Mark's Blog

Around three weeks ago I was running a two day workshop with Joe Cornish at Paddy's Hole - a small, quaint yet run down fishing harbour at the mouth of the River Tees. During the workshop one of the participant's batteries went flat and he didn't have a spare. I therefore offered to lend him my Panasonic Lumix G1 as we still had another couple of hours to go before last light. Delighted at this, we set it up on my tripod where we were located on the outer collar of the harbour, which is made up of sharp craggy rocks. We decided to take a breather and whilst I was talking to Joe and another participant, the wind got up and blew the camera and tripod over. The result of which was a shattered screen, torn rubber eyepiece and badly disjointed tripod socket. A total write off it seemed... or...

It's been over eighteen months since I visited the Isle of Skye and took this image of the Cuillins from Elgol. However, having scanned it using my Epson V700 scanner, I was always aware that I could glean just that little bit more information from the transparency using a drum scanner. In particular the left rock jutting into the sea, which simply blocked up in the shadows. I decided to call in to see Tim Parkin, the font of all knowledge with these things, who kindly drum scanned the transparency (along with a few others), so that I could get the very best out of the image. What I hadn't realised is that he is able to scan right to the edge of the transparency including the film name and black border of the transparency itself. I'd seen this done by a few photographers in the past and always thought they...

I recently had chance to visit a lavender farm near Terrington, York a few weeks ago and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with the new Lumix G3 camera I’d borrowed. It was the ideal camera for getting in among all the lavender and other brightly coloured flowers to make a few pics. However, it was a tad blustery and along with no cloud cover I knew it would be rather difficult to make anything decent here. After a good few hours and a rather nice coffee I decided to head for the coast as the evening forecast for anywhere else was dull and overcast. Whitby felt like a good idea but having recently visited there I knew any images from or of the piers risked a huge crane in the way (I believe they’re repairing East Pier lighthouse?). I decided therefore to take a look around Saltwick Bay....