Tonight there is an amazing colourful hue in the sky over San José, the photograph below doesn’t do it full justice. We’re blessed with having some amazing cloud / light combinations here in our paradise, especially autumn through to spring – sometimes in summer too.
Clouds over San José
Two truly fantastic movies showing the beauty of the area I live in, the area that I would love to show YOU around!!
Contact me to learn more (details below).
Contact details:
Martyn Thompson – Landscape Photography
http://martynthompson.net
http://martynthompsonphotography.wordpress.com
martyn@martynthompson.net
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Often in the past and mostly when I was studying photography, I’d proudly show off my black and white prints, still smelling of fixative and be met with such comments,
“Can’t you afford colour then?” or “Ooh, they’re black and white”. I would then try to explain sometimes to no avail, the whole point of the black and white photographs.
Rotterdam Library, Holland
The absence of colour forces me to focus (excuse the pun) on other elements of the photograph; the shadows, the light, the sense of space and drama, amongst other things. Sometimes when we view colour photographs, we overlook such aspects whilst perhaps admiring a pretty red hat that someone is wearing. Of course some photographs do not work in black and white and colour actually accentuates the sense of scale, for example the work of Eliot Porter would not be the same in monochrome conversely, the few colour photographs that Ansel Adams produced have nowhere near the dramatic effect of his black and white studies.
From time to time, I like to use black and white photography to convey a mood or an emotion rather than to show a tangible subject, especially when looking at landscape abstracts.
As to whether black and white or colour photography is best – this is a discussion that could go on forever; there is some merit in both styles of photography and each suits a different subject and audience. I show some of my black and white photographs and some people prefer the colour versions, the reverse also happens so to coin a cliche, at-the-end-of-the-day, it’s all subjective, as most things are I guess 
La Graciosa, Lanzarote
View black & white set on Flickr
Contact details:
Martyn Thompson – Landscape Photography
http://martynthompson.net
http://martynthompsonphotography.wordpress.com
martyn@martynthompson.net
Facebook / Twitter / Etsy / Flickr
This is a nice blog from my friends at Cortijo el Campillo
http://cortijoelcampillo.blogspot.com/
…and this is an amazing movie clip made in Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata by Cortijo el Campillo.
The history of Cortijo el Campillo is quite amazing. The house is apparently where the real-life bride which inspired the seminal Federico Lorca play, Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) hid after her lover was murdered as she was being pursued by the family of the man she didn’t want to marry.
There are some aspects of my moonlight photography that I want to try and replicate during the daytime so I thought it was about time to start trying out the technique of daytime long exposures… well actually, I’ve been trying this out for a few months now.
Playa de la Vega, Asturias
There is a technique for taking “open shutter” photographs using a neutral density filter and of course a tripod during the daytime. The effect on things like the sea and / or clouds is quite surreal at times; cloud and sea movement becomes a directional blur that can often look like mist.
Cala del Plomo, Cabo de Gata
When used together with reflections the results can be amazing and sometimes much better than I could have predicted.
I have been trying to capture situations where there is both movement and stillness in the water and the sky and yesterday went to a beautiful beach not too far away called Cala del Plomo to practice my technique. What I found was an area to the left of the beach where rockpools of perfectly clear, still water were juxtaposed against an agitated sea (if you got the angle right) and the light was perfect, as it always is!
I love developing ideas using this technique but it requires a special kind of situation in which to take these kind of photographs. The beauty of living where I live is that there are no end of these special kind of situations. Come and see for yourself and let me show you how it’s done
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martyn@martynthompson.net
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