Category: Photography

My Best Photo of 2022

It seems a bit vain to choose what I think is my best photo of 2022. So, I’ve chosen this based on the number of likes my photos have gotten on Social Media platforms that are generally used by other photographers (Vero, Flickr, the M43 Reddit Sub), and this one was miles in front of the others.

The fact that it’s one of my most recent photos’ is pleasing, as I feel it shows that I’m getting better. It also shows that getting up early and a bit of planning really does pay off. I really took my time with this one and waited until the mist had cleared enough that the foreground was clear, but there was enough remaining in the distance to add another texture and mystery to where the line leads the eye. Well, in my mind anyway. I also worked to get into a position where the sun was behind one of the trees so that it didn’t over expose the top left of the image. I actually took two versions of this. One was a five stop bracket, and the other just a single exposure. This version is just the single exposure. The G9 did did a great job of keeping the contrast in the whole image, and the detail is amazing. One for printing and framing I think.

That’s it for this year. I’m really looking forward to 2023 and all of the trips we have planned. It’s going to be an exciting one.

A Week Without Photography

After last week’s spectacular winter frost and mist s we’re back to the standard grey wintery days we get in this part of Yorkshire. Flat grey sky, damp, not particularly cold, all the leaves and plants are rotting or brown, everything is muddy – just dull, Not really great for taking photos’. Plus, it’s the run up to Christmas, so free time is rare but I am planning to get out on the moors tomorrow morning, even if it’s just for some quiet time and fresh air. I’ll take a camera – just in case.

More New Gear

My faithful old (2014) Mac mini gave up on me last week. Absolutely gutted as it’s been with me for so long, but it was getting slow, especially when running Lightroom. So, I ordered a new one. As it wasn’t the standard spec (I wanted as much RAM as possible) I had to order it from Apple’s web site, but it came all the way from China in a week. I’m very impressed with it. The M1 chip and extra Ram make it blazingly fast. It makes my 2020 MacBook Pro look slow and that was the highest spec 13-inch model at the time. I hooked it up to my Apple AirPort Time Capsule (yes, I still use one of those – I think they should still make them) and loaded my last Time Machine back up, and it was ready to go in no time. Hopefully, that’s the last I’ll need to spend on photography gear in a while now. It’s been an expensive year. That said, I would quite like a Macro lens…..

Weather permitting I’ll get something worth photographing tomorrow. If not, lots of plans for next year already in the pipeline.

Out in the Cold

I finally got to take my new G9 this week. I had to wait longer than I’d like after having steroid injections in my eyes, but it paid off as winter has finally arrived.

An afternoon where the temperature didn’t get above -4oC meant the frost was around all day, and a clear sky meant I could see if the G9 stabilisation was as good as I hoped. It didn’t disappoint, as I didn’t need to get my tripod out until sunset (except to try the high resolution mode). I am loving the G9. What a great camera Panasonic have made, except for the flipping shutter button. Why did they make it so sensitive? If nothing else it’s forced me to finally get used to back button focusing.

Things I’ve learned this week

Bracketing – I need to do less of this and just focus on one photo.
Peak Design Tripod – I need to use this more. It weighs more than my other tripods, but it works better and the ball head can’t be beaten.
Going to the same place repeatedly- is worth it. I’m still finding new compositions and obviously places change with seasons.
The value of backing up – my Mac Mini died this week. Thankfully everything was backed up onto an external drive, Creative Cloud and iCloud. New one us coming on Monday!

Winter has been good for photography so far. It’s important to go out prepared though. Always take tea!

I didn’t have to go far for this one. Just the landing window, my little G100, a 45-150 lens, and a Gorillapod. Really pleased with this one.

This version is a low res j-peg, but the original is a massive 140mg high res from my G9. Taken from about 500m away at 300mm. Not a great composition, but an amazing exam of what the camera can do.

I bought another camera….

Yup. Another camera, because two wasn’t enough. So, I got my dream camera the LUMIX G9. I’ve looked at this camera for a long time, since it first came out in 2018 but it’s always been out of my reach financially. There I was browsing the Black Friday sales and I found the body on sale at £700. I didn’t have £700 for another new camera so I closed the browser and got on with cleaning my camera shelves – where my unused DJI Mavic Mini 3 was sat gathering dust. Since I lost the vision in my right eye I’ve never felt safe flying a drone for photography, and I’m not sure I ever would. Anyway, lightbulb moment…..sell the drone I never use, buy the camera. So, I did. Part exchange, straight swap.

Not my actual camera….

After a faff around with deliver due to postal strike (posties have my full support), it arrived yesterday. It’s huge, and heavy compared to my current bodies, but not in the grand scheme of cameras.

Unfortunately, my eyes are painful so I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, and I’m in hospital next week. Hopefully I’ll get out with it before Christmas.

Panthers, Deer and Geese.

The one benefit of not sleeping is it’s really easy to get up and get out of the house before sunrise. So, this morning (Saturday) I found myself at Hatfield Moors at 7am, a full forty five minutes before sun rise. Thankfully I have a very good head torch that turns night into day, and the early morning sky was starting to turn into a plan blue.

I had the fright of my life walking through the woodland as a fairly large deer burst from the bushes to my left and cleared the pathway in a single bound before disappearing into the woodland. That will wake anyone up quicker than the strongest espresso. Once I’d got my breath back and realised I wasn’t about to be eaten by a panther (this is the kind of stuff that goes through my head walking through the woods in the dark – don’t read crap online) I made my way to my first point I wanted to photograph.

I’ve been trying to get a decent photo of this location for ages now, and this is my favourite so far, although I still think there’s a better photo there with the right sky or perhaps a bit of mist. I’ll keep trying. I stood at this point for about 15 minutes waiting for the light. During that time there were thousands (!) of geese flying in hundreds of flocks of V formations. I’ve never seen anything like it, and it was worth going early just to see it. Unfortunately, it was too dark to get a photo.

My next plan was to get onto the moors. I wanted to get the marsh land with the sunrise. I had the photo in mind, but again – the light and cloud had different ideas to me. I did get this nice photo of some fungus.

I also go this shot, but it’s very noisy after being edited. If I get back there next weekend I’ll bracket the same photo and see if that works better. I might run this through Luminar and see if that does a better job than Lightroom.

So, only one photo I really like – out of 60-odd taken. There were a lot more that made it to editing, but felt grey sky and flat landscape make a challenging location for photography. I also ran out of time as my wife was picking me up. But, that’s ok. I enjoyed my time out of the house and that’s the point really.

Editing Photographs

I am not a big fan of over edited photos’. I don’t mind cropping or straightening, they’re simple fixes that don’t change the look or the tone of the photo. But, when it comes to changing exposure, contrast, black point and all of the other changes we can make these days I think you can always tell when a photo has been over-edited and it looks unnatural. My dad (who I caught the photo bug from) and his generation shot on film, which meant they had to get everything right there and then, and what they captured was usually what the eye would see – which, to me seems a much more artistic and skilful process. So, am I missing out? Am I not making my photos’ the absolute best they can be? I’ve just downloaded Lightroom on my Mac and iPads and over the next few months I’ll see which I think is better.

A Break from the Norm

Four days in Amsterdam. Not the relaxing time I was hoping for. It’s a manic city with cars, bikes, buses and trams coming at you from all sides at breakneck speeds, so for someone with limited vision it’s not the best place to visit. As it was a boozy trip and my luggage space was limited I didn’t take an actual camera, so I did what I could with my iPhone when I was sober enough.