Back to Totnes again today for one of the regular Food Fairs, so decided to have another go at street photography and add a few more images to the 'Street Photography' Gallery.

As I've been taking picture for nearly 40 years, I have several large boxes of negatives.  Now  my multifunction printer has the ability to scan in negatives so I thought I'd give it a go - selected a few interesting (?) images.  Well, this is a painfully slow process so I think the boxes of negative will remain packed away.  Anyway, a small section in the Galleries entitled  'Scans from Old Negatives' has been created for some of those I managed to do before boredom set-in!

Decided to visit another National Trust property today - the last castle built in England(?) where work started in the early 1900's.  Of course it is'nt a real Castle as it has no military purpose and mearly the home of a wealthy man (Julius Drewe) built in the style of a castle - designed by Edwin Lutyens.  Unlike our visit to High Cross House, this one is worth the admission with wonderful views, scenic walk and even if you only get to see a few rooms within the 'castle' itself they are well presented and have interesting features.  Once again decided to use the Fish Eye lens and there is a new section in the Fish Eye Fun Gallery, called 'Castl Drogo'.  Picture inside are a bit grainy as I had to set the camera to ISO 1600, but they will at least give you an idea of the style of the rooms within the 'castle'.

After our visit to High Cross House, we went over to Totnes to have a look round the market and I decided to have a go at some 'Street Photography' for the first time.  So, a new section in the Galleries Section, called, well, "Street Photography"  in the People section.

Went out for lunch today and my wife fancied Italian - now is it just me, but I always find Italian food generally overpriced for what you get!  Pasta of one of the many variates, a sauce , add a few herbs some basic meat (usually minced) put in a bowl and you're done!  Don't get me wrong, it was very tasty and enjoyable, service was good  and the restaurant was very pleasant, but with the food, I always feel I could have got the same results from a jar!

Last night I had a tutorial on how to enhance portraits with Photoshop - now I don't intend to enter into a discussion about the ethics of image manipulation as I hope we all realise that the images we see in magazines and advertising probably bear little or no  relationship to reality and never have done.  What this is more about is time management!  After spending several hours to get a better portrait image in the classroom I felt it would be better use of my time to enhance my skills with creative lighting, a better understanding sympathetic camera angels and so on...Anyway more to the point I often seen advertised a bit of software called Portrait Professional which promised to do everything that I'd spent hours doing in Photoshop in minutes, so I downloaded the trial version to try it out.  The simple answer to "does it deliver on that promise" is a big fat YES.

Now I'd be first to admit that there is enhancement and enhancement and as with all these packages you can go completely OTT and you end up with a portrait of what looks like a mannequin!  Restraint is the name of the game here and aim for results that still show the essential character of the sitter but it just looks like they've had access to a top notch make-up artist prior to the sitting.  Anyway the real point for me is Photoshop is a wonderful and complex bit of software that I've not even really scratched the surface of, but to be honest, life's to short to spend hours behind a computer screen (as can be seen from how often this blog gets updated;¬) toying with an image.

For portraits, I'll stick with Portrait Professional - it's the right tool for the job plain and simple.