Queen of Hearts

Reading David Cooke's recent accounts of how some of his exhibition acceptances were created has been fascinating, and they are well worth reading.  Completely coincidentally, a few days ago I was asked by Roger Hance if I could give him a selection of images which had been successful in exhibitions, along with the original unprocessed file and its history, for a talk he was putting together.  So often we only concentrate on the finished article, so it's always good to go back and discover the "sow's ear" which eventually resulted in the "silk purse" with which everyone is familiar.  David's articles and Roger's request have inspired me to do the same for occasional blog postings, so here goes.

To kick off, I thought I'd give the story behind Queen of Hearts - one of my most successful pictures, which has recently accepted into the RPS Members' Biennial and for publication in Portfolio Three.  It was taken in Whitby outside Botham's, my favourite bakery in the entire world.  Because I had the dog with me I was banned from entering the shop, so had to wait outside while my family went in to buy stuff for lunch.  The shop assistant started to replenish the stock in the window, and I had a few seconds in which to take a picture.

The lens was right up against the glass in order to reduce reflections, but even so - if you look carefully - you can see the tell-tale outline of Amber, my yellow Labrador, in the bottom left hand corner of the picture (see inset).

This is the original image straight out of the camera.  It was processed in a mixture of Photoshop and Nik Colour Efex.  Canon 5DmkII, EF 15 f/2.8 fisheye, 1/40s @ f/11, ISO400.

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