Lake Light Exhibition at the Woolpack Ending Soon!

My Lake Light exhibition at the Woolpack Inn in Eskdale is ending in a few days time, on 31st October.

Here are a few photos that I took on Jan's Nikon D90 digital camera when we stayed at the Woolpack to run a course in early October.

There were 23 photos to start with, a few less now with sales.

Hurry if you want to see it before it comes down!
All at reduced prices too.

Lake Light Exhibition at the Woolpack Inn, Boot in Eskdale, until 31st October

Here are some pictures of my Lake Light exhibition at the Woolpack Inn in Boot in Eskdale (taken by Emma Aylett of Travelling Curators who organised and hung the exhibition as part of the Lives in the Landscape exhibitions in Eskdale and Ravenglass). It is on display until the 31st October 2012.

There are 23 traditional hand-printed archival framed black and white photographs in total, so lots to see. We will be there from the 2nd to the 5th October (running a photo course based at the Woolpack but taking in Eskdale, Wasdale and Ravenglass) if you want a chat in the evenings. I will take my own shots then, maybe some wider views too if I can get in before the bar opens to the public!

Most of the photographs are taken from my 3rd book, Lake Light, available through my web site, booksellers (quote ISBN 978-0-9555627-1-6) or Amazon UK.

Lake Light Exhibition at the Woolpack Inn, Eskdale

A new exhibition of a selection of my Lake District photographs has just opened at the Woolpack Inn in the village of Boot in Eskdale. It runs from 1st September to 31st October 2012 and can be viewed during normal pub opening hours.

There are 23 framed photographs from 40 x 30cm to 70 x 70cm with prices from £95 to £200. Every photograph was hand printed by me using traditional darkroom techniques on Ilford Multigrade FB fine art photographic paper.

The selection is based upon my Lake Light book but there are quite a few new images included.

Jan delivered the pictures on Wednesday and the exhibition was hung in our absence so no pictures of it yet!

It is part of the Lives in the Landscape exhibitions that are running in the Eskdale valley and Ravenglass, so there's lots to see.

Storey Exhibition End

We went up to Lancaster today to take down my Lake Light exhibition. It had been up for several weeks and we made some sales. Took a lot longer to put up than take down!

Our next exhibition is the ICHF Chilterns Craft Show at Stonor Park near Henley on Thames over the August Bank Holiday.

Lake Light Exhibition at The Storey in Lancaster

I have an exhibition at The Storey in the centre of Lancaster, in the Thomas Storey Room. This is just 200 yards from Lancaster Castle, on the city centre side, so you should be able to find it without sat nav!

A total of 25 framed photographs from 25 x 20 cm to 70 x 70 cm are on display with another 50 mounted photographs in a browser.

The exhibition was opened on Friday 1st July and ends on Wednesday 10th August (we actually take it down on 11th August 2011, so you could actually see it on the morning of the 11th if you have no other time to get in there!).

They are all black and white photographs of the Lake District across all seasons and in all weathers. lots of big views, waterfalls, lakes, trees, snow and ice, as well as the odd infra-red shot. They can all be purchased on the day, you don't have to wait until the end of the exhibition. The framed photographs are priced from £25 to £300, all very reasonable Derbyshire prices, not London ones!

Here are some images (taken by Jan on a little Panasonic Lumix camera) of the gallery and exhibition to give you a better idea. Hope you like them.

New Lecture in Warrington

Lake Light, my new lecture, will be presented for a second time Tuesday evening at Warrington Photographic Society. Drop by if you can. It's a mixture of cities and landscapes.

Great Dome Art Fair

We have been getting ready for the Great Dome Art Fair. It starts with the preview tomorrow evening 7pm to 9pm. Please do come along if you are able to.

The main show is open 10am to 4.30pm Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th. I am giving a talk on Saturday afternoon at 2pm on Lake Light, my new book. 29 pictures from the Lake District, many printed specially for this talk, and the story behind each picture. Lots of other new photos on show too as well as book offers, courses and posters.

Hope to see you there. Dave

New Web Sites for Each Book

I now have a web site for each of my 3 books. They give a better impression of each book than was previously available on my main site, http://www.davebutcher.co.uk/books-and-writing.

If you are interested have a look by clicking on each link in turn.
Lake Light: http://www.lakelight.co.uk/
Peak Light: http://www.peaklight.co.uk/
High Light: http://www.highlightbook.co.uk/

Hope you like them!
Dave

Focus on Imaging is Over for Another Year

The big photo and imaging show Focus on Imaging, at the NEC Birmingham, is over for another year. We made it home by 8.30pm last night having gone down on Saturday to set up. This year we were back with our friends on the Harman Technology / Ilford Photo stand who kindly gave Jan and I space for a display of Lake District photos and to sell my books and courses. We also launched Lake Light, my third book, this time on the Lake District.

We saw lots of old friends and met many new ones but now it's back to ship a few web orders and go in the darkroom to print some photographs. I'm in the Gallery in Buxton tomorrow so will get some exercise walking the 12 miles there and back. Saturday it's up to the Lakes before running a 3 day course meeting up  Sunday evening then Monday to Wednesday photography. Fingers crossed for good weather!

Great day here in the Peak District, blue sky and white fluffy clouds but cold out of the sun, about 8C. I can still see small patches of snow on Combs Moss, the hill I can see out of the window from my desk.

Focus on Imaging

Just had a very nice meal and evening with our good friends Peter and Sally Moore and winding down ready for tomorrow.

The Focus on Imaging exhibition is about to start tomorrow at 10 am at the NEC Birmingham. I'm on the Ilford Photo side of the Harman Technology stand C2.

My new book on the Lake District, Lake Light - The Lake District Photography of Dave Butcher is launched on Sunday 7th March at 10am. I have offers on all of my books. For the 4 days of the show Lake Light is £12, Peak Light and High Light are £10 each. If you buy all 3 they cost £30, RRP for all three is £42,98.

The stand is all set up ready to go tomorrow. There is a small display of pictures from Lake Light hand printed on Ilford Multigrade FB archival silver gelatin paper and a picture from one of my digital files from a negative scan printed by the Ilford printing service on multigrade RC silver gelatin paper.

Come by for a chat if you are able to. Dave

Lake Light Published

Lake Light - The Lake District Photography of Dave Butcher is now available.

The printers delivered all 1500 copies this morning. Orders already received have been shipped. The official launch is at the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC Birmingham, the largest annual photography and imaging show in Europe. We go down tomorrow to set up. The show runs from Sunday to Wednesday. Jan and I are on the Ilford Photo side of the Harman Technology stand C2 (near the entrance to Hall 9). I will be doing 4 days of book signing and talking about my courses and the £1000 competition that I'm running with Harman and B+W Photography magazine (in the current March issue). Hope to see some of you there. Dave

Lake Light Print Run

Yesterday afternoon I heard that Lake Light was going to be printed this morning so I had an early start to drive the 27 miles across to South Yorkshire Printers in Sheffield for 8.30pm. I was there in good time despite the traffic and then watched the first plate be printed. This was printing 4 pages from the book. Right from the start print quality was pretty good and with a few minor tweaks was even better.

I gave the go ahead and 15 minutes later 1500 copies were finished and in a stack on the floor to await printing the reverse face when the ink had dried. The plan is to print today and tomorrow and Saturday if needed. The cover was also being printed and this looked good too. After printing it will be lacquered to a high gloss before it can be bound.

The binding is done by another company so I'm unlikely to receive copies until the end of next week. I was hoping to have for Wednesday 3rd so that I could take them to my next camera club lecture to Chapel-en-le-Frith Camera Club.

Can't wait to see the final books and start selling them at Focus on Imaging at the NEC.

Lake Light to Printers

At long last my new book Lake Light is with the printers in Sheffield. Hope to soon hear when it will be printed. I will go over to check print quality when they start the print run.

It has 89 images, a foreword by Joe Cornish, location map, technical data for all images and an article on using digital cameras for taking black and white landscapes.

Lake Light can be ordered now through my web site. Copies will be shipped next week.

The formal book launch will be at the Focus on Imaging exhibiton at the NEC Birmingham 7th to 10th March. I will be on the Harman Technology / Ilford Photo stand (C2 in Hall 9) doing 4 days of book signing.

More Snow here in the Peak District

It's snowing again as I look out of the office window. There is about 3 inches everywhere, no wind so it's just coming straight down and not being blown around.

Swapped our 7 year old Toyota RAV 4 for a 3 month old ex-demo Nissan Pathfinder on Wednesday. It has 7 seats so we can now use just 1 car for courses, it is also considerably larger inside so has more space for our exhibition stand stuff for when we do shows. Then Thursday we used it to go to Melbourne, the one just south of Derby rather than the one in Australia, where I gave a lecture. It was snowing as we drove over the Peak District. On the way home all well until about 10 miles north of Ashbourne heading for Buxton, the road was blocked by an accident (the road was covered by snow but underneath was black ice - very slippery). We turned round and returned to Ashbourne for fuel, all garages shut so on to Derby then returned to Ashbourne. Another accident on the A52 had blocked the road since we came through so we sat there for over a half hour (now 1.30 am). Then traffic reports on the sat nav showed the A6 blocked by another accident near Buxton so we decided to try returning through Leek and Macclesfield, which was fine. Just the 4 hours to do a 1.5h journey, arriving home at 3am! The car was rock solid on some very dodgy roads, a good test for the 4 wheel drive. Needless to say I decided to drive into the Buxton Gallery a few hours later rather than walking since I have to get up at 6am if I'm walking to give me time to do my stretches for my bad back and I need more than 2.5h sleep!

It's been trying to snow on and off for several days now but today we have had 3 or 4 inches and the hills look great. It's stopped snowing and it's brightening up.

Don't forget, Focus on Imaging at the NEC Birmingham starts in exactly 2 weeks time - Sunday 7th March. I will be on the Harman Technology stand near the entrance to Hall 9 doing the launch and signing of my new book Lake Light. Hope to see some of you there. Dave Butcher

Lake Light 3rd Proof

I sent off the edited version of the 3rd proof of Lake Light last night. It's pretty much done and, with a couple of minor edits, will be sent to Joe Cornish so that he can write the foreword.
Cover design is done too.

As we are moving forward so well and the launch date is getting closer we have added Lake Light to the Books page on the web site. If you would like a copy you can now order it by paying £15 (post free worldwide).
It will be shipped when available (late Feb/early March) in the order in which orders are received.
Encouragingly, I already have several orders.
The official launch will be at the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC 7th to 10th March but we should have the book a week or so before this so those ordering early will receive their signed copies of Lake Light before anyone else.

With the new layout it looks like there will be 88 or 89 photographs in the book. For a long time it looked like it would be 85 but Andy changed the layout and needed more images to make it work.
Dave Butcher

Thaw Begins

The temperature was above freezing for the first time in 3 or 4 weeks and the snow, that is still several inches deep, is now soft and wet. There was fresh snow last night, not much here but enough, with a strong wind behind it, to close all roads into and out of Buxton except the A6. I had to go into Buxton today and thought Long Hill was open, since it wasn't mentioned on any reports, but the road closed sign was out when I got there so turned around and went to Chapel and used A6.

Bit busy at moment trying to tie off loose ends before leave on photo trip on Wednesday. Tomorrow (or later today!) will be a busy day.

Just returned 3rd proof of Lake Light book. Saw the map for the first time, just 1 edit to this and 1 edit to image captions, so that was good. Should be able to send to Joe Cornish to write foreword later this week.
Dave

New Lake District Images

The last batch of images for Lake Light have also been added to the web site. Here are a few samples.

Dave Butcher

Lake Light Edits

I received the first proof of Lake Light just before Christmas and at long last the final edits on it are finished. All the headers and captions are sorted. There will be 85 Lake District images. The map now has all the locations marked on it. The technical data table is finished. The book is divided into 3 sections, each with an introduction, and all of these are written. There is also an article on using digital cameras for black and white landscape photography, after all this is what most people come on my courses to learn about.

I will send off all the edit files tomorrow to Andy, the book designer I am using. I look forward to receiving the 2nd proof sometime next week. Hopefully that will be close to the final copy. Then a copy will go to Joe Cornish so that he can write the foreword while I'm in USA on photo trip. Then to the printers in February ready for big launch on Harman/Ilford stand at Focus on Imaging at the NEC 7th to 10th March.

Still keeping fingers crossed until all done!
Dave Butcher

Gallery in the Gardens Day Today

I'm typing this while in the Gallery in the Gardens all day. Very quiet here today, maybe down to the cold wet weather outside! Not many people around at all.

Apart from writing this blog I am also taking advantage of the quiet time to write some text for my new book. The final set of images was sent on Monday which just leaves the introduction text and photo location map to do. Hope to complete everything this week but map may have to wait until after Christmas.

Final printing sesions before Christmas are tomorrow (Thursday) and Monday 21st. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I'm busy with a private 1-to-1 course so hope the weather is better than today or we will get wet! The forecast is for snow tomorrow which would be great as long as it brightens up in time for Friday.
Dave Butcher

New Lake District Photographs on Web Site

I have been busy pulling together photographs for my new book, Lake Light, on the Lake District. Another batch of 60 is now on the web site. Just click the link here to go straight there.

Not all will be in the book but a sizeable number will be. More to follow in the next week or so.
Dave Butcher