My early photography
My parents gave me my first (point and shoot – no controls) camera for my tenth birthday. I have had various cameras over the years. None of them were especially expensive. Until recently, my pictures were mainly of family and holidays. Until 2002, I used rolls of film and waited with bated breath to see what came back from the chemist. We then bought digital cameras (mine was an Olympus trip) and used them for the next 10 years. From 2012 until 2024, I took all of my photos using my smartphone. Smartphones have increasingly amazing cameras and I have taken some of my favourite photos using a phone. I started taking a more serious interest in my photographs around 2016 when we started living in Newhaven, a fishing port in Edinburgh with wonderful sea, skies and wildlife.
First ‘real’ camera
I took the plunge and bought a ‘real’ camera in 2024. A Panasonic Lumix S5 with a kit 18-40 lens (f4.5 – f6.3). I am still learning how to get the best from the camera, the art of composition and how to maximise quality and interest using editing (mainly using Lightroom). I have now bought another two lenses. A Lumix Prime 50mm which gives a natural look of the photographs and the option of a wider aperture (up to f1.8). A Prime 100 (f2.8 with 2x macro and manual focusing). First impressions are, not surprisingly, that the two more expensive Lumix lenses give more reliable quality then the cheaper 100mm.
What photographic style?
I am still working out what types of photographs I want to concentrate on. I have focused on flowers, skies, water, buildings, machinery and cityscapes, with incidental shots of people. So far I have not taken any portraits (other than the very large number of photographs of our grandchildren). I am pleased with some of my photos of animals and birds, athough I am not sure I have the patience required to be a serious bird photographer. Flowers are better behaved!
My learning
At this very early stage, I think there are four areas where I need to improve: having a clear purpose for each photo; good composition and lighting; making good use of in camera settings; editing to improve the images. There is a great deal of very helpful material online – for every level from absolute beginner to expert. So much so that you could spend all your time learning instead of taking photographs! My learning involves taking lots of photos and deciding why I am going to bin most of them.
This website makes me generate sets of photos with specific themes, which gives a helpful focus to my photographic expeditions.
Every month I send one image to Gavin Hardcastle at Fototripper. He creates a very helpful monthly video where he critiques photos submitted by his members. Gavin also makes educational and highly entertaining videos where he explores aspects of photography, often in wilderness areas of Canada, Iceland or Scotland.
52Frames is a world wide group of around 2500 photographers who submit one photograph a week on a particular theme. We offer comments on each other’s work. It is fascinating to see the very wide range of reactions to this week’s theme and you get great ideas for types of image. (Recent themes have included: Shadows, Time, Texture, Abandoned, Daily Ritual).
I have just completed an autumn tree photography course at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. I have added a slide show of some of the pictures I took on the course!
My Instagram page @newhavenlad has a mix of stills, carousels of photos and videos, many of them set to music (from Premium Beats). The posts and reels are a mix of new images from my camera and old images from my phones.
This page will be updated from time to time.