Blooming heck

It’s been a good week.

Frustrating in parts, another trip to London and the weather was fantastic, but I didn’t have my camera…completely contracting my own advice about always carrying one!

The bank holiday weekend was a bit of a washout – literally! But I went out and set myself the challenge of only using my 50-150mm lens...I’ve become really reliant on my walkabout 14-42mm lens and fancied changing my perspective. The summer flowers are finally out around the river so I got some reasonable shots of the various blooms.

One of my New Year photographic resolutions was to take more close-up photographs, and I’m amazed at how much stuff we take for granted, especially flowers. As a typically insensitive male, I tend to miss these little photographic nuggets, always looking for the landscape rather than detail. The overcast, rainy conditions actually seemed to make it easier!

You can view all the photos on the Picasa site.

In other news, I’ve had some brilliant feedback on a couple of my Fuerteventura pictures, with the possibility of some of the shots getting published! Which is great, my first paid work…the best compliment I’ve had to date.

Loosing my composure with exposure

rocky beach, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

What a great couple of weeks!

Firstly, a very stressful board presentation went really well down in Warwick, then it was off to Glasgow and from there flying out to Fuerteventura for my first real break since Christmas.

We stayed here, the resort was great, the weather was wonderful and the photography opportunities amazing.

Deciding to do something different, I got up at 6am and wandered down to the beach at Jandia to watch the sunrise. It was an incredible experience; I had the whole beach pretty much to myself. But shooting the rising sun is incredibly difficult to get right, I’ve shot plenty of sunsets and in that situation you can use ISO to manage the loss of light, however when the sun RISES, you have to very quickly compensate for increasing light. I really struggled with this, ending up with loads of over-exposed pictures. I welcome any hints or tips on how to better manage exposure in these kinds of situations.

Anyway, it was a wonderful week, aside from the profound experience of watching the sunrise over a deserted beach, the heat, the chipmunks and just spending some quality time with my wife was great. You can see a selection of shots from the week on Picasa.

The next few weeks look set to be quiet, but it’s finally getting warm enough in Scotland to go fishing, so hopefully some more photographic opportunities then.