Photography

Long before I started writing as a hobby, that is to say whether as learning to write at school or, later, as a work-related activity, I loved using a camera. This love increased when a Sunday School teacher (he was also a wedding photographer and owned a photography shop) taught me how to develop and print black and white prints from the films in my camera.

My photography, until 2016, employed mainly point-and-shoot cameras, moving from film to digital in the early 2000s. By this time I was becoming disappointed in the quality of my photographs and assumed that I needed a better camera, so I purchased my first dslr model with lots of bells and whistles that I really didn’t know how to use.

Needless to say, my photographs were not much better than those taken with a point and shoot camera. Wrongly, I assumed that this was because I’d bought an entry level dslr – a beginners’ camera. Interestingly, I realised that my wife and granddaughter – even with smartphone cameras – usually took better pictures than mine. It was at this time that my wife noticed an advertisement in our local weekly newspaper for people wishing to join a photography group for over 55s.

I joined. It was there that the saying clicked with me that photography isn’t primarily about the camera being used but about the person twelve inches or so behind the lens. I came to understand the purposes of the dials and buttons, about the exposure triangle, about composition, about practice, continuous learning and about mental preparation. I don’t claim to produce professional photographs but I’m much more satisfied now with my skill level and the much improved images that I’m creating. If a shot doesn’t turn out as good as I hoped, I no longer blame the camera but I try to use the experienc

I use my Blog pages to showcase my photos – usually in the context of a story if I can find a relevant image. I also try to end each post with the EXIF data of the day’s Featured Photo in case another photographer wishes to consider how I achieved that image.

I’ve featured one of my favourite photos for this page – a view in August 2020 from the Trefor area of the Llyn Peninsula in Snowdonia, North Wales. The view is a long exposure of the Trefor sea stacks.

EXIF data:

Pentax K-1 36 MP full-frame dslr camera using a Pentax 15-30 mm f/2.8 lens. Tripod mounted.

Shutter speed 20 seconds @ f/11 and 20 mm. ISO 100 and exposure compensation -1.3.

Processed in Lightroom Classic.