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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Thursday 21 May 2015

CDW 2015 – Two Photographers Clerkenwell Design Week 2015


Clerkenwell has been my milieu for many a year, and much has changed since I first arrived, and worked out my RAF leave for a basement photographers’ studio in Hatton Garden. Gamages Department Store was still trading, and seemingly had given rise to much of the trade in the Leather Lane Market. I worked simply for the experience and expenses for six weeks at Francis-Thompson Studios. It was part of Sidney Barton PR Services based in nearby Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane. I had absolutely no idea at that time of the part that this area of working London was to play in my working life.

I left many times – each time I returned there were subtle changes, but its heart kept beating, and the Twentieth Century brought the most extensive changes of all, and now many of the streets I first knew have disappeared, but Clerkenwell Design Week allows visitors to see the spirit of both the old and the new, and the warmth of the place lives on. A few of my past work colleagues still work here and for the past three years I have taken a camera to capture glimpses of both past and present and the quirky, and welcomed the establishment of Zaha Hadid’s Gallery that opened on my first visit to CDW.

On the Wednesday I treated myself to a break from the stresses of moving my home from Caddington to Marston Moretaine to pay a visit this year, and in chatting to a salesman in one of the first places Geoff Dann and I visited, he knew precisely where my new abode was situated, so this is indeed a small world. On a purely personal level both of us visitors were interested in working chairs for the lengthy times spent in front of Mac screens to post-process images from our respective cameras, and Elite had two interesting task chairs, the iSit and the Airflex which we flight-tested and flagged as worth considering.

Another showroom, Mosa held our attention from a background perspective with individual 300 x 900mm tile panels, we then headed to the Farmiloe Building, now seemingly termed the Design Factory, where my interest in cars was tweaked by the main Sponsor this year, Renault. Taking detail shots of this made it feel as if I was transported to Goodwood and the Festival of Speed. An old school that used to house studios for a couple of photographers I knew has become the London office for Zaha Hadid, whose influence could even be seen on the red Renault Concept Car, when you look at her acrylic furniture on display in her gallery, which we later visited. See if you can spot them.

My own interest in the quirky and amusing can also be seen in some of the more random shots taken during the day, such as architectural details, and amusing juxtapositions such as the lone blue Barclays Boris Bike amongst the line of Santander red ones – an omen that Barclays should heed? Our last major call was in Zaha’s Gallery, before a brief visit to another ex-business colleague John Swift of the Colour Company and his wife Annie, Retouchers with whom I worked before setting up ‘SOLUTIONS photographic’– they also are shortly leaving old London Town, but I end my visual trip where I started, at Old Street and the Tools of Change, the cranes. Till the next time, farewell to Clerkenwell; the beating heart of working London.

Monday 11 May 2015

Holy Trinity, Aylesbury Concert


Late Wednesday evening I receive a text that a Concert is scheduled for the Saturday at the Holy Trinity Church, Walton Street Aylesbury that my daughter Lizzy has just heard about, and was I interested. Under most circumstances I would always try to attend anyway, but the stress that has attended my forthcoming move from Caddington, the marital home to my own home in Marston Moretaine was even more appealing to allow the music to wash over me and restore calm.

I set my phone alarm to give me ample time to spruce myself up and gather my camera gear together for the venue. I had never been to this church, so I had no idea of the layout or lighting, though Lizzy had said it was not overly bright. Fortunately there is a car park nearby, though only as the crow flies, but for mere mortals it involves first walking away from the church to reach the crossing over the dual carriageway, then the same distance and more to reach the venue. That would have been a serious trek for Lizzy with her baritone saxophone, its case and music stand, for the preliminary rehearsal and concert the return trip would be even harder.
I parked the car and reaching the road I took a quick shot of building opposite, intending then to take a shot of the church, but then I get a call from a long term friend, whom I had left a message of the impending move, I chatted all the way to the church, then had to end the call as I got my ticket and promptly having explained, in the course of paying for it managed to completely forget I had been still connected, so once settled inside resumed the call and apologised and would have a longer call later. Thus I completely forgot to take a shot of the church!
Inside I tried to locate where Lizzy would be seated and found the least obstructed view of her position which was to the right of centre on the end. It was not as packed as some of the Aylesbury Community Band’s audiences, but they were enthusiastic and I was able to exercise my feet to the beat without affecting my handholding of the two cameras with the 70-200mm for the individual musicians and 24-105mm for the more inclusive shots.
After the interval, I moved to the right hand side wall for a change of viewpoint as well as a shift to my 100-400mm lens to get individual musicians on the far left and profiles of Rob Wicks, the Conductor. The music in some instances was familiar to me, but not all, though I would have had to have had a heart of stone not to be nticed into humming my way through the final piece – the Dambusters March, with this being the 70th Anniversary of VE Day.
The Gallery is less arranged due to time constraints, but hopefully captures at least some of the musicians I could see without too much lost to the plethora of very effective LED lamps over the scores; for those who did not feature, I apologise for my and the pillars’ positions.

Monday 4 May 2015

Gardening Book Delivery to Stockwood

I have now exchanged Contracts and am due to move to Marston Moretaine any day now, so my days, nights and times I did not know existed, have been filled by filling – filling boxes; the end result being that a four-bedroomed house has been reduced to a series of corridors between stacks – of boxes!
In order to achieve this Nirvana, I have reduced wall-to-ceiling bookcases to the building blocks of a cardboard city of skyscraper stacks of boxes. Where some have a small room in their house they term a boxroom, I have a boxhouse! It offered the opportunity to do some reading-weeding and provide an abundant supply of very random books to the Caddington Allotment Library, being successfully built by one Helen Taylor.
After the first room's bookcase was emptied I delivered a mere three boxes, but at that time I knew there were to be more, and a couple of back-breaking days later, another few boxes made their way to the Allotments Library, and I said there might just be a few to follow – I was wrong! I had forgotten that bookcases were to be found on the landing and in my bedroom, so I duly delivered yet more heavy boxes, saying there might yet be a few lonely remainders to follow – wrong again! I made no more promises to Helen and her daughter on their doorstep as I delivered yet another box.

These books had been acquired from my reading, that of my ex-wife and both our deceased parents from their collections. Amongst them, I unearthed a book signed by the entire Yorkshire Cricket team in the early part of the twentieth century and the point of this narrative; a book entitled: 'The Gardener's Enquire Within'. I had put this aside as soon as I spotted its title with the intention of making it a present to one of the gardeners at the Stockwood Discovery Centre, Jan Tysoe. I had made a vow to myself that I would not be creating any more galleries until the packing was completed, but that vow was about to be tested because there was no way I was going to visit the Gardens without a camera at this time of year, so I took only the single camera with the 90mm Tamron macro attached along with the book and sought out Jan without even removing the soft case from the camera.

However, having earlier in the day had a stressful series of phone calls to Insurance companies, the opportunity and the temptation to capture some of the colour and beauty around me, conspired to break my resolve, and the case was stuffed in one pocket and the lens cap in another and shooting began immediately I had handed the book to Jan. It was rewarding that she appreciated it and  from the ensuing brief conversation, I knew it had found a new home.  As we walked by the apple blossom and I took a few pictures, I learned that this was a real success story as two earlier, poor and wet seasons had all but killed these bushes. I left Jan to tend to the greenhouse and did my best to capture the new leaves and flowers that were the gardeners' reward for all their hard work over the winter.

Before leaving I paid a quick visit to the greenhouse to say goodbye and add the last few shots, but it was in here that I found myself getting the blindspots that were a precursor to a Migraine and I held out my hand as Jan directed her hose on my outstretched palm to down a couple of Paracetamol tablets. This had blatantly been brought along by my earlier telephone frustrations of the last two days.

That was last week and I did not even look at what I had taken till I had completed the filling of many more boxes to do my best to honour the vow I had broken.