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Shoot for the Moon – Capturing the 2018 Lunar Eclipse

While eclipses of all sorts happen throughout each year – from “blood moons” to annular solar eclipses, total eclipses and every partial one in between, this year’s lunar eclipse promised something special: the longest lunar eclipse in the 21st century. So the call from Rollei came – could I come across and be involved in their live shoot on Instagram, capturing the spectacle from Hamburg? Well, why not…? With a few days’ preparation beforehand and […]

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Norway’s Lofoten Islands – Stunning? Yes. “Untamed”? I’m not so sure.

It’s one of landscape photography’s “big ticks” – that shot of the fishermans cottages in the shadow of Lofoten’s mountain range in Hamnøy; one of the archipelago’s tiny islands connected by bridges that span for miles across the region. I have to admit, it’s been a place I’d been wanting to shoot for a while, so when the opportunity arose to test some new equipment in low temperatures, it was pretty high up there on […]

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Hide & Seek – Denmark’s Sand-Covered Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, Løkken

Arriving into bad weather wasn’t on the original plan, but it had taken us long enough to get to Løkken so a determination to shoot took over – I was there to shoot the hidden lighthouse, and that’s precisely what I was going to do, rain and sand storm or not. Set almost as far north as you can go in Denmark, Løkken has become somewhat of a local tourist-trap for its beaches more than […]

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Chill Out : The End of Winter in Iceland

For the briefest of moments, the sound of cracking had stopped – the huge iceberg formations that feed Iceland’s iconic Jökulsárlón (or “glacial river lagoon” when translated) had steadied and the tide was turning. While often full of baby icebergs which have fallen away from the surface of the Vatnajökull glacier, finding one of this size in isolation resting in still water (with very few people around to distract) was quite unusual. Even better, the stillness […]

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First Light : Sunrise at Zion National Park

Zion – a National Park that I’ve passed many times, yet strangely never visited. Heading in for just one night as we travelled the long trek from Jackson to Las Vegas, I was reliably informed that there was one key “sunset shot” that was worth heading in to at least try and capture. The signs of an unlikely shot were there – the weather was closing in, loads of people around in the late season, and […]

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Chicago from the rooftops : Carbide, Carbon and a little Hard Rock

Chicago. “The Windy City” – home to some of the finest architecture, food and (now!) baseball teams in the USA. Stood on the rooftop of the Carbide and Carbon Building, now the home of Chicago’s Hard Rock Hotel, it’s easy to see why people are so fascinated with this city – looking out across the skyscrapers, neighbourhoods and river as it weaves its way through the juxtaposition of historic stone buildings and sleek modern towers. And what […]

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Roy’s Peak – Another of New Zealand’s (now) cliché locations

Over-used by cliché wedding photographers, over-“influenced” by millions of instagrammers and over-sold around the world by tourism boards, this once peaceful hiking trail and overlook across Lake Wanaka has sadly now become a magnet for “look at me” shots worldwide. Beautiful though it is, Roy’s Peak has fallen victim to the same challenges faced by “that Wanaka tree” and many other tourist traps nearby – the result of huge popularity following the publishing of (what were […]

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Inside Antelope Canyon – Paul’s Complete Photography Guide

It’s a location that features on the bucket list of many photographers, and it’s a magnetic one at that. Having already visited both Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon 6 or 7 times since my first visit in 2011, I still have the urge to return every now and then to capture the other-worldly scenes of light-trails, stunning rock formations and shadows throughout these two natural wonders just outside of Page, Arizona. Sadly, there is a lot […]

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Venetian Nights – Capturing Venice’s Grand Canal

Ah, Venice. The Bride of the Sea, City of Bridges, City of Light, City of Water and Serenissima. A stunning place to just force yourself to get lost with no maps and wander around the winding streets, waterways, alleys and ancient buildings exploring an area that is so set back in time, it’s as close to arriving in a Shakespearean novel as you can get. My last visit to Venice had resulted in quite a few “learning […]

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9 Years in the Making : Fog City – San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge

There’s always that one shot, for every photographer out there – “the one” that just keeps getting away, the one that’s never quite right when you click the button, or the one that’s impossible to find the right conditions to capture. For me, that shot has been the same for over 9 years now: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the fog. Finally, one random winter’s afternoon, I managed to break that spell – and shoot […]

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Take it, Don’t Fake it. The Disturbing Rise of Photoshop-ography

As part of my post last year, I briefly touched on the growing number of “photoshop-ographers” in the industry – a worrying trend which is creating a void of necessary in-camera capture skills and knowledge. This is where people are instead opting to “fix things later” (often fabricating reality), publishing fake scenes while claiming them to be photographs. In this article, I want to explore the challenges we face as a result of this apparent shift in what […]

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Yosemite National Park – Capturing the Valley in Winter

Ah, Yosemite – a “photographer’s paradise” (as claimed), but a location which can equally be the stuff of a photographer’s nightmares… On what must now be my 7th or 8th time of visiting, I was determined on this occasion to get at least one shot which stood out from the millions of picture-postcard views and Ansel Adams “tributes” that I see far too often. In one single frame, almost by accident, I managed it – […]

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Through the Keyhole: Durdle Door’s sunrise, revisited

Since my first attempt to capture sunrise “through the hole” a few year back, a couple of things have happened. Firstly, I’ve managed to get a lot more familiar with my gear – its quirks and challenges, as well as what to do to get it to really perform. Secondly, I’ve seen a mini-explosion of photographers shrouding their images in fake mystery regarding “the art of capturing sunrise through the hole” at Durdle Door. If you seriously listened […]

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Steller App – Photographic social storytelling on your phone

A couple of weeks ago, after landing back to London Heathrow, my phone informed me that I’d been “mentioned” on an unknown app called “Steller“. As is normally the case with this kind of thing, I initially brushed it off as an invite to yet another useless social media/networking tool that will likely disappear after I’ve put effort into using it. However, something grabbed my attention with this one: It listed a company that I’d recently photographed for and […]

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A Special Moment – Shooting from the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, Jin Mao Tower

Of course, witnessing that sunset was a special moment in itself – but being up here on the rooftop of the Jin Mao Tower, the home of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Shanghai, was especially significant for me. Soon, I would be leaving Shanghai – a place I’ve called home for 3 years now – and this was a return to the very first building I’d ever visited in Asia. Stood up on the roof with my […]

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The Glenorchy Willow Trees – Back Again for Winter!

Well, *I* was back for winter – I’m going to guess the willow trees themselves didn’t go anywhere since I was there last year! For those who remember my shots from last winter – “myst” and “the three witches“, you’ll recall that we were pretty much fog-bound for the window we had to shoot. This time, with the flexibility of our “Jucy Casa” home on wheels, I was determined to get a shot showing the true […]

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How to Shoot the Night Sky – Paul’s Guide to Astro & Star Photography

Night/Astro/Star/Star-trail Photography – whatever you want to call it, this is a genre which has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years (partly connected with the increase in sensitivity of reasonably-priced camera sensors over the same period). The irony being, it’s also one of the easiest forms of photography that yields some of the most impressive results if you get it right. Given the chance for some downtime while travelling around the New […]