2024, a year of growth.
Well hello everyone and welcome back to my website! I decided in November to take the site down over Christmas as I knew I would be too busy at work to write any blogs or spend time curating the portfolios. Also, I wasn’t in a great frame of mind with depression rearing its ugly head again. Fortunately it wasnt too bad this time and I hid it well enough so others mostly didn’t notice. Anyone who suffers will know we can cover it up pretty well when required!
I want this post to be a reflection on 2024 and my year with the camera. It was a year of transisition and aquisition as my trusty and seemingly indestructable Nikon Z6 finally failed on me. I replaced this with a Nikon Zf and couldnt be happier. The Zf has a personality about it that is lacking in many modern cameras and harks back to an era of manual dials and cool looks. Its a powerhouse that integrates retro and future seamlessly and produces some glorious files to edit. Its weird but the Raw files from this beast are just a little different and very easy to work on. I have no clue what magic is going on behind the scenes, suffice to say I am deeply impressed with this purchase. The Z6 did come back to life after a while (it has more lives than a house full of cats!) and is now my daughters who is doing a fine job in her fledgling career as a live music photographer. I am immensely proud of her and can see her doing very well in the near future.
One from December and a fantastic visit to Wistmans wood.
I also was shortlisted once again in the British Photography awards and once again failed to win the landscape award. I was beaten by a stunning image from my mate Chris Harrison who has had a blinder of a year and is developing into a top drawer landscape and woodland photographer. I also came close to the finals of the Natural Landscape Photography awards but couldn’t quite get an image into the final.
The year was bookended by two visits to the incredible Wistmans wood where I managed to get really good foggy conditions and spent a good few hours exploring. Its a tough place to shoot and also very small so difficult to get unique compositions but my thoughts on this are its not the scene but the edit that individualises an image. If you are into woodland photography this is a place you MUST visit! I also revisited a couple of other woods on t’moors but this one is definitely my favourite when conditions are just so.
In between I had a mediocre bluebell season, my best images of spring actually turning out to be wild garlic!
I also bought a new lens for astrophotography, the Viltrox 16mm f1.8. For the money it simply cant be beat with edge to edge sharpness, little vignetting and not much coma either. I didnt get as much use with it due to a seemingly constant stream of cloudy nights here in the UK but I did manage to make some use of it.
Of course the big events of the year were the two incredible showings of the Auroroa Borealis here in the UK. The first, in May, I felt I didn’t do justice to although I did manage to bag an image with a meteor streaking across the night sky in front of the light show! The second proved rather cloudy and once again was not overly happy with any of my images. Fortunately this year looks likely to see even more displays as the Sun reaches peak activity so keep your eyes on those Aurora apps!
Meteor streaking across the night sky in front of the Northern lights.
Overall, looking back on 2024 I think for me its been a year of learning and consolidating. I missed some fantastic conditions in autumn and never really got anything outstanding during bluebell season. Outside of those two events though I think my woodland photography has improved massively and I am branching out (no pun intended!) into more “classic” landscapes too. I am constantly refining my editing skills too and feel I have made the most gains here in 2024.
So what is coming for 2025? Well, if you are a follower you will know I am going to be going full time in 2026 and this year will be a build up to that. I am looking to put together some workshops, both group and 1 to 1. I will also be offering up more prints for sale as my portfolio expands and improves. There is also a collaboration in the works with a local artist Zac Greening and the National Trust which is exciting! And finally, I will be reincarnating the Youtube channel! This for me is a real trial by combat. I am constantly battling my demons when it comes to videos. It looks like its becoming harder and harder to get noticed on YT with a few notable exceptions such as Courtney Victoria and Henry Turner who both expanded massively in 2024. Both, I feel offer something a little different and both are exceptionally good in front of the camera. I always feel awkward so will need to address that in some way. I did a few videos using the Osmo Action 3 strapped to my chest so might try that format again so at least you dont have to put up with my ugly mug on screen all the time! Anyways, I will let you know on here once I start filming again.
One final thing I would like to do is collaborate with more of you guys! I would love to organise more meet ups with fellow like minded folks and its always great fun when I get to do this. I had a few last year with Ryan Seymour, Chris Harrison, Phil aka Capturing the Elements. I also met some great folks randomly such as Hang Ross and her partner Shaun, Rachel Baker who I bumped into at a certain poppy field last summer. And getting to meet and chat to the legend that is Nick Page at the Photography Show was just insane. I hope to meet more of you out there this year!
Toodles!