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.
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.
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.
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!