TopMeadow Journal

This journal was inspired by Eric Boutilier-Brown's Evolving Beauty site where he too keeps a photographic journal. This journal is experimental. I don't yet know whether I will keep it up. Time will tell.

Feel free to contact me by email, but be careful to make the obvious correction to the email address.
10 Sep 2006 I' have created a FlikR account for Top Meadow and will place some images there.

I have also added two new images, a stark landscape and a portrait of a dancer. The portrait of the dancer is from an old negative recently scanned; the landscape is a recent shot taken on a digital point and shoot camera.
30 Sep 2006 I have upgraded my copy of photoshop to CS2 which handles 16 bit per channel images. Unfortunately the SilverFast software for my scanner that integrates with PhotoShop only outputs 8 bits per channel. I have downloaded the latest Epson software for the scanner and can access that from PhotoShop. This is a significant improvement. I also tried running the scanner at a higher reolution using its mircostep technology, but got distinctly fuzzier scans and so I've gone back to 3200 dpi scans - which also makes the files a more reasonable size.

I am interested in the idea of exploring different themes which will result in sets, or panels, of related images. So I'm experiementing with shifting from the site from the book metaphor to a gallery metaphor, with each wall of the gallery holding a panel. I have put up an experimental first version of this idea. Hold the mouse over n image and it should enlarge. The idea is to simulate going taking a closer look at a picture that interests. You will likely want your browser on full screen for it to work reasonably well. I'd appreciate feedback to photography@nospam@topmeadow.net (remove the antispam device before using) on how this approach works for folks.
01 Oct 2006 I've just been experimenting with a little javascript that would enlarge the images when the cursor enters the frame - not just the body of the picture. The code works but gives an unpleasent flickering effect if the expanding image then encompasses the mouse cursor. I'f prefer to be able move the cursor out of the enlarged picture and leave it enlarged; this is going to take more thought.
08 Oct 2006 I have been continuing to scan old negatives and play about with them in photoshop. There are now enough for a wall of images of Tintern Abbey.
29 Oct 2006 Spent four hours in the studio this afternoon at a session organized by the Bristol Photographic Society studio group. Mary Cooke did the make up for our two models. I was called a dinosaur because I was still shooting film - and I confess it must be nice to see the results of what one takes on the spot instead of waiting until the film gets developed - without using polaroid. I planned to use about 4 rolls of monochrome film which, together with what is in the fridge, would have given me a full tank to develop tonight. But, it just turned out to be a colour day - so I have one roll of monochrome, one of colour neg and two of colour slide awating development.

There are two many people at these sessions to expect to get a good shot - they are primarily social and there was a nice bunch of people there I haven't met before. Our models were good. At one point, staring through the lens, I asked one of them to straighten up a bit and this rather pretty girl suddenly transformed into a queen. If that shot worked - it should be good. We'll see.
24 Dec 2006 I finally got around to reworking the layout of these pages. The problem with the current layout is that it only really worked on a large screen, so I am trying a new approach which can bee seen in the portrait2 panel.
Previous journal entries 2003