Category: Photographs

Lockdown Photography Is Tough

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Recently in Wales we had what they called a “Firebreak” lockdown where there were restrictions on where we could go, what shops were open and what places we could visit. I took advantage of this to try and be creative with some photography, so my goal was to take a photo a day.

I managed 15 photographs from the 17 days that we were locked down. Sometimes I just had to force myself to take them, sometimes they came naturally. These photos are not meant to be particularly awesome in any way, but I think I managed to grab one or two that interest me.

Images were edited in a mobile phone app called “Koda”, which has many filters for old cameras, plus effects and other such things. I used it just to use something different.

Here are my 15 photos from Wales’ Lockdown, October/November 2020.

Please click on the images to see them full size

A variety of photographs, taking any opportunities I could to get the photograph. It’s surprising how hard it can be if you loose your mojo because of circumstances.

Looking at the images after I have put this together, I quite like a number of them a lot more than I thought, plus I quite like the editing style. Let me know what you think!

— Hopefully that’s the last of the lockdowns, but you never know! If you enjoyed what you have seen, please like, comment and subscribe to my blog. Thank you all very much for your time.

Autumnal Shoot In Margam Park (Kodachrome Slide)

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Today was the first day we were able to get out with Great Photography Walks South Wales since Wales came out of lockdown yesterday. We prayed for good weather as it has been very wet lately, and we were lucky enough to have a few fine hours to get some amazing shots of Margam at this wonderful time of year.

My plan for the day was simple. Capture the wonders of autumn, in camera, using only my Fred Herzog Kodachrome Slide Film film simulation from the jpegs that my new Fujifilm X-T3 produces. This simulation is really meant for street photography and architecture, but I thought I would give it a go in the countryside, and I am more than happy with the results!

A couple of the images were cropped slightly using Photoscape X Pro, and they were all resized to 1200×800. No other edits were performed to these images.

Please click on the images to see them full screen

This is definitely a look that I really like. The film recipe I used has grain in it, and so if you zoom you will see added grain, but I think that adds to the filmic qualities of the images.

The more I use Fujifilm camera’s, the more I just want to shoot using jpeg as they are so perfect, however I still shoot raw and jpeg just so I can have something to go back to should I need to, plus I can use the raw files to design more film simulation recipes.

If you’ve liked what you’ve seen, taking into consideration they are straight from camera, please comment, like and subscribe to my blog. Thank you all for taking the time to visit.

— You’ll find a full section of Fujifilm Film Simulations here, and there are more added on a regular basis.

Lockdown Street Photography: Port Talbot with Fred Herzog Kodachrome

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Today was the first chance that I had to really go out and test my new Fujifilm X-T3 and my new film recipe I’ve been working on based on Fred Herzog’s Kodachrome images.

I’ve really liked the look of his work, and although it was Kodachrome slide film that he used, he had a certain look with to me is simply intriguing and stunning. Shooting the mundane, shooting the everyday things were all take for granted, the images came alive with the strong colours of the film.

So today I took these images. All colour is straight from camera, the only thing I edited was performing a crop to them and adding a border, so achieved in Snapseed.

Please click on images to view full screen

These images were taken in strong sunlight. For this year I have not yet included any white balance shifts to the images. The full recipe will be coming to the website soon, and included in this blog when it is completed.

I would love feedback on these. You can view original images by Fred Herzog at This Website Please take into account, the time different, people’s clothes, images on buildings and almost everything was very different back then, which of course gives Frank’s images an altogether different look.

Sunset At Aberavon Beach

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It’s been a long time since I have been out and about, and today I didn’t think I would get outside as the weather has been so bad. However, half hour before sunset I noticed there was a break in the weather, and so made a dash for it! I run down the road to the beach, and the fun then began!

This was the first time I had used my brand new Fujifilm X-T3 out in the wild and under pressure. The wind was gale force, the water and foam of the beach were blowing at me, and the prospect of a downpour was looming ever closer as I started taking photographs! For today’s shoot I decided to take my 15-45mm Fujinon lens so that I could try the crop mode at 45mm and see how much extra reach I could get.

I was taking photo’s, but things didn’t seem right. This particular lens does not have an aperture ring, and I couldn’t get the aperture to stay at F9 to start with. I noticed the “P” on the screen for Program Mode, but I could not get rid of it! Eventually, after a few photo’s, I realised that my front and rear command dials were opposite to what they had been on my X-T20, so I eventually sorted that out!

I managed to get 140 photographs (I was on, as usual continuous low shooting mode, so sometimes a couple of each shot, which can make a huge difference when choosing wave shots!)

Please click on images to see them full screen

Just before I started work on this blog, I also got the chance to shoot the moon. I had been wanting to try out the sports crop mode on the camera by shooting the moon, and I was happy with the results!

The moon at 230mm plus the camera 1.25x crop on sports mode

Tonight was a big learning curve for me with the new camera, apart from the problems at the beach, I somehow at first couldn’t photograph the moon, but then started to remember that this camera does things a little differently. I must get used to using all the dials on the top of the camera!

All images were initially edited in Capture One Pro, before being moved across to Photoscape X Pro where I tweaked the colours with a filter on low opacity, and then resized in the batch module.

I hope you have enjoyed these images, please like, comment and subscribe if you have!

— All images taken with the new Fujifilm X-T3 with Fujinon 15-45mm lens. All shot in aperture priority mode except the moon which was in full manual. All EXIF data is in the images.

An Autumn Walk

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We woke up this morning, looked out of the window and could see it was going to be a nice day. We dropped off Samuel to school and got in the car and headed out with the camera to take some autumnal photographs while we had the chance.

The idea today was to just get some lovely photographs to go with the ones we’ve taken with Samuel over the years. When Samuel is off school next week we will do the same with both the boys, so this was great practise to get some things right. I chose to take the Viltrox 23mm F/1.4 and Viltrox 85mm F/1.8 and have my settings set to the MGA Colour Chrome setting (which can be found in the Fuji section of the website).

The idea today blossomed into doing everything away from home, so I’m writing this in the car while Llinos is shopping and George is sleeping. The photos were transferred from the camera to my mobile phone via the Fuji mobile app, which works amazingly. Editing consisted of a couple little crops and a border added to the photographs, all performed in Snapseed.

So, here are the images after going through this process… Autumn is certainly upon us!

The wonderful colours of autumn!

As can be seen, this all turned out really nice! It was quite a nice challenge that I set myself, and it turned out well.

Hopefully in the coming days I will share with you the shots that I took that were not of the family, but I just think this will be a change to a lot of my readers.

If you liked what you have seen, please remember to comment, like and share my blog and website. Thank you everyone!