Skip to main content

Setting yourself a challenge

Now that I'm unable to get out and about as often as I used to for my photography, I've found it increasingly important to actively set a challenge for myself. I love photography - the process, the equipment, the satisfaction of a photograph well taken - but without having something in place to make me pick up my camera, it would languish within the camera bag.
Picture info: Lumix GH4, Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm ISO1000, f/8, 1/2000 sec

I got around this last year by setting myself a Photo 52 challenge which, as you may have guessed, means taking a photo a week. I'd undertaken a Photo 365 in 2014 (results here), but thanks to my busy work and increasingly-busy home life, I just knew that I know longer had the time to dedicate to another one. It was tricky enough without a family!
Picture info: Lumix GH4, Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm ISO200, f/1.2, 1/8000 sec

Not only does a challenge make you get your camera out, it also makes you look for shots. And not just the every-day (though occasionally that's all you find you've got on the memory card). You start to take light a bit more seriously, grabbing the moment before it is gone as you realise that it probably won't happen again that week, nor indeed again.
Picture info: Lumix GH4, Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm ISO200, f/5.6, 1/200 sec

Since finishing my Photo 52 of 2017, I've moved offices with work. No longer am I bang center in the middle of Brighton - now, I'm in the suburban dreariness of Hove. This has given me added impetus for another Photo 52, and so 2018 starts with a new batch of photos. Now that I don't have Brighton's characters, architecture or life to play with, before work or at lunch, my shots now have to come from somewhere else. And so the hunt begins anew...
Picture info: Lumix GH4, Lumix G Vario 12-32mm @ 12mm ISO200, f/7.1, 1/320 sec

(attached images are from my Photo 52 2017)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A dark night, and a brace of Voigtlanders

I fell in love with the Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm prime as soon as I mounted it on my GH4 a few years back. It properly sprang to life once I moved over to the Lumix G9 - the higher-resolution viewfinder made it much, much easier to check focus, and I feel that the sensor was able to benefit from the lens more than the GH4's was. Due to coronavirus in the UK, I've left the area where I live on very few occasions. I am lucky in that I have the South Downs to the north, and the English Channel to the south - and both are only a five minute walk away for me. Despite coronavirus, I've ensured that I've kept my Photo 52 challenge up to date. This forces me to get out with my camera so that I at least have one image, no matter how rubbish it is, to show for my week. As the nights have grown longer, the Voigtlander 17.5mm and its 42.5mm brother have both joined me on my evening walks, so I thought I'd show you a few shots I grabbed the other evening whilst traipsing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

BOTBs - Panasonic Lumix GH3

Panasonic had realised with the GH1 and GH2 just how much demand there was for high-quality, low-cost mirrorless cameras capable of brilliant video capture. And it was with the 2013-released GH3 that they responded to many of the demands that users had asked for. Panasonic Lumix GH3 January 2014 to December 2016 22500 shots Gone was the multi aspect Panasonic sensor, replaced with a 16 megapixel unit from Sony - the same, it transpires, as used in Olympus's at-the-time recently released OM-D E-M5 . This was a more capable sensor than the one used in the previous model, which helped with better noise handling at higher ISOs and higher-bit-rate video. Gone too was the compact body. Now, the GH3 was a chunkier magnesium alloy affair, and now weather-sealed. It was a huge improvement ergonomically over the GH2 - after shooting airshows for many hours with the GH2, my hand ached, mainly because there wasn't enough room around the handgrip for all fingers. This was no longer th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons from RIAT 2018

Last weekend I got up stupidly early to travel half way across the country to attend an airshow. But what an airshow! The Royal International Air Tattoo 2018! A word of warning - this is going to be a looooong post. Grab yourself a cup of tea and settle down... I haven't been to an airshow, or at least shot aircraft flying since the Goodwood Revival in 2015, where they had a number of warbirds from the Second World War flying. My equipment back then was my trusty GH3 with the first-generation Lumix 100-300mm lens, and my GM5 with Lumix 14-140mm as backup. These performed well as a pair, allowing me to grab take off, landing, and formation shots with the surprisingly-capable GM5, and the longer, single aircraft detail shots with the GH3. At the time, AF-S was used on both cameras, as I didn't trust the reliability of the continuous auto-focus offered by either - bare in mind that at this point, Panasonic had yet to introduce their Depth from Defocus technology to assist wit...
2 comments
Read more