Ogwen Valley and Tryfan

August 23rd, 2010

Untitled from Craig Magee on Vimeo.

Video from a recent trip to Ogwen Valley / Nant Ffrancon to start a book project on North Wales that I’ve had in mind for a while. Don’t want to give to much away yet, but should be a really nice project.

I got two out of the three shots I wanted that day, the rain interrupted the third. All of them involved some pretty awkward shooting positions but this one was the trickiest, requiring balancing the tripod, and myself, between three rocks.

Definitely going to be a fun project .

Making use of the Sealskinz

August 5th, 2010

Untitled from Craig Magee on Vimeo.

What you don’t quite get in this video is that I’m perched on a couple of rocks on the sides of the river flow, feet are totallysubmerged in cold Welsh river water! The middle is knee deep! totally buying some of the longer socks. Question is normal black ones or the olive and grey ones they make for the tweed brigade!?

Grey Grey Wales

August 5th, 2010

Well I’ve had this commission to shoot of Cadair Idris for the last month and annoyingly most of that time its been cloudy and wet! I went today with Sherpa Paul (!!) with high hopes and… well… see below!

GREY CADAIR from Craig Magee on Vimeo.

Pistyll Rhaeadr

July 21st, 2010

Bottom part of Pistyll Rhaeadr, highest waterfall in Wales.

Socks? yeah Socks!

July 19th, 2010

One of my favourite bits of kit at the moment are my Sealskinz socks!

Might seem a bit odd that I’m not talking about a lens or tripod, but when your up to your ankles in a cold North Wales river, the fact your feet are nice and dry makes you a happy snapper. This is even better when your in the car with soaking wet shoes and your toes are all warm and toasty instead of freezing cold.

They are even fine to wear in the summer as the merino wool liner wicks sweat away.

I’ve got two pairs and would happily buy more. At £20ish quid they may seem expensive for socks, but for me, having happy feet makes them worth every penny.

(excuse the crappy iphone pic but was feeling lazy)

Manchesters CJC

June 24th, 2010


Couple of shots from trip to Manchester of the awesome CJC building.

5DmkII vs 4×5 neg

June 18th, 2010


Recently while shooting some new stuff for BaaBar I took a quick shot with the 4×5 on Portra 160nc. Thought it would be interesting to compare to the 5D. Not a particularly scientific test but it shows some interesting stuff. 5×4 is at the top by the way.

Check out the differences in the red light boxes, the Canon has some weird stuff going on were you can see the placement of the tubes as yellowy hotspots! I’ve not been able to get rid of them unless the image is massively underexposed. I’m guessing its to do with the spectral response of the 5D’s chip and its seeing more than the naked eye!

Click the images for larger versions on Flickr.

Back in Black (& White)

June 11th, 2010

It only took 10 years but I’ve shot some b&w film again. It’s FP4+ which ironically is out of date by 10 years! Not one of my favorite b&w films ever, but it was free and its not a bad film to ease back in with.

Fav shot from the batch is this of the new Museum of Liverpool. Can’t wait for the hording to be taken down and to get it shot on some proper b&w like Fuji Acros

Nant Ffrancon

June 6th, 2010

View up Nant Ffrancon

Recent shot of Nant Ffrancon, Ogwen Valley. Love this view towards the Glyders

Surely all planes are the same?!

June 2nd, 2010

Recently I bought a new camera bag that I could use for traveling with as well as a new home for my expanding 5×4 kit. Its a Lowepro Pro Trekker 400, not a small bag but is surprisingly light and, importantly, Lowepro say its Carry-on compatible.

I was a little unsure on the size but couldn’t find anything else suitable really. I need one that can carry the 5×4, some Canon kit and a laptop. A week later i find myself panicking that really its to damn big so I do some research to see what the sizes are for Carry-on with the airlines I use. What I find is that while they are in the same ballpark there are some big differences.

Widths of bags can vary as much as 10cm, depths and heights 5-6cm.

I’m kind of confused as to why?!? I would of thought that there would be a standardization of this between airlines and aircraft manufacturers so everyone knows were they stand. Instead you end up with a bit of a lottery as to whether your bag is gonna be ok to take on the plane or not.

So I took a little trip to the airport to try the bag in a few of the cages they have there for measuring Carry-on.

It fits in Easyjet’s with out a problem, which is good because I prefer to fly with them, but it wouldn’t go anywhere near Ryanair’s and Flybe’s was a really tight squeeze, in fact so tight I didn’t bother forcing the bag in. There is all of about 2-5cm variation in depth there and its a shock how much difference it made. Maybe that’s why the variation, no-one can agree on the right size, or some airlines want to cram more baggage into smaller lockers!

So as I can’t just fly Easyjet all the time, and some international airlines spec the same size as Ryanair, the bag is up for sale and I’m back to trying to find a suitable one. Which isn’t to bad ’cause I do like a bit of kit research!