That being said, this off-season so far I've mostly shot one of my usual subject areas, Lucy and Lola. Shooting hockey means that you get accustomed to shooting unpredictable occurrences with no notice, and this turns out to be perfect training for shooting two moggies. In fairness they're easiest to shoot when they're asleep, which is most of the time, but that doesn't always make for a thrilling shot! So in order to get some slightly more active shots, I took advantage of the early summer and took the pair of them out into the garden for a photo shoot.
But even when we're playing, Lola still manages to find time to cuddle her ball and have an impromptu nap:
I will admit freely that before last summer, I wasn't a cat person. Cats were something to be shooed out of the garden, tolerated or ignored. My partner Yolanda had a cat in her previous marriage, and when she divorced she had to leave him behind and I know how much that broke her heart, so I figured that a trip to have a look at the moggies at an RSPCA Centre not too far away might go some way to putting a smile back on her face. To cut a long story short, Lola and Lucy chose to adopt us (I realise it's supposed to be the other way around, but that's the way it happened) and since then my life has been changed 'fur the better' (see what I did there?) So I've now become one of those people who finds pictures of cats cute, and can't stop shooting my own two. Even when they steal my lawn chair...
This past weekend, I went home. Back to the Homeland, the place where my family still resides, Grimsby. Whilst there, I squeezed in a few trips to visit family and friends, and to shoot a couple of familiar places. I always try to get a shot of Waltham Windmill in whenever I go home, for some reason I never tire of shooting it, and this time I was experimenting with a polarizing filter:
I also squeezed off a few shots at the War Memorial in Waltham, not far from the windmill. I have a soft spot for shooting older things, like windmills, monuments, statues, castles, churches and cathedrals, and I have no idea why! It just gives me a sense of peace, and I enjoy it, so I'll carry on doing it whenever the opportunity presents itself. In this particular instance, the war memorial was lit by the sun from behind, which presented a challenge in itself, but I managed to get this particular shot which I'm fairly proud of:
Visiting Yolanda's relatives over in Hull meant a trip over the Humber, and a chance to shoot the Humber Bridge from one of the two viewpoints. This time we stopped off at the north viewpoint, at Hessle, and I wandered onto the shingly beach to shoot the bridge:
It's a huge structure, completely unnatural, but it does give me a sense of calmness and wellbeing. It links the north and south shores of the Humber and gives drivers a shortcut to Hull, but to me it's a thing of beauty, and I shoot it every chance I get. It doesn't move (much), it doesn't physically change, and yet every time I go I see something different to shoot there:
Recently I have been corresponding with a fellow photographer on Flickr, a young lady by the name of Chris Willis, and she's been encouraging me to try out some of the 'challenge groups' on Flickr, groups where there is a theme set each week and the idea is that you go out and shoot something that fits in with the theme. The general idea is that you can get some inspiration and try your hand at something new, and before long I will probably be immersing myself in the challenge. So far though, Chris has challenged me to shoot a Zoom Burst of a dandelion, and so I've given it a go. A Zoom Burst is a shot where you manually zoom in on your subject whilst the exposure is taken, and here's my attempt at it:
I'm looking forward to more challenges from Chris and from the Flickr groups this summer, and hopefully some of the shot will be featuring on this blog in the near future!
My Flickr page can be seen here.
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