Category: Thoughts

Supporting Independent Music – An Appeal

A little over 3 years ago, I had the good fortune to make contact with independent musician, JJ Lovegrove on what was then a service still called ‘Twitter’. I had a listen to a couple of tracks on Bandcamp and was instantly bowled over, investing in a CD of her then-current EP ‘Things Only THE daRk knows’ in short order.

First, I was captivated by Judi’s voice, then her music, and finally, and most thoroughly, her lyrics. In addition to the EP, I purchased Judi’s entire back catalogue on Bandcamp; this gave me access to  many excellent songs that didn’t feature on the EP.

Moving forward to 2023, I caught news of the impending arrival of Judi’s first album, “The Lines We Leave Behind”. I attended the online listening party before the album launch and was simply blown away by what I heard. No music had entranced me as thoroughly as this for a very long time. Elbow’s ‘Seldom Seen Kid’ was probably the previous occasion that an album had got under my skin and into my soul in quite the same way, but ‘The Lines We Leave Behind’ surpassed even that, by quite a way.

In the autumn of 2024, Judi produced her next EP, ‘Unravelled’, writing and recording the entire project in the space of a few weeks.

In addition to all of this, Judi produces some truly unique merchandise to accompany her music. A limited-edition CD of a live recording of ‘The Lines We Leave Behind’ (entitled ‘Behind The Lines We Leave’) was presented, along with a beautiful handcrafted booklet that tells the stories behind the songs, each copy of which was unique.

Currently, Judi is working on an EP ‘exploring D.H Lawrence, his words, his World & the ghosts we share’, with the Mercury Prize nominated Ed Harcourt in the producer’s chair. However, to do justice to this body of work, Judi wants to be able to book time in a proper studio, which is expensive.

Judi applied for funding for the recording, but wasn’t successful in securing that backing. About a week ago, she took the plunge and asked for help in funding the recording of the new EP. The fundraising has been going well, but any further contributions, no matter how small, would be greatly appreciated and could help give this EP the start in life it richly deserves.

You can read Judi’s own account of this fundraiser and a link to support the project via PayPal on her Substack here : https://substack.com/home/post/p-170265860 .

Judi is a tireless supporter of independent musicians who create music I love (in addition to her own), so I wanted to do my part to help her make this project a success.

Reflecting On The Past Year

Eilean Donan Castle at night.
Eilean Donan Castle at night.

It has been over a year since I wrote anything here. I’ve taken a bit of a break from blogging, but I have still been fairly active with my photography.

Why the break?

A couple of weeks after my previous post here, I suffered another bereavement. Much time was spent doing the Things That Need To Be Done. Death certificates, funeral arrangements, solicitors, house clearing…

And I seemed to jump straight from that to happier things – my sister’s wedding and my daughter’s graduation from University of Nottingham. Both happy events tinged with pangs of loss.

My sister and my new brother-in-law asked me to be their wedding photographer. It’s a role I’m always nervous of and I’ve only “officially” shot weddings on a handful of occasions. It was at a beautiful location in Scotland, Eilean Donan Castle. But a beautiful location held its photographic hazards. A big, high roofed, medieval great hall – stunning!

I knew I would need to use flash, but I didn’t get a chance to look at the room before the ceremony. I had a little “soft box” attachment for my flash but that caused too much light loss in this setting. The ceiling was a high timber raftered affair, not suitable for bouncing off. I just had to shoot with full on direct flash which led to lots of nasty glare and reflections. This in turn led to way too much work in post to try and remove or reduce the glare. Had I been able to spend a bit of time in the room before the ceremony I might have been able to find a happy balance of ISO and flash strength. However, a fantastic day.

JJ Lovegrove performing at the final Soundhive Social gig, Duffy's Bar, Leicester. 12th December 2024.
JJ Lovegrove performing at the final Soundhive Social gig, Duffy’s Bar, Leicester. 12th December 2024.

I’ve also done quite a bit in the way of “shooting musicians”. Quite a few gigs in small venues which I’ve enjoyed tremendously. I also did another promo shoot for Bellatones, I won’t share any of the photos from that shoot here as I view them as their property to share as they wish (or not).

Meanwhile I have been working on a photography project which I started thinking about very nearly a year ago. It will be a collection of ten photographs inspired by music from a favourite album. I have a few photos still to take, but I do have plans in place for each photo. I just need to get out and shoot them.

One of these photos involved three or four trips out to the planned location. I would get home, look at what I’d shot and then think of improvements and additional props that would add to the finished result. The residents of the little village I was shooting in must have been getting curious about why this strange bloke kept showing up with his camera and tripod and doing weird things on their main street. You’ll get to see just how weird this must have looked when I finally finish the project and publish the photos. I’m not going to publish any of the photos until I have them all “in the can” but then I will publish one at a time here.

View whilst ascending Moun t Blue Sky, Colorado, looking down towards Echo Lake.
View whilst ascending Moun t Blue Sky, Colorado, looking down towards Echo Lake.

I also enjoyed a trip to Colorado to visit my late wife’s family there. This would have been lovely and a great photo opportunity but for one thing. I had managed to totally evade Covid-19 for four and a half years. I had been ultra careful about it because I had been doing a lot of caring duties for my dad and I really didn’t want to pass anything like that on to him. However, passing through Heathrow and sitting on a direct flight to Denver finally defeated me. I started to feel rough after a couple of days and tested positive on the third day – not before I’d passed it on to the whole family over there. I had no clue I was ill until the evening of the second day and even then, I just thought I had a sore throat.

We did manage to extend the visit by an extra week, but I spent two whole weeks just sitting out on the porch, listening to music and watching the hummingbirds (which I spectacularly failed to photograph – they’re very small and very fast). I felt so very guilty about passing this nasty virus on to everybody over there. Lots of plans had to be cancelled but I was very lucky and did manage to get back up Mount Blue Sky (formerly Mount Evans) which was a real highlight of the trip for me. It’s a place my late wife loved and yeah, I’m sure you can imagine the importance to me of getting up there again.

Oak tree in January at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire.
Oak tree in January at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire.

I need to get out into nature more. I watch several photography channels on YouTube and I think the one I have gained most from is by Kim Grant. I love her mindful approach to photography, making sure that you take the time to properly engage with your surroundings when out with your camera. Her channel makes a refreshing change from all those channels that are more focussed on equipment or the technical aspects of photography.

So, I’m back and will be trying to embrace Kim’s approach more often. Hopefully it won’t be another year before I post here again!

Some Days…

View looking towards Old John at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire.
View looking towards Old John at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire.

… Just don’t go according to plan.

I headed out to Bradgate Park in Leicestershire on Monday afternoon. It had been too long since I’d visited and I decided to take my tripod and have a stab at a panorama and maybe some focus stacked landscape shots.

It was a Monday afternoon in the summer holidays so I was expecting the place to be busy. And it was. The overflow car parks were in operation but I managed to get a spot quite near the entrance gate on the Newtown Linford car park. However, with a place this size (850 acres) I normally manage to find some isolation no matter how busy it is. The main tip here is just to set off away from the tarmac road which leads through the park to avoid the thronging crowds. So that’s what I did.

I was lugging way too much kit around with me. With my camera bag, tripod and big water bottle it came to over 10KG. I’ve written before about how liberated I feel when I shoot light. This was the opposite experience. Added to the weight I had the inconvenience of not having a way to strap my tripod to my camera bag so I was hand carrying that everywhere. I ended up with a rather sore thumb from the rubbing of the tripod leg I was gripping.

I’ve been watching way too many landscape photography vlogs on YouTube so I set out with that kind of shooting in mind. Slow, deliberate, planned. I had a composition in mind, something shot from the next hill to the east of the Old John tower, looking back at the landmark and using some of the rocky outcrops as a foreground.

(A few of the vlog channels I’ve been enjoying lately just in the order they appear in my subscription list : Thomas Heaton, Ian Worth, Henry Turner, Kim Grant ) 

Camera setup to shoot at Beadgate Park, Leicestershire.
Camera ready to shoot at Bradgate Park, Leicestershire (snapped with my phone).

The photo at the top of this post was taken just a little further to the left of where I took the snap above. I shot it as a stitched panorama at the 24mm end of my 10-24mm zoom.

I think watching all those vlogs had me in a frame of mind to be experimental. Yes, I’d shot panoramas before going back to film days (3 or 4 frames of film to end up with one image was quite costly back then) but I also decided to try composing using the screen on the back of my camera rather than the viewfinder. I never normally do this but with my camera secured on a tripod then why not? It might help quite a bit when the camera is in a low position and looking through the viewfinder will mean getting into an uncomfortable position, yes? Well, because in bright light it can be difficult to see the image on the LCD screen, that’s why not. However, I stuck with it – I was having an afternoon of experimentation after all. And I can say right now, I’ll be going back to the viewfinder 99% of the time. 

So I shot my panorama and tried a few focus stacked images – focussing on the rock formation as my foreground and then on the hill in the background with a view to merging the exposures in Photoshop to have a sharp image from front to back. I’m not bothering to share the results here, suffice it to say that I wasn’t really happy with them.

The light was nothing special on Monday afternoon so after a while I decided to just sit on top of this hill for a while and take in the views. I’m a Leicestershire native and have been visiting Bradgate Park for longer than I can remember and yet, having felt that I’d explored the park thoroughly over the years, I realised that I’d never been up this particular hill before. So I sat there and vaped for a while, enjoying the peace and quiet and staring down towards Bradgate House where I could see all the crowds of people walking along the road like ants. 

On my way back to the car park I decided to head back down to that road near the ruins of the house, even though that meant picking my way through the crowds. I managed to nab a couple of reasonable (and obligatory) deer shots as I went and then spotted a family of swans near one of the waterfalls on the River Lin, momentarily invaded by a crow. These were shot hand held with my 100-400mm lens. 

The results from the afternoon were as follows :-

  • Worn out from lugging all that kit around. On the up side, probably good exercise!
  • A sore thumb from gripping that tripod all the time.
  • A sense of frustration at not really having achieved what I set out to do.
  • A determination to carry less equipment with me. Yes, having “everything” there can open up opportunities – but it can also remove them because you’re spending so long faffing about with bits of kit.
  • Realisation that I could have shot that panorama hand held and likely got  as good if not better results.
  • Thoroughly enjoyed myself despite my perceived failures. It was great just to get out and see what I saw.

 

A Bad Case of G.A.S.

It happens now and again. I get G.A.S. – Gear Acquisition Syndrome. I already have too many camera bodies, I already have too many lenses and yet something appears on the market which I lust after.

Right now that something is the Fujifilm X-T5. 

But also right now, I am not working, haven’t been working for over a year. So, no, I really can’t just go out and treat myself. I am looking for work but meanwhile I’m living off my savings (which I’m fortunate to have some of) and I’m not claiming any state benefits so basically zero income (other than a very small amount of interest on those savings). No, I’m not in a position to scratch that itch.

So how do I quell the G.A.S.? Other than constantly reminding myself of the above inconvenient fact regarding lack of an income?

Well, in the case of the X-T5 Fuji have moved up to a 40 megapixel sensor. Only a few of my lenses would be capable of resolving the full resolution of that sensor. I’m sure I’d still get improved results from all of my lenses but it’s a niggle. Maybe only one for “pixel peepers” but try to understand, this is ammunition I’m using to convince myself I’m fine with my old 24 megapixel X-H1 (and older cameras too).

40 megapixels would be handy for producing large prints, A3 and bigger. But although I have an A3 capable printer then I’ve not actually printed anything larger than A4 with it as yet.

So, what is the best way of getting over G.A.S. for me? Simple : get out and shoot with the kit I already have! It all works beautifully and getting a new camera or a new lens will not make me a better photographer. I recently wrote about the pleasure I had in getting out with my X100T again. 16 megapixels, fixed 23mm prime lens – and a complete joy to shoot with.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. Enjoying the cameras and lenses I already have and holding that G.A.S. in check, telling myself that when I have a job and a regular income again, then I can consider it.

Daisy at Leicester Botanic Gardens.
Daisy at Leicester Botanic Gardens. Fujifilm X-H1, 56mm @ f1.2.
Abstract sculpture by the fish pond at Leicester Botanic Gardens.
Abstract sculpture by the fish pond at Leicester Botanic Gardens. Fujifilm X-H1 35mm @ f1.4.
The Braunston-in-Rutland Goddess sculpture.
The Braunston-in-Rutland Goddess sculpture. Fujifilm X-H1, 35mm @ f8.
Light through a window at Canons Ashby.
Light through a window at Canons Ashby. Fujifilm X100T.
Rocking horse at Canon's Ashby.
Rocking horse at Canon’s Ashby. Fujifilm X100T.
Three panel window in room above the porch at St. Andrews Church, Stoke Dry, Rutland.
Three panel window in room above the porch at St. Andrews Church, Stoke Dry, Rutland. Fujifilm X-H1, 18mm @f2.8.
Alabaster table tomb at church of St. Andrew, Stoke Dry, Rutland.
Alabaster table tomb at church of St. Andrew, Stoke Dry, Rutland. Fujifilm X-H1, 18mm @f2.

 

How Much?!?

Fujifilm X100 and X100T sitting side by side on a map.
Fujifilm X100 and X100T.

In my last post I wrote about my joy of shooting with my Fujifilm X100T. I have since then been out and about using it a bit more and appreciating this quirky little beast for what it is – a highly capable compact camera.

Earlier this evening I was just checking over some camera settings and noticed that there was a (minor) firmware update from 8 years ago which I hadn’t applied. Whilst noodling around online I thought I’d check out pricing for the current latest iteration of this camera, the X100V. Not that I’m in the market for a replacement, I was just curious.

WEX were showing the X100V at £1,349 which I believe is around the RRP, but out of stock. So I took a look on Amazon and very nearly choked on my tea when I saw it listed at £4,510. 

Amazon UK listing for X100V
Amazon UK listing for X100V

£4,510 for an X100V?

You could buy the medium format (Fuji are now calling it “large format”) Fuji GFX 100S for £4,799. Ok, you’d need to add a lens to that… but seriously?

Apparently the X100V has been trending on TikTok after somebody raved about it on that platform. Just goes to show what a powerful platform that is, not that I’d want to go near it. 

The X100V is a lovely little camera and it has a few features I would appreciate but you would have to have way more money than sense to pay £4,500 for one.

Come to that my X100T (two generations older) is also a lovely little camera and I’ll continue to shoot with it and enjoy it. Hopefully I’ll have more photos taken with it to share here soon.

 

I’m Back

A robin feeding.
A robin taking seed from a feeder at Medbourne, Leicestershire.

It has been nearly three years since my last update. There are lots of reasons for my absence which I won’t go into here. However, I’m back to wanting to be creative again and share my experiences so here I am.

Of course, I’ve still been taking photographs in the time since I last posted, it’s an important part of who I am. The Covid pandemic has certainly reduced my photographic opportunities over the last year but my camera has been with me on the all too rare occasions I’ve been able to get out. I’ve barely been outside of Leicestershire for a year now. There was one day trip to the Peak District in the summer of 2020, a short walk along the path up Kinder Scout next to the Grinds Brook with my daughter. I look forward to when such things are possible once again.

The photo I’ve selected for this post was shot on my last “proper” walkabout before England entered “Lockdown 3” at the start of January 2021. My daughter and I had been taking short trips into the local countryside when Covid restrictions permitted. One of our favourite places to visit is Medbourne in the south-eastern part of the county. It’s a lovely village with a stream running through it, a medieval packhorse bridge and a ford crossing the stream near the church. On this particular day, we spotted a robin hopping from bush to bird feeder and back again in a garden area down near The Nevill Arms pub.

Shot using my Canon 6D and 70-300ml lens.

I’ll be back with another post describing a project I have been able to work on from home, hopefully in the next few days.

Am I Just Pixel Peeping?

Micklegate
Micklegate, York.

Just over a year ago I wrote about using a then new piece of software called Iridient X-Transformer which dramatically improved my results when processing photos from my Fujifilm X System cameras.

Back in January 2017 Iridient X-Transformer was in beta testing but the results were impressive enough for me to purchase the software right away.

Since then I have been using X-Transformer on a photo by photo basis where I think it will be of most benefit to the image.

I’m now beginning to think that I should just run all my Fuji photos through X-Transformer regardless. Why? Have a look at the screen shot below. This is one small section of a photo I took in York back in November, looking along Micklegate from Micklegate Bar. It’s not a great photo, I didn’t bother to process it at the time and I’m just using it as an example here. Click on it to see it at 100% or I doubt you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about and particularly look at the lettering on the red “shop to let” sign, but also at the brickwork and the little Christmas tree.

compare
Small section of a photo viewed in Lightroom’s compare loupe. Click to see at full size.

Which looks better / sharper / clearer / better defined to you? The image on the left or the image on the right?

To my eyes the version on the left is the clear (and clearer!) winner. No surprise then that the version on the left is the .dng file processed through X-Transformer whereas the version on the right is the default .raf imported by Lightroom.

I was originally planning to run all of my Fuji photos through X-Transformer as I stated in that original blog post but then I noticed how much more disk space the .dng file took up compared with the .raf file. In the case of the example shown the .raf file is 24.4MB, the .dng is 66.7MB. This photo was shot using my X-Pro2 and I use a (losslessly) compressed raw format so the .dng version is always going to be much larger as that compression is removed during the process of converting to .dng.

I am now thinking that it would better to accept the greater file size and just process everything I shoot on a Fuji camera (99% of my photography) through X-Transformer. I likely wouldn’t have used it to process this photo as I wouldn’t have viewed it as containing lots of intricate details – just a normal (and rather dull and uninteresting) street scene.

The difference is clear so I think it’s time for another change to my workflow. Process everything through X-Transformer before importing into Lightroom and I might as well stop using that compressed Fuji raw format on my X-Pro2 as there will be no benefit if converting to .dng anyway. Yes, the photos will take up more space but that might be a good incentive for me to be more ruthless with my “pruning” during the editing process.

I dont think this is “pixel peeping”. I think that Lightroom’s de-mosaicing of Fuji raw images is substandard and I’m not getting the full benefit of the image quality my Fuji cameras are capable of providing.

Adobe should be doing way better than this. I pay a subscription to use Lightroom, it’s not “cheap”. X-Transformer currently costs just £23.75 and is produced by a small, independent software developer. I do wish they produced their full Iridient Developer package for Windows, I’d be highly likely to switch from Lightroom.

I have considered and tried using Capture One and again the results are way better than Lightroom but at the moment I would rather not spend hundreds of pounds on new software and I don’t know how many hours learning to use it. I know Lightroom pretty well and get along with it fine, if I pre-process my photos with X-Transformer I can then just carry on as normal with Lightroom. I just wish to heck that Adobe would do something about its treatment of Fuji files. Good job Iridient are there to step in where Adobe fall short.

Digging Myself Out

As I said a couple of posts ago, I felt like I was suffering from Photographer’s Block. I’ve taken a few steps to try and resolve this and I think it’s working.

Sovetskoe Foto
Sovetskoe Foto

Firstly I decided that I would spend more time looking at other people’s work and that I have done – in magazines, in photo books and online. The latter of these is a huge advantage we have today, there is such a wealth of photography to see online. One unexpected online avenue I found was a complete online archive of a Soviet era Russian photography magazine, “Sovetskoe Foto” . Sure, I couldn’t understand any of the writing but I’ve been enjoying looking at the photos.

Wistow
Across the fields behind Wistow church.

Next I decided I needed to simplify. Instead of heading out with two or three cameras and six or seven lenses I would make sure I would regularly go out to shoot with just one camera and one lens, not limiting myself in this way all of the time but regularly. Sometimes this has been my X100T, other times my X-Pro2 with the 35mm f2 lens (the f2 over the f1.4 mainly for the weather resistance – I am based in the UK after all). Isn’t it strange how as photographers we spend so much time debating new lenses to buy (“invest in”…?!) and yet having less options actually seems to increase creativity? Plus instead of spending so much time wondering whether I might be better using the 90mm, the 55-200 or maybe I should get in really close and add some drama with the 10-24… well, I only have the 35mm here with me so let’s see what can I do with that, eh?

Pinhole photo.
The Knoll, Leicester Botanic Gardens. Fuji X-T1 and homemade pinhole body cap. 1/2 second exposure.

As I wrote earlier I’ve also made myself a pinhole body cap. I’m not one hundred percent happy with it yet but it did give me something new and different to try. With a bit of tinkering about in Analog Efex Pro 2 I’m getting the kind of look I was hoping for but I think maybe my pinhole is still a bit too wide or maybe not smooth enough. I would like to achieve something with a little sharper rendition. I can keep working at that, it’s fairly quick and easy to make another pinhole to go into the body cap.

I also realised that it had been a while since I’d really shot with a flash. I do tend to regard myself as an “available light” photographer. Sometimes I’ll feel a bit sniffy about the idea of introducing non-ambient light sources – it’s cheating. Other times I just simply can’t be bothered – it’s yet more kit to carry around and more batteries to charge, cables to tangle, wireless triggers to faff about with. So meh – I don’t bother.

The Angel
The Angel, Leicester Welford Road Cemetery. Fuji X100T, 1/1000th of a second at f11.

Today I did bother. I fished out my el-cheapo Yongnuo YN460 strobe and my equally el-cheap iShoot radio triggers and took them along to shoot my favourite angel down at Welford Road Cemetery. Yes, THAT angel. Yes, again. Yes, I know… But with the flash I got some rather different and dramatic looking photos of her that I was fairly pleased with.

The Angel
The Angel, Leicester Welford Road Cemetery. Fuji X100T, 1/1000th of a second at f8.

I was using my X100T for this as the leaf shutter of that camera allows for flash sync at silly shutter speeds. With a flash directly connected to the hotshoe or with the little built in flash it will sync right up to 1/4000th of a second. Using my radio triggers it was working just fine at 1/1000th. Shooting flash at that kind of shutter speed lets you really block down the ambient light and the cheap Yongnuo was powerful enough for me to shoot at f8 or f11 if I held the flash up close to the statue. This way I was able to take advantage of the dark and stormy looking clouds in the background whilst shooting the angel in what was actually pretty bright light (I took a couple of shots using the 90mm : 1/1600th at f2 without the flash). Maybe I’ve processed these a little too much on the dark side… But the main thing was I was out and enjoying taking photos.

Lambs
Lambs near Wistow church, Leicestershire. Fuji X-Pro2, 35mm (actually the f1.4 on this occasion).

Above all I’ve been trying to not force things when I’m out shooting. I’ve found it most enjoyable to go on a wander with my one body and one lens and just take uncomplicated shots, concentrating on simple compositions. If there isn’t a photo there then no amount of trying and forcing myself will make one happen. Move on, see what else I can find. Okay, sometimes I’ll wish I had a different lens with me, I couldn’t get any closer to these lambs for fear of scaring them away but it is so refreshingly simple to just work with what you have.

Through simplifying, slowing down, not forcing things and trying out a couple of new things I feel like my mojo might just be back again. Or maybe it was just a matter of waiting? Either way I’m happier with my photography now than I was a few weeks ago.

 

Floundering Around In The Dark

Leicester Guildhall.
Leicester Guildhall.

I’m feeling very frustrated with my photography at the moment. I think I’m going through the equivalent of “writer’s block” and I’ve been suffering from it for several weeks now, possibly months.

The weather doesn’t help. It seems that every time I get a chance to get out with a camera we’re covered in a heavy blanket of grey cloud which doesn’t shift. Photography is all about light, I need light to work with and everything is flat, grey and lifeless. The fact that I really like working with high contrast light just makes it feel worse.

But it goes beyond this. I feel like I’m wandering directionless. I know I need projects to work on and the harder I think about possible projects the less inspiration comes to me. Everything just feels impossible.

Okay so to take photographs we have to go out and shoot. So get the hell out there and shoot! Dull, grey day? Doesn’t matter. There will be photos out there just waiting to be taken. So I go out and it feels like I’m trying too hard. I’m trying to make images out of nothing. And the harder I try the worse it gets.

And then I start to think, “Why the hell am I even bothering? What does any of this matter? Who even looks at any of this rubbish I keep shooting?”.

It matters to me because making photographs is such a key part of who I am. It’s my one form of self expression. I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I can’t sing, I can’t play a musical instrument. I suppose I could write… Yeah I could, but I do it badly.

When I have so little free time to dedicate to taking photos it feels like I have to make the very best use of every moment I get. And yet I struggle to even know where to go to shoot. I’ve lived in the same place all of my life. I feel like I know everything so well. Too well. Seeing a place for the first time seems to open up so many photographic avenues, trying to make images in a place you know like the back of your hand can feel like trying to breath life back into the dead.

St. Martins East.
St. Martins East, Leicester.

I took a walk around the cathedral area of Leicester for a couple of hours or so earlier today. It’s a part of town I like a lot, interesting old buildings and steeped in history. I ended up taking around 90 photos out of which one or two were “meh, sort of ok”. I’m using them in this post.

So what can I do to get my mojo back?

It feels like I’m stuck in a rut and I need to come up with “something new”, approach my photography in a different way. It might not be about going to new places. It certainly isn’t about buying more kit. I think I need to go back to looking at lots of good photography by other people. I need to spend more time reading other people’s photography blogs.I need to think of projects I can work on and I need to actually get out there and shoot the ones I’ve already got in my head.

How can it be that I’ve had an idea for one project in my head for several years now and I’ve never even attempted to go out and shoot a single photo for it? Would it put me too far out of my comfort zone? Yes, I think it probably would. Maybe that would be a good thing?

Video Columns
Video Columns. Highcross, Leicester.