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Pinhole

Recently my work has drifted towards a darker more abstract side, I’ve been using quite a lot of camera movement within this, which normally means shutter speeds of 0.3 to 2 seconds. In daylight the bottom end of this is just about achievable with ISO 100 and f/22 but sometimes you need to get things darker, a polariser or ND8 usually get me in the right ballpark.

That’s all easy enough on the Canon 6D but often I only have a Fuji X-M1 in my pocket, the 27mm lens has an awkward 39mm filter thread and I don’t really want to be messing about with filters on there, the point of that camera is compact portability. The other downside is it maxes at ISO 200 and f/16, so I’m miles away from getting the slow shutter I need.

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Misty Woodland

I’d been meaning to post this blog a fortnight ago but struggle with time to write so better late than never.

Trees, forests and woodland have been featuring in my photography more and more, mainly because it’s the sort of place I most enjoy spending time, relaxing away from work and people. One of the big draws was to find some mist having seen stunning atmospheric shots from photographers I admire. Autumn completely passed by in a blur with the birth of my daughter so I thought I’d be waiting another year but woke up to thick fog on an early March morning.

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ICM Reflections, Behind the Scenes

If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram you will have recently seen me post a dark black and white photo of some blurry trees, if not then here it is.

Above and Below

I entered it into a couple of regular weekly competitions on Twitter, one of which being Fotospeed Print Mondays where a photo from that weekend is chosen to win an A3 print. For those who don’t know Fotospeed they make fantastic papers, so if you print your work do check them out.

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Winter Forest

Snow Photos

Most people get excited at the prospect of snow round here, especially photographers as it transforms the landscape and opens up lots of different shots which wouldn’t normally work. We only seem to get one day with a decent covering each year recently so you have to make the most of the opportunity!

It wasn’t exactly a blizzard but we woke up this morning to a light dusting, enough that out in the countryside it had settled well, so I set off at 7:30 to catch first light and spend a couple of hours walking round a local spot near Calverton, Nottingham where there’s an area of woodland and the old colliery spoil heap to get some views from.

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New Year's Resolutions 2016

If you read my last post (here) you would have seen that my first year really trying to get my photography out there started with a New Year’s resolution twelve months ago. Because of how well that turned out I’ve decided to make some more for 2016 and hopefully carry this on, so below are my new resolutions, I’m looking forward to seeing how I get on with these.

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Review of 2015

Some of you may know that this year has been my first actually trying to get my photography out there, it’s been a hobby for a good few years now but past sharing on a few sites like Flickr and 500px I hadn’t taken it any further.

A lot has changed in the last year so I thought it was worthy of a quick round up!

Towards the end of 2014 a few people made comments on my photos which gave me the confidence that they might be popular outside family & friends, so I made a New Year’s resolution to try and sell a print to someone I didn’t know.

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Forest Abstracts

In a couple of weeks I’ll be making some photography resolutions for the New Year, one that will definitely be on there is to take my camera out more, take more photos and experiment. More on that in a later post, but for now I’ve started early during a short family walk in a local patch of woodland this morning.

Often I wouldn’t even take my camera on a trip like that or I’d come away without taking any photos I was happy with, so today I made a conscious effort to try something new, to take photos and come away with something that was worth sharing. This led to some fun with longer exposures, panning the camera up through the trees as the shutter was open. I’ve seen these techniques referred to recently as ICM or Intentional Camera Movement but it’s a great way of trying something more abstract.

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Amateur Photographer Christmas Cover Competition

  • News

A while back I entered a couple of photos into the Amateur Photographer magazine competition to be on the cover of the Christmas edition.

The magazine came out this week and I didn’t make the cover, but from over 500 entries I made the shortlist of 20 runners up alongside some stunning photos of winter scenes including a few from some very talented photographers I know from Twitter.

My photo is shown in the magazine in a small mockup alongside the other shortlisted shots and you can also read the article online here.

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What Digital Camera Feature

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One of my photos is featured in the December issue of What Digital Camera magazine which is out now in shops and digital format online.

This came off the back of a previous feature for Amateur Photographer which is a sister magazine and also included this image as part of my portfolio.

This is in the ‘Things to try this month’ section where some other stunning photos are shown with tips on compositions or techniques to try out.

Not my usual landscape photography style, this shot was a chance capture that caught my eye on the walk back from a birdwatching trip so I’m really pleased that it has now been published in two national magazines.

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Shooting Landscapes in Portrait

Composition is a very subjective thing, there are lots of guidelines like the rule of thirds but as clichéd as it sounds these are all there to be broken. One thing I have found as I’ve been learning photography is that I often prefer landscapes shot in portrait orientation which might not be the most obvious or conventional approach.

I think it’s always worth trying when you’re shooting your next landscape, take a portrait version of the same scene and see the difference it makes to the photograph.

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