Paul David Drabble

Scarborough Grand Hotel

Aug 092016

Scarborough Grand Hotel

A Grade II listed building dominating the the town’s South Bay. When completed in 1867 Scarborough Grand Hotel was one of the largest hotels in the world, as well as one of the first giant purpose-built hotels in Europe. The hotel is in the shape of a ‘V’ in honour of Queen Victoria and was designed around the theme of time:
4 towers for the seasons,
12 floors for the months of the year,
52 chimneys to symbolise the weeks,
Originally there were 365 bedrooms – one for each day of the year.

As Scarborough was a famous ‘Spa Town’ in its heyday the Grand hotels baths included an extra pair of taps so guests could wash in seawater as well as fresh water. During the first world war the hotel was badly damaged by the German Navy when they bombarded the town in 1914.

Three blue plaques outside mark where the novelist Anne Brontë died in 1849, the contribution of the RAF trainees stationed at the hotel during the Second World War, and the original opening of the building.
11 July 2016

Fuji X-Pro1 60mm F2.4 Real World Update

Jul 272015

I used the Fuji X-Pro1 60mm f2.4 at couple of 1940’s events over the last couple of weekends, Kelham Island Sheffield and East Park Hull. Probably the most challenging of things to shoot were the Spitfire/Hurricane Flypast at the Hull Veterans weekend. I intended to use my Nikon D700 with 80-200mm but was caught out after being told the flypast would be Sunday. It actually happened very late on Saturday. I only had time to flick to AFC and shoot fortunately the camera was set as described in my last post resulting in the aircraft images included below. The exposures were f11 1/350 or better all at ISO 400.

Kelham Island & Hull Veterans 1940’s – Images by Paul Drabble

Fuji X-Pro1 and Fuji XF 60mm f2.4 Macro

Jul 152015

Fuji X-Pro1 and Fuji XF 60mm f2.4 Macro

Today I added the Fuji XF 60mm f2.4 macro lens to the Fuji X-Pro1 XF 18mm f2 & XF 27mm f2.8 in my kit bag. My understanding is the XF 60mm f2.4 is a tad on the slow side when it comes to focusing, especially if compared to the rather more expensive XF 56mm f1.2 but is there away to gain an edge if using the XF 60mm for anything other than Macro work?
I would say yes and the trick is understand the problem and plan ahead. Think what you want to achieve with the camera lens combination. One thing I want to try with the lens is some candid portraits and grab shots without getting too close to a subject. The problem that needs to be overcome with the Fuji is a combination of slow focusing lens and the fact the the Contrast Detection AF (CDAF) employed by the X-Pro1 cant predict where the subject is going to be. I should probably also point out that unlike a DSLRs which use Phase Detection AF (PDAF) you don’t press the shutter halfway down to start the continuous AF. The correct way to use AFC on the X-Pro1 is to aim the camera at the subject with the cross hairs on the bit you want sharp and squeeze the shutter release in a single movement until the camera fires. I figured a small enough aperture with a reasonable DOF would help the focusing but as with all cameras that results in a drop in shutter speed and the possibility of losing the sharpness to camera shake or subject movement. My first instinct was to wind the ISO up but that has two drawbacks first is a drop in image quality second is a danger of over exposure in bright light. Fortunately the X-Pro1 has the option to program an Auto ISO. You get to tell the camera the minimum & maximum ISO you want to use and the minimum shutter speed it should be trying to achieve. What it doesn’t do is stop the camera working if the shutter speed drops too low it just tries to get up there if it can.
After a little fiddling about I settled on a minimum ISO of 800 a maximum of 6400 and a minimum shutter speed of 1/250. With the aperture set to f5.6 and AF set to continuous I roped in some help from my partner and our dog. As you can see from the images I had her throw a dog toy towards me so he would run towards camera chasing it. Each of the four images below is from a different throw of the toy. There were five throws in all and the results are pretty consistent for a slow focusing macro lens. The first throw I failed miserably and got only grass throws 2, 3, 4, 5 resulted in the images below. They have been cropped but still I think they are pretty impressive. You can find the camera settings for each shot in the captions. I have included the Thistle, shot in Macro, and the dog portrait to give a feel for what can expected if you forget to change the setting back to your ‘usual’ ones for situations that are more sedate.

I have to admit It was a glorious sunny day and the results may not be so good in poor lighting conditions but I feel I may just have an edge that maximises my chance of the subject being in focus while minimising the chance of camera shake with a set of camera settings that alow the X-Pro1 and Fuji XF 60mm f2.4 Macro lens to be used quickly and without too much though of anything other than composition.

Sheffield Industrial Estate Fire

Sep 062014

Sheffield Industrial Estate Fire – A major fire broke out on an industrial estate in Sheffield on Wednesday night 3rd Spetember. The fire started just after 9.30pm and a number of loud explosions were heard during the course of the night. The large large blaze at a single storey warehouse just off Station Road in Ecclesfield, close to South Yorkshire Police Sub Divisional HQ and Chapeltown Academy involved 2,000 tonnes of waste plastics. It destroyed the building and caused serious damage to a car paint spraying unit close by and was tackled by over 40 firefighters.

PR Photography Website up-grade

Aug 262014

PR Photography Website up-grade portfolio blog online presence is still undergoing it’s upgrade. It is a work in progress but its is now up and running with a selection of News, Public Relations, and other photographs. Links to my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkdIn accounts also to my ~~Blog~~ and Photoshelter.

it can be found here www.pauldaviddrabble.co.uk

As of 24th of October 2016 the subdomin blog has been removed and the blog along with all its old post have been brought into the main website

www.pauldaviddrabble.co.uk Website Down

Aug 222014

22 August 2014 Due to a PHP server upgrade my Website has Technical issues and is now under going an upgrade. Meanwhile its Business As Usual from a Photography point of view. If you would like to see some examples of my work please browse through my past blog pages alternatively you can check out my Photoshelter presence

I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter

Portfolio – Images by Paul Drabble

Make Modern Photographs Vintage

Aug 292013

Make Modern Photographs Vintage- With the increase in popularity of vintage events, 1940’s weekends and re-enacting seems to have led to a trend for ageing digital photographs and trying to make them look like period images. To help photographers who want their photographs to look like film from the 40’s here are a few tips to make modern photographs vintage

The first problem is image quality. Most modern digital cameras handled correctly produce images of significantly higher quality than than their equivalent from the 1940’s. My method of knocking down the image quality is to take my original image, size it down by 50% or more then interpolate it back up to its original size. This can still leave the image too sharp if it is I use a blur filter to soften the image further.

Next desaturate the image but desaturation alone tends to give a harsh and crisp black and white, which leans towards having a blueish tinge. Using colour balance tools to add yellow (or remove blue depending upon how you look at it) and add red will allow you to get a warmer tone that you can make look anywhere from a natural looking black and white through to a sepia tone.

Now add the film grain effect. Create a new layer which will need to be in overlay mode or similar with 100% opacity of middle or 50% grey. On this new layer you carry out two steps.

First add noise, how much will depend up how grainy you want your final image to look, again I start around 50% however make sure the noise is monochrome, there would be no colour noise in a 1940’s B&W photograph.

Second step is to blur the noise so it looks less like sharp dots and more resembles real film grain Gaussian blur is my preferred choice usually around 2 or three pixels.

At this point it’s worth comparing your manipulated image with genuine pictures from the period to make sure you have a reasonable match for colour tone and softness before merging the layers and moving onto cropping.

I prefer to crop either the 3:2 proportion of 35mm format or the square format of 6×6 you could also use 10×8 but a give away that your image may not be “period” would be to crop it at A4 as this probably would not have been a popular shape of the time unless you are going on to mock-up a period magazine cover. Once cropped its time to add a white border I add a 10% border relative to the cropped photograph This can be done by using something like the “Canvas Size” tool in Photoshop or you could just create a new plain white image document in your editor then drag your manipulated photograph into the middle. Once the border is sorted for that final touch of authenticity you can use a softening tool like adobes blur tool to soften the really hard edge between the beginning of the image and the white border and really make modern Photographs Vintage.

Penny Hill Wind Farm Near Ulley

Mar 142013

One of the things I love about my job is the variety. I get access to people, places and experiences I wouldn’t ordinarily see, one such case is Penny Hill Wind Farm located on farm land between junctions 31 and 32 of the M1 motorway close to the village of Ulley. Where i got to watch and photograph wind farm turbines being delivered and erected. Love them, or hate them, it seems wind farms are now an firm part of the UK’s renewable energy policy. Personally I think in the right light and in the right place these giant “windmills” can be very photogenic and while shooting for one of the local papers I was asked to visit and photograph Penny Hill.

Once completed it will consist of six individual wind turbines with a life span of 25 years. At up to 130 Meters from ground to the tip of the blade these massive turbines arrive on site broken down as four tower pieces, a necell, a hub and three blades which, I am told, in optimum weather conditions can be erected into its base in a single day. Its difficult to comprehend just how large these towers are unless you can get right up to them.

One of the four sections that make up wind farm turbines towers arrives by lorry at Penny Hill

Despite less than perfect conditions workers prepare two massive cranes to lift the first of four sections that make up the tower and lower it on to its base.

Making the lorry that brought it onto the site look like a child’s toy the first of the four sections from the turbines tower is lifted swung over the base. Note the workmen in orange ensuring correct positioning of the section before it is finally lowered on to its base

At £95,000 pounds each, three wind farm turbines blades wait to be fitted to the hub before the assembled pieces can be hoisted up and fitted to the nacelle. I was was unable to resist touching them knowing when I drive past Penny Hill I will be able to look and say. “do you see the center of those blades……”

Penny Hill Wind Farm between junctions 31 and 32 of the M1 motorway close to the village of Ulley. Love them these giant “Windmills” can be photogenic

One completed Wind Turbine beside a second which is awaiting the its blades and hub to be assembled and hoisted into place. Note the comparative size of the yellow excavator at the foot of the unfinished turbine and the car in the bottom right hand corner for scale.

Sheffield Bomb Discovered Leppings Lane

Mar 062013

Sheffield Bomb – Leppings Lane, behind Sheffield Wednesday football stadium, was closed off for a period on Tuesday after Sheffield council workmen discovered, what they believed to be, an unexploded bomb from the second world war. The Workers became concerned when they discovered a large metallic object roughly the shape of a bomb, just under the bridge at Leppings Lane, while carrying out clearance and maintenance work on the Banks of the River Don in Sheffield. They raised the alarm causing South Yorkshire Police to close Leppings lane to traffic and pedestrians between Catchbar Lane and the junction of Vere Road. The British Army Royal Logistics Corp Bomb Disposal Unit were called in to examine the find. After some excavation and upon closer examination the object turned out to be some type of rusted metal barrel.

Images from the Scene including the barrel/bomb shaped cylinder.

Sheffield News Images, Man Charged With Murder of Girl Aged 3

Feb 112013

Sheffield News Images – One of the things people considering getting into news photography don’t consider, especially when thinking about freelancing, is covering stories like this. Work has been very thin on the ground recently and sometimes in order to stay in business you end up going out on spec to stories like this one.

A man has been charged with murder after the death of a 3 year old girl in Sheffield. An ambulance was called to a house on Beck Road Shiregreen Sheffield on Friday 8th February and a 3 year old was taken to Sheffield Children’s Hospital where she died in the early hours of Saturday Morning . A man aged 30 appeared at Sheffield Magistrates Court on Monday morning Charged with Murder.

Once you have the images the next job is ringing around to sell your speculatively shot images. News photography isn’t always all about glamour, celebrity, sport and big occasions its also about people, tragedy and death. This job I supplied to a news agency who will try to place the images and story.

If you are interested in using any of the images on this story they can be obtained by contacting Caters News Agency

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