Photo of the Week #243

We just returned from our second trip to Shetland. Awhile back I wrote about comparing an organized photo tour with a self-guided trip and you know what? My original feelings were only reinforced. We really like the idea of setting up a home base and working from there. This flight was our first ever time that our luggage got misplaced. I’m willing to bet it went to Bergen without us as there was a plane from the same airline loading for there when we arrived.

We had to purchase a few things to get us going but the horrendous weather was the real issue. It was so windy and cold we really didn’t have the clothing to do very much. Our luggage caught up to us by day 4 and we were set with our rain gear and some more layers to deal with the low teens temperatures we were experiencing. All things considered, I would rather be in some northern destination than sitting on a Caribbean beach any day.

One of my favourite images came from a hike we did in the rain. There is no bad weather, just poor choices in clothing they say.

Photo of the Week #242

Well, we are back safe and sound from our recent trip to Shetland. People have asked us what takes us there, it is many things. It’s a place that hasn’t been overrun by tourists so far. There have been places made popular by social media and suffered for it in my opinion. For one, I’m thinking of the American Southwest. If you have ever been there, you will understand the negative impact that has been experienced. Shetland is so full of peace, that does it for me. Even in the town of Lerwick, you don’t feel overwhelmed by crowds. This trip we did feel the pain of having our bags lost for the first time. This combined with cold and extremely windy conditions made for a bumpy start of our trip but eventually our bags arrived and we were able to get out and active. We walked a lot, we ventured to some new places from our first trip too. I have changed so much in my photography, I no longer overshoot. I’m more deliberate, finding compositions and sticking with it, quality over quantity sort of thing. We did have to deal with a good amount of completely overcast skies and a couple of times we were even hiking in the rain but I would rather have this than clear blue skies.

Photo of the Week # 241

My wife and I just returned from the UK once again, Shetland to be exact. I’ll show some photos from there soon but I wanted to post a couple from St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh today. This place is mind-blowing in it’s details. Dating back to the late medieval period, it is just loaded with history. Being on the Royal Mile, it is understandably busy and extremely hard to shoot. I decided to concentrate more on the higher details to avoid all the people.

Photo of the Week #240

Photographers seem to lean in one of two ways, one very technical, the other more creative. The creative people seem to be able to shoot completely unencumbered by all that technical clutter and pay little attention to it. On the other hand, technical people are often so involved in the technical side of things that it often stands in the way of even shooting. I’m afraid I suffer from the latter. I’m always reading and researching something.

That said, I try to do something a little more creative here and there. This is obviously done digitally so I don’t see a series of these in my future but it’s fun to have a play. Comments always welcome.

Traveling

Traveling means different things to different people. Whatever works for you, that’s what you should do. We had a conversation with a friend recently about this. She prefers the idea of photo tours as opposed to solo trip planning. She gets a package of experiences planned by someone who knows the area and knows when to be where to increase your chances of getting best photos possible. I get it, it has it’s perks.

My wife and I have always planned our own trips and at first, we found that we tried to pack in too much and you’re just not devoting enough attention to any one area. Schedules aren’t conducive to creativity in my opinion. The last couple of years, we decided that it was so much more pleasing to pick a home base and plan day activities around that base. We may see fewer places overall, but what we do experience, we experience far deeper I think. Since we adopted the slow down and experience more plan, I think my photography has come up because of not being rushed. Sometimes we even return to a place more than once and that would never happen on an organized trip. Living life in a hurry just isn’t relaxing to me.

The photo below is a perfect example of taking my time. This was made on the second day we went to the island. The light still isn’t what I would like but it is much better than the first day. I wanted the stacks to have at least some light on them to define them a bit. I have one thing that bothers me about this composition, The stack on the right intersects with the far shore and I wish there was some space between them. I’m thinking there may even be a third visit to this beautiful place.