Behind the scenes with Chris Logue

Somehow when I am out looking for something I never find it and then suddenly it falls into your lap when you have stopped looking for it. How many times has that happened to you? I spend a lot of time on photography blogs, photography forums, photo sharing websites such as flickr or zooomr with the aim of discovering new photographers who are producing excellent pieces of work. I love photographs and I love art, and I am very fortunate to have come across many excellent people doing exciting new things. However sometimes I come across some really excellent pieces of work when I am not even looking for it, the work done by Rui Palha was one, and Chris Logue’s photographs are another example.

I accidentally came across Chris’s work when browsing through photos in my favourites collections, Chris had made a comment on one of the photos and that comment led me to his photostream, and ever since then I have been following the work of this young photographer from Glasgow, UK. Currently working as an engineer, Chris is about to quit full time work to study full time photography. his love with photography goes back 7 years when he was 18 years old and he was shooting with a film point and shoot camera. As Chris says “In those days I shot to 400 speed black and white and had no idea what i was doing or what I was aiming for…“.

Any photographer will tell you, especially those who take a lot of landscape shots, scouting the location and the timing is very important, arrive late and the sunlight would be very strong or arrive too early in the day and it is not light enough. It is imperative to get the location and the timing right otherwise the mood and the composition you are trying to create may not come as you anticipated it. Chris at times has to make multiple trips to a location to get the shot he wants. For instance take the following picture, Chris had to stand knee deep in the swamp to get the shot he waned.

In Chris’s words
“I had scouted this location out previously whilst driving around the countryside, north of Glasgow. The previous times the weather had been either too cloudy or not cloudy enough to produce the type of light I was hoping for.

On this particular evening I had been on the edge of Mugdock Country Park shooting a different scene.

The sky was wonderful, producing a wrapping, diffused light, with shards of direct warm light interspersed. So I thought I may as well take a detour past the bathtub on the way home.

I was muddy and wet up to my knees because the last shot had required me to stand in a swamp to get the composition I was after. As I pulled up to the spot, which is on the edge of a field off a small country road, the sun was just setting below the horizon, creating a very strong contrast between the sky and ground.

In terms of composition I wanted to give the impression that the viewer could be lying in the bath, gazing out over the field and sunset. However I decided to include the whole bath as the rim of the tub had an interesting weathered textured that I needed to explore. So I decided to use a low viewpoint, including the whole tub with a very wide angle (15mm in 35mm terms) I hope this gives the viewer the sense that they are right there, at the point of the lens. I also used the wide angle to bring in as much of the surrounding mud as possible. The small pockets of water and rough texture are very interesting I think.

I measured the dynamic range of the scene with the spot meter on my camera and found it to be about 12 stops from the brightest point of the sky to the darkest part of the foreground. This and the marvellous textures in the scene were enough to persuade me to use the HDR method to record all the details present. I used a remote release, and bracketed the exposures by 1 stop until I had captured all twelve.
One I got home I imported all the images into Lightroom. This step isn’t really necessary, but I prefer to have all my images catalogued in one place for easy reference in the future. After this I imported the Tiffs into Photomatix Pro for the HDR merge and then onto Photoshop where I applied local contrast and exposure adjustments, noise reduction and some selective sharpening to add some bite to the final image. ”

We asked Chris a few questions about his work flow and his inspiration and aspirations regarding photography, what follows is a brief interview with Chris:

CM: What equipment do you most regularly use in your photographs?
CL: In the landscape pictures you have shown here I use a relatively small subset of equipment. So a digital SLR, a 10-20mm wide-angle lens, a 30mm prime, ND grads, polarizer, warming and cooling Filters, and a Flashgun with an off camera sync cord. Oh, and a tripod and remote release, essentials for landscape shots.

CM: Where do you want to go with your photography and how has the internet helped spread your work?
CL: The internet has really connected me with the photographic community at large. Flickr has obviously played the largest part in this, but there are many other places out there, and I am always awestruck at the amount of people who are willing to give advice; whether it’s understanding the hyper-focal distance, or critiquing a recent picture.

I would love to turn professional, and as such I’ve enrolled in a college course, as much to give myself more time to shoot and collaborate with others, as for the educational element.

In terms of what I would like to shoot, I’m open. Obviously I love to shoot landscapes and this is where I have spent the most time so far but I’m also really interested in journalism and portraiture so who knows. Being more realistic, I would like to look into commercial photography, maybe weddings or product work, as a way to cut my teeth and give me time to pursue other projects.

CM: What do you prefer colour or black and white? and why?
CL: Wow, what a question, I would have to say neither. I try to decide if the picture is going to be in colour or b&w before I press the shutter, this way I can avoid using mono as a safety net for otherwise flawed pictures, and use it for it’s own merits instead. The work here is mostly in colour, and that is usually the case when I am shooting landscapes, however, when I’m shooting people or more impromptu subjects I will often use monochrome, as the colours in these scenes can be a distraction.

CM: Who has been your biggest influence in your photography work?
CL: I have to say I’ve never been influenced by a specific photographer in terms of landscape work, only by individual photographs, flickr has been my reference in terms of what others are doing and how they are working. In documentary and street photography I’m inspired by Bruce Gilden and Monty Fresco, also the famous Glasgow photographer Harry Benson who has an exhibition here at the moment.

CM: Where do you look for inspiration for your photographic work?
CL: All around, I try to carry my camera as much as possible, my only wish is that I could use something smaller. If I could do that my camera would never leave my side. I try to take note of anything I think has potential when I’m driving around for my day job, then I come back later with my camera. Sometimes it takes 5 or 6 visits to a place to get something I’m pleased with, but that is an important part of learning I think, refining your technique through repetition.

CM: What is your preferred post processing method and how do you organise your photographic workflow from shooting to final production.
CL: When I look to post process a landscape image, it depends on the mood I had in mind, as to what processes I apply. Typically, local curves, levels and saturation adjustments nearly always feature.

If I’m going for something more fantasy based I might use tone mapping or multiple exposure techniques, otherwise I will use grads and a gelled flash to even up the scene, this gives a cleaner, less challenging look to the image.

I always shoot to RAW and try to nail the exposure at the time of capture, I love the RAW format, but of all the things it is great at, changing exposure isn’t a good idea I find. It nearly always introduces lots of noise.

We wish Chris all the best of luck in his new career, and he is certainly a person whose work we would like to keep an eye on. To see more of his work or contact Chris, please head over to his flickr profile.