Winner of UK Photo Harmony 5 to 8 Competition.

[Almark]

My Scotland PTE Show was the winner!

Scotland: Glencoe and the Isle of Skye. The photos were taken in 2013, on a dedicated photography trip. Around half were taken with a Nikon D300 (2007, APS-C size sensor), the rest were taken with the Nikon D700 (2009, full frame) and one image was taken with my iPhone4. I mention this as some folk get caught up with the need to update their gear every year and also get involved in silly debates about the need for a full frame camera fro landscapes. I challenge anyone to differentiate between the smaller size sensor images and the full frame ones, and to date, no one has been able to identify the one image taken with the iPhone! V7 of this sequence won 2nd place at the Northern Ireland AV Festival in 2014. This is V9; which was lengthened in order to submit it to the 2015 UK Photo Harmony 5 to 8 Competition.

Windows version, an exe file zipped, 50MB, 1920x1200. This can only be viewed on a Windows computer, not on a smartphone / tablet.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1y8vfvhbn5umn85/scotland_V9.zip

Mac version, an app file zipped, 50MB, 1920x1200. This can only be viewed on a Mac computer, not on a smartphone / tablet.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/vvs8p8sf9mm6fs5/scotland_V9_mac.zip

MP4 version, this a streaming video hosted by Vimeo and will play on all smartphones and tablets. It is best viewed by clicking on the "HD" bottom at the bottom right of the player. You will need broadband.

https://vimeo.com/123150325

[cead]

Mark,

Congratulations on this great result !

Frans

[smithrg]

Mark,

Fantastic, I can see how you won!

All the best, Robert

[Bert]

Mark,

Great show with beautiful composed landscapes and soaring music. (Having seen your Iceland show also, you have a real eye for those stark landscapes).

Congratulations on winning with this show.

Bert

[trailertrash]

Great win Mark. How good it is to see my homeland in such glory.

[Almark]

Judges comments:

“You know when you see the first picture that this is going to be special. The photography throughout is stunning. The Ken Burns effect of gently zooming every image helps keep the momentum going. The "Adagio" from the film "Sunshine" is a wonderful piece and the drama of the music complements the drama of the landscapes completely. Maybe the author should warn the projectionist to keep the volume down during the relatively quiet beginning otherwise the audience will get blown away! The images and transitions are totally in sync with the music. Here is somebody who listens to and knows his music. There is perfect harmony between successive images, shapes, colours, with not a single jarring line or horizon. Great care has been taken constructing this sequence, helped by the fact that the author no doubt has a large number of first class pictures from which to choose. The whole thing builds and develops. Swells in the music are used to highlight the close ups of rocks, barnacles and ice fragments. The percussion is used to show the railway section. When I saw the classic image of the Cuillins from Elgol I thought "this is the end", but the final picture was even better. It's clear from the filename (v9) that this has undergone a lengthy period of revision, honing and pruning, so that what we see today is powerful, passionate and intense. This is a good lesson, not to be satisfied with the first attempt. The only criticism I have is that the title is what I would call a "working title". Such a dramatic presentation needs a dramatic title, "The drama of the Highlands" or "Elemental landscape", "Wild Scotland", "Untamed wilderness"...”

Malcolm Imhoff, FRPS FACI(M)

[Almark]

(Taken from PAGB May E-News and RPS AV News Issue 200,)

I am an amateur photographer; I do not hold any photographic distinctions or do any commercial work. I’m retired and, for me, both photography and creating slideshows are a merely a most enjoyable hobby. The “Scotland” sequence was two years in the making and, as alluded to by Malcolm, was at version 9. I had plenty of pictures to choose from and the multiple versions were all about getting the colours of the images to flow, “just so”, but also exactly match the music. It was great to read Malcolm’s feedback and realise that his expert eye identified the many nuances I had included. The latest version of Pictures To Exe allowed me to increase, or decrease, the sound envelope - to draw attention to certain slides.

I’m dyslexic, so I work slightly differently to my fellow AV workers (so I’m told.) For me, the music must come first. One evening; while driving and listening to Classic FM ‘at the movies’ I first heard the "Adagio" from the film "Sunshine". I immediately said to myself – “Scotland” - and version 1 was created. I naively called V7 “final”, but then spent some considerable time working on the last four slides. These were: the bridge framing the view of the mountains; then the tree appears under the bridge and then melts into the side of the honeycomb cliff at Elgol, that then finally melts to a ten stopper version of a similar view to the first slide. I wanted to ‘bookend’, or link, the first and last image.

Almost all of the images were taken with a tripod during a dedicated photography trip to Glencoe and the Isle of Skye. I used a Nikon D300 and D700 and my iPhone 4 and spent a lot of time getting the composition just right. On some occasions this meant waiting for that interesting cloud to move to just where I wanted it. All images were adjusted with Capture NX and only cropped to fit my ratio of choice 16:10. I use this ratio; as I know, when I take the photo, I will only have to slice a small amount off the top and bottom. I therefore compose the image with this in mind.

On an aside, about half of the images were taken with a camera with an APS-C size sensor, the others with a full frame sensor and one image was taken with my iPhone4. No one can differentiate between them and, to date, no one has been able to pick out the iPhone4 image!