Personal Photography
Habits can be a good thing. This is a start of new habit.
At the end of every month from now on, I will be sharing my month, my life, on this blog for the world to see.
I’m always taking photographs, but hardly ever sharing them. I know I am a perfectionist and too ultra-critical of myself and my work. Sometimes you just need to put it out there, even if it’s not perfect. So here goes.
Here’s my April.
New Challenges | A vintage themed wedding album shoot in the forest.
New Friends | A meet up and chat about all things photography with Jen, who found me via Youtube.
New Sights | Actual Sunsets! Remember those?
New Things | Shiny new business cards. Yeah!
New Places | My first visit to Oxford. So many bicycles!
Plus the usual every day collection of interesting things, places, ideas and just random photographs I love to take, but never really share with anybody. Enjoy.
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In one of the wettest, dullest summers the UK has had for a long time, I made the awesome decision to take a short summer break, and go for a roadtrip in Scotland. I expected it to probably be the only place in the world that could be more grey, wet and cold in the middle of July.
The trip started with a few days in Edinburgh, then to little town called Elgin, on the coast of the north sea. Next was a day traveling west across to Inverness, and then down past Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and a finally staying a couple of days in Fort William, a town that lies at the bottom of Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK.
In the space of 5 days, I have seen everything from the historic Edinburgh streets, to absolutely gigantic mountains, miles of endless green wilderness, and crystal clear blue water as far as the eye can see. You may not believe me, but I have actually stood on the whitest, cleanest sandy beach I have ever seen in my life. Even the sun came out.
Everything was beautiful.
Safe to say I took a lot of photos, but as it was a road trip, we didn’t stay in one place for very long. I could so easily get lost in Scotland for days, exploring the lesser know parts of the country, waiting for great light and getting a perspective that captures the beauty and sheer scale of the Scottish landscape.
For this trip, I took just the Fuji X100, and the Nikon D700 with 35mm f1.4.So all of the photos I took during the week were all with a 35mm prime. Mmm, my favourite.
Some of the places we visited were just too big for a 35mm focal length, so some of these required a lot of photo stitching (some of the panoramas are 12 - 16 photos stitched together).…
A few weeks ago, I was a bit of an idiot, and had an incident involving one of my fingers and kitchen knife. It was entirely my own fault, so I don’t deserve an ounce of sympathy!
Apart from being in pain, having my right hand bandaged up, and generally feeling sorry for myself, it has also meant I have been physically unable to even pick up my Nikon D700. (Something I wont be doing for for at least 6 weeks. Boo. )
But I’m not the sort of person to let a little thing like this stop me shooting, oh no.
Instead, I have been shooting with just my iPhone 4, and editing with only the amazing VSCO Cam App.
Shooting and editing with the iPhone requires a completely different approach to photography, which has been refreshing and inspiring.
Sometimes it can be a great idea to leave the fancy equipment at home and simplify. Of course, I had little choice now being temporarily one handed, but anyone can do it.
It’s great way to keep you on your toes and break the routine of big cameras, photoshop and off camera flash.
I had a surprising amount of fun just shooting away on streets of Gloucester in my short lunch breaks, or on my walk to and from work.
All of the shots below we’re taken in the last 7 days, and processed entirely on the iPhone 4, using VSCO Cam. (with one hand!)
Hope you like them.
If you want to see more of my iPhone snapshots, why not follow me on Twitter or Facebook.
More Chris Scuffins On:
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I feels like ages since I last visited London, I love going. A lot people don’t like all the hustle and bustle, but I really enjoy it. There’s always so much going on, and far cry from the sleepy little goings on in Gloucester.
We didn’t really go with much of plan in mind, just to go and have a walk around and a day out.
We checked out the market at Covent garden, which is almost unrecognisable compared to how I remember it. We spent some time in the Tate Gallery, and walked along southbank and had my most favourite Sushi for dinner. It was a pretty nice day out really.
All photos were taken with my D700 and 35mm f1.4. I didn’t actually take that many photos with my Nikon, as I also finished of two rolls of film in my Olympus OM-2N. I’m looking forward to getting them processed soon, as some of my favourite street shots were captured on film.
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More Chris Scuffins On:
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Making the most of the unusually good weather this weekend, me and Helen went for a brief walk around the woods just outside Painswick, a few miles from our home in Gloucester.
The sun was shining, but it was still bitterly cold, so we weren’t outside for long. But it did give me just enough time to take few shots of Helen and test out my new Nikon 85mm f1.4 G.
I just thoughtI would share some of my favourites with you.
Like most of my portraits shoots so far, they were completely unplanned and spontaneous, but that doesn’t really matter. I’m just happy to be able to practice my technique for posing and lighting portraits. After all, practice makes perfect.
If you are a local to the Gloucestershire area, and would like to model for me, I’d love to hear from you!
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Today me and Helen visited the lovely city of Worcester, to see the little Christmas Market and buy the last few presents we needed to get for family.
Naturally, I took my camera with me. I’d planned to do a bit of candid street photography while we there, but the streets were so full of people it was impossible to get a clear shot of anything!
So instead we did our shopping, grabbed a coffee and spent some time inside the nearby Cathedral. I also got a quick images of some cute little Owls that were there too.
As always, I’m just happy to have some time with my camera, even if the shots I took weren’t want I had planned to get. I just loving taking photos, even if it’s while doing a bit of xmas shopping.
All of these were taken with my Nikon D700 and 50mm f1.4. Please let me know what you think…..…
WooHoo! Today I have finished my 30 day self portrait project!
Every single day in November, I have taken at least one self portrait of myself, ranging from traditional portraiture, to umm..slightly more abstract images involving parts of my body. (It’s not what you think!) .
The goal of the project was to force myself to think about portraiture more often, and to approach photography more organically; to spend more time experimenting with ideas.
In most ways the project has been a success. I now feel more confident about taking, and editing portraits. I’ve also spent more time practicing and experimenting with Photoshop; I’m really starting to see what amazing things Phtoshop can do, even if i am only scratching the surface.
Concentrating on a particular theme for the last month has also been a nice break to my usual daily photo routine of landscapes or still life.
But I know I could have done better. I had some great ideas, but often being on my own during the week, it’s been very difficult to plan and find time to set up a tripod or lighting to get the shot I wanted.
I look forward to doing another self portrait project in the summer, when I’ll have more light and more time in the day to try out some of my ideas.
So, here are my 30 self portraits!
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Wow, last week was a bit of a whirlwind.
I recently posted on the blog that I had reached my 500th photo journal entry on Blipfoto.com.
It turns out the nice people at Blipfoto thought that was a pretty big deal and offered to contact some people to let them know about it. Of course, I said yes, but was pretty sure nobody would really care.
Turns out, some people did. A few days later and I was contacted by the local paper, the Gloucester Citizen, and BBC Radio Gloucestershire about my photography. Yay!
I’ve posted a copy of the article about me in the paper below, or you can see it on line on the thisisgloucestershire website.
If you are local to the Gloucestershire area, look out for more of my photos in next Tuesdays (8th November) copy of the Citizen aswell!.
I’m just 11 months into my photography plan, and it’s so great that little things like this are happening. It’s nice to know I’m going somewhere with my photography!
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I just posted my 500th entry on Blipfoto.com, which is my daily photo journal that I have been contributing to since the 6th August 2009!
Out of my 500 entries, 400 have been every single day in a row. The last time I didn’t post a photo on blipfoto was 24th September 2010.
I’m quite proud of myself to have gotten this far, but thats mostly thanks to the great community of people on blipfoto.
Every comment I have ever received, (and I’ve received 1000′s) has been friendly, positive and encouraging.
In the 2 years I have been on blipfoto, I have clearly become a better photographer. Sometimes through inspiration and encouragement, other times have been out of pure frustration for having a take a photo even single day.
Trust me, there were somedays when it was really, really hard to make time for photography, but I was always thankful when I did.
I have so many favourite images in my journal, I suggest you have a look through if you ever have time, it’s great way to find out more about me and what I do.
Will I make it to 1000? Who knows? But for as long as I am taking photos, I will try my hardest to share them with as many people as I can.
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Yesterday me and Helen got up early and drove to the beautiful Westonbirt Arboretum, just outside Tetbury, here in Gloucestershire.
We were very lucky that the country seems to be going through a little heat wave at the moment, so we had fantastic weather for this time of year. (28’c In October!) The skies were clear, and the sun was shining, making it a great opportunity to photograph some of the first signs of autumn in the 16,000 trees in the arboretum. .
The best light for photography is during what’s called the golden hour. This is the period of time when the sun is either just rising or setting. Getting up early to photograph somewhere like Westonbirt also means you have the place practically to yourself, so you can capture images of the pathways and trails without them being full of people.
We arrived a 6am, just before sunrise, and headed towards the Japanese Maple Garden, but stopped along the way to capture the sunlight seeping through the misty Oak trees. We then spent a couple of hours photographing the warm pink maples, scattered amongst the imposing pines. By 11am, the morning mist had gone, and the great warm weather meant the Arboretum was quickly filling with visitors, making it difficult to photograph the great trees and plants at their best.
So instead, we took shelter under a beautiful birch tree, had some lunch, and then did an impromptu photo shoot! (Here’s a link to the photos from the shoot!)
Overall we had a great day, and I took some really nice images. Westonbirt Arboretum is such a great place; I have no doubt, there is so much I didn’t get to photograph. I think I will be going back in a few weeks, when autumn is really underway….…