Menorca Night Photography

         I recently had a weeks holiday in Menorca with my partner and his family. I find when travelling anywhere it is a great opportunity to play with new photography techniques. I tend to also take minimal equipment when on holiday thanks to hand luggage restrictions, this motivates me to be creative with what I have. While in Menorca I had a great time doing night photography around the coastline. Below I have listed some tips to help anyone wanting to try this out, I have learnt a few things along the way to make it much easier:

• The 3 photos in this blog were taken using long exposures of 6-10 seconds, in all cases I needed a stable surface to put my camera on. When you don't have a tripod, you can use anything stable and flat as an alternative, just look through the viewfinder or use Live View if your camera has it to check composition. I used a stone step, a wall and the rocks on the floor. I also used my leather camera strap to lift up the lens into the right position so it isn't pointing at the floor (you can use whatever you have to hand, jumper, lens cap, scarf etc.)
• My next tip for extra stability is using timer - I used a 3 second timer so my hand was nowhere near my camera when the shutter opened, this eliminates camera shake so you don't ruin your photo from the beginning when you take your finger off the shutter.
• Use manual focus - autofocus tends to dislike the darkness and will usually struggle to find a point to stick on. Zoom right into the area you want to focus on and then rotate your focus ring until that area is sharp, you can then zoom out to decide on a composition. Live View is great for this as the screen is easier to see in the dark than trying to crouch and look through your viewfinder. 
• For some jazzy starbursts where there are spotlights (above and below images) set your aperture to a nice high number like f16, don't ask me the science behind why this works, I just googled how to do it once as I wanted to try it. I enjoy this effect as it makes your images look like a holiday postcard.
• Setting the aperture higher lets in less light so your exposure will need to be even longer, this gives you a watercolour type effect if you are photographing water which can look really nice, especially when lights and buildings are reflected in it. 
• Shoot in RAW if you can. If your camera has the option to shoot RAW it will gather a wider range of lights and darks in the image, especially important when shooting at night as your camera will pick up more detail.  
• To finish off my travel photos, I usually don't have a laptop so I will edit my favourite RAW files in camera, save as a JPEG and then send via Wifi to my phone/Ipad. I then edit further using the free app Snapseed, which is one of my favourite image editing apps. 

Castle Park on Film

      Does everyone remember that bank holiday at the beginning of May when the sun actually shone for 3 days straight? I spent 3 lovely days walking around different places in Bristol lying on the grass reading and taking photos. I try and use my film camera more in the summer as I love how brilliant the light looks on film when the sun is shining. I bought 10 rolls of expired Fujicolor ISO 100 film from Ebay and I absolutely love the colours it brings out. I now don't want to use all the other old film I have because I know they won't be as bright...

     These images were all taken around castle park when I was trying to finish a roll before dropping it at Bristol Cameras for developing. I thought it was 24 exp and then turned out to be 36, which meant I had a lot more to use than I thought. 

      These were all shot on my Minolta X-300 with 35mm f1.7 lens - a great combination for walk around/street photography. This camera is pretty lightweight and simple to use, I managed to pick mine up from Ebay for £30 with the lens. Let me know what you think of these, if you have any other recommendations for colourful film let me know. 

Spring Bluebells

       Happy spring everyone! What with the snow storms, freezing temperatures and miserable rain it hasn't felt particularly goods so far. This time last year I was wandering around the woods out the back of Wild Place in Bristol taking photos of some lovely bluebells with my film camera. 

I use a Minolta X-300 with a Tamron 28mm f2.4 and Minolta 50mm f1.7. I love the 50mm for its beautiful depth of field, it really helps the bluebells stand out. 

These are all taken on Fujifilm Superia ISO 100 film bought expired on Ebay. I so far have been lucky enough with expired film that it still always gives me good results even if I have no idea how old it is. 

These photos make me miss the warmth and sun! It is 7 degrees outside and I was still deicing my car last week, I wish spring would hurry up. 

52 Weeks - Hitting The Ground Running

       So if you have me on Facebook or Instagram you might have noticed a little series of photos going up every week! In January I knew i would be changing jobs into a position less focused on photography, but which would give me better work/life balance and freedom to do more with my spare time. 5 weeks I am really enjoying it and being able to use my evenings and weekends to take photos has been great! 
      I wanted to keep motivated in the new year, I am into week 8 of this challenge and I have tried to do something new and different each week. The theme changes every week but on top of that I want to push myself and try new techniques and ideas. If anyone wants to join the challenge there is a group here to submit your photos and hashtags to share on social media. 

Week 1 - 52 steps from your front door. 3 exposures in and out of focus at the end of my road!

Week 2 - Sun. There was not a lot of sun in January, I shot some film but my local developers was out of action so this was what I had!

Week 3 - Black and white. Shot on my film camera on Ilford HP5, Stokes Croft graffiti makes for great high contrast photos. 

Week 4 - Landscape. My new job in Avonmouth has a nice walk I can go on on my lunch break with views of the boats! 

Week 5 - A childs laughter. This is my cousins little boy Jack who has the greatest big blue eyes and who is very hard to keep still!

Week 6 - Animals. I went to Wild Place in Bristol and caught this cheeky lemur having his lunch. 

Week 7 - The colour red. Valentines week, I was so so busy and ended up having no good ideas, this experiment with ink droplets came out rather well though.

Week 8 - Water and Ice. I froze some flowers and had fun smashing them open and playing around with composition.

Week 9 - Macro. I had a plan for this which looked horrible so in the end I just explored my living room and found this great cracked candle holder to photograph. 

Week 10 - Transport. Rather uninspired by this theme so I went to the village of Lacock and took photos of vintage bikes and lovely street stalls.

Bristol on Film

      I have a stack of out of date film under my bed which included an Ilford HP5 ASA 400. I haven't shot black and white for many years and I wanted to try this film out with my Minolta X-300 and 50mm lens. It was nice to wander round a few areas of Bristol and get some grainy, contrasty images! 

Stokes Croft - Famous for it's street art, Stokes Croft has graffiti around every corner which changes on a regular basis!

The Bear Pit - The portal between Stokes Croft and the main shopping centres, this area has more street art, a fair few homeless often playing music in the tunnels and skaters making the most of the open space. I especially like the Donne Darko like messages sprayed on the walls and floor. 

Horfield - Perhaps not an "exciting" place but these few are on the 2nd January when the buses were running bank holiday schedule so I walked halfway to save sitting in the freezing cold! A very crisp icy morning!

Park Street/Bristol Museum/College Green - Park street area has such a huge amount to offer. The Museum is free to enter with a huge amount to see. Park street has many independent shops, restaurants and cafes with college green at the bottom where you can sit on a bench and watch the world go by, or pretend you are in Skins (if anyone reading remembers back that far!). 

The final frame - this is just a happy accident from the end of the film. One of the things I love about film is when things like this happen and you get an interesting graphic image which you would never get digitally. Let me know what you guys think!