took it on a walk around Kiltonga Nature Reserve in Newtownards, to test out the film simulation feature. One of the interesting features of this camera is the ability to set it to emulate various Fufi Films, like Fuji’s popular Velvia colour film for example.
The camera has a black and white option to record images on virtual ‘Acros’ monochrome film, which should give outstanding contrast, and a rich tonal range. Furthermore, Acros simulation will produce grain in the image exactly the same size as the film version, by ISO. The claim made by Fuji is that Arcos film simlation is even better than shooting in RAW and later converting to monochrome in Photoshop. Fufi even claim that Acros will outperform any other high end digital camera shooting in B&W mode. So, today I set the X-T2 to shoot in Acros Monochrome on card two, and in RAW on card one. (Shooting in RAW, of course means that should I want a colour image, I can use the RAW unprocessed files to produce it.)
