As a photographer who tends to hop from one genre to another (see previous post on genres), it’s not uncommon for me to forget about some ideas or inspiration then come back to them when they resurface. I’ve tried a few different ways to organise thoughts over the years to try not to lose anything good, including notebooks etc but the one that’s actually proven most useful was Google keep. I think this is largely because I can’t misplace it and I tend to get ideas at random times, so having a physical notebook that isn’t always with me never worked out (although the idea of a nicely bound collection of ideas is appealing). But returning to the topic at hand, I recently saw a few things that reminded me about the surrealism genre, one of the early things I dabbled in and it prompted my to go back and look in my ‘keep’ to see if I had any undeveloped ideas, which I did have. So I decided to realise some of those ideas, to varying degrees of success…
Raindrops: Behind the shot
I recently posted an abstract photo of some raindrops with an umbrella showing through them (Instagram post below), and I had someone ask me how I did it and if I could share some of the details of behind the scenes, so I thought I’d do a write up of how I set out with the shot and some of the reasoning behind it.
Driving in Poland
Driving for many is a normal part of every day, it’s not something you tend to give much thought to. However, anyone who’s driven while abroad/on holiday knows driving in another land is not so simple!
Tutorial – Football Photography
Following on from my previous post about starting out in sports photography, I thought I’d put something together about what I’ve learnt around shooting football matches. When I first started planning out a post on this, I wasn’t going to make it a tutorial (I’m still learning, so no master!) but as I’m writing this it’s apparent it is. So, this will be my take on how I shoot football games, and please comment/message me if you have any other tips or think I could do something better. One of my original aims for this post was that I could provide a sort of reference set, locations and focal lengths with example images to try to help people know what to expect depending on their lens availability and or location flexibility. Note – I’ve also included a video part to this tutorial so you can see what it looks like from where I’m sitting during the game (link to video). In the future I’d like to expand this to some other sports, so let me know if you have found this useful and I will try to make that happen, but for now I’ll start with football.
Sports photography – of the amateur kind
One of the first genres of photography I really spent much time on was sports photography (alongside wildlife), but then after a while it dropped off as I moved away from the area of the team I was shooting. However more recently I’ve got the sports photography buzz back again, so I thought it would be a good time to share some experience of how I’ve gotten the buzz back, and how others may find that trying sports photography is easier than they thought (and definitely something to try at least a few times).
Mushroom hunting
I’ve always enjoyed the process of growing or collecting my own food, whether that’s tomatoes, apples, other vegetables or even rabbits from the garden, but one thing I’d never explored was mushroom picking. It’s always seemed complex, risky and something people always have horror stories about. However in recent years we’ve gone out as a family with my father in law while visiting Poland, where this is much more common to the point where at the right time of year, everyone is out at their favourite patch. During these trips I learnt that while mushrooms are complex (There are roughly 15,000 species of fungi in the UK!), it’s possible to learn while being careful what can be taken safely, but more importantly I learnt that the process/experience is just as enjoyable as the eating.
Review – Osprey Poco AG premium child carrier
When getting ready to hike with small children, the first thing you’ll need to look for is a child carrier, and loving the outdoors as I do, this was actually the first baby related item I bought prior to the arrival of our first child (something my wife always likes to remind me of!). On the advice of a good friend I bought the Osprey Poco AG premium, which I’ve had now for nearly 3 years, so time for a review.
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Snowdonia November 2019 – My first trad experience
I recently managed to get out for a weekend trip to Snowdonia with a friend of mine to get in a bit of a winter hike up Snowdon and also get my first experience of trad climbing in what can only be described as typically Welsh weather!
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Polish food
An alternative name for this post could be “how I gained a few kilos”, but that aside it would be impossible to write a series on Poland without at least one post about the food. Not only because food is a topic worth discussing in any description of a place, but also its one of my vices, hence the aforementioned alternative title. So here is my best attempt at doing justice to the Polish cuisine.
My switch to Fujifilm
I recently went through the biggest change/investment in my photography since getting more serious nearly 8 years ago when I bought my first DSLR… I made the switch from Canon to a Fuji XT-3. I’ll share my thoughts behind the switch, and a review not of the technical details (there are so many reviews on this already), but more about user experience and the overall process.
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