Sensitive Light :
Galleries    Favourites     Wallpaper    About     Email
About Sensitive Light
The Sensitive Light site was launched at the beginning of March 2003 and is nothing more than a place to present the results of my photographic interest. I had other sites in the past but to be honest nobody ever visited them.

Different to my previous sites, this site includes a photoblog. A photoblog is a regularly updated chronological web log (blog) of recent work. There is a community of photobloggers and the combination of regular updates, and interaction with others, help to keep the site fresh and my interest sustained.

The frequency of my photoblog updates varies over time, sometimes it's every day, sometimes every few days, and sometimes I have breaks while I look for fresh inspiration.

For an excellent list of other photoblogs I strongly recommend a visit to photoblogs.org While you are there you could check out the Sensitive Light photoblogs profile if you wanted.


About Me
My name is Graham Jeffery; I live in Hinckley a small market town in the middle of England. When I originally built the site I went by the alias of Sensiti, I can't remember quite why, but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. So, if you see a reference on the site to Sensiti, it means me.

I have had a lifelong interest in photography and have practiced on and off for the last 30 years. It wasn't until I retired from computing in 2003 that my interest really took off. On accepting the offer of early retirement I invested in a whizzy digital camera and some lenses, and haven't looked back since.

I have no aspiration to become a full time professional photographer; I am enjoying my current situation too much. However, I do undertake and enjoy the commercial commissions and assignments that occur from time to time.

Originally I had intended not to specialise in any particular area of photography, but a review of the site for the last year shows a bias towards nature and portraiture. I'm particularly interested in candid or informal portraits. I guess I'll just continue to go with the flow and see where it leads.


Equipment
All my equipment is made by Canon. I'm not a diehard believer in any one manufacturer; it's just that at the time of purchase there was nothing on the market to touch the 1Ds. I'm not an equipment nut either, in fact after laying out money on an expensive camera I'd rather not read reviews of new models. When I do feel the need to compare hardware or read the latest reviews I usually go to Steves Digicams.

My kit.
Body Canon 1Ds
Wide zoom lens Canon 24-70mm
Medium zoom lens Canon 70-200 IS
Telephoto lens Canon 400mm DO
Macro lens Canon 100mm macro
Macro ring flash Canon MR14EX
Standard flash Canon Speedlight 550EX



Processing
I shoot in RAW mode with a colour pallet of Adobe 1998, and preprocess all images in Capture One from Phase One. Typically I will review (and adjust as necessary) exposure and colour balance in Capture One, and then pass a 16 bit TIFF image to Photoshop for cropping, and any further adjustments I see fit. Images are stored in 16 bit Photoshop (PSD) format and converted to JPEG for the web or TIFF for printing or supply to customers.

I aim in Photoshop to use non destructive editing, where this is not possible I keep a copy of the image at each stage so that I can always retrace the editing steps back to the original capture.


Photographic philosophy
I am interested in creating high quality, attractive and interesting pictures, and sometimes I succeed. I am not interested in or excited by f stops or technical matters of how a picture is created. I have no strong views about how a photograph should be created; film v digital, b&w v colour, cropping in camera v on the computer or darkroom.

For me it is only the result that counts. The beauty and drama in a landscape, the personality or mood in a portrait, the detail and industry of the hoverfly; these are the results I strive towards.

I am uncomfortable with the label 'artist' it seems rather too fanciful for me. If you want to know more about photography as art, and real photographic artists then you might be interested in Conscientious - a weblog about photography or Coincidences - discussion on the art and craft of photography both make fascinating reading.

If you are of a more technical nature and want to research the finer aspects of technique then I would suggest a visit (many visits) to The Luminous Landscape and also to Digital Outback Photo. For macro photography the Fine Art Photography of M. Plonsky is a must read.


Featured
Sensitive Light has been featured by:
28mm (issue 9)
Yahoo Picks (February 2004)
Phase One
Summerset Review (Fall 2004)



Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Do you sell your pictures?
A. Yes. I can supply, prints, files on CD, or files for downloading. Most of my sales have been to corporate customers who have purchased a licence to use a specific picture in the furtherance of their business.

Not all pictures on the site are available for purchase. I have a lot of candid people shots where no model release form exists; these are not for sale.

The pictures presented on the web are low resolution versions. For every low res picture on the site there is a high res version. Most of the pictures on file will print large, up to poster size, but a few would need to be limited to smaller size where the original image has been heavily cropped. Pictures supplied by file are in 8 bit TIFF format with a resolution of 300 dots per inch.

For prints I use a specialist lab, they produce high quality photographs on archival paper, and have never let me down yet.


Q. How do you create your smoke pictures?
A. Firstly I should point out that the smoke is everyday grey. I have found joss sticks to be the best source of smoke. The smoke is side or back lit and photographed against a black background.

If I want the final picture to have a white background then the whole image is inverted, black becoms white, white becomes black, and grey's stay much the same. The colouring is done in Photoshop by selecting parts of the image with a highly feathered selection and adjusting the colour with hue/saturation or one of the other colour adjustment tools.


Q. What sort of camera should I buy?
A. I don't know.


Q. How did you build your site?
A. Slowly? The PhotoBlog (Recent Images) is built using a weblog publishing tool called Movable Type 3.1. The rest of the site is written very simply using Dreamweaver and advice from people who know what they are doing.


Q. Who hosts your site?
A. Sensitive Light is hosted by Hostrocket, and their service is excellent.


Q. Would you be interested in a link exchange with my site?
A. No.




Design, layout and content is Copyright © 2003 - 2009 Graham Jeffery.
Images presented on the Sensitive Light site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.