During lockdown theatres, as with many other industries, were hit hard, but this performance from local theatre company Arad Goch aimed to bring the theatre outdoors and into our communities. It was an absolute pleasure to meet everyone involved and photograph their performances over the course of a month, and fantastic to have some of these images commissioned into print, always the goal! Here are a few of my favourites:
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During the pandemic I decided, instead of twiddling my thumbs, I would set up a pet photography business, something I could continue doing were the pandemic to continue playing havoc with the rules for weddings. This would later mean I had even more work to do once it all kicked off with weddings.
Despite that, I’ve always wanted to slow down with my photography, put more effort into less photos and of higher quality, as opposed to the “event” nature of a wedding. Here are a few photos from the past year, hopefully there’ll be more of these to come as I move to balance out wedding work with other ventures.
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Usually I’d be able to post a “best of” for a given year of weddings, but the past few months have been a lock down/ covid driven mess. Postponed weddings, juggling date clashes, recruiting associates, taking on other work to fill locked down gaps, etc etc. All has led to a bit of an explosion in the past few months where I, as almost every other wedding photographer has had to do, have had several years of work to do in just a few months (yet all paid a long time ago!), not counting the extra work I’ve given myself.
Before I turn this into a rant (I still may if I receive another “how long until my photos are ready?”) here are a few images from this year. No, last year. We’re all owed a couple of years.
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Whilst setting up Pet Photography Wales it’s been mostly dogs (and some hamsters!) I’ve pointed my camera at, but equine photography is an extension of this that I’m hoping to expand into. This image achieved a bronze award from The Guild of Photographers, and I’m hoping to improve and explore equine photography a lot more in the future, it’s certainly different to photographing dogs, “sit” is not a good horse command apparently.
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Another venture I dabbled in during the lockdown lull was offering businesses photography packages with the general aim of providing content for their websites and social media. I haven’t pushed this yet but have been working on it as a sort of “pay-as-you-go” model for businesses. I did a small shoot for local business Y Ffarmers to test the waters although this was something else I had to quickly sweep aside once lockdown rules were lifted on weddings.
Whilst not a terribly artistic route, there’s still a lot of technique in creating some of these images. There are bracketed interior images that I still need to process using HDR techniques, and will post a few examples on here once they’re finished. In the meantime here’s a small handful from the shoot
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I remember shooting my first roll of 35mm film at the age of 14. It was exciting to put the Minolta XD7 through its paces at Bristol Zoo. Although the Minolta XD7 was the first camera ever to feature aperture priority, I still felt very connected to the process.
On return of the prints from this roll came a very fast lesson in shutter speeds. It turns out 1/60 of a second, handheld, with a longish lens is not a good idea.
20ish years later and, after being spoiled by modern digital features like image stabilisation, digital viewfinders and, well, everything that digital has to offer in the modern age, I began my medium format venturings and felt I was going through the same connected and manual process again with my first medium format roll of Ilford FP4 PLUS on a Mamiya C330.
There’s something magical about getting your head around all the little quirks and workarounds that shooting and processing film involves. Such as parallax and inverted images whilst shooting, right through to processing your own film and fumbling in the dark, praying you haven’t just loaded the backing paper instead of the film.
Anyway, enough rambling, these are the results of my first venture into medium format. Minimal editing, dusty scans, slightly spoiled film and all
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