The Lockdown Posts
- At July 22, 2020
- By John
- In Book, News, Photography
- 0
Monday, March 23rd, 2020, the day all our lives as we had known changed. The Covid-19 pandemic had taken a foothold in the United Kingdom and the Government announced that Lockdown measures are to be put in place, forcing us to stay in our homes, bar essential trips to the shops for food and some daily exercise. Our daily lives suddenly changed beyond comprehension.
The mantra became
“Stay Home, Stay Safe, Protect the NHS”
Most people, like me, suddenly found themselves with more time on their hands. A lot more time. A time perhaps, to finally start some of the projects you’d been putting off for years. Social media suddenly became much more important in our lives, to help us stay in touch, communicate, inform, entertain and ease the boredom. For myself, it was a time to finally begin sorting out my large library of photos, update my software, improve my photo processing skills and make some photo books. I posted one or two pictures to Facebook, as I occasionally did anyway, but at the behest of my sister, it soon became an almost daily ritual. These would become my Lockdown Posts.
My first official Lockdown post occurred on the 1st of April, and I continued posting almost daily until the 5th July, 2020, although as Lockdown began to ease, so did I, so I didn’t quite conform to posting one image every day. The end date was originally going to be the 4th of July, but I extended this to the 5th which was the 75th Anniversary of the NHS; it just seemed more appropriate.
At first, the images were pretty much selected at random, but at some stage (around late May perhaps?) it just seemed perfectly logical to make them a subject of a book. From then onwards, some of the images were paired up and chosen with the book layout in mind. Many of the images are re-discoveries or previously unprocessed and long-forgotten images, but the whole process proved quite a voyage of rediscovery and quite a cathartic one at that. It’s resulted in a bit of a Hodge-potch of 90 images, but one that provides an interesting snapshot into my photographic body of work. They are all now posted on my Lockdown Gallery, and you can see them all together here.
New Zoom Lens from Canon
- At November 14, 2014
- By John
- In Canon, Lens
- 0
Mark II of the Popular 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 L Lens Announced
Of particular interest to myself, the much rumoured replacement from the 16 year old, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L, push-pull, zoom lens has finally been announced from Canon.
Read More»Antarctica Video
- At April 11, 2014
- By John
- In Antarctica, Travel, Uncategorized
- 0
Courtesy of Chris Sanderson, there is now an 18 minute video of my trip with Luminous Landscape to Antarctica earlier this year. It is really a taster (advertisement) for future LuLa trips there, but contains some stunning Antarctic scenery and wildlife, and for me a great reminder of such good times. I had hoped to embed the video below but unfortunately their privacy setting’s won’t allow that, so you just have to click on the screen grab below linked to the video. It’s well worth a watch. and there’s even the odd glimpse of yours truly.
Read More»Masters of Vision Exhibition 2013
- At August 17, 2013
- By John
- In Anthony Spencer, Dav Thomas, Exhibition, Joe Cornish
- 0
Photography Exhibition at Southwell Minster
Most photographic exhibitions within the UK are generally held within the nation’s capital so it comes as a much welcome change to see one housed in the shires, and especially one not far from where I live. Masters of Vision is a landscape photography exhibition currently on show within the beautiful Minster at Southwell in Nottinghamshire. The exhibition features several well know UK landscape photographers, this year headlined by Joe Cornish, and runs for just one month from 27th July to 26th August 2013. Southwell Minster may seem like a odd venue for a photography exhibition, but it has been the setting for 2 previous Masters of Vision exhibitions which featured the works of Charlie Waite in 2009 and David Noton in 2011. So what better way to idle a few hours on a rather damp drizzly Sunday afternoon.
New Gallery Pictures
- At May 15, 2013
- By John
- In Photographic Art, Portfolio, UK Landscape
- 0
Updated UK Landscape Gallery
I’ve at long last added several more images to my UK Landscape portfolio, which I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. I’ve recreated a complete new set of jpeg files for the whole UK Landscape Gallery, which I thought didn’t quite look their best when viewed on-screen in a web browser, and the watermark logo wasn’t rendered so hot on some either.
Read More»The Worlds Top 10 Most Expensive Photographs
It doesn’t seem so long ago when I was discussing a picture by Australian landsscape photographer Peter Lik with a group of fellow photographers, that had sold for a million dollars. Having been to Lik’s gallery in Las Vegas and witnessed the crass commercialism first hand, I guess I wasn’t too surprised. But only in America hey? However, something the other day made me want to find out what was so appealing about that picture as to command such an amazing price. During my research I was stunned to find out it’s now not even in the top ten most expensive photographs in the world today.
Read More»The Rise of the eBook
- At August 16, 2012
- By John
- In Book, Instruction, Magazine
- 0
EBooks aren’t really anything radically new, as the hypertext editing system and electronic documents have been in existence since the 1960’s but didn’t proliferate until the birth of the world wide web and then not in the form that we know now. Even electronic book readers have been around since 1998, but these early devices failed to capture the imagination on an unsuspecting public. It wasn’t until 2009 when Amazon released their first Kindle and the Sony e-reader emerged that eBooks seemed to provide a serious alternative to the paper varieties.
Read More»Why Aren’t Extended Timer Facilities Built-in to my DSLR?
- At October 19, 2011
- By John
- In Accessory, Gadget, Gear, Gear Review
- 0
On the weekend whilst photographing the limestone pavement on top of Malham cove in the Yorkshire Dales I lost my remote timer switch. It was dangling from my camera and got tangled up in my tripod legs as I was moving my tripod; one of the legs closed, snapped the timer cord out of the socket on the side of the camera which then disappeared down one of the deep grykes in the limestone pavement, never to be seen again. Thankfully it wasn’t an original (and very expensive) Canon TC-80N3 remote timer; my original TC-80N3 bit the dust last year when I managed to dangle it in salt water on a Scottish beach, this latest disaster was a only a considerably cheaper eBay clone.
Read More»Putting in a little Effort
- At October 12, 2011
- By John
- In Location
- 0
I’ve just returned from an evening at my local photographic club where we were talking about various aspects of photography, noticeably new activities to get long term and new members to socialise more and activities to get us out doing more photography, which is after all what we are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately our club is a little too fixated with club competitions. At the beginning of each new season potential new recruits arrive hoping to learn more about photography,
Read More»When Lightning Strikes
- At June 14, 2011
- By John
- In Accessory, Gadget, Gear, Gear Review
- 0
AEO Lightning Strike – Firsts Looks
I’ve often admired some amazing photographs of lightning and although I’ve read plenty on the technique of how to achieve such shots I’ve never had any success myself. All my attempts have been a complete disaster even when I’ve know the shutter was open when the lightning flashed.
Read More»