about
John Corlett Photography
Church Hanborough, Witney, Oxfordshire, UK
email: images@jacorlett.com
What I love about photography is, in the end, that you’re dealing directly with light and colour. In painting you have to re-invent them, to simulate them with smudges of pigment, but with a camera you’re capturing the real thing. I’ve been trying to do it since I was ten (this was my camera then) and the attempt is endlessly fascinating.
I find it hard to grab successful photos in the midst of doing something else. I need to get into the right frame of mind, to engage the mind’s eye. It needs a special way of seeing which I hope I can communicate through the pictures. As a result my better photos come in bursts, when the time and place – and most importantly the light – are right.
Once something special is captured on camera, the real work starts: selecting the right image, selecting the right bit of it, fussing over exactly what’s to be cropped in the picture and what’s not, and if need be, adjusting tone and contrast back to something that best conveys the original experience.
These days I use a digital SLR and a PC for minor editing. Having spent much of my formative years in a darkroom watching images emerge in baths of smelly chemicals, to do it on the computer is a delight; but something holds me back from doing anything more radical to the pictures than the darkroom would allow.
Until a few years ago I used Photoshop, believing like many people that it was intended for photographers. I gritted my teeth and put up with the many laborious procedures, unnecessary features and bits that simply didn't work, in one version after another. Then I discovered Adobe Lightroom, and life changed overnight. Photoshop was actually meant for graphic designers all along, while Lightroom is 'light years' ahead for the photographer. What a revelation!
Church Hanborough, Witney, Oxfordshire, UK
email: images@jacorlett.com
What I love about photography is, in the end, that you’re dealing directly with light and colour. In painting you have to re-invent them, to simulate them with smudges of pigment, but with a camera you’re capturing the real thing. I’ve been trying to do it since I was ten (this was my camera then) and the attempt is endlessly fascinating.
I find it hard to grab successful photos in the midst of doing something else. I need to get into the right frame of mind, to engage the mind’s eye. It needs a special way of seeing which I hope I can communicate through the pictures. As a result my better photos come in bursts, when the time and place – and most importantly the light – are right.
Once something special is captured on camera, the real work starts: selecting the right image, selecting the right bit of it, fussing over exactly what’s to be cropped in the picture and what’s not, and if need be, adjusting tone and contrast back to something that best conveys the original experience.
These days I use a digital SLR and a PC for minor editing. Having spent much of my formative years in a darkroom watching images emerge in baths of smelly chemicals, to do it on the computer is a delight; but something holds me back from doing anything more radical to the pictures than the darkroom would allow.
Until a few years ago I used Photoshop, believing like many people that it was intended for photographers. I gritted my teeth and put up with the many laborious procedures, unnecessary features and bits that simply didn't work, in one version after another. Then I discovered Adobe Lightroom, and life changed overnight. Photoshop was actually meant for graphic designers all along, while Lightroom is 'light years' ahead for the photographer. What a revelation!