Welcome

I am Rod Wynne-Powell, and this is my way to pass on snippets either of a technical nature, or related to what I am currently doing or hope to be doing in the near future.

A third-person description follows:
Professional photographer, Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow trainer, Consultant, digital image retoucher, author, and tech-editor for Martin Evening's many 'Photoshop for Photographers' books.

For over twenty years, Rod has had a client list of large and small companies, which reads like the ‘who’s who’ of the imaging, advertising and software industries. He has a background in Commercial/Industrial Photography, was Sales Manager for a leading London-based colour laboratory and has trained many digital photographers on a one-to-one basis, in the UK and Europe.
Still a pre-release tester for Adobe in the US, for Photoshop, he is also very much involved in the taking of a wide range of photographs, as can be seen in the galleries.

See his broad range of training and creative services, available NOW. Take advantage of them and ensure an unfair advantage over your competitors…


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Wednesday 15 April 2020

MM-Walk in the Fields

Having spent the afternoon of the Monday Bank Holiday really close to home to capture the Spring Growth in the hedgerows and the elusive male Orange Spot Butterflies, making the most of the warm sunshine, the following Day was destined to be largely seated in front of my Mac, spending time cropping and adjusting the images into a gallery to be put up on the blog.
This ensures I cannot spend too much time in the great outdoors and disobey the mores of Social Distancing whilst under the Covid pandemic, whilst still ensuring I keep body and brain active, and exercised regularly. On this trip, the large part of my time was spent without even a single soul visible for at least eighty percent of this period. Out in the large open field, the Marston Moretaine Church does not display its characteristic separate bell tower and seems ordinary and unassuming, beyond the shielding trees.
On three distinct occasions when I caught sight of a white butterfly with orange wing tips, they were making the most of the energy supplying sunshine to spend most of their time in the air, with only fractions of a second stationary, so with almost no time to frame them, let alone consider focussing. This is the single most frustrating aspect of using a mirrorless camera – one needs some appreciable time to follow and focus on such a subject in order to expect to obtain a reasonable shot, and with almost constant sunshine, the butterfly has the advantage! On one spell when the insect was working along the banks of the stream, it alighted on a flower probably three times in a five-minute spell, and the aggregate time it was stationary over that period never amounted to a complete single second! The really galling aspect was on that occasion, I never had a chance to get it in frame, let alone get an image!
Likewise, the stream was both deep and with overhanging grasses, reeds and other foliage, making it difficult to capture the few shots I did manage, of a pair of Mallard ducks making their way along. Fortunately, I enjoy a challenge as I need to master the controls of this particular camera, because they are far less intuitive than my Canon cameras. (I am also reminded of the saying involving 'Old Dogs' and 'New Tricks') and I freely admit that I have many more difficult-to-reach 'Little Grey Cells' that lie tantalising buried within the Cortex I laughingly call my brain! – I put this down to 'Anno Domini' and the sad truth that my dominoes are easily knocked over in a cascade!
However, the fortuitous finding of this Lumix FZ1000 Mk2 does mean that I can have it with me all day without it ever becoming a burden, and the quality it can achieve is exceptional, despite having thus far not reached that Nirvana where I find it entirely intuitive (this is when I am reminded of the mathematical term asymptote, and as if to remind myself, I accept I will only ever come close, in that Infinity always keeps its distance!)
After the trip as I reached home, a lone starling atop my roof was singing its little heart out, presumably hoping for its sweetheart to respond. Aha! My little Leica-lensed Lumix, can capture you clearly from down here!

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