On My Watch List - A New Show with Chris Sale

Collaborations Take Time

One of the great benefits of sharing your photography life on YouTube is the number of people that you get to meet. I often say the photography content creation community is a bit like a virtual camera club. While this does mean your virtual camera club has members from all over the country (even the world) it also means it is challenging to find the time to meet people in person.

I would love to have more time to spend travelling the country, meeting up with fellow photographers and collaborating on content ideas. For me, allocating time for landscape photography is often a careful balance of family and work commitments. As a result, I only collaborate a few times a year and only if the idea is going to provide a tangible benefit to all the parties involved.

My good friend and fellow landscape photographer, Chris Sale, is a person I have collaborated with several times. For some time now we have been talking about collaborating on the creation of a new photography related show or podcast. We didn’t just want to create just another photography chat show. Instead, we wanted to create something with purpose and definition. Something that has a USP!

Lockdown Ideas

Like many photographers at the moment, Chris and I have a bit more time on our hands. While our landscape photography activities have very much been restricted, that hasn’t stopped us being creative. This period of lockdown has given us the time to work on our idea to produce a new show. Over the last few weeks, we discussed several ideas but the one that stuck was Chris’ idea of doing a show around photography related videos on YouTube.

We decided to go with that idea as we produce and watch a lot of photography related YouTube content. We feel this makes us well placed to discuss the topic, and we also believe that no one else is doing this type of show (with landscape photography content). By talking about the videos that we watch we hope to inspire your watch later list and to also inspire your photography.

After man-hours of discussion and planning, we agreed to film a pilot. The biggest challenge for filming the pilot was the fact that we live in different ends of the country. Even without lockdown, it would be unlikely that we would be able to film anything in person. So, the main challenges to filming were mostly technical and how post-production would work with different video sources such as Skype..

With a plan for the show laid out and (hopefully) the technical issues all sorted we filmed the pilot which we are incredibly happy to share with you all.

You’ll find the video below. It will premiere on YouTube at 7:30 pm tonight (14th July 2020) and if you can join us live, we will be there in the Live Chat to discuss the show and hear your feedback. If you can’t join us live don’t worry as after the premier has finished it will remain on YouTube just like any other video.

We really hope you enjoyed the pilot show and we want to hear your feedback (good or bad). It will help us decide if we will do more shows and help us shape the content and format. We look forward to seeing your comments!

One Million Minutes

Milestones

It was only 13 months ago when I posted up a channel update video on my YouTube channel.  In the video, I was celebrating the fact that I had just reached 100 subscribers.  I was well chuffed!  Fast forward to now and I've reached two milestones that I didn't think I'd achieve.  Not only do I have more than 5000 subscribers now, but people have now watched over 1 million minutes of my content!

This totally blows my mind!  It's also very encouraging and inspires me to keep creating new videos.  To help celebrate these milestones I have created a quick thank you video which you can see below.  In the video, I also share with you some of my outtakes from my previous videos.  While you only see the final, edited version, you don't get to see how often I get it wrong.  I rarely get things right on the first take!

So thank you again for your support and enjoy the outtakes.

PS.  Now the spring has hopefully sprung I'll be back to creating blogs and vlogs of my landscape photography adventures.  :-)

My YouTube Channel is 1 Year Old

Another Birthday!

I recently celebrated the first birthday of my blog and now I'm pleased to say that my YouTube channel is doing the same!  

My blog was an easy way for me to journal and share my photography stories, but it soon became apparent to me that creating videos would be a natural extension of this.  As with most things though it wasn't as straightforward as I thought it might be, but once I had started I was determined to keep going with it and improve.

My First YouTube Video

My first video, which you can see below, was on drone photography. The story was that I would leave my big Nikon camera behind and see what landscape images I could capture using my DJI Phantom 3.  Looking back it's a bit rough around the edges, but as a first VLOG, it was to bad!

My first video on my YouTube channel.

After that video, I created a few others with varying degrees of success.  I covered topics such as My Top 5 Landscape Photography Locations in Devon, Creating a Custom Google Map, and How to Use ND Filters.  I found the filming hard work.  There was a lot to deal with on top of just taking pictures.  I had to worry about audio, repeat takes, camera position etc.  Then back in post-production, I had to learn how to edit, merge audio to video, export and publish.  However, once a video was published there was a great sense of satisfaction.  

The Big Adventure

What really keeps me creating new content is the fact that people actually watched my videos.  Not in huge numbers, not like a Thomas Heaton, but enough people left positive comments to make me want to carry on.  Much in the same way people did with my blog.

So when I decided to spend a few days in Glencoe in March I thought it would be an adventure worth documenting.  

My Glencoe adventure video really seemed to hit a mark with people and it gave my subscriber count a significant boost.  It was another turning point for my channel and rather than doing videos when I could I started adding video to my regular publishing schedule.

The 5 Minute Adventures

While the longer and more adventurous videos are great to make, they are a significant investment in time and can sometimes take weeks to get done.   I wanted to create more videos but with a day job and a family, having the time to create long videos was difficult to find.  

After a few people commented on how the liked some of my shorter videos and that enabled them to watch them more readily, I decided to start the 5 Minute Photo Adventure Series.  The idea was simple really.  I would go to a single location, talk about what I had planned, what I was doing and shoot an image.  With just a single location and shot to plan for the production time was much reduced and so I could create more videos.

Here is one of my favourite 5 Minute Photo Adventure videos, but you can watch the entire series by clicking here.

The Nikon D850 Video

I was very excited about the purchase of my Nikon D850 and I was fortunate enough to get one of the day of release.  In all the excitement I decided to make a video on my initial experiences.  I posted up the video and within 24 hrs it was approaching 10,000 views!  This was twice as many views as my Glencoe video ever had.  There was an obvious demand for D850 on YouTube and thanks to some good timing I think I had managed to capitalize on that.

The D850 video is by far my most popular video and has given me the biggest subscriber boost.

The Future

I've got a number of videos planned in for the remainder of the year.  I'll keep doing my 5 Minute Photo Adventure videos and I have a few bigger adventure videos planned as well.  I'm also aiming to do a follow-up drone video and a follow-up video on printing.  So there should be something there for all my 1900+ subscribers (never thought I'd get that many!).

So have you checked out my YouTube channel?  Do you have a favourite video?  Is there a video you'd like to see my make or a location you want me to visit?  Let me know in the comments below.

My Year So Far...

Holidays!

In this blog post, I'm going to take a brief look back at my first half of the year as a landscape photographer.  I would normally do this type of blog post at the end of the year but as I'm on holiday at the moment I haven't been doing much photography so I don't have any photographic adventures to tell you about.  By the time you read this though I'll be back in the UK and weather permitting I'm back out shooting the landscape.  Normal service should be resumed next week!

The Good

It's been a good year for me so far as a landscape photographer.  I've been working hard and I'm out shooting more than I've been in any other year.  The effort has paid off and my work is getting viewed by a much wider audience now.  This is thanks to successes such as:

• South West Coast Path 2018 Calendar Competition - though I didn't win the overall competition it was still great to get placed and you will be able to see my image of Start Point as the January 2018 photograph.  You can pick up a copy from the SWCP Shop.

• YouTube Channel - though I started my landscape photography channel last year, it is the first half of this year that I've have seen a significant growth in subscribers and video views.  My video of my adventure in Glencoe gave me a great boost, and my video on printing, and my 5 Minute Photo Adventure series have helped the channel to keep growing.

• Outdoor Photography Magazine - I've had a few images published in Outdoor Photography magazine this year.  This has included images in their monthly competition and in their Locations Guide section where I had to author the text as well as provide the images.

• Improve Photography - I also started writing articles for improvephotography.com this year.  I've written about a wide range of topics so be sure to head on over there and read my articles such as this one on printing at home.

The Not So Good

I'm going to keep this bit short.  I don't like to dwell on the negatives too much.  Unfortunately, it was another year of not making the shortlist in Landscape Photographer of the Year.  Despite the lack of success I still value competitions like this as they help inspire and drive my photography.  You can read why in this blog post I wrote last year:  The Pain and Joy of Photography Competitions.

My Favourite 3 Images

Finally, I'd like to share my favourite 3 images of the year so far.  This is a tough choice as I have a decent pool of images to pick from thanks to numerous trips out with the camera.

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Porth Nanven

Glencoe

Trevose Head

So there you have it.  It's actually been a positive exercise writing this blog post.  With the lack of success in LPOTY putting a bit of a damper on my photography, looking back at my photographs and other success I feel recharged and ready for the remainder of the year.  Autumn is just around the corner and I've got a couple of photography adventures in the planning stage so there is plenty to look forward to!

Have you had a good year with your photography so far?  Do you have any big plans for the remainder of the year?  Let me know in the comments below.

Daymark Tower

A Brief History

I started this blog back August 2016 and shortly after that, I posted my first video over on my YouTube channel.  When I made that first video it was just something I wanted to do and I didn't really have a plan for growing and developing a YouTube channel.

However, after posting a few more videos I realised that I enjoyed the process of creating video content so I decided to keep it going.  I then started getting some positive feedback and my subscriber count grew.  I've always been committed to my website and blog, but I now also wanted to develop and grow my YouTube channel.  Soon I had a long list of video content that I wanted to shoot.

I remain committed to my blog which is my primary output channel for my landscape photography stories and as long as I'm out taking pictures I normally have something to write about.  Creating video is a different ball game though and while I have some grand ideas and themes for my videos,  producing them takes time, so the rate of delivery is going be slower than the blog.

A New Video Series

So this brings us nicely onto this video I've just made on shooting Daymark Tower.  I decided to shoot it as I've just had the following image used in Outdoor Photography this month (issue 208, June 2017, page 55).

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I thought it would be useful if I shot a brief video on the location so other photographers could get a better idea of what the location is like before they visited it.  It's only a short video and unlike most of my other forthcoming videos it will be about one location only so it will be quicker to produce.  So this video marks the start of what I will hope will be a series of short videos that introduce photographers to locations they may not have visited before.  A little dose of inspiration!

My website and my blog will always be my home and I will continue to produce regular content there as I have done before, but by producing more frequent video content I hope to share my landscape photography journey with an even wider audience.

The Daymark Tower

So onto my first location in this new series, The Daymark Tower. 

I hope you enjoyed that video and that it's given you a better idea of what it is like to shoot there.  Here is the final image I captured there in a bit more detail:

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Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm VR f/2.8 @ 45 mm, f/13, ISO 100, 1/15 sec, 4:5 crop.

Unfortunately I didn't get the light I was after to produce a really stunning shot but hopefully, you've seen enough from my images and the video that you too will be inspired to visit this great location.  If you do decide to go, here are my top 3 tips for shooting the Daymark Tower:

1. Shadows - While shooting at sunset will work at most times of the year you will be casting a long shadow if it is behind you. So if you want to include the path in your composition, check which direction the sun is setting so your shadow isn't cast along the path. Something which I failed to check in my planning for this video!

2. Wide Angle Correction - If you are shooting with a wide angle lens be aware that the tower may be distorted in the frame. This is generally easy to correct in post production, but it normally involves the image being cropped. So be sure to include some extra room around your composition so you don't lose anything critical when the image is corrected and cropped. Though I spend 99% of post processing life in Lightroom, I found the wide angle correction feature in Photoshop to be much better at correcting the distortions in the tower.

3. Timing - My preferred time of year to shoot Daymark Tower is when the crops are approaching harvest. I shot the video a little early which still works very well, but by around, mid-May the crops swaying in a gentle breeze looks very nice indeed.

I hope you enjoyed reading about and looking at the Daymark Tower.  Hopefully by the time you read this I will have already shot the video for the 2nd location.  I should also be well on my way to shooting some of those bigger videos that I have planned.  If you want to know when those videos are published you can of course subscribe to my YouTube channel or you can follow me on the Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google Plus where I will also post notifications when new video content is posted up.  The video and additional content will always be available here on the blog as well.

Do you include man-made elements in your landscape photography?  Are there are any locations in the South West that you would like me to make a short video on?  Let me know in the comments below.

My YouTube Channel - Update #1 for 2017

Happy New Year!

Firstly Happy New Year to you all.  I started this blog back in August 2016, and since then I've managed to maintain my goal of a new post every week.  It's hard work but it also encourages me to get out there with my camera more often which is rarely a bad thing!  

I've also received plenty of positive feedback and will continue to deliver new blog posts and content throughout 2017.  I've got plenty of ideas for new posts but I just need the British weather to be a bit more cooperative!  These winter months can be very restrictive.

My YouTube Channel

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will already know I've also got a YouTube channel. In 2016 I created the following videos:

• Starting Out with Drone Photography

• Location Scouting in the Teign Valley

• Planning a Landscape Shoot at Dawlish Warren

• My 5 Favourite Locations to Landscapes in Devon

It's been a couple of months since I last post a video on the channel, but it is far from abandoned!  Unfortunately, as is always the case with landscape photography in the UK, the weather has made it difficult to execute some of the video ideas I have.

Not to worry, I have rolled those ideas into my 2017 content plan and with any luck, I'll be back juggling cameras in the field again very soon.  I've posted a quick update video to my channel to keep my subscribers up to date but here it is for my blog readers.  

If you aren't already a subscriber or viewer why not check out my YouTube channel and even better why not subscribe.  Don't worry if you don't, I always post a blog article here with the video embedded so you won't miss out.

Is there anything you'd like to see from my YouTube channel?  If so I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

Till next time!