My blog
Looking back on 2024 and forward to the year ahead
15/03/2025
So to those of you that have followed my adventures and checked in on my website I think I owe you all a MASSIVE apology! You may have noticed that in 2024 there had been no posts at all! Why I hear you cry?? Well the year was a bit of a muddle for me to be honest. I had taken on an additional task at work which has sucked up a phenomenal amount of my time, both at work and out of work as well. My health has been a bit up and down and there have been other distractions as well.
Before I go deeper into what’s been going on I’d like to touch on mental health for a moment if I may? Life throws it’s up’s and downs at us constantly and equally we must try and compensate in our daily activities in order to cope. But what happens to us when we don’t spot the dip ahead in the road or worse still get blindsided by something we never even considered? I can be resilient to most things but I began to notice I was slowly being dragged down by the relentless bombardment of daily news from multiple sources piped directly into my phone. Knowing what is going on in the world is important but saturation of often very biased information can have a very profound effect on our wellbeing if allowed to continue unchecked. I had an account with X or Twitter as was for a long time and regularly posted my pictures to it as well as the occasional comment post but I slowly began to realise two very unpleasant things. One, nobody took any notice of my posts which can make you feel a bit disheartened and two I felt drawn to other people’s posts some of which were decidedly toxic. In simple terms my time wasted and nothing good for me and my wellbeing. I am no longer on X! My smartphone has a daily news app on it. The same thing was happening there as well. You feel drawn to it, you tap it, you see things that can very often drag you down and make you unhappy. Good news is you can edit what you see on this and remove news outlets you don’t want to see.
I still use YouTube constantly and today watched a very good video by FIRST MAN PHOTOGRAPHY Click here which has given me even more to think about. I’m not going to steal his content, go and watch his video and see what you think. On the subject of YouTube I have started watching it on my smart TV as well. There is some seriously good content on there and it can make a worthwhile change to the programs available on other channels.
So, what have I been up to? I bought another camera!! (What, another one??) My journey started at the beginning with Film and I still like to dabble from time to time. I have a very good friend who is into film photography and she started me wanting a medium format film camera. My partner suggested I should try my hand at taking images to do with mindfulness and this all gelled together into my purchasing a Bronica ETRSI medium format film camera. To say this is a work in progress is an understatement, I haven’t even run a test roll through it yet but I’m very excited as to where this is going to take me. The whole thing is so old school it’s unreal. (I feel another post coming here!) Instead of a memory card with 1700+ images on it you get 12 and each one is not cheap to shoot so you really have to slow it down and think about so many things. Mindfulness in the taking as well as in the image its self. The Bronica comes with a meter built in but I will be using a hand held meter as well which is something else to get used to.
I did manage to get back to some club motorsport curtesy of our company motor club. We have had two track days at the Curborough sprint venue near Lichfield. One was in the spring and the other in October. It did feel like going back in time a bit but a thoroughly wonderful experience. I love photographing aircraft but for me cars is where it all really started and Curborough was the first venue I raced at way back when. An added bonus was my images got some exposure in the club magazine and on the company’s internal intranet.
I was back at Fairford in July for RIAT 2024. Weather wise it was a bit mixed but a good event nonetheless. For an aviation photographer it is impossible to say what was the Stand out aircraft/display because there is just so much to see but my favourites were the F4 Phantoms, The Harriers and the Qatari Airforce F15 Ababil displayed by Boeing’s test pilots in both clean and fully loaded configuration. An amazing but exhausting event in equal measure!! 2025 is already booked!
So that was my 2024 condensed into a blog post. What of the year ahead?
Firstly and most importantly I need to put more effort into me and my health. I’ve already touched on mental wellness but it is so important and the easiest thing to overlook. 2024 has taught me a lot about this so I am going to try and put more effort into myself and my wellbeing as well as those close to me. I want to shoot and post to my website what is important to ME without worrying about algorithms and what people like or don’t like. My SEO tells me my website does get hits so somebody must like it! The big deals for 2025 for me could well be the Bronica and YouTube. I’m really excited about medium format film and where it might take me, maybe even my own developing! I keep telling myself I want to do video’s for YouTube, I have a lot I would like to share in video form but the idea of standing in front of a camera is a bit scary for me! I think I need to man up!!
I think I’d best end this post now before it becomes the longest in history so I’ll just say thanks for reading it and Keep shooting!
Before I go deeper into what’s been going on I’d like to touch on mental health for a moment if I may? Life throws it’s up’s and downs at us constantly and equally we must try and compensate in our daily activities in order to cope. But what happens to us when we don’t spot the dip ahead in the road or worse still get blindsided by something we never even considered? I can be resilient to most things but I began to notice I was slowly being dragged down by the relentless bombardment of daily news from multiple sources piped directly into my phone. Knowing what is going on in the world is important but saturation of often very biased information can have a very profound effect on our wellbeing if allowed to continue unchecked. I had an account with X or Twitter as was for a long time and regularly posted my pictures to it as well as the occasional comment post but I slowly began to realise two very unpleasant things. One, nobody took any notice of my posts which can make you feel a bit disheartened and two I felt drawn to other people’s posts some of which were decidedly toxic. In simple terms my time wasted and nothing good for me and my wellbeing. I am no longer on X! My smartphone has a daily news app on it. The same thing was happening there as well. You feel drawn to it, you tap it, you see things that can very often drag you down and make you unhappy. Good news is you can edit what you see on this and remove news outlets you don’t want to see.
I still use YouTube constantly and today watched a very good video by FIRST MAN PHOTOGRAPHY Click here which has given me even more to think about. I’m not going to steal his content, go and watch his video and see what you think. On the subject of YouTube I have started watching it on my smart TV as well. There is some seriously good content on there and it can make a worthwhile change to the programs available on other channels.
So, what have I been up to? I bought another camera!! (What, another one??) My journey started at the beginning with Film and I still like to dabble from time to time. I have a very good friend who is into film photography and she started me wanting a medium format film camera. My partner suggested I should try my hand at taking images to do with mindfulness and this all gelled together into my purchasing a Bronica ETRSI medium format film camera. To say this is a work in progress is an understatement, I haven’t even run a test roll through it yet but I’m very excited as to where this is going to take me. The whole thing is so old school it’s unreal. (I feel another post coming here!) Instead of a memory card with 1700+ images on it you get 12 and each one is not cheap to shoot so you really have to slow it down and think about so many things. Mindfulness in the taking as well as in the image its self. The Bronica comes with a meter built in but I will be using a hand held meter as well which is something else to get used to.
I did manage to get back to some club motorsport curtesy of our company motor club. We have had two track days at the Curborough sprint venue near Lichfield. One was in the spring and the other in October. It did feel like going back in time a bit but a thoroughly wonderful experience. I love photographing aircraft but for me cars is where it all really started and Curborough was the first venue I raced at way back when. An added bonus was my images got some exposure in the club magazine and on the company’s internal intranet.
I was back at Fairford in July for RIAT 2024. Weather wise it was a bit mixed but a good event nonetheless. For an aviation photographer it is impossible to say what was the Stand out aircraft/display because there is just so much to see but my favourites were the F4 Phantoms, The Harriers and the Qatari Airforce F15 Ababil displayed by Boeing’s test pilots in both clean and fully loaded configuration. An amazing but exhausting event in equal measure!! 2025 is already booked!
So that was my 2024 condensed into a blog post. What of the year ahead?
Firstly and most importantly I need to put more effort into me and my health. I’ve already touched on mental wellness but it is so important and the easiest thing to overlook. 2024 has taught me a lot about this so I am going to try and put more effort into myself and my wellbeing as well as those close to me. I want to shoot and post to my website what is important to ME without worrying about algorithms and what people like or don’t like. My SEO tells me my website does get hits so somebody must like it! The big deals for 2025 for me could well be the Bronica and YouTube. I’m really excited about medium format film and where it might take me, maybe even my own developing! I keep telling myself I want to do video’s for YouTube, I have a lot I would like to share in video form but the idea of standing in front of a camera is a bit scary for me! I think I need to man up!!
I think I’d best end this post now before it becomes the longest in history so I’ll just say thanks for reading it and Keep shooting!
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