The Phase One IQ4 150MP Infinity Platform ships at the end of this month, and for the past week I’ve been their focus in the latest marketing campaign.
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Las Vegas – Capturing The Strip in Ultra-HD
Capturing the Las Vegas Strip and Fountains of Bellagio in 150+ megapixels of medium format image from a stunning location in the heart of Sin City.
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 […]
Light Pollution, Astroklar & Natural Night Filter Review – Do They Really Work?
Light pollution: Increasingly a challenge for city dwellers and photographers alike. Those deep, dark skies that I’m lucky enough to see full of stars out in the countryside are becoming an endangered species in their own right as the world’s population continues to rise and urban areas inevitably expand. The problem is, with all that light bouncing around, our view of the night sky (and ability to capture it) continues to diminish on a daily […]
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 […]
Rollei Lion Rock 30 Mk II Review – Could this be the most stable tripod, ever?
There’s a new kid on the block – well, triplets, actually : The Rollei Lion Rock Mark II series of tripods, made by FotoPro, with three different heights and capacities of up to 20kg, 25kg and 30kg. So, having used tripods from Manfrotto, Really Right Stuff, Gitzo and many others – after years of them trying to convince me to switch from my existing “old favourites”, could this finally be “the one”? Last year, I […]
The Boston Rooftops – Beantown in Trichromatic Detail
So here we are again, stood on top of an historic building, looking out over the city of Boston just after sunset. What a view, and what a night. It wasn’t the night I’d been planning, to be fair – this was supposed to be a really quick trip to capture the snow that had fallen over Cape Cod – checking out Race Point Lighthouse for the first time and seeing how some new equipment […]
Electric Dreams : Dubai Revisited
Stepping out onto the scorching hot ground of the Red Sand Desert, I was reminded (rather cheerily) by our guide of the one thing I should be grateful for in this midday sun : “at least it’s not last month, it was at least 10 degrees C hotter!”. It was quite a contrast to where I’d been sat just hours before, being looked after in BA’s Concorde Room at London Heathrow – getting pampered (in […]
Iceland : The Land of the Midnight Sun, Mountains & Waterfalls
What an evening – and what a view! Being lucky enough to stand in the foothills of Kirkjufellsfoss at 12:30am this summer was quite the experience, and everything I thought it would be all those months ago when we planned this trip to Iceland to see the midnight sun. Landing into Reykjavik, it was clear this was going to be a strange week – looking back to the plane in the middle of the night […]
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 […]
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 […]
From 5 stars to a billion stars : Road-Tripping the Jucy way
Persuading me to leave a 5-star hotel and “rough it” in a Jucy campervan for a week or two while tearing around New Zealand’s south island is no mean feat, but just over a year ago now it was done – and with some great photography results to show for it. This year, based on that success, was the return. With a lot more clarity on our route, more flexibility in our approach and with Jucy […]
New Zealand Nights : Aurora Australis & our Galaxy Above
Seeing the northern lights (aurora borealis) in the sky above us is becoming an increasingly popular to-do list item, but despite being fortunate enough to have seen them a few times now, the lure of seeing the southern lights (aurora australis) during our time in New Zealand was just too tempting to ignore. We’d been lucky so far, really, when it came to night sky photographs. While not my favourite subject, hunting for the right location, angle, […]
Thinking outside of the Box : Kuala Lumpur from Above
(Don’t) Look down! At around 1,000ft above the ground, Menara Kuala Lumpur (or the “KL Tower” as it’s also known) isn’t a record-breaker by any means, but hey – it’s still the highest place you can get to across the city. My usual plan when shooting nightscapes tends to specifically exclude photography from the iconic towers for one simple reason : that icon can’t be in the shot if you’re stood on it to take the photo! This […]
London : In Blue
The sudden realisation that you’ve been back in the UK for over 6 months now, and are yet to capture any shots of London hit me a few weeks ago. An easy fix, for sure, but it also dawned on me that I was missing some standard “stock shots” of the city at night. It was time to put that right… London, to me, will always have with it a certain air of excitement. As a […]
cityscapes : out of this | world – the video
Have you ever seen a still photograph of a cityscape move? Here’s your opportunity! Together with the guys at ToInspire, we’re pulling together each of my collections into a promo-reel, starting with cityscapes, “out of this | world”. Creating moving images from still shots isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and a lot of painstaking pixel-level work goes in to every single photograph to get the effect just right while still keeping as much of the […]
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 […]
Cold as Ice : An Amazing Winter in Iceland
Iceland – a country of stunning beauty, dramatic views and amazing natural resources. In some ways, photographs of the huge vistas that presented themselves before us can never really show the true nature of the vast spaces and rugged landscape – but in others, they also capture a stillness that is easy to miss when you’re stood in huge, freezing, gusts of arctic wind… With glaciers all around, the sheer scale is something that must […]
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 […]
Curtain Call – Free download : Hollywood Sign Image
Some call it a “Black Friday Sale”; Others call it a moment of madness; I call it “giving something back” (as you’ll read more about below). However, regardless of the reason, you’re not reading the title wrong – You can download, for free, one of my latest digital images for personal use. 😉 Proudly presenting… “Curtain Call”: Clicking the image above, or clicking here, will download the lower-resolution version (suitable for desktop backgrounds, 3,000 x 2,000 px). Clicking on this […]
It’s not “haze”, it’s Deadly Pollution : Malaysia, Truly Asia…
“Malaysia, truly Asia” – The jingle on the TV ad, plane intro’s and travel programmes that I’ve been hearing for years and years really did come true last week – and not only for all the good reasons they intended… I’m sat writing this blog beneath bright blue skies and a fresh breeze in Bali – and with all of that above me, it’s too easy to forget the horrendous conditions I left behind in Kuala Lumpur last […]
W Doha : Shooting Bibi and Fouz – the “celebrities” of Instagram
“Welcome to W Doha, we saw you had a good flight” – was my welcome as I entered this amazing hotel. Granted, W Hotels are unique in the way they really take time to get to know their guests, but I was still surprised. “Oh, we saw your instagram post”, was the response when I looked back at him slightly puzzled. Ahhhh, I get it… Entering in to the lobby (or “Living Room” in W speak), you’re […]
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 […]
Japan 2015 – Capturing the Tokyo Tower from the Andaz Rooftop
Tokyo – what a truly amazing place. Full of modern innovation, side by side with centuries of culture and history. It’s one of my favourite cities in the world, and despite visiting a few times (I’ve climbed Mount Fuji twice now!) – it was another tick off the list to head back there and capture an iconic image of the skyline before I leave Asia for a while. The standard stereotypes can actually be pretty accurate […]