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Embleton Bay

I’ve recently spent a week on a family holiday, staying just outside Embleton in Northumberland. The last time I visited the area was around 4 years ago and you can see the images from that trip in a previous blog post here.

That previous visit had a mix of fairly traditional landscape images and more abstract impressions which was a reasonable reflection of my style at the time. I had some specific evenings taking the camera out for photography and was treated to decent weather with some nice evening light.

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Infrared Filter

For years I’ve seen photos taken with infrared converted cameras and loved the look and feel, but never had the money to buy or convert a camera body myself.

I recently decided just to pick up a cheap infrared filter for the kit lens on my Fuji X-M1 which I use quite a bit for abstract work, and see how I got on with it.

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On the Doorstep

I’m on a bit of a mission of self discovery in my photography at the moment, the last 6 months or so has been a huge learning curve for me in terms of subject, style and processing. This has lead to a lot of new work which I’m happy with but also long periods of self doubt and creative block.

A well known weekly competition on Twitter has been my driving force this year to take photographs every week, I know the majority of my entries don’t stand a chance but my resolution to enter every week has forced me to get out and take something I’m not ashamed to share even when I’m feeling uninspired, which is a massive positive.

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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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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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