Matt's Blog
2nd September 2010 - A Good Walk Spoiled?
Mark Twain once described golf as a good walk spoiled and while I may beg to differ with that particular quote I am beginning to wonder if photography can often spoil a walk.
Today I completed a 14 mile walk in the Brecon Beacons covering 4 of the highest summits with fellow photographer Dan Santillo (www.dansantillo.com) and neither of us took any real photographs! Some camera-phone snaps for sure and I did get my “real” camera out a couple of times to snap some reference shots from a particular location, but the main purpose of the walk was to just enjoy the walk itself. Despite the aching feet it was very enjoyable – although this was aided by the unusually warm sunny weather we have in Wales at the moment.
I walk a lot in the Brecon Beacons and most of the time I have a particular image in mind. So I trudge to the intended site, mess around with tripod, lens selection and camera settings then capture the images I want before trudging back to the car. Then it’s usually a quick drive home to download the images and start processing them on the computer. But today I got home completely exhausted and just relaxed…
Tempting though it is to repeat this process every week between now and Christmas I know that I need to continue to capture new images of the National Park for my online gallery, retail outlets and Photolibraries, but maybe every now and again I will leave my camera at home and just go for a walk 
Dan at the top of Fan y Big looking back towards the other 3 peaks we covered (Corn Du, Pen y Fan and Cribyn)
28th August 2010 - Summer Holiday
If you’ve been wondering about the lack of activity and serious photography on my website, Facebook page or Twitterfeed recently don’t worry, I haven’t given up photography, it’s just that it’s the summer holiday
Anyone who had kids of school age will know what that means, additional hours and days spent entertaining the children with days out and visits to friends and family. In previous years I’ve always insisted on taking my camera with me on such trips but this year I made a conscious decision to leave my SLR at home and concentrate on the kids. Now that doesn’t mean that I abandoned photography altogether, just that I limited it to my camera phone!! In previous years I would have mocked anyone who used their phone for photography, but since becoming an iPhone convert I’ve become quite attached to the imperfect nature of camera phone photography. To the extent that I’ve now set up a Flickr account simply to upload by iPhone images. If you want to see where I’ve been and what I’ve been photographing over the summer holiday have a look here.
Now that the holiday is coming to an end I’m looking forward to some more considered photography. Watch this space and become a fan of MB Photography on Facebook or follow @mattbotwood on Twitter to keep up to date with my work.
2nd August 2010 - A Good View Spoiled
I haven’t yet got around to disposing of my late uncle’s outrageous “creative” filters that he left me as part of his camera gear (see HERE for a view of the filters) and as I had at least one tongue-in-cheek request to see what pictures looked like taken with them I though I would stick them in my camera bag today for a bit of fun. I was going to Ysgyryd Fawr near Abergavenny to scout out a potential sunrise location for images of Sugar Loaf Mountain so only planned to capture some general stock images anyway.
The filters are technicolor to put it politely….although maybe garish would be a better description. I can only get them to fit my 50mm lens, which is perhaps appropriate given their vintage, and it’s tricky to see how some of them could have ever been used to produce successful images. So here goes….a selection of images created with the aid of the worst equipment 1980s filter manufacturers could muster.
25th July 2010 - Try Something New
It’s always good to try your hand at areas of photography that are out of your comfort zone, and motor sport photography certainly falls into that category for me. The most movement I normally have to contend with is a strong breeze in my landscapes or an over-active toddler in my portraits, not a 600cc motorbike lapping around my local park at an average of 80mph!
Aberdare Park Races is a fairly unique motor sport event in that it is a very short circuit (only 0.9 miles) and based on a road surface normally used for kids cycling bikes and scooters – and they certainly don’t reach the same speeds! Because of the local nature of the event you can get pretty close to the action, so no need for 400mm lenses here. I used the equivalent of a 135mm focal length for most of the day and was quite close enough. For safety reasons all of the public viewing is on the inside of the circuit which doesn’t exactly give you the best photographic viewpoints but does mean that you won’t be hit by a bike coming off the corner (as one did while I was there!) – there are no Armco barriers and chain links fences here, only bales of straw!
First I found a suitable corner to practice my panning action, then I had to explore some of the seldom-used settings on my camera. Shutter Priority for a start, followed by continuous shooting mode and predictive autofocus – although I soon dispensed with the last setting which couldn’t keep up with the action and went for manual focus on a predetermined point instead.
After exploring a few different viewpoints and 300 RAW files later I finally got the hang of panning the camera to follow the bikes as they cornered and captured some reasonable images. At £12 for the day it was certainly worth the trip out, and as kids were free it doubled up as a family day out!
11th July 2010 - Verdict on the Exhibition
So the exhibition is over and everything is packed away back in my studio, but how did it go?
Well first of all it was great to see so much of my work framed and on the wall – which becomes more and more unusual in this digital age – and I managed to cover most of my costs via sales. However, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the number of people passing through the National Park Visitors Centre over the weekend. Those that did visit the exhibition gave both Dan Santillo and myself very positive feedback about the images on display, but as is often the case appreciation doesn’t always translate into sales
Interestingly we both sold lots of greetings cards which does make you wonder why the National Park seems reticent to stock them in it’s own shop – Dan was also doing a roaring trade in coasters, mousemats and fridge magnets which surely would sell in their gift shops too! Hopefully the exhibition will raise our profile with whoever makes their purchasing decisions.
They are currently consulting people on the possible relocation of a new visitors centre and although the current location is very picturesque it does not really get any “passing trade”. Hopefully the chosen location for the new centre will offer greater potential for future exhibitions.
So I’m certainly keen to put on another exhibition of my work in the not so distant future, but definitely at a higher profile location.