Back in December, I went out fishing with one of my colleagues…unsuccessfully! Instead of catching many fish, I was rather ill in the stormy weather and we came back in empty-handed. Faced with the opportunity to have another go, I was very eager, loading up with seasickness tablets and ginger beer to settle my stomach.

June is slightly different from December in terms of weather off the coast of Portsmouth, and today was a beautiful day. Once anchored, we got the rods out, baiting up with hermit crab, squid and mackerel, and then we waited…but not for long. During the day we landed several dogfish (keeping 2 to eat), a few smooth hounds (keeping 2 to eat), a couple of rays, a black bream and countless mackerel (keeping several to eat and others for bait). It was a great day out, with a great skipper (who doubled as a fishmonger) and it was a little disappointing to have to come in when the weather turned after a few hours.

The highlight of the day? Eating this little chap this evening – baked in foil with lime, chilli, salt, pepper and coriander, accompanied with chips. Marvellous – eating dinner that I caught; the freshest fish in London tonight!

Gallery of photos from sea fishing (warning – gallery contains images that some readers may find disturbing)

Between the two batches of snow, a couple of my friends came to visit me in London. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond any of our controls we weren’t able to do the things around London that we had planned, but we did have a walk along the south bank of the Thames in the dark.

The stretch of the Thames between Lambeth Bridge and Tower Bridge is one of my favourite parts of London – there is so much variety in terms of architecture and style that it’s great for photography. A couple of my photo walks around London in the past have taken me in this area, but I haven’t really had much chance to do night photography seriously there.

This was no exception unfortunately – I hadn’t really planned to take any pictures, so I hadn’t brought my tripod (or even my D700, which is more superior than my D50 for low light photography). However, I still managed to get a few handheld shots that weren’t too bad. On the strength of those results, I’m determined to do a proper night photography trip along that stretch at some point.

One of my colleagues has a 30ft fishing boat in Portsmouth and is a keen fisherman at the weekends, so I headed out with him and his son this morning for a spot of fishing. Aside from some fog and it being a bit chilly, the weather forecast was ideal with no wind at all, however there had been force 6 winds last night, so the sea was a little choppy at times (5ft waves…but about 15 seconds apart). On our way out (to the East of the Isle of Wight, and a few miles from shore), another boat was coming back in, with the skipper complaining that he was feeling a little queasy, so that should have been warning enough.

Once we dropped anchor it was a little too much for me. I’ve never been seasick before, but the sea was just a little too lumpy today for me. We stayed out there for about an hour, catching only one fish (a dogfish) between the three of us before the weather turned suddenly from no wind to a force 4 in about 10 minutes, the temperature plummeted, and the rain rolled in. To be honest I was quite glad that there was an excuse to come back in rather than it being due to my weak stomach!

So, far from it being a trip where I could take plenty of photos, I have to admit I was a little distracted. I ended up taking very few photos, with the image above being the only one that I’m happy enough with to share. I missed a corker of a shot as we were leaving the marina – I was so excited about being on a boat that I didn’t have my camera ready as we passed a little fishing boat bobbing in the mist, with the milky sunshine trying to break through behind it. All of this considered means that I’ll just have to go back out there at some point to take some better photos!

As a bit of a spontaneous decision a couple of weeks ago after buying a Big Issue, I decided to do their sponsored night walk this coming Friday. It’s a 25 km walk that starts at 10:30pm, and takes us around London, walking alongside vendors and supporters alike, ending in the early hours of Saturday.

Cartoon courtesy of timble.me.uk

I’ve always had a great respect for the Big Issue Foundation; working with those who are on the streets to support them and find away up. As one of their slogans says, it’s a hand up rather than a hand out. It gives those on the streets (either living rough, or in sheltered housing) a purpose (through selling the magazine), and the Foundation also provides support to address the problems that led to the people ending up on the streets, rather than them being condemned to a life of begging.

Over the years when talking to Big Issue vendors, I’ve spoken with such a diverse range of people who have found themselves on the streets, ranging from young people who have been thrown out of their homes through to a guy who used to work for the Inland Revenue, but was a victim of credit card fraud, and lost everything. This walk is a chance to stand (and walk) alongside these people who are normally marginalised by society, whilst raising money for the work of the Big Issue Foundation.

If you would like to sponsor our team of 6, please visit our team sponsorship page and give what you can. Thank you.

Update 28th Sept: weather forecast is for heavy rain!

Unfortunately this will have to be a really quick post, as I’m in the middle of moving into London, but I just had to share the following, that I saw as part of a very geeky wedding:


do {
have_and_hold();
love_and_cherish();
} until (death==true);


That novel take on the traditional vows really appeals to my geek side. Prior to seeing this, the best geeky thing that I’d seen at a wedding was an inscription of “Wifi” (similar to “Wifey”…geddit?) inside the bride’s wedding ring.

I love being a geek!

Often I find that I want to take a sharp photo, but the light isn’t really sufficient for the job. Recently on holiday, there were several situations where I yearned for the low light capabilities of the D700, but I was only carrying my D50 (purely due to the weight of the two).

The rule that I try to follow is that the minimum handheld shutter speed that I use is 1 over the focal length of the lens, so 1/200 if I’m shooting with a 200mm lens. However, that’s not always practical, and it’s certainly not practical to carry a tripod or monopod everywhere. There are a few techniques to minimise camera shake though, without necessarily whacking up the ISO, and these are good practice in general; not just low light.

• Support your camera properly – I see a lot of photographers holding a camera a bit like a sandwich; fingers on top, and thumbs underneath. With SLRs it’s slight better, as most have a hand grip for the right hand. The left hand should be predominantly under the camera. When holding compact cameras, I create an ‘L’ shape with my left hand, with my index finger horizontal, then rest the camera on that. For SLRs, I keep the weight of the camera on the heel of my hand, leaving my fingers free to zoom and focus.
• Draw your elbows in – I generally tend to do this anyway for any photo I take. Pull your elbows right into your body to give a good stable base.
• Stand well – the photographer’s stance should be such that if someone came and gently pushed them, they wouldn’t fall. It’s all about making sure that in general, you have a stable base. It’s not always easy on rough terrain, but it’s helps to minimise general swaying.
• Breathe – it’s much the same as shooting so I’ve heard; relax the breathing, then when you’ve exhaled the whole breath, gently squeeze the trigger.
• Brace the camera – sometimes a handheld shot is just not going to work; for me it’s any photo with a shutter speed less than 1/30. In those situations, I try to find something to hold the camera against firmly; normally a vertical support or something similar. Night photos in cities that I’ve taken without a tripod have always been braced against something
• Use a beanbag – beanbags are great; they’re versatile in that they can be used as a cushion for your head, but also they can provide great stability, as they mould to the shape of the camera/lens. When bear-watching in Romania, I was lent a beanbag for use in the hide, and it was much better than bracing that I’d previously been doing.

So, there are actually quite a few things that can be done. A lot of them are just sensible in general to be honest.

I’ve been interested in night photography almost as soon as I started taking photos, and with it came a fascination about long exposures. There is the opportunity with a long exposure to capture in a single frame, things that the human eye cannot fully appreciate; especially movement, or timeliness of objects and their placements. The version of this that has become relatively cliched recently is light-writing; using a torch or a light source to “draw” or “paint” with light in the dark. I’ll confess that I’ve had a play with it myself.

There are however some fantastic examples of really long exposures that have been done to great effect. We’re not talking seconds, or even minutes; this is hours, days, weeks and even months:

• Solargraphy.com – a project that invites people to chart the movement of the sun across their landscapes around the world.
• Justin Quinell’s Slow Light – much the same as the above, but deserves a mention, as Justin is one of the first long exposure pinhole photographers that I came across
• Michael Wesely’s Open Shutter – a project that documents either the building or demolishing of architectural structures. The parts that remain in place for longest are more solid in the final image, whereas those bits that we’re added or removed are more ghostly and transient in the images

All of these are rather cool…now I wonder if there’s something different that I could do with long exposures…?

I keep an eye on the sites that link to mine, and a couple of days ago, I noticed that the photos of my D50 was getting many more hits than normal:

The source of all of the hits? A site called picsdigger.com. It seems to be a random automatic photo aggregation site; I certainly can’t find any details about who they are, or what they do.

If anyone has any idea who picsdigger.com are, please let me know!

A couple of weeks ago I took some photos with my Rajar No 6; eager to see whether an 80 year old camera could deliver. Well, here’s one of the results:

As can be seen from the white splodges (that’s a technical term by the way) and general feeling of looking at the scene through a dirty window you can see that I have a problem. Seeing as I had cleaned the lens, I was pretty sure that it wasn’t the glass that was the problem, so I shone a bright light from inside the camera to check for pinholes:

Oops. Not just pinholes, but massive holes in the bellows. I guess that’s to be expected in such an old camera, but I have to say I’m a little disappointed. A little bit of searching online reveals that there’s no accepted and permanent way of mending them, as the bellows need to retain their elasticity in folding in and out. Unfortunately this means that this camera of mine will have to just be a piece to look at….however I would be happy to experiment again with both 120 format film, and vintage cameras. Oh, and maybe also pinhole cameras; where pinholes are a good thing!

It’s not often that I write two blog posts in one night, but I’ve just read such a useful and sensible article about lenses, that I had to share it! It’s by David Noton who historically writes great articles, but this one is so useful.

Choosing lenses is notoriously difficult to do (especially on a budget), and although David doesn’t give a complete beginner the answer of which lenses to buy, he highlights things to consider. What do I use? Well at weddings I mainly use an 18-200mm VR lens for digital and a 28-70mm, 50mm and 70-210mm for film. When I move to the D700, I’ll be using a 24-70mm, 50mm and 80-200mm for the digital.

It’s taken a while to build up that collection, and I’m happy with it. I have got a 500mm lens for my Canon film cameras…but it’s so bulky that I’ve only ever used it a couple of times.

This was only meant to be a quick post to say – check out David Noton’s blog post about choosing and using lenses.