Ian Emmerson Photo's: Joe Cornish

Joe Cornish has been taking pictures for well over 30 years and has established himself as one our most sort after landscape photographers He was born in Exeter but now resides in North Yorkshire where he has based his studio, from here he and some friends not only produce his images but also hold workshops in photography and post production. He studied at Art at Reading University and was there that he became interested in photography.

In 1980 after graduating he worked as an assistant photographer in both London and Washington DC. His big break came in 1985 in the form of his travel photography; he was accepted into Charlie Waite's photolibrary for his landscape pictures. This then led onto over a decade of supplying his images to over thirty travel books, some of which only used his images in their publication .This was to be the making of Joe’s career as it led onto him being a well established landscape photographer. So much so, he was in 1991, invited to be the Raleigh expedition photographer for their event in Alaska. After this he moved onto supplying the National Trust with his images and continue to do so upto this day .

Above are two images, the top being Cornish's followed by mine , his taken in the North York moors as in comparison with mine which was taken in one of the most southern point of England , Lands End. I'm not sure which format was used by Joe on this occasion but certainly a wide angled lens was used . I did not attempt to re create this image but to produce one to give similar feel to it . Both have you imaging your self standing in the image with texture of the ground being in the foregound then as you look up all is in focus as far as you can see. Joe's image is a recent one so may have been taken with his 39mega pixel digital back a Phase One P-45+ attached to a Linhof Techno field camera. This enables him to still work with the large format camera he is used to but have the all flexibility of the digital camera as well. I had planned to vistit Lizard Point with the intent of capturing the sunrise and surrounding countryside . This image was taken after the sun had risen at 08.37 but had left the camrea set at ISO of 400 which I'd used for the sun rise an hour earlier but had still had to use a shutter speed of 1 second to cope with the emerging light compounded as well as I wanted to use a small apature, f22, to help keep the background in focus. We arrived at Lizards Point at around 0630hrs to give us time to set up and find a suitable postions to use.At this point it was still dark so had to take extra cae under foot to ensure our safety came fisrt as we were quite close to cliffs over looking the sea. For this image I used my Nikon D3100 with its kit lens which I set to its widest at 18mm and my tripod which was essential due to the slow shutter speed . Looking at mine in comparison you can see that it was taken too early in the day I have had to process my image to get the desired effect also after looking on my home computer I have spotted that my focus point is to near the fore gound , having a focus point perhaps around the 2/3rds up the picture may have helped to have a better balanced image where as it is the back ground is out of focus in comparrison to Joe's which stays focused to the top of the image.

100 ISO , 1/20sec , f32

The next two images show mine at the top and Cornish's below. My image was taken also in Cornwall in a village called Porthleven. On this occasion I haven't post proccesed my image. This was taken in the morning so the sun was over the sea by then , to get this image I had spent a little time trying to find some larger rocks as can be seen in Cornish's but had to do with was available . As this was taken from ground level so having to rest the camera directly onto the pebbles it took quite a few shots before I was pleased with the result to use as a comparrison. I used my Nikon D3100 with it's standard lens and set it to it's smallest apature to capture as much detail as possible and used 100 ISO and a shutter speed of 1/20th . With Cornish's shot you get a real feelng of texture to it, with the stones in the foreground giving a gritty and cold feeling to the scene. Then the sence of how time is working with nature on the beach together to be able to create such a beautiful landscape.