The Beginning of Something Beautiful

Canon EOS 5D MkII, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 @ f1.8, ISO 3200

The sky was clear, the air had a chill in it, but I got out last night with the camera. I’ve been planning to set myself a photographic project for a while now, but nothing really inspired me. Until, for some peculiar reason, I thought of Newport. Despite being one of Wales’ newest cities, Newport has never really had a good name that I can remember and is known to be a little abrasive to say the least. While millions of pounds have been spend in trying to regenerate the city, it’s still struggling to evolve in to the environment that people want to visit. For reasons unknown to me, I’ve decided to try and find the hidden beauty in this  micro metropolis and display it to the masses… or the readers of my blog.

At this point the project details are fairly sparse and I should really look to set myself some criteria. It’s open ended and have no end date. I currently have no intended outcome. I just need to try and make Newport pretty with only the use of a camera, tripod, lights and maybe a little creative flair. A collection of photographs to show a different side of my local city.

Watch this space. #MakeNewportPretty

Inspiration in your Pocket

I’m finding myself, yet again lacking that inspiration and “get up and go” with regards to photography. While my new 5D2’s apparent weatherproofing is meant to be fairly top notch, my own weatherproofing isn’t up to much and the torrential rain recently has put me off going out. But I’ve found myself spending a lot of time on Instagram since it was launched on Android devices recently.

Instagram as I’m sure you’re all aware is a $1bn smartphone application to edit and share photographs and from what I can understand by reading the internet, it’s not really a tool that actual “real” photographers are a fan of. My theory on this is that they see the application purely as a photo editor. I’m led to believe that the iPhone version of the app is a lot more advanced than the Android version, but using my own experience, I’m not a huge fan of applying “retro” digital filters to my shots, just to make them look like I just scanned and uploaded them from a retro camera. While a highly saturated photo of someone’s breakfast cereal and half eaten toast with a fancy filter on with a border around it may appeal to some and get thousands of likes, it’s not of any huge benefit to me.

I see the application as an open, social, photographic idea box. All the uploaded photos can be geotagged and hash tagged to help you find inspiration. Searching on hashtags of dSLR cameras, like #5dmk2 will usually result in a plethora of photos taken on that camera, and generally there will be some decent images. If you have an idea to shoot something, but not sure on what’s been done before, or want some different ideas, search for it!

While you will have to search for the diamonds amongst the rough, and respond to questions like “what app did you use to do that?” I deffinately see it as a benefit to amateur photographers looking for a little bit of inspiration in smartphone size. Following people with similar interests to you is also a major plus, it gets your mind working if you see something you’re capable of, but haven’t tried yet.

How do you use Instagram?

If you use Instagram, you can follow me by searching: DanWoosnam.