5 Underrated Landscape Photography Spots in The Lake District

Welcome to this latest blog post, where I am going to look at what I think are 5 underrated landscape photography locations in The Lake District, and I must admit, I feel like one of them is a bit of curveball, as I think it’s popular but not rated as highly as it perhaps should be.

Grab a brew and settle in.

Gummer’s How

This is a favourite of mine as it’s so close to home and so easily accessible. Gummer’s how is one of the fells that Wainright covers in his book “The Outlying Fells of Lakeland”, and it’s a real beauty. It sits high above Windermere with views across the water and right out to the Langdale Pikes.

You can park (usually pretty easily) in the free car park (what3 words ///rated.soup.looms) which is close to the hill, or in one of the many lay-bys at this location. The lay-bys are big enough that you won’t impede passing traffic if you park sensibly. From the car park, the walk to the summit is probably about 25 minutes and the rewards for exceed the effort that you put in to getting up there.

There are some views on the way up as well, so take your time and really soak it in!

Walney Island

This one isn’t the Lake District as such, but Walney Island some incredible views of The Lake District. It’s short drive (about 20 minutes) west of the town of Ulverston, which is definitely worth a look on the way in. Walney Island itself is small island with a population of around 10,000 accessed via a bridge from Barrow in Furness. There’s some great coastline here and the waves can be pretty dramatic when the wind is blowing.

One of my favourite spots here is on the West Shore, but facing north back towards the Lake District Fells. Parking is in a small car park (///class.dent.late) near to the end of the West Shore Road. You’re on foot from here as you can’t drive much further on this road as it turns to the north; it’s been closed to vehicles for some time, so you’re feet are going to be your friend. The sunsets on this island can be incredible in the right conditions, as can the sunrises, but conduct your resarch and make sure you give yourself a fighting chance.

You’ll also find some beaches on here and a huge breeding colony of seals at the south end of the island. There are some lovely walks and bird life here too, and you can park at South Walney Nature reserve for a small fee.

Although I don’t like to use the term, Walney is really a little bit of a hidden gem in the northwest and is somewhere you should definitely consider checking out.

Kelly Hall Tarn

This is lovely little town next to the village of Torver, which you will find on your way into Coniston. There is ample free parking right next to the path that leads to the tarn (///class.dent.late) and you will find the tarn itself about a 3 minute walk from your car, which you can park on the piece of land adjoining the access to the tarn (///pinch.inspects.giggled). Parking is free, but be careful in the cold weather when the ground is icy as it can get very slippy.

I love this place; it feels a lot further away from civilisation that it actually it. Whilst your here, there is a well known composition shooting a lone tree from the far side of the water and there are often Herdwick sheep wandering around here as they graze; they’re inquisitive, but not so much that they are intimidating. The last time I was there, they were kind enough to pose for me for a few minutes and I got some the best Herdy shot’s I’ve ever managed to get.

If you’re there at the right time of the year, you’ll also be able to get a great shot of some the water Lillies that cover the water in the summer.

Coniston Water

Hear me out on this one, I know Coniston Wawter is far from hidden and'/or underrated. What I love about this place is the access to the water side, the convenient parking at the side of the road, but I also love that at night time, it’s so incredibly dark. All of the above combine to make a really great spot for astrophotography. There is plenty of foreground interest and on a still evening, the water makes for some great reflections.

I’ve not managed to get an astronaut shot that I am happy enough to share yet, but having it so close by and knowing that during the winter it is MUCH quieter, means that I will be a frequent visitor here throughout the winter as I look to nail the first one I want to share!

Wast Water

This one is my curveball; Wast Water is known for being Englands deepest lake and it is situated in the shadow of Scafell Pike, which as many of you will know is the highest mountain in England.

It’s a bit of a drive for me to get there from the South Lakes, but I am always blown away by this place. At night time it’s dark with some decent Milky Way opportunities when the conditions are favourable. The sunsets up here are awesome and the light catches the fells and the screes in some amazing golden colours.

This place also looks amazing under moody skies, and if you can get a day with some moody but patchy cloud and the sun starts breaking through, then you’re onto a winner.

It’s also really accessible with lots of parking close to the edge of the water, so a lot of shots aren’t a huge walk from your car (the availability of this parking is going to depend on a number of factors, such as the weather, the time of year and the time of day). If you’re partial to a bit of wild swimming alongside your photography, then it’s a pretty epic place for a dip - just don’t look down, the depth (almost 80 metres in places) means that it’s very dark down there. If you are swimming here, don’t go alone and let someone know where you are - don’t do anything stupid and make sure you get out in one piece!

So that wraps this weeks landscape photography blog, and I hope you have found something useful in here. I’ll keep an eye on how much this page gets viewed and if the stats are looking good, I will put another one together in due course!

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

10 Photo Books YOU should own.

Welcome back! In this fairly quick entry, I am going to list and give a brief outline of 10 photobooks that I own and that I think you should too. This is going to cover everything from landscape photography to street photography and the craft of photography in general.

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may received a small kickback if you make a qualifying purchase after clicking one of the links in this blog.

I own all of these books, with the exception of one of them; the last one on the list (which I am hoping to receive for Christmas, or bag a copy in the Black Friday sales.

I think what surprised me about the list when I wrote it was that I haven’t chosen a lot of landscape photography books. In fact, there are only 3 ‘real’ landscape books. I like to have a variety of photography to look at. I don’t want everything I consume to be the stuff that I am shooting, I don’t want to be sat looking at what I could be taking - I want to be out there taking it and on top of that I don’t want my creativity to be limited by thinking about how I can recreate images that I have seen.

I think that the last point applies even more so to social media, but that’s a whole other blog I am going to write need to unpick that!

Anyway, here goes with the list. I will include a link to each one of them on Amazon so that if the mood strikes, you can go ahead and grab a copy for yourself or maybe to give as a gift to a very lucky photographer.

1. Susan Sontag - On Photography

   I think that this is a really important book and one that every photographer should read. In this book, Sontag discusses many ideas, but chief among them (for me anyway) is that photography makes us spectators of life, rather than people who participate in it. I think this rings ever more true the more prevalent social media comes in our lives.

   She also looks at several other themes such as photography becoming a form of control, explores how it can distort our perception of reality (social media again, anyone?) and how we can becomes desensitised to things such as the atrocity of war because of how much we see it in the course of our daily lives.

   If you haven’t read this then you probably should, it’s also really reasonably priced at less than £10 on Amazon.

2. Liam Wong :TO:KY:00

   This isn’t just one of my favourite photo books, this one, and it’s sequel After Dark are two of my favourite books that I own. They might even be two of my favourite possessions full stop. The images in these books are just incredible and Wong’s training as a video games artist really shows. The images are crisp, the compositions are simply incredible and the colours… just WOW.. serious cyberpunk vibes! There’s a lot of neon lights going, the photos are dark, moody and tell some incredible stories.

   The other thing worth mentioning about these books is that they are so incredibly well produced. They have lay flat binding so that you’re not going to get them all creased up and ruin the spines and there are fold-out panoramic shots as well so you can really enjoy the images the way in which they were intended to be seen.

3. Ansell Adams 400 Photographs

   Would this list be complete without some kind of mention of the Godfather of landscape photographer, Ansell Adams? If you want to enjoy as much of the great man’s photography as possible, and in one palace, then this is the place to do it. The images are organised into groups, starting with some of his earliest stuff in Yosemite around 1916 up until some of the work he did around the National Parks in the 1960s.

   If you’re into landscape photography, or just like the natural world then this is something you need on your bookshelf. You can pick this one up for around £30 here on Amazon

4. The Photographer’s Eye - Michael Freeman

   If you are looking for a way to improve your landscape photography, then this is a good place to start. This is well organised book which guides you through a process which ultimately will change the way you view the world. What I like about this is the clear language it uses and moreover, the way the book uses such a wide range of example images from all around the world so that it doesn’t fill your head with images that are a stones throw from your front door that you can just head out and copy. I really like that.

   This book has recently been updated and you can grab a copy of the latest edition for about £18 on Amazon by clicking here.

5. This Pleasant Land - Hoxton Mini Press

   This is one I have had a couple of years and frequently dip into. It shows a modern perspective on the UK landscape as it exits today, and it isn't just classically ‘beautiful’ photographs. It looks at the beauty that can be found in decay as well as exploring the more traditionally aesthetically pleasing side that we associate with landscape photography. Is it predictable? No. Is it traditional? No. Do you need a copy? Yes. Yes you do. It’s available on Amazon for just shy of £22

6. Magnum Contact Sheets - Kristen Lubben

   Another one which isn’t a landscape book, but I don’t know a single photographer who hasn’t been fascinated by this book. It’s a collection of contact sheets and stories as told by the incredible photojournalists that have worked for the Magnum Agency. We’re talking big names in this book… Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Elliot Erwitt and Bruce Gilden to name just a few.

   I find the stories behind the images fascinating and perhaps at times, the reasons behind the selects even more so. It’s just an incredible book and even you’re not into photojournalistic work, you can learn a heck of a lot about storytelling and composition by spending a couple of hours with this book. It’s one of the heavier books on the list both in terms of physical weight and price coming in at around £45 on Amazon

7. Ernst Haas - New York in Colour - Prestel

   Haas moved to New York from Vienna in 1951 and qucickly set about photographing it. What he captured was just incredible and marks his move away from his career shooting in black and white. All of the images have the classic New York vibe that we have come to expect from the city that never sleeps. The images explore the technical challenges he encountered shooting with Kodachrome and then printing the images in colour. I can’t tell you exactly what it is about this book that makes it so good, it’s just an incredible set of images that you need to see. This one is currently selling for £35 on Amazon

8. William Eggleston - Portraits

   Do you like shooting in colour? Do you like looking at colour images in galleries and at exhibitions? You do? Well then you have William Eggleston to thank for that. At a time when colour photography was for amateurs and the establishment’s attitude was that in order to be considered a true professional and a ‘serious’ artist then you had to shoot in black and white. There was a lot of snobbery about the use of colour and Eggleston broke down that barrier. The potraits in this book show colour photography at its very best, the compositions are often hectic, playful and the way people are portrayed in them feels really authentic. There is a whole bunch of books by Eggleston that could have made this list (The Democratic Forest and 2 1/4 are fantastic, but unless you have very deep pockets, you might struggle to justify the £6100 that a copy of the former is currently listed for on Amazon). Portraits has a much more wallet friendly price, coming in at around £35 on Amazon.

9. Life on The Mountains - Terry Abraham

   You didn’t think I was going to complete this blog without talking about The Lake District, did you? This gorgeous book which talks about a ten year project Abraham worked on, documenting the fells of Lakeland, encountering some pretty sketchy weather and taking some nasty falls along the way. The photography in this book is nothing short of stunning, helped of course by the quality of the environment he was shooting! It’s a book that really does speak for itself and is as equally at home in the hands of a photographer as it is with an outdoor enthusiast and love of The Lake District; I reckon Wainwright would have loved it! You can grab your copy on Amazon for just under £20!

10. The Decisive Moment - Henri Cartier-Bresson

    Ok, so full disclosure, I don’t own a copy of this book, but I have had the chance to peruse one in a library when I still lived in London. If you had asked me to write this list 6 months ago, this book would’t have featured; it was out of print, hard to get hold of and if you wanted a useable copy, you were looking at deep into three figures territory. So why is it on here now? There has been a new print run and it’s available to buy again!

    This is one of, if not the most famous photobooks in existence. It looks at the concept of the decisive moment in photography. The exact meaning of ‘the decisive moment’ is a bit of a bone of contention amongst photographers, but it boils down to waiting for the right moment to capture the image, but its a bit deeper than that at the same time. This really is a genre defining book and is definitely something you should own!

    The reprint is currently going for £40 on Amazon.

    And here endeth the list.
    
    This just my opinion based on what I own and what I have read. I don’t profess to be the oracle of photographic literature, but I reckon a number of these would pop-up in conversations about books with fellow photographers. I love owning photo books, they bring me a lot of joy and have pride of place in my house, they’re a great talking point and who knows, maybe one day, I will have one of my own!

    Prices are correct as of 11pm, Wednesday 19th November, please bear in mind that I am writing this as I waiting for the Amazon Black Friday to start at midnight (I really do love a bargain!), but that means that Amazon have an absolute raft of deals going on in the run up to the start of their event so please don’t be mad if the prices have gone up by the time you get round to reading this!

    Thanks for making it this far! If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

Escaping Golden Hour Jail in Landscape Photography

We’ve all heard all of the tropes about landscape photography and how “Golden hour is the best time to take photographs” and “Golden hour has the best light”, but sometimes we end up only shooting at these times and forgetting about all of the other opportunities we have to go out to make images.

In this blog, I am going to looks at some ideas to get you out of the habit of only shooting at this times.

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may receive a small kickback if you make a qualifying purchased after clicking one of these links.

SO… for the uninitiated, golden hour is the hour after the sun has risen in the morning, and the hour before it sets in the evening. There’s also blue hour: The hour before the sun rises and the evening, the hour after it has set.

If you’re thinking of long, lingering summer sunsets, you’re thinking of golden hour. If you’re reminiscing about the times you have watched the sunrise, wherever you are in the world, you are thinking of golden hour.

Like I said at the start of this blog, we hear so much about how this is the best time to go and shoot, and yes, the light is often incredible; it’s warm, it’s soft and it has the ability to make even the most ordinary of scenes look beautiful. However, we also often forget that these aren’t the only times that we can go out with our cameras.

When we get into this habit of only shooting at these times, I say that we have ended up in “golden hour jail”. Whilst this isn’t a horrible place to be, it can be a restrictive place to be.

If you’re anything like me, and have a proper job during the day, this is going to mean that you are often driving to work during golden hour in the winter, and in the very depths of the coldest of the seasons, you’re sat behind your desk whilst the golden hour in the evening flies past your eyes.

I work right next to the coast, and as a landscape photographer, it can be gruelling having to sit and watch the sunset knowing that there is nothing you can do to go out and shoot it. Somedays, you finish work and it’s already dark! When the weekend rolls around, you often find that you are too tired to want to get up early again and then life happens.

Before you know it, the weekend is gone (always too quickly) and you’re back in the car seeing the sunrise around you during your commute, wishing you could make some photos and you still haven’t had the camera out in weeks because of everything I have just mentioned above.

So then, the answer to the big question, is how do we get out of this ‘golden hour jail’. What’s the thing we do that is like playing the landscape photography version of a get out of jail free card? Let’s take a look…

I think the first thing to remember, is that why there may be no such thing as bad photography conditions, there can be bad light. This is often when the light is flat and the skies are completely and featureless and whilst these kinds of days aren’t ideal, though they are all too common in The Lake District, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go out and take images in them.

It hasn’t, and didn’t impact many of the great photographers. You can still go out to shoot in these conditions. Yes, it can be harder to find the compositions you want, but for me, that’s part of the joy of this kind of photography - it pushes us out of our comfort zone; usually this is because we are used to nature doing massive chunk of the work for us!

I think that that one of the best ways to help yourself shoot outside of these times is to stay in bed for an extra hour in the morning, have that extra cup of coffee and maybe a bigger breakfast and let the sunrise pass you by, or go and watch it and don’t take the camera. Certainly for me and the way I work, if I go out to shoot sunset, I am there for blue hour, golden hour and then once the sun is fully up and the colours have faded, I am heading back to the car, and at this time of the year, I am turning on the heated seat and driving home for food an warm drinks!

By passing this time doing something else, you take it out of the equation. You don’t have nature to do so much of the heavy lifting and you need to look for other things.

Going out to shoot when the weather is less than ideal is a great way to break free as well. One of the most fun shoots I had this year was in some local woodland whist it was pouring with rain. Did I get wet? Absolutely, but me and my camera survived and I learned a lot about photography and about myself as a photographer in this couple of hours. I wrote a blog about going out to shoot in unfavourable conditions, you can read it here.

But this blog isn’t about going out in poor conditions, this is about going out in conditions that aren’t what we associate with being good for photography.

Bright/Direct Sunlight

Here in The Lake District, landscape photography takes in all kinds of light that isn’t in one of the golden hours. We have the full gamut of weather here; rain, more rain, lot of rain, bright sun, cloudy skies and in winter we get plenty of snow up on the fells. Sometimes, if you get really lucky, you will get all of those within about 20 minutes!

We often associate bright sunlight with being poor for landscape photography. The photo next to this paragraph (usually below the paragraph if you’re reading on your phone), was taken on Castle Crag (the smallest of the Wainwright fells and also my first!, shows just how strong sunlight can really make the colours in your image pop, and this image was taken on an iPhone with minimal edits.

Is this the greatest photo I have ever taken? No. it isn’t. But… look at the way some of those colours are lit up and how the light is really helping to pull the yellow colour out of the petals on the flower.

The other great thing about shooting in the bright sunlight is that it can produce some really strong shadows, especially if you’re out in the middle of the day.

These shadows will be crisp but harsh, but even so, they are really good framing an aspect of the landscape you are shooting. If you’re a street photographer, you can do the same thing - go and looks at Fa Ho’s work if you want to see more of what I am talking about here, but he was incredible at working with harsh light.

Rain

This is one that I love, as things look great when they have had dose of rain on them, especially if you’re out in woodland.

Rain has the ability to make everything look better, the colours pop, the textures stand out and you just end up with a great looking photo.

If you’re into macro photography and you’re in the right place then raindrops make great subjects, and if you can capture some reflections in them as well, then you could really be on to a winner.

Overcast Skies:

For some landscape photographers, overcast skies are the worst. Everything looks flat, the sun is all but snuffed out and the cloud, even the sky has little no interest in it; you begin to wonder why you even thought it would be a good idea to leave the house.

I suppose what I like about these kinds of conditions is that even though the light isn’t the most beautiful, it’s pretty consistent and you don’t need to worry too much about wild variations in exposure because the cloud isn’t changing much and it’s already blotted out the sun.

For me, these are ideal conditions for working on some detail shots, looking at the textures that are around you and working on some stuff that’s a bit more abstract that I might normally do. Intentional camera movement can be something which is fun if you haven’t tried it before, or even if you have!

On these days, especially when there isn’t as much light as I might like, I find that taking out a small RGB light can be really useful as I like to take some detail or macro shots. Having this with me gives some more flexibility with my shutter speed, but can also be useful if I want to get creative with some lighting! I like this one from SmallRig.

My Top Tips for Getting out of Golden Hour Jail

1. Wait for the sunrise to happen and then leave to go on your shoot, enjoy that extra hour in bed in the morning. This takes the pressure off and stops you from going home once the sunrise has finished its display. Flip this evening and wait for blue hour, or even darkness!

2. Work on different “types” of photography - try some abstracts, try some macro, a bit of astro and maybe even some intentional camera movement.

3. Have a plan in mind and stick to it.

4. Look at your feet. The ground so often gets overlooked; I’m not talking starting a project cover footpaths, I’m talking about spotting the stuff that you’re not normally looking for - just make sure you stay aware of your surroundings.

5. Don’t rule anything out, you never know what you might see when you get it in post.

6. Try shooting in black and white, especially if you’re out in the day and have some shadows to play with. Black and white loves contrast, and you'll get that in abundance if you get out on the right day.

7. Be brave… look for things you wouldn’t usually consider - you never know, you might surprise yourself.

Go out, be brave and shoot in outside out of the times that we all cling so dearly to! There’s an awesome world out there, and sometimes, I don’t think that we as much of it as we could, because we often shoot and then walk away when the golden light is gone.

And hey, if none of this is your thing, have you heard about golden hour? It’s supposed to be a great time to take photos…

Planning a Landscape Photography Shoot

You’ve got your camera and you have learned how to use it. It’s all in a nice bag and your tripod is attached and ready to go. But how do you go about planning a landscape photography shoot? What should you take? Where should you go and when should you go there? How long should you stay? In this blog, I’ll go through some simple hints and tips that I hope you will find useful and will set you up for success.

Why Planning Matters in Landscape Photography

Yes, you can just grab your camera, head out the door, and hope for the best. Sometimes you’ll even get lucky. But more often than not, you’ll come home with flat skies, harsh shadows, or shots that just don’t do the place justice.

For me, planning is about giving myself the best chance possible. If I know when the light’s going to be good, where the sun is rising, or whether there’s a chance of mist rolling through, then I can actually focus on taking photos instead of panicking that I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It doesn’t need to be complicated a quick look at the weather, maps, and light conditions is usually enough. The point is that when the basics are sorted, you’ve got more headspace to be creative. You’re not rushing around, you’re not guessing. You’re ready when the good stuff happens.

Researching the Best Locations for Your Shoot

Consider where you want to go, and when you want to arrive. Think about the travel time and what time you need to leave and build in some contingency time.

Research where you want to go and think about the shots that you want to try and get why you get there. Looks at photo books and check online to see what kind of shots you want to have in mind.

It’s a bit of a double edged sword doing this, if you research “landscape photography in The Lake District” or “shooting sunrise at Derwent Water”, you’re going to see hundreds, if not thousands of images and these are likely to give you a preconceived idea of what you want to get and this can stifle your creativity.

It’s great to get the “classic” shots, but everyone has them and you want to try and be a bit different.

Consider your ability level when it comes to walking. If you’ve never hiked before, then deciding that you want to do your first shoot atop Helvellyn in the winter might not be the greatest idea, don’t put yourself in danger. The mountain will still be there long after you’re gone, so make sure you’re around to enjoy it!

Remember, if you’re going to a “drive up and shoot” location, such as Surpise View at Keswick, it’s likely to busy, so be arrive in plenty of time to make sure you get the spot that you want.

Use apps like Google Earth and Google Maps to scout locations that you can’t get to easily if you live far away. I spend a lot of time on these apps and it’s always time well spent.

If you’re going for a sunrise/sunset then use an app like PhotoPills or The Photographer’s Ephemeris to check where the Sunni going to rise/set so that you can position yourself accordingly. Getting to a location and finding out that the sun is in a position which is of zero use to you!

Before You Leave, Check Everything…

This is really important, you don’t want to get on location and find out you have forgotten something. We’ve all arrived on a shoot and realised we don’t have a memory card in the camera, and you only do it once, because it absolutely sucks!

So what should you be checking? Make sure your battery in your camera is charged and that if you have spare it is also charged. You should also make sure that you have a battery in your camera, and that your camera is turned off! Make sure that you spare battery is in your bag.

Do the same with your memory card and ensure that it’s correctly formatted and/or has enough space on it to last you the whole day/whole shoot.

The way I stop myself from forgetting these two essential items is by using the rule “never close an empty door”.By this, I mean when you get home from a shoot and need to charge your battery and get the images off your card, don’t close the battery door or the

memory card slot until you replaced both of these things. If these door are closed, everything should be inside them and ready to go!

Check that your bag is packed with everything you need easily accessible. Make sure you’ve got lenses and they have the caps on both ends, this will stop any debris from getting inside them when you’re on location.

Charge all of your other batteries (head torch, battery pack etc), you don’t want these to be running flat or dead when you arrive as it can cause you all sort of issues and even stop your shoot before it has even started.

If you’re planning on being out for a long time then make sure you’ve got enough food/snacks to last the duration of your planned trip.

Finally, if you’re heading out in the early hours, get the stuff ready for a brew before you go. Oh, and don’t forget to set an alarm (or 5!).

Kit/Photo Gear

Carry what you are definitely going to need. If you have them then a wide angle lens and a zoom would be a good start, especically if you’re planning a long walk and don’t want to haul a ton of gear around with you. Your tripod is always going to be must, so make sure it is securely attached to your bag.

Again, make sure you have your fully charged batteries and memory card with you! I’ve said this twice now so it must be important.

I always make sure I have a lens cloth with me, as well something to cover my camera with if the weather turns bad.

You should make sure that you’re appropriately dressed - if you’re out in the cold then layer up and if it’s wet (or wet and cold) then make sure you have your waterproofs. If you get soaked, you’re going to be cold and uncomfortable very quickly, and this is going to mean that you do not have a good time, guaranteed, even if the conditions are ideal for what you want to achieve.

The usual caveats around safety apply here: make sure you’ve got your headtorch, map(s) (paper, not on your phone) if you’re planning a route you haven’t done before.

Creating a Flexible Shot List

I’m a big fan of making a shot list before I go out. Nothing fancy — usually just a few scribbles in my notebook about the kind of images I want to try. Things like: wide vista, reflections, foreground textures, maybe a telephoto shot if the light hits a ridge.

The important bit though is not treating it like a shopping list. Nature doesn’t always do what you expect, and that’s half the fun. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone out planning a big sweeping landscape, only for the best shot of the day to be a detail in the rocks or a patch of dappled light through the trees.

So yes, have a plan — but don’t be afraid to ditch it. Think of your shot list as a guide to get you started, not something you have to tick off. Some of my favourite photos came from chasing something unexpected instead of stubbornly sticking to the plan.

Weather

This is one of the most important things to check, especially if you’re heading in to the hills. Knowing the times for sunrise/sunset/golden hour/blue hour are key to your trip being successful if you’re chasing the light; use an app like PhotoPills to check the exact times the sun will rise/set and where in the sky it is going to be and use this information to decide where you are going to be.

Knowing what the weather is going to be doing is also going to inform your choice of clothing, which in turn is going to influence how much of a good time you are going to have!

If you’re heading into the hills then always be sure to check the mountain weather report for your locale, I’ve written a blog about the best apps for photographers and have included some weather apps on this. Take a look!

When to go and how long to stay

Timing can make or break a landscape photo. The same location can look completely different depending on the time of day, the season, or even the hour you arrive. The best time for landscape photography is often during golden hour or blue hour.

The light is soft, shadows stretch beautifully, and colours have more depth. But don’t completely rule out midday. Harsh light might not be flattering for portraits, but it can be perfect for highlighting bold contrasts, dramatic skies, or textured rock faces.

As for how long to stay, my advice is always: longer than you think. The first few shots you take are usually the obvious ones, but the real magic tends to appear when you slow down, explore different perspectives, and wait to see how the light changes.

Sometimes I’ll plan a quick visit and end up staying hours, simply because each shift in light brings something new to capture.

If you want to improve your landscape photography planning, build in time to just sit with the location. Arrive early, linger after the “main event,” and let the scene reveal itself to you. You’ll not only come away with stronger photos but also with a better sense of connection to the place you’re photographing.

So there you have it. Planning a landscape photography shoot is all about giving yourself the best chance to be in the right place at the right time, while still leaving room for a bit of creativity and spontaneity. The more thought you put into research, timing, and preparation, the more freedom you’ll have when you are actually behind the camera. Every location has its own character, and with the right planning you can capture it at its very best.

Cover Image: @lunarts on unsplash.com

Amazon Black Friday Deals for Photographers 2025

It’s time for another “it’s that time of the year” post. Again. Sorry.

I have been working hard to find some great Black Friday deals for photographers who want to treat themselves or for someone looking for a gift to give over the festive season.

I’ve got some amazing ideas here for your from landscape photography, to street and even studio photgraphy, in 3 price categories, each with 3 items. I’ve gone for less than £50, £50-£100 and then £100+.

So here it is, my list of Amazon Black Friday deals for photographers 2025.

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links, if you make a qualifying purchase, I may receive a small kickback/commission.

£0-50

The Photographer’s Eye - Michael Freeman £18.35

I have only recently picked up a copy of this book as I read a review that said it was a good resource for working on your composition, and I must admit, I am impressed! I am not normally one for buying “how to” guides about photography, but this comes at some of the everyday things that we do as photographers in a way that is helpful for the beginner and more advanced photographer alike.

It’s a great looking book and it’s one you can dip in and out of, using the information to really train and work on specific parts of photography.

There’s a decent discount on this at the minute, so grab a copy before someone buys the last one!

SMALLRIG P96L RGB Video Light - £39.90

RGB lights are very hand little things for a lot of photographers to have, be it for street photography, astro photography, landscape photography or for some fun with light painting!

My main use case for these is for macro photography, especially when I am out in the field - they are small enough not to rob me of a ton of room in my bag and light enough that I don’t feel like they are weighing me down. Don’t confuse its size and weight with poor build quality though. Smallrig produce some really sturdy kit and these are no exception.

I use these to light small subjects out in the field; whether I just need some more light to get my shutter speed down or I want to light something a little more creatively than nature allows on her own, this small, lightweight package has me covered!

For the price, you’re not going to get anything which is much better, and I have to say, that so far, I am very happy with mine!

SD Card £22.85

Ok, so I’m not sure why the photo for this one is so big, and I don’t know if I have enough to say about memory cards to be able to fill the space it has created for me to write in, but I’ll have a go!

Photographers always have plenty of these lying around, but at the same time, we never have enough. They’re a pretty standard thing to use in most cameras that are on the market, unless the person you are buying for has a particularly high-end camera, you should be pretty safe.

I’ve picked this one from SanDisk as this is the brand that I use and is one that I trust. I’ve only ever had one of them let me down, and I am 99% sure that this was simply down to user error!

The price in the title is for a 128gb card, but smaller capacities will be cheaper, and vice versa for the larger ones.

£50-100

Calibrite Colour Checker Passport £99

This handy tool is great for studio photographers. If you’re buying for a landscape or street photographer, then this probably isn’t for them and you might want to explore some of the ideas on this. But what does it do?

Essentially, it allows a photographer to calibrate the colours in their image (assuming their monitor is also calibrated), by providing some known reference points for exposure and white balance (12% and 18% grey). This is great, small little item, but will need to replaced every couple of years to maintain its integrity.

Amazon Echo Spot - £79.99

This is probably the most left-field choice on the list, but I have one of these in my studio and it’s one of the busiest non-photographic devices that I own. It does everything from controlling lights to playing music, to telling the time and reminding me to do things that I would forget about when I’ve got my attention fully on editing or shooting.

I’ve picked this one as it fits well on a desk and packs a bit of a punch when it comes to sound!

UGREEN USB Charger - £54.99

Photographers have all sorts of things that need to be charged and usually, these will have a plethora of USB types which are used to charge them.

This charger has 3 USB and 3 USB-C ports, allowing for fast and well organised charing. They are also great for taking on the road, as you can just unplug the whole unit from the mains and take all of the cables you need and already have plugged in, with you.

£100+

DJI Osmo Action 4 Essential Combo - £172

Not the latest offering in this market space by DJI, but that means you get a lot for your money, especially with the deals that Amazon are offering on it.

It’s small, it’s high quality and it shoots in a log profile, which makes colour grading the footage a dream; perfect for a budding content creator who wants to film some great B-roll or some high quality BTS footage!

Polaroid - NOW Gen3 - Instant Camera - £139.99

I love my polaroid and I take it on every shoot with me. It’s great fun, fits easily in my bag and it’s nostalgic, and who doesn’t love nostalgia at this time of the year?

This one comes with two packets of film (worth about £30 itself at the moment!) and everything else you need to get started.

These are’t serious bits of kit, which is reflected in the price, but it’s without a doubt the most fun bit of kit on this list!

Wacom Intuos Pro S Black

When I first got this, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like or even how much I would use it, but it’s firmly got a place in my workflow these days and I use it for a ton of stuff in my editing.

The integration with various editing suites is awesome and it’s a solid piece of kit which (in my case!), has stood up to a bit of a beating!

So there we have 10 Amazon Black Friday deals which are great for photographers (always handy if you’re not a photographer and need to buy one of us a Christmas gift!). If you’re doing your Christmas shopping and are buying for a photographer, then you might also want to check out my Christmas Gift Guide for Photographers, 2025.

Cover Image Credit - @cdd20 (Yumu) on unsplash.com

“But the conditions weren’t right” and other excuses. Making the most of the Changeable Lake District Weather as Landscape Photographer.

Landscape photography in The Lake District can be the most rewarding of endeavours, especially when you’re rewarded with stunning views, bathed in light which is equally as beautiful. However, the rapidly changing conditions can make it as frustrating as it is gratifying. When we don’t get the conditions we had hoped for, we have to adapt!

I’m writing this following a trip to Blea Tarn, two nights ago (much longer ago at the time you’re likely reading this, as for once, I have managed to keep to my blogging schedule so some of the posts are a couple of months behind when I actually went out!), when I had planned to shoot sunset, but right from setting off, this shoot felt like it was doomed!

The title suggests that this just applies to The Lake District, but I think those of us who live in the UK can agree that the weather can be ideal one second, and then we blink and the sky is full of “that fine rain that soaks you through”!

So what do you do when the weather and the conditions aren’t on your side? I’m going to explore this little more deeply in this blog. Grab a brew, it could be a long one!

Blea Tarn - Failed Sunset.

The issues with my trip to Blea Tarn started a soon as I tried to leave the driveway at home. I had to wait for what felt like an age to get out of the driveway, and at the end of the road, I had to wait behind all of the cars which had just driven past me as we all tried to join a busy dual carriageway, which seemed to have much more traffic on it than it does during the morning rush hour. The journey was further hampered by some very slow drivers along the whole route!

When I left the house, it was looking like we were on for an incredible sunset, and as I approached Coniston, the light was incredible, it was already starting to look soft and golden, dappled light was dancing across the fells, picking out some incredible features in the landscape. I probably should have pulled over and taken out the long lens, but I was hell-bent on getting to Blea Tarn, getting parked up and hot footing it down to the water's edge to see what the light was going to do for me. (Spoiler alert, it did nothing!)

About 30 minutes into the journey, it was becoming apparent the light was all but gone, despite there being a full 60+ minutes of Golden Hour remaining. It was going to be flat grey hour instead and I was now in the wrong place!

So what do you do in these situations? I suppose I was fortunate in many ways, but was particularly grateful that this was a shoot I had driven to (the walk from the car park to the water is no more than 300 meters at a push), and I hadn’t walked for 2 hours up a hill just to end up clagged in and without any views to speak of.

Once I had reconciled myself with the fact there wasn’t going to be any golden hour light, I started to look around for other compositions which might work, and how the conditions I had were going to help me. The first order of business was to get the tripod set up. Not only was there no golden light, but there was also a thick layer of clouds, robbing me of light to shoot with - handholding was out of the question.

A quick evaluation of the conditions led me to the conclusion/observation that there wasn’t very much wind, barely a breath. There were also not many birds on the water (plenty of them were singing and calling to each other as the light faded), and there were no late evening swimmers in the water creating bow waves as they freestyled through the water. I soon realised this meant the classic reflection shot was “on”.

There were some ripples in the water, but any breeze was intermittent and weak, the movement in the water quickly dissipated and the reflections were mirror like! I popped a CPL filter on the front of my lens, adjusted it to remove as much the glare as possible and then started shooting. I tried a variety of exposure lengths to really smooth out the water and used my 16-35mm f/4 lens to give myself some composition options in the scene. The sky was interesting and foreground interest at this location comes in the form or rocks/boulders at the edge of the water. I also exposure stacked these images so I could preserve the highlight and shadow detail - there were small sections of the sky that would have been completely blown-out otherwise.

The resulting images are some of the best ones I feel like I have captured at this location and I will share one of them in this blog. Even though it isn’t the image I was hoping to capture, I am really happy with how it turned out. Blea Tarn isn’t known for being a “classic” sunset location, but the position of the sun at this time of the year, has some potential to throw some amazing colour onto the fells - The Langdale Pikes are the dominant feature of the skyline here and their rugged, weathered surfaces, full of interest, make excellent additions to photos here.

So what next? I’d got a shot in the bag and it would have been easy enough for me to go home. But when I tuned my ears in, I noticed the distinct call of a Kingfisher; I’ve heard this sound many times, but have only ever seen one once and that was a fleeting glance as it flew by me at breakneck speed. Moments later, I saw a flash of blue right in front of me, and our little whistling friend landed on a rock a short distance around the lake from where I was. I was no where near quick (or quiet!) enough to get the long lens and extended on the front of the camera - these guys are notoriously shy and easily spooked and just as I raised the camera to my eye, it was gone as quickly as it arrived.

This was now my new quarry, and I set up to try and photograph it. I watched it for a few minutes and saw where it kept returning to. Once I got set up and focussed, it never came back. This was disappointing, as I saw the bird sat inches from where I had moved from. I did have a go at shooting it from a long way away, with the 70-200 + 2x extender. The f/8 aperture foisted on me by extender, and the rapidly failing light meant I just didn’t have the means to capture anything close to me being happy with it.

I do have some images, but they are pictures with a kingfisher in them, rather than a picture of a kingfisher. This aperture restriction is a definite limitation of shooting with an extender and at some points I will invest in a dedicated super-zoom, but for now, I know I can back with more light and know I have a good chance of another opportunity to capture this bird, which is a bit of a bucket list photo for me. I will be back and I will succeed.

The remainder of my time here was spent fairly aimlessly looking for new compositions, having another attempt at the reflection shot and getting my foot buried in about 10” of bog.

This whole experience did however, serve to remind me that just because the light isn’t there, doesn't mean photos, the opportunities to learn and to discover more about the location you are in, are not.

Roanhead Dunes - Bad Planning for Tides

Another trip earlier this year, this time to Roanhead Nature Reserve, saw me in a situation where I had some amazing light and a long evening in late July to work with. What I had failed to do was to check the tide tables and I ended up with a scene which had all of the light as well as all of the mud and sand. Vast expanses of both, it was flat and largely featureless. The surrounding hills and the small town of Millom on the opposite side of the bay make great features but foreground interest was scoring a big fat zero.

Instead I turned my interest to some of the local flora, working closely and slowly to get detail shots of things I could find in and around the dunes, there are plenty of grasses here as well as some interesting shapes amongst the dunes. My favourite shot of this evening was one of some long grass which had gone to seed and was catching the light prefectly.

The lessons here are 1) I should also follow my own advice and check the tide tables (I wasn’t going anywhere that would have put me in danger but it would have saved me a lot of hard work) and 2) The detail shots are just as interesting, challenging and fun to shoot as the bigger grand vistas presented to us.

I could go on with examples like this, but I think by now, the message that there aren’t “wrong” conditions, just different conditions to those we would prefer don’t snuff out our chances of taking a good photo, they just mean we need to look in different places and identify different subjects.

But what about times when we can see that the conditions aren’t ideal before we have even left the house. We've all been there, especially in the summer, when the weather is great, but “the light is flat” or “it’s too bright, the light is too harsh” and then we settle in to watch the cricket instead…

In the winter, it’s the opposite set of circumstances/excuses - “too cold”, “too wet” and “too overcast”. We’re just never really happy with the weather, are we?

How do we as landscape photographers cope with these kinds of days, how do we muster up the energy to get out and do the thing we love?

My advice would be to pack your kit and go no matter what the weather, providing you are doing it safely.

Gummer’s How - Torrential Rain

Within the last week (at the time of writing), I packed up and went out with the camera, hoping to shoot a sunset or at least something close to one and headed out in the car to Gummer’s How, a short drive from where I live. The rain was coming down like stair rods and the wind was strong to say the least. I wasn’t hopeful, especially as when I pulled up in the car park and the rain seemed to get heavier and heavier. Any thoughts of walking up the hill were soon put out of my head and I resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be a shoot by the roadside, or it was going to be a complete bust and I would be going home with an empty memory card.

I took the car to a lay-by and waited. And I didn’t have to wait for very long until the tiny patch of orange in the sky started to spread. Not much, but enough that I got some shots I didn’t think I would get and that I am really happy with, I have shared one in this blog and the rest will be on my Instagram. But if I hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t have got these images in the can and wouldn’t have had the experience of watching the sunset take place in spite of all of the weather that was going on around it.

I think it’s also important to remember that old adage, “There’s no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothing”, even if this entire shoot did take place from the warmth and comfort of the car.

Local Nature Reserve - I Went Out in Conditions I Knew Were Bad

My last example.. and for this one, I headed out to my local nature reserve, and did so in conditions that were less than ideal. On purpose. Simply to try and prove my point for this blog. It was humid, damp, raining on and off, the light was failing and there was a thick layer of cloud (doubly disappointing conditions give that this was the night of the blood moon, which was most definitely not visible in my part of The Lake District).

I drove to the location, donned my fancy new mustard yellow waterproof, grabbed the camera and headed out. I did begin to wander what I was doing. The light was “drab” at best, and being inside a waterproof in these humid conditions was not the most amazing thing I have ever done, but I carried on regardless and surprised myself with what I noticed… there were wet ferns, trees that looked interesting against the grey background and a group of trees that form a bit of an arch.

Were these images all bangers? Absolutely not. But were they good enough for me to pleased with them? Did I learn from them? Yes. Absolutely. I’ve posted some of them for you to have a look at down at the bottom of the page.

I think that one of the biggest takeaways for me with this shoot was the fact I learned, and a learned a lot; that’s something that we need to think about a lot with photography, we might not be getting portfolio standard images all the time (if you are, then hat’s off to you, you’re doing well!), but are we learning all the time? Yes, we are.

I wouldn’t often say that someone else’s approach is wrong, but I will fundamentally disagree with anyone who says that they don’t or can’t learn anything about their own photography (or indeed themself) or about their own photographic skill, everything time they go out with the camera and make images.

If you don’t think that you’re learning, then go and take a look at the images from you last shoot. Are they all keepers? If they’re not then why aren’t they? Why did you reject them? What will you do differently next time and how are you going to adjust what you’re doing to make sure that it doesn’t happen again?

And if you’re new to photography (welcome!), and you’re not sure what what has caused the issues in you image then I would recommend checking my blog post on diagnosing the faults in your images which explores some common issues that we all encounter and tells you how to fix them or stop them from happening again?

So what did I learn from this photoshoot in less than ideal conditions?

First and foremost I thought about the opportunity this gave me to scout locations. I’ve got new pins and notes on one of my maps so that I can plan shoots in conditions which are suited to the shots I want to get. I learned that even though my camera is still and on a tripod, I need to remember that other things still move and this is going to show up as (largely) unwanted motion blur in my images. On top of this, I reinforced my own thoughts that every shoot has the potential to be a complete bust, but with some creative thinking and a lot of will power, going out in sub-optimum conditions can still result in shots that I wouldn’t have got if I had stayed at home!

My Bucket List Photo Locations

This one is almost a little but self indulgent, but I suppose this is also some kind of accountability post for me to try and get my backside into gear. It also goes without saying that because this is my current bucket-list of my landscape photography locations, that none of the images that appear in here are mine, they have all been taken from the free SquareSpace stock library, which uses Unsplash - I have credited all of the photographers at the end of this entry, so go and check out their Unsplash profiles!

I don’t have a timeline, or any definite plans in place to shoot any of these places as it stands, and a lot of them are out of the country so that adds another layer of complexity. These are places I have either discovered since I started my landscape photography journey, or are places that I have always wanted to visit and shoot - some of them aren’t even landscape locations but park back to my days as an urban and street photographer. Let’s get into it…

1. Moraine Lake

When I first started photography (of any kind!), someone who was a huge influence on me, and who taught me a lot, was, you guessed it, Peter McKinnon.

This first selection seems like a bit of a cop out, seeing as this is PM’s original ‘bucket shot’, but when I first clapped eyes on this place, I immediately understood why. The still, blue tinged water lined with trees and the mirror reflections are the stuff of landscape photography dreams and I am determined, that one day, I will have my own print, of my own shot from here.

2. Skogafoss Waterfall - Iceland

I think this image speaks for itself, in fact, I expect a lot of them do as we move through the list. I’m a huge fan of long exposure photography (definitely a hangover from my low light days in city), and waterfalls make great long exposure subjects.

Not only does the long exposure appeal to me, but the opportunities to show the scale and play with the colours, especially the greens which flank it on either side mean that I find the prospect of shooting this location really exciting, and with all of that foreground texture and interest, I think this is going to be an incredible place to shoot.

3. Tokyo - Japan

One of my favourite things to shoot has always been neon lights, not that I get much chance to do it anymore, (they’re not so common in the countryside) and one my favourite photobooks is TO:KY:OO, by Liam Wong. If you haven’t read this, then you must - it is simply incredible.

I think that this will be an amazing experience, playing with the light, the colour and the different spaces, the night time moods that can be captured are incredible and I am yearning for a little taste of city photography again, it’s been a few years since I flexed that particular photography muscle and I feel like a trip here is long overdue.

4. Route 66 - USA

This is something I have wanted to do since before I was a photographer; I love to drive and see new things and when I got into photography a few years ago, I realised quite quickly that this would be an incredible combination of photography and driving some insane hire car across The States.

Not only would this trip combine driving and photography, but having watched waaaaay too much YouTube on this topic, it’s clear to see that this a journey would allow for a whole gamut of photography genres,styles and compositions; long leading lines, huge

sunsets, architectural and low light photography, not to mention more landscapes than you can shake a stick at, as well as, more than likely, some awesome food as well!

5. The Scottish Highlands

I only visited Scotland for the first time within the last 12 months, and the tiny section I have already seen, as well hours spent poring through phonebooks have made this one a firm fixture on this list, and one that is likely to happen more quickly than some of the others.

It’s got it all from the tallest mountain in the UK (others are available!) as well as huge bodies of water, stunning coastlines and wildlife, castles and (allegedly!) and monster.

6. New York

I told you some of these wouldn’t be solely landscape focused. Having lived and shot London for a number of years, The Big Apple, for me is an absolute must.

I feel like I know this city really well from having seen so much of it on TV and online (thanks Casey Neistat) and have an immense shot list that I want to tick off whilst I am there, as well as having a bash at some NYC street photography; endless compositions, people, landmarks and panoramic views. What’s not to love from a photography perspective? Might even get ambushed by Bruce Gilden!

7. Lofoten - Norway

I have watched countless photographers photographing Lofoten on the North Western coast of Norway. Every time I have watched them, I have been so incredibly jealous. So much so, that Lofoten has made this list.

There’s so much in this location from snow covered mountains, to brightly coloured wooden buildings, and if you’re there at the right time, the Northern Lights can be a common sight here, and who doesn’t love seeing and photographing these?

I’m also a massive fan of not being too hot (or “‘ot” as we tend to say here), it’s another one of the amazing things about living where I do (though this summer the North West has often felt like the centre of the sun), and Lofoten isn’t known for being hot in the winter.

Warm clothes and warm drinks are the order of the day here and I can’t think of many better places to feel “just right” in terms of temperature!

The compositions in this place feel like they will be endless and to spend a day shooting them and then going back to relax in front of a roaring fire makes the idea of shooting here all the more appealing.

8. Patagonia - Arentina/Chile

I mean, just look at those lenticular clouds above the mountain. Look at the colour. Look at the mountains.

I’m sorry to say, that this is another one that I have seen done by a YouTuber (Thomas Heaton) and from the second I saw the landscape, the chances to tell stories and watch the landscape and the light evolving in front of you, I made a promise to myself that one day, I would make it to this part of the world to grab my own images.

9. Arctic/Antarctica

I know that there is a theme emerging here in that many of the places I have chosen are cold and these must be the two coldest places on the planet, and they’re pretty far apart from one another.

My main inspiration for wanting to visit here (aside from the very cute looking, but often dangerous animals) which are some of the ‘obvious’ reasons for wanting to go.

I also want to go because I think that photographically, despite the grandness of some of the landscapes, it will be a really challenging place to photograph. The lack of obvious features means that compositions are going to be more difficult to hunt down and figure out and the absence of many other colours other than blue or white, means that finding interest is going to take on a whole different level of difficulty.

For me, this is a challenge which is about using texture and a limited colour palette to be able to create interesting stories and to capture images of some of the most amazing wildlife that we have on earth.

I’m also hoping that the long daylight and vast amounts of reflected light are going to help me to keep those shutter speeds fast for when I am being chased down by a polar bear!

10. Ireland

Finally, Ireland. I've chosen a picture of The Giant’s Causeway for this, as I’d love to see and shoot it. Not just this, but everything else that’s I have chosen to shoot in this part of the world and have pinned on Google “My Maps”.

One thing we lack in The Lake District, is coastline, let alone the dramatic coastlines this place has to offer.

If manage to shoot here with the right conditions then I could well be in for some seriously amazing photogenic coastal photography opportunities.

This was a difficult list to write/compile, I could have a list of 200+ places I want to go and shoot. I have kept this list short so that you are able to digest the whole thing quickly. I know that speed isn’t going to be something that is possible when it comes to working my way through this list, it’s going to mean saving a lot of money to do it, but the memories and the images, I really hope, are going to be more than worth it.

I hope to share some images of one or many of these places when I've ticked some of them off.

Image Credits:

Moraine Lake: @john_artifexfilm on Unsplash.com; Skogafoss Waterfall: @dnevozhai on Unsplash.com; Tokyo: @agk42 on Unsplash.com; Route 66: @gerardag on Unsplash.com; Scottish Highlands: @connormollison on Unsplash.com; New York: @_miltiadis_ on Unsplash.com; Lofoten: @withluke on Unsplash.com; Patagonia: cyrus_smith on Unsplash.com; Artica/Antartica: @eadesstudio on Unsplash.com; Ireland: @katkelley on Unsplash.com

How to Overcome a Creative Rut in Photography: Tips and Strategies for Every Photographer

We’ve all been there. We don’t have any ideas, we don’t have the want to get up and go out to shoot and find every excuse under the sun not to go out (there’s no light, it’s raining, *insert your own here*) and sometimes, you’re just not “feeling it”. So what do you do when you’re feeling this? How could you get yourself out of it? How do you recover that lost will to go and shoot? In this blog, I’ll go through some of the things that I have done when I’ve struggled to pick up the camera.

Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I’ve always loved photography since the first time I really started to do it seriously about 6 years ago, but there have been times when I just couldn’t be bothered, or simply wasn’t feeling like I wanted to. Let’s not also forget that most of us are doing this as a hobby and simply don’t always have bags and bags of disposable time to go out and shoot! Sometimes, it can be just a struggle to know what to do and where to do it.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to have ever felt like giving it up, but but under this intro, you’ll find some of the strategies I have used to get me off the couch to get out to shoot.

These tips/ideas aren’t exclusive to landscape photography, let alone landscape photography in The Lake District (which is what I talk about a lot on here), they will will work for everyone who owns a camera. You don’t need to go out and by things to help you with any of it, most photographers will have the things I talk about in this blog already. In fact in one part of this entry, I’m going to tell you not to buy gear to help with this problem!

Anyway, enough waffle. Let’s jump in…

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may receive a small kickback if you make a qualifying purchase after clicking one of my links. The images in this blog are from unsplash.com and credits are at the bottom of the page.

1: Build a Shot List

I like this one because it’s free (most of us already own a pen/pencil and a piece of paper), it’s easy and it encourages you to look at other photographer’s work, or to actually go out and explore (when I am shoot planning, it tends to be a mixture of both). Doing the latter means that just in the planning stage, you are likely to go and scout the location and take the camera with you.

Come up with a list of locations and some ideas of photos that you would like to get, find some spare time in your day/week, and then head out and start to tick them off!

As with another point further down this blog, don’t plan exactly what shots you want to get - if you end up not

getting the shot(s) it makes the whole exercise feel like a bust and this could put you deeper into the rut that we are trying to escape here.

My final point about any list is that it allows you to see your progress, ticking things off as you go can help you feel a real sense of accomplishment.

2: Look at Photography Books

I have a not inconsiderable collection of photography books from a wide variety of photographers and in all manner of styles. Look at the greats and check out some newer more contemporary photographers. It’s worth looking in magazines as well. As a landscape photographer, I get Outdoor Photography Magazine every month. Other magazines are available so find which one is the one for you and try it out.

Photobooks are a bit of a double edged sword. They’re great ways to find things you want to do and maybe to find a new technique you want to try but on the other hand, they are also a great way to limit your creativity to a certain extent.

The problem is that we often see photos that other people have taken and think “I want to go and shoot that”, and you come home and you’ve got a great picture that another, unknown number of photographers have got too and can mean that in some ways, your image lacks originality. There’s nothing wrong with shooting ‘honeypot photos’, they’re great ones to have in the bag and will generally do well on social media, but they’re just not original. Look around when you’re out and find something new: be the one who’s copied, not the one who copies.

If you’re looking to improve your composition, then there are some great resources online, or take a look at The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman, it’s a great resource and can give you some great ideas that you can apply to the different scenes that you plan to shoot and perhaps even some new ideas for a favourite location.

3: Challenge Yourself (a post a day/a shot a day)

There might be some days that you don’t post, and that’s ok. Just post two shots the next day, but don’t take the Mickey with missed posts - not posting for a whole month and then posting 30 photos on one day to make up for it isn’t really in the spirit of the challenge!

If you’re someone who is into social media then challenging yourself to a post a day is something you can try in order to get you out shooting. If you’re going to post every day, then you don’t need to go and shoot everyday that isn’t possible (or sustainable!) for many people, but if you like a challenge then this is something that with a little bit of effort, will ensure that you are out shooting to build up enough content to have something to post every day for a whole year.

You could try to do a shot every day, a nice (but massively expensive) way to do this could be with a Polaroid, but have you seen the price of I-type film lately? Trying to do this with colour I-type film would set you back somewhere in the order of £700!! If you don’t have money to burn then this isn’t the way to do it.

However, if you did want to shoot every day for a year, just one shot, then this can be doable, with some caveats, and gets you into the habit of taking your camera with you every day and if you need to shoot locally (see point 4 for some tips on this), then this can be a great way to start building up a fairly cohesive body of work.

4: Shoot in Your Local Area

I can already hear the cries of “but where I live is boring” or “there nothing to photograph where I live”. It isn’t and there is. You just haven’t found it yet, because you haven’t tried doing this. There is a ton of YouTube videos on this subject (usually called something like “Photographing a Boring Town”).

This can be a great way to find the interest and the beauty in the everyday. When you go out and start looking, you will start to notice the details and the compositions will start to present themselves to you.

If you have a massive camera, it can feel a bit intrusive and a bit like everyone is looking at you. Two things will help here: 1) The more you do it, the less weird it’s going to feel and 2) stick a smaller lens on the front of your camera. My 80D is a bit of a unit, but if I stick something like a 50mm, 35mm or even my pocket dispo (read my review here) on the front of it, you will reduce the size of your camera and it won’t draw as much attention to what you’re doing.

5: Come up with a Personal Project

This ties in neatly with the point above. With something like this, anything is possible, but start small. The hardest part of this can be figuring out what it is you want to do. It could be anything from documenting family life, taking photos at football matches you attend (I’m off to see the mighty Barrow AFC play in league two later and will be taking it with me), shooting around town and building your street photography skills to a still life project in the studio.

This is only going to cost you time, and it might uncover a hidden passion and could even encourage

you to step out of your comfort zone and try a style of photography that is new to you. The image for this section uses intentional camera movement (ICM), and is a fun and free way to develop a new skill and maybe find a new artistic passion in your photography.

I know it’s a bit cliché, but the possibilties for this are endlesss.

Some ideas to get you started could be:

• Changing Seasons (longer term project)

• Empty Streets (good for low light fans)

• Everyday Objects Reimagined (Find interest and/or beauty in the everyday)

6: Take your Camera Everywhere

I mean literally everywhere. Going to the shops? Take your camera. Walking the dog? Take your camera. Driving long distance? Take your camera. Going to a museum? Take your… you get the idea.

I recently ‘found’/remebered I had a very small, very old digital camera that was given to me by a relative when she was clearing some stuff out. I am going to be taking this everywhere with me for a month to see what I can come up with and how it affects what I do. The point here though isn’t about buying new gear, it’s not about having the best gear, it’s about having your camera with you. The time when your camera isn’t with is the only time it’s useless.

It’s also likely to be the time when the best light and the best opportunities present themself to you. It will stop those “I wish I had my camera with me/if only I had my camera with me” moments and grabbing an absolute banger of a photo when you wouldn’t have normally had your camera with you can be inspiration enough in itself.

7: Plan a Trip with Photography in Mind

Pick somewhere you want to shoot. Plan a trip there. Get out and shoot. I had written this first sentence just as some placeholder text as I was planning this blog, and as reminder to me what I wanted to write when I got round to fleshing this out. Now I am looking at it, I kind of feel like it doesn’t need anything else adding to it!

Find a new location, research it, consider what shots you want to get and then go out and get them. I think with this though, and the mindset that the this blog aims to address, it’s really important not to plan your shots in too much detail. I say this because whilst it is good to have something in mind, if you don’t tick them off your list, or you don’t get the light you wanted/needed then you could well come away from a shoot like this feeling like you have failed, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here.

And yes, I know the image in for this entry is the view from a plane window, but this doesn’t need to be a huge trip - you could combine this with a local area project, or a longer trip that you can turn into a day out, you don’t need to get on a plane!

8: Try Something New

This one feels like it is fairly obvious.

This could be a new style of photography, a new technique or you might even decide to branch out and shoot some video if you haven’t done much of that before.

As long as it’s something new for you, it doesn't matter what you do, but have an idea and then go and try it.

Some things that you could try:

• Long Exposure

• Astrophotography

• Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)

• Taking out just one lens and sticking to that focal length. (If you only have a zoom, pick a focal length and be honest with yourself!)

9: Revisit a Favourite Spot

This is another point which I think really speaks for itself, but for the avoidance of doubt, here’s what I mean…

We all have spots that we love. These are the places that we return time, after time, after time. Sometimes we know why we go back, sometimes we don’t know what it is that draws us there, and that’s the beauty of it. I have a few places that are my go -to’s, and one of my all time favourite shots comes from one of these spots. Yet I keep going back.

I think part of it is because it looks so different at different times of the year, and the sunsets across the fells are often very colourful and seem to last forever!

It might be that your favourite spot is a real honeypot location for a particular shot and you’ve not managed to nail it yet - go back and have another go; you never know, this could be the time that you get the perfect light and everything comes together to give you the shot that you’ve been hoping for.

I think that well over 99% of the shots we take are truly once in a lifetime, so make sure you’re there to capture it.

10: Don’t Buy Gear

For me, this is one of the most important ones. You should only by gear when you need it, not because you think it will make you go out and shoot. I’ve done this before, so learn from my mistake. I didn’t learn the first time. Or the second.

It didn’t cost me a ton of money, but that’s beside the point. Every time I did this, I ended up with a shiny new desk ornament for the first few weeks as when these items arrived, they just sat unused for longer than they should do and I just ended up taking them out the next time I thought I might need them. I didn’t. These weren’t things I needed, they were things I wanted and probably because I thought they would solve my lack of motivation, and that just wasn’t the case.

Save the money and when you do need to upgrade something, you’ll already have a chunk of it there. Or save the money and use it to visit somewhere new, this is far more inspiring than having a new toy to (not) play with.

Feeling stuck happens to every photographer, but the key is to keep moving forward. If you found this guide helpful, don’t forget to save it for later and explore more of my blogs for fresh inspiration. And if you’d like regular tips, insights, and behind-the-scenes updates straight to your inbox, sign up to my mailing list. It’s the best way to stay inspired and never miss new content.

Photo Credits:

Header Image: @ryansnaadt @unsplash, List writing: @glenncarstenspeters @unsplash, Stack of books: @kimberlyfarmer @unsplash, Better Days Ahead: @carrier_lost @unsplash, Signpost: @deemoonie @ unsplash, ICM: @photoken123 @unsplash, Here the and everywhere: @jannerboy62 @ unsplash, Aeroplane window: @vorosbenisop @ unsplash, NEW Graffiti Wall: @jannerboy62 @unsplash, Instagram like: @karsten116 @ unsplash, Kid with crossed fingers: @markusspiske @unsplash

Christmas Gifts for Photographers, updated for 2025.

No matter how much you try to deny it, that time of the year is fast approaching. The mince pies have been in the shops since August, Mariah has been defrosting for months and the big guy is polishing his boots and picking up his red suit from the dry cleaners.

So what do you buy for the photographer in your life? Or, what are you treating yourself to? I’ve done some research and have compiled this list of my top 10 gifts for photographers 2025 so that you can navigate the photography shopping minefield effectively and get the reaction you hope for on Christmas Day.

As usual, I have broken this down into three price categories; £0-£50, £50-100 and £100 + and have included a bonus item at the end.

I hope that you find this useful and that I make your Christmas shopping just a little bit less stressful.

This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links, so if you make a qualifying purchase after clicking one of my links, I may revive a small commission/kickback.

£1-50

Susan Sontag - On Photography

£7.53 on Amazon

This book is a must have and a must read for all photographers, and in it, Sontag explores the idea that constantly consuming photography makes us spectators of life, rather than participants in it. Something which I think is increasingly relevant given the online world in which we find ourselves.

It’s a quick read and will give every photographer some real food for thought; I certainly went away and scratched my head a bit considering some of the observations that are made in it and how I could apply these not only to my own workflow and the way that I make images but also thought about the way I consume photography every day.

A great stocking filler for any photographer!

K&F Concept 10 in 1 Camera Cleaning Kit

£19.99 on Amazon

For me, this is another must have for photographers, keeping your kit clean and dust free is really important, and will help to preserve its resale value if you ever come to sell when you upgrade.

I own this particular kit, which contains a rocket blower, lens cleaner fluid, lens cloths and a lens cleaning tool. I really like it.

It’s compact enough to take out if I need to, but it does spend most of its time in the studio where I can clean things in a more predictable environment.

Peak Design Tech Pouch

£47.99 on Amazon

Ok, so there are cheaper tech pouches on the market, but for me, you can’t beat the build quality and the design of this one by Peak Design.

Tech pouches/electronics, are a great addition to any photographer’s camera bag as they help to keep everything organised, in the right place and well looked after. I have one of these and its only a recent addition, but in spite of this, it’s one of the things in my bag I wish I had got hold of sooner - no more digging through my bag to find cables, memory cards or lens cloths; I just need to dig this pouch out and there they all are!

£50-100

External Hard Drive

Toshiba Canvio £64.99 ơn Amazon

Busy photographers never have enough storage and I’d be really chuffed to receive a hard drive for Christmas! I know that on the face of it, this isn’t the most exciting choice, but in terms of being useful, it’s way out there. There are tons to choose from and you will have to decide whether you go for solid state or mechanical. The one I have linked on here is the Canvio Partner from Toshiba and this is because it’s the one that I buy when I need some more space. It’s quick enough, works on Mac and PC and so far (touch wood) has never let me down.

Power Bank

Belkin BoostCharge £59.99 on Amazon

Another one which might not seem exciting on the face of things, but photographers always have something that needs charging, or will need charging soon. Again, plenty of options here, but I have gone for this one from Belkin as it’s got a decent capacity, small form factor and 4 charging ports. It will do 5 full phone charges from an overnight charge, which only takes about 6.5 hours, perfect for sticking on charge over night and having plenty of power on the go.

Peak Design Camera Capture Clip and Plate

£69.99 on Amazon

This is something that I talk about A LOT. It’s hands down one of the best camera accessories I own. It’s a tidy looking piece of milled aluminium alloy, meaning it’s lightweight, durable and looks great.

You screw the plate into the 1/4” tripod mounting hole on the bottom of your camera and attach the clip to the shoulder strap on your camera bag, allowing you to keep your hands free when you are out walking, but at the same time, still have your camera readily available so that you don’t miss the shot when you see it.

In my opinion, this a fantastic little piece of kit and it’s something that I wouldn't be without.

The clip fits all cameras, so long as they have a tripod mount in the base.

£100+

Lowepro FastPack

£109.99 on Amazon

This is a bag that I own and that I love. It’s a great day bag as it has space to keep your camera gear well protected in the bottom section, and the top section is a great place to keep everything else you need for a day’s shooting, including a pack-down jacket, your laptop (I can fit a 16” MacBook Pro M4 in the laptop section) and it also has a well segmented section for storing all of the bits and pieces that photographers need to carry with them.

The bag is comfortable to wear, weather proof and also comes with a rain cover; just in case you get caught out in a nasty shower.

Tripods can be secured using the straps at the bottom and there’s also a handy side pouch for your water bottle.

DJI Osmo Pocket 3

£430 on Amazon

Okay, so this is pretty expensive piece of kit, and by far the most expensive thing on this list, but it’s also probably the most exciting.

The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is a compact, high-performance gimbal camera which truly allows you to create on the go. It features a large 1″ CMOS sensor for improved low-light performance, alongside mechanical 3-axis stabilization that keeps shots smooth. Capable of capturing 4K video (up to 120 fps) and offering a rotatable 2″ touchscreen, it is great for both photo and video

It ticks several boxes: portability (it virtually disappears in a coat pocket), creative versatility (excellent for landscapes, travel, behind-the-scenes shooting or quick on-the-go captures), and premium performance that steps up from typical compact cameras or smartphone rigs. Whether it’s capturing family moments, field work, or spontaneous creative ideas, it offers real value and flexibility. For a photographer who already uses larger kit, this makes an excellent complementary “everyday” camera—one they will reach for when the big gear is too much.

Tripod Head

£100 +

This one is going to require a bit of research, so if you’re looking for a surprise for someone, then this probably isn’t going to be it. You need to think about a lot of variables with a tripod (style of photography, current ecosystem etc) to make sure that you’re buying that they’re not going to be asking for the receipt so that they can return it and get something more suited to their style or their current setup.

The one that I have pictured here, and that is in the link is a Manfrotto one, but this might not be the one for your intended recipient. It’s a bit of a minefield buying tripods and heads, so work with the person you are buying it for to make sure that what you are buying is going to suit them and the way they work as well as the way they choose to attach their camera to the tripod!

Bonus Item

The Lens Mug

£12.99 on Amazon

It had to be didn’t it. Every photographer I know has one of these that’s been bought for them at some point. Many of us have more than one!

They’re fun, they’re cheap and they hold coffee. What’s not to like.

There’s also the added bonus of the packaging being the same shape and size as a 24-105mm lens which adds a bit of a troll-factor as well - I certainly got caught out when I was given one and was told before opening it “don’t get too excited”! (I still got excited).

Some final notes…

1. Check what they already use.
Start by finding out their camera brand, the type of tripod mount they have, or whether their gimbal is compatible with certain accessories. It sounds technical, but knowing their setup helps you avoid buying something that doesn’t fit — and they’ll appreciate the attention to detail.

2. Match the gift to their photography style.
A landscape photographer might value a sturdy tripod, while someone who travels light will prefer a compact gimbal or versatile camera clip. Studio photographers might love new lighting gear or a stylish backdrop.

3. Think beyond equipment.
If they already have every gadget under the sun, consider creative gifts instead — a high-quality photo book, fine-art printing paper, or a voucher for professional printing services. These add a personal touch and encourage them to showcase their work.

4. Gift cards are never boring.
A voucher for their favourite photo retailer or software subscription gives them flexibility to choose exactly what they need — a safe but thoughtful option.

5. Shop smart and local.
Check UK stock and shipping options to make sure delivery is quick and returns are straightforward. It’s also worth double-checking VAT and warranty coverage before you buy.

So there you have it, whether you’re shopping for a seasoned pro or an enthusiastic beginner, the key is to find something that inspires creativity and fits their unique shooting style. Thoughtful gifts don’t just add to a kit — they will give your loved one some inspiration and flexibility to improve their craft

If you found these tips helpful, explore more photography insights and gear guides over on my blog — and don’t forget to share this post with anyone hunting for the perfect gift for the photographer in their life!

All prices in this blog are correct as of 25/10/2025 and are subject to change.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

Getting Ready for Winter Photography.

As the night’s start to draw in, thoughts start to turn towards the colours of autumn, the cold crisp winter mornings, and lighting the log burner (and getting the slow cooker out of storage!).

I love winter, and as a landscape photographer, I think one of my favourite things about it is sunrise times starting to get later (no more 2am alarm calls for a few months), the sunsets are getting earlier and chances for dark skies and some first forays into astrophotography are getting much closer! (Edit, I wrote this in August and have been out shooting astro and have a high failure rate so far… more to come on this in the future when I have something worth showing and talking about!)

The first thing on my radar will be the amazing autumn colours that we get here in The Lake District. The heathers are now in full bloom and soon the leaves will start to turn to oranges and stunning hues of read. All of which look incredible with some golden hour light, which is now later in the morning. It does mean that the rain is going to be making a comeback (I hope) and that waterproofs are now going to be the order of the day more often than they are not.

1. Yeti Mug.

This is probably an odd choice for number one on this list, but most of us love a warm drink on a cold day and this ensures that I have one waiting for me in the car when I get back!

I love my Yeti mug and for two main reasons - it’s huge (almost a litre) and it stays hot (not just warm), for anything up to about 8 hours. I use this nearly every day for work, and even when I am finishing for the day at around 4pm, after filling it up at 6.30am, it’s still pretty hot.

It’s been a life saver on some of the cold shoots I have been out on previously, even when I have been out only a short walk from the car in temperatures that were so cold my hat bobble froze, I have been thrilled to have this waiting for me in the car to help me warm back up! They are easy to clean and the lid, comes apart completely and is dishwasher safe I got mine from Amazon, have had it for almost 3 years and it’s as good as new.

2. Warm Clothing.

I am not going to fill this section with links to different items, I have a lot of outdoor clothing and listing it here would take forever. Layers are important, especially a good base layer to wick all of the sweat away from your skin to help to keep you warm; start with this and then buy items which will fit over it, that are easy to take off, light enough to carry and small enough to bundle up and stuff into your bag.

I am a fan of wearing hats. During the summer, it’s usually one of my not insignificant collection of UnderArmour baseball caps, and in the winter I opt for something a bit more substantial in the form of my wooly, Rab bobble hat. This covers my ears, is super warm and has kept the heat in on countless, very cold, early winter mornings.

Solid footwear is a must so that you are comfortable, but equally as important (in my opinion) during the winter is a decent pair of gloves. I have these ones, which I got from Amazon for less than a tenner and they have been brilliant. They are warm, have plenty of room and have grips on the palms which are great for holding the camera with. Furthermore, they have fingertips which “pop off” and remain attached to the glove, to expose your fingers so that touchscreen operation is a breeze, as well as allowing you to operate some of the smaller buttons and dials on your camera without getting in a mess because of decreased sense of touch in your fingers. I know you can get gloves which have “touchscreen fingers” and allow you to work touchscreens without having to expose the tips of your fingers, but I have never found that these work well for me and I have settled upon this option instead and so far it’s been a great decision.

Another thing I am going to link in here is some hand warmers, these are a really useful addition to your winter bag. The ones I have linked are the reusable type that you put in boiling water to recycle them. You can get battery powered ones, but in cold conditions the batteries won’t last as long, which is why I prefer these ones. You also can’t forget to recharge these ones, and can’t accidentally take out one which is flat!

Finally… socks! Get some warm socks, spend some money on them and get some good quality ones. I like the Bridgedale ones, they’re comfortable, warm and made of merino which helps to keep your feet warm by keeping any sweat off them at the same time as insulating them!

3. Apps

I won't write a ton about apps here, but will direct your towards my blog Must Have Apps for Photographers, these apps will help you to check sunrise and sunset times, find the part of the world where you need to be for the best shots at these times, plan for the weather and help you to navigate to them.

4. Headtorch

There’s know doubt about it, you are going to need this. You’re often going to be up and about before the sun rises and out until way after it has set. You’re also likely to be traversing some fairly rough, at times unstable, often boggy and sometimes dangerous terrain. The head torch won’t stop you from falling/tripping/similar, but it will give you a bit of an advantage against Mother Nature in the dark. You wouldn’t drive to your location without your vehicle’s lights switched off, so why potentially fall and hurt yourself on the last leg of your trip. I have this one, which is a good balance between price, brightness, battery life and comfort. I’ve mentioned this head torch on this blog before so won’t bang on about it here for too long, but please please please wear ones if you’re in the dark.

5. Acclimatising Your Gear.

This isn’t something you can buy, but it is something that will prolong the life of your gear and could potentially save you money by avoiding expensive repairs or having to replace your gear.

Put simply, your camera and lenses and water are not friends. Going out in the cold to shoot and then coming home all excited to edit your image and unbagging all of your kit is likely to cause condensation both on both your interior and exterior lens elements. Moisture inside lenses is never a good thing so we need to make sure that we do everything to prevent it - moisture will often turn into fungus/mold inside your lenses.

If I know I am going out in the cold, I will leave my bag in a cool room in the house so that it isn’t already warm before I go outside, warm lens + cold air = condensation. Equally, when I get home, I will leave the bag unopened and in the same space in my house to gradually come back up to room temperature in an attempt to prevent any condensation from forming.

So that I am able to edit the images I have taken as soon as I get in, I always remove the card from the camera before I put it away for the final time on my shoot and store the card in a small SD card case which I keep in my bag and then move this to the car when I am travelling home. This way, my gear can slowly warm back up when I get back to the house.

Don’t be tempted to keep your camera under your jacket as you’re moving around on location. This will also cause condensation/mist/fog. Constant cold won’t harm your camera (caveat: unless you’re out in extreme cold or your shooting overnight timelapses in cold conditions, in which case you should probably consider a lens warmer); constant ‘extreme’ changes in temperature which cause moisture, will.

Cold will also affect your battery life. Now obviously, you need to have one in your camera so that it works, but if you are taking a spare, keep it in a pocket close to your body to keep it warm so that you preserve as much charge as possible.

6. Tripod

As landscape photographers, we are often reliant on our tripods. We can spend hundreds of pounds on something which is lightweight and sturdy but they also often come with rubber feet at the bottom of each leg. These feet are great when we have grippy terrain, but if you’re out in the ice and snow then we can accept that there are times when the conditions are a lot slippier underfoot.

You can buy, often quite cheaply, replacement feet for your tripod which have little spikes in the bottom of them, which will you give you some extra stability and help your tripod to both remain stable whilst you shoot and to stay upright if you’re not stood near enough to catch it quickly!

There are spikes and ice claws available for a modest amount on Amazon, and are an ideal addition to your winter photography arsenal.

7. Lens Hoods

Most of us have these with us when we go out anyway, but just because the sun isn’t shining brightly, this doesn't mean you don’t want to try and prevent lens flare in your images. The snow and ice is a huge selective surface often covering much of what we are shooting, and they can both reflect light into your lens no matter where the sun is in the sky and this will cause that unwanted flare in your images, and in snowy/icy conditions, you are really going to notice it - make sure they’re with you and make sure you use them! They’re also pretty handy at keeping the rain off your lens when you’re out shooting in the less favourable weather.

8. Lens Warmer

This is a recent addition for me as I am hoping to get out on the cold clear nights and take some Milky Way photos (so far they have all been cloudy. Sad face.). A lens warmer, which is sometimes called a ‘dew heater’ is a length of neoprene style fabric, with a heating element inside. They usually plug into a battery pack and then wrap around the front part of the barrel of you lens. The point of it is to prevent dew, condensation and mist forming on the front element of your lens when you are out shooting in cold conditions.

You could keep wiping your lens, but this is going to introduce vibration or movement into your camera, which could really make mess of things, even more so than a bit of fog on the front element, so when it’s cold and you’re out for a long time, these are really useful and a great thing to have in your bag.

I have the 30 cm one from Neewer and I’m pretty happy with it.

And Finally…

The Peak Design Camera Capture Clip.

I want my hands free, especially when it’s snowy or icy. I don’t want to break my fall with my hands, but I don’t always want to spend half of time putting by camera in my bag, taking it back out, replacing it… you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I am always going to be putting it away if the terrain is getting tricky, but if I’m moving a short distance, or just want my hands free to adjust/move my tripod, or if I want to have a drink, then the camera is going on the clip. I don’t want to be putting it down on cold, frosty and/or slippy ground, for me, it’s safer being attached to me in some way!

So there you have it, this is my list of things that I wouldn’t be without when I am getting ready for a winter shoot. This isn’t a definitive or exhaustive list and it’s certainly not a list that will be for everyone, but for me, these are some of the things I am not leaving the house without.

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Gear Review: Canon EF 2x Teleconverter MKII

This is a review I hadn’t planned on writing as this wasn’t a piece of kit I was planning on buying! I ended up with one of these teleconverters as at the same time I was buying my 16-35mm lens, I was also looking for a telephoto zoom lens, with the Sigma 150-600mm f/5.6 being at the top of my list.

Some quick maths made me rethink this - I knew I REALLY wanted the 16-35mm f/4L, but getting the 150-600 at the same time, financially, was going to be a bit of a push and after some consideration, I decided to plump for the teleconverter and see how I got on with it. On the front of my Canon 80D which has a crop sensor, paired with my 70-200 f/4L, I can expect to have a focal length around 224-600. (Here’s the maths… (70x2)x1.6 = 224 and (2—x2)x1.6 = 600)).

We can agree this is a whole lot of reach, which is going to be great for a having a go at some wildlife which has previously been out of the range of my 70-200. I will also be able to pick out things in a landscape which have previously been a mere pipe dream and hopefully bag some great shots of the low flying jets as they pass through The Lake District Valleys.

I got mine from MPB.COM, and it’s in “Like new” condition. It set me back £198.55, which is great compared to the in excess of £800 I was going to have shell out for the Sigma. Yes, I have had to sacrifice some reach, (on a crop sensor, 800mm looks like 960mm), but I want to see how this solution works first.

This isn’t the best looking piece of kit; it’s the same off white colour we expect to see long Canon lenses come in and without the lens caps on, it’s a truly odd looking accessory.

Mine has the EF mounting system, (remember, I am still shooting with a DSLR!), and the extender comes with a solid, metal mount which firmly attaches it to the front of the camera.

There is a trade-off to all of this extra reach, namely, attaching your lens to an extender reduces your maximum aperture by 2 stops. So in my case, the max aperture my f/4 lens is going to have is f/8. I don’t mind this for two reasons - 1) I am mainly going to be using this lens in brighter conditions, so will have plenty of light to work with and 2) This lens is really sharp at f/8 so this should translate to better sharpness in the images I produce. I will share some sample images throughout this blog so you can make up your own minds!

How does it work?

Extenders, which are also referred to as teleconverters, work by increasing the magnification of your lens, and then projecting this onto your sensor. A really crude way to think of is it’s like a magnifying glass for your lens.

They come in a limited range of magnifications, usually 1.4x and 2x, though I have seen Nikon ones which have a magnification factor of 1.7x. As you’ve probably worked out, the numbers are the factors your magnification is increased by, so a 100mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, will have a theoretical reach of 140mm, the same lens with a 2x teleconverter will have a reach of 200mm and so on. If you have a zoom lens then the whole range is magnified by the same factor. You get the idea.

These pieces of kit however, are not selective in what the magnify. They will magnify everything in your image, which includes any grain or ISO ‘noise’ captured in your image.

What should I consider?

You need to consider what the trade-offs are. Essentially, you will be decreasing your maximum aperture and you are going to sacrifice a bit of sharpness in your final images.

Because you are effectively losing light by having the smaller aperture, you are going to have to compensate by increasing your shutter speed or ISO. You’ll need to bear this in mind when setting up your shots and consider the exposure triangle to make sure you end up with an image, which is in exposure terms, balanced. You can read about this in my blog “A Beginner’s Guide to The Exposure Triangle”.

You might lose some auto-focus functionality by attaching the extender. This so far hasn’t been an issue for me, as I have been taking pictures of landscapes in which the subject is often the light hitting the side of a mountain. Mountain’s aren’t known for being fast moving (if one does start moving quickly, then I would suggest you do the same!), but if you’re using it to shoot sport or wildlife then the amount of images you get which are ‘keepers’ will probably see a reduction compared to shots taken without the teleconverter attached.

The image on the right was taken at 400mm (640mm on a crop sensor), has had noise reduction applied alongside exposure adjustments, masking and colour adjustments. Single exposure, not focused stacked —>

Finally, you should think about what the kit is doing - it is magnifying everything your lens sees and does, so if you have a lens which suffers from, for example, chromatic aberration, this is also going to be magnified and on top this, you are going to lose some contrast as well.

First Impressions of the Canon 2x extender II.

I’ve already taken this out and stretched its legs for half an hour, the first impressions are good but I have identified a couple of drawbacks, but at this stage, nothing bad enough for me to want to return it.

I also got lucky when I was out shooting and instead of just landscapes, I was fortunate enough to see an A400 Atlas flying low level through the Leven Estuary at Greenodd, presumably on it’s way to LFA 17 at Windermere.

One of the first things I noticed was just how much more of a challenge it is to find things in the viewfinder. Especially a moving object like the A400 I just mentioned. It took me a moment to locate it and then to lock focus. I eventually succeeded and have a bagged a couple of shots I am happy with, you can see one of them on the left.

Because it was a bright evening, I didn’t need to add lots of ISO to compensate for the lack of light in now my now f/8 lens. The shot I have ended up with is sharp and because it was shot at ISO 100, it isn’t loaded with image-ruining noise.

The second shoot I went on, saw me heading over to Walney Island for sunset on a very grey evening. Ambient light was not as abundant as I might have liked it to be. Plus, it was sunset, so I was losing light by the second. This resulted in me having to bump up the ISO on my camera to 400.

When I got back to the studio, I did notice the images I had shot using the teleconverter were suffering from more noise than the same images shot on their “native” counterparts. I will point out this wasn’t a lot of noise, but was still more than I could see on the non-extender version.

Prior to the advent of effective noise reduction software/algorithms, this would have been much more of a problem than it is in today’s post processing world. I used Lightroom’s noise reduction panel to get rid of some of this and it did a pretty good job. All of the above being said, the loss of saturation, whilst not catastrophic, did (in my opinion) make the raw files harder for me to edit effectively and I felt like I had lost some of the flexibility I would normally have.

Something else I noticed was having this lens on my camera made it much heavier, so much so, the ball-head on my tripod was really struggling - I would get a shot framed up and then tighten up the ball head, all for it to “drop” when I wasn’t supporting the weight of the camera/lens/extender combination. I have to admit, this could also be a limitation of my tripod and an unfair criticism of the extender, but I had no issues when I was using my 16-35mm or my 24-105. I am going to try a different ball-head before I reach the decision about how often I might want to shoot with it on a tripod, but if you’re using a longer lens which comes supplied with a collar, then using this is a must to help you to balance the weight of the camera against the lens/extender combination. I will update this entry if I manage to solve the problem.

Who is the Canon EF 2 extender for?

I would recommend this to anyone who is wanting to try shooting at much longer focal lengths, but who isn’t ready to spend the money on a good quality super-telephoto lens just yet. There is a big saving to be made if you buy second hand and it can be a good way into trying your hand at genres such as sports and wildlife.

Another thing I would say is this lens is for someone who already owns some good quality glass to put in front of it; if you’re shooting with a lens which you know has some serious flaws then the teleconverter isn’t just going to make your lens longer, it is also going to amplify the imperfections in your lens. These are going to be painfully obvious to whoever is looking at your image. I am lucky to have a full set of Canon L Series lenses which are really high quality, but I also know the characteristics of each of them meaning I know what to look out for when using the teleconverter and this can help me to mitigate any issues before they have a chance to become a problem in the edit.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Lightweight

• Small(ish) form factor means it’s likely to fit somewhere in your bag.

• A cost effective option for people who want to try shooting at longer lengths but who don’t want to shell out hundreds of pounds on a huge lens.

• On crop sensors, you end up with “extra” reach owing to your sensor’s crop factor.

Cons:

• Loss of stops of light owing to the max aperture of the lens caused by adding the extender.

• Amplifies everything, including grain and chromatic aberration.

• Some loss of contrast and sharpness in final images.

Summary

If you’re considering making your first foray into genres which require more reach, but don’t have the money to buy the long lens then this could potentially be a safe middle ground. If you’re really into low light photography then you might find the reduction in aperture to (in my case) f/8 to be too constraining. If you’re considering the purchase, then it’s helpful to start by having good lenses which you really understand as any imperfections created by the lens are going to be amplified by the converter.

I think this has been a good purchase for me, it’s opened a world of new compositions, particularly when I want to shoot things I can’t get close enough to in order to create my desired composition. It has given me some more flexibility, perhaps enough to get 2 or 3 extra compositions per location I visit, but I do think this means sacrificing some sharpness and saturation, but not so much to make the ‘project’ a write off.

Will I use this forever instead of buying a dedicated super-telephoto zoom lens (or if I’m feeling flush, a prime - £10,000 for the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 prime anyone?), probably not. But I am happy enough with the results for the time being which means I am going to have a lot of fun creating something different to my normal shots for many months to come!

Lake District Photography Itinerary: The Best 3-Day Trip for Stunning Shots

Visits to The Lake District are often far more fleeting than you might want them to be, especially given that a lot of us are working full time and stays often last just a few days. I’ve been living here and photographing the eternal beauty of this place for over two years now and have used some of this time and the benefit of my experience to create a 3 day photography itinerary for this incredible part of the world, so that you can grab some social media worthy shots whilst exploring the dramatic landscape this place lays out right in front of us at every single turn.

I’ve worked this into a three day itinerary, but it doesn’t need to be done over the course of three consecutive days. You might want to cram all of these into one trip, but could just as easily spread these out over the course of a week, or over several visits, the choice is yours!

What I have tried to do here is to combine some easy what I like to call “walk up shots” where you can park up and walk the shortest of distances to the car, with some longer walks and more interesting terrain.

As with many of these blogs, it’s essential I give you some of the key safety information, especially if you’re travelling alone. Always make sure someone knows where you are, where you are going what time you expect to be back. Mobile phone and battery pack should be charged before you set off, your head torch should be charged and packed even if you think you might not need it - especially if you’re cutting it fine to get back before nightfall and if you’re out in the hills, you must have your map and compass with you. Appropriate footwear, clothing and enough water are also a must. If you’re trying to plan and you’re not sure where to start, my blog about Must Have Apps for Photographers will come in handy!

So what about the photos? What about the locations and what about the subjects? I’ve laid this out in 3 days below, do them in any order you like, do them in one weekend or one week or spread them out over the course of a few weeks or even across the year, the choice is yours.

Day One - Angles and Structure

Sunsrise: Derwentwater.

One of the smaller major lakes in the The Laker District, it’s in the northern part of the National Park and is really close to Keswick. Derwentwater is over looked by Catbnells and Skiddaw, and at just over 3 miles long, it provides homes to kingfishers and otters as well ospreys over the summer before they head south to overwinter.If you head into the surrounding woodlands, there’s a good chance of seeing a red squirrel or two. Sci-fi fans may recognise parts of the landscape from Start Wars - the scenes on Takodana were filmed at Derwentwater.

<— LEFT: The view from Surprise View, Keswick.

There are plenty of photo opportunities dotted around the lake, but head to The Theatre by The Lake for sunrise. From here you can shoot back towards Catbells. This is a popular spot amongst photographers shooting the sunrise, so get here early to secure a good spot! Head to Crow Park for this one, what3words //////driveways.trails.teachers will get you in the rough area, you’ll just need to fine tune a little bit when you arrive.

When you’ve captured your sunrise shot, there will be a bit of time to explore Kewsick, plenty of good places to eat and relax here, as well some great outdoor shops if that’s your thing. If you are looking for a spot for lunch, then The Round is fantastic - amazing burgers and cocktails (if you like them!), but you can’t book and just have to turn up - good luck!

During the Day: Around Keswick and Derwentwater.

Suitably refreshed, the next stop on your itinerary is Ashness Bridge (what3words ///nation.custard.reinvest), a short drive from where you were for sunrise. This is an iconic Lake District Location and is one of the most photographed packhorse bridges in the entire national park. These were built for horses carrying heavy loads to enable them to cross the water.

You might want your ND filters for this location, it looks great with some motion captured in the water, especially if the water levels are good following the rain (we get a lot of that up here)!

Once you’ve visited here, you should head up the road to Surprise View (what3words ///heartened.coconut.cork. - this will get you to the National Trust Car Park, the viewpoint is a 30 second walk from here) This is an incredible location over looking Derwentwater, with Bassenthwaite lake in the distance. The views over the Borrowdale are amazing, and were popular with the Victorians and the Romantic Poets. Take care, there isn’t a safety rail, but there is a huge steep drop.

Sunset: Friar’s Crag.

Once you’re done at Surprise View, you can start to think abuout sunset and I am recommending Friar’s Crag for this. You can find the location at ///itself.surcharge.truck. We’re headed back to The Theatre by The Lake for the start of this one, walk past with the theatre on your left, keep the lake on you right and head towards the end of the tarmacced road, when the tarmac runs out, follow the track until you reach the bench at the end and hopefully you’ll be rewarded with some amazing golden hour light as the sunsets and you look across the lake towards Catbells.

Top tips for day one:

Pack your ND filters to help manipulate your exposure times, especially at Ashness Bridge and make sure you have your polarisers to deal with the reflections coming off the water. You’re probably going to want a tripod and I’d recommend both a wide angle and a zoom lens so that you can experiment with as many compositions as you want.

Day 2 - Mountains and Panoramas.

Sunrise - Buttermere.

We’re heading southwest from day ones adventures and to the Beautiful Buttermere. There’s a bit more walking involved today, as the parking isn’t quite as handy, but the views are well and truly worth it. You’ll also need to cross your fingers for a calm morning. Buttermere on a still morning is renowned for its mirror-like reflections, which are a photographers dream.

Park at the National Trust Car Park (///promises.parsnips.smoker), and then it’s a bit of a walk down to the lakeshore. This should take you about fifteen minutes, some of which is on the road with limited footpaths so dress accordingly and make sure you can be seen.

Once you’re by the lake shore, the walk is very easy and nice and flat, if a little boggy underfoot at times. Head for the lone pine tree for a classic Lake District Composition with Fleetwith Pike in the Background. If you’re there in Spring/Summer then head for the bluebells for an extra pop of colour.

You’re surrounded by mountains at this location, with Haystacks, Fleetwith Pike, and High Stile all beautifully reflected in the water.

Once you’re by the lake shore, the walk is very easy and nice and flat, if a little boggy underfoot at times. Head for the lone pine tree for a classic Lake District Composition with Fleetwith Pike in the Background. If you’re there in Spring/Summer then head for the bluebells for an extra pop of colour.

Buttermere in the depths of Winter —>

You’re surrounded by mountains at this location, with Haystacks, Fleetwith Pike, and High Stile all beautifully reflected in the water.

Once you’re done with your sunrise shoot, circular walk around the lake is a lovely one to get under your belt before heading into the village for a cup of tea, or something stronger if that’s your thing (and you’re not driving!) and something to eat before you move on.

Daytime - Honister Pass.

A word of warning, that if you’re not a confident driver then this might not be for you. Some of the roads are very steep, very narrow and very windy. Pay attention to the weather forecast, if it’s snowy or particularly consider whether or not you actually need to drive along it - opportunities to take photos will be there tomorrow, make sure you are too! Take your time, drive within your limits and make sure you’re looking well ahead of you.

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, this is a great road to take photos on - there are sweeping views across the Lake District Fells and valleys, and you can also spend some time at the Honister Slate Mine, learning about the rich history of slate mining in the area.

Having your long lens in this area is going to help you get some great compression and layers into your shots. There are places to stop and get out to shoot/walk to find compositions, but be considerate of other road users, your own safety and especially considerate of the farmers who work their sheep in these hills - don’t block their gates or the entrances.

You’ll see plenty of small, picturesque waterfalls as you drive along this picturesque mountain pass, if you’re stopping to take pictures then the above rules still apply.

Herdwick sheep roam freely in this area and they make great subjects, but they aren’t renowned for their knowledge of the green cross code, so make sure you’ve got your wits about you!

Sunset - Wastwater

England’s deepest lake, with an average depth of around 80 metres. It’s bordered by Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain )at its northeastern end), but parts of the lake are below sea level - it’s got both extremes all in one beautiful location. The view is so beautiful that it won a public vote in 2007 to be named as Britain’s Best View.

You’re going to want to follow the road along the western shore of the lake, where you can scout for compositions. Favourites look towards the north with Scafell Pike looming large in the background, Great Gable being frame across the lake and the screes on the steep slopes, which have been formed by millions of years of geological activity.

You’ll usually find Wast Water much quieter than spots like Windermere and Derwentwater owing to its much more remote location.

Top tips for day two:

Check the weather to see if you’re in luck with a calm day at Buttermere, if not, pack your ND filters to try and smooth out some of that water and to get some movement in any clouds. Pack some variation in your lenses - wide angles to capture some stunning pano’s and dramatic shots and then something longer to get some compression in layers in the shots along Honister Pass.

I’d rely recommend doing the circular walk around Buttermere. The views are incredible and that walk is a great way to find more compositions and work up and appetite for some cake in the village!

Day Three

Morning - Rydal Water and Rydal Cave

Park in the village and follow the signs! The path to Rydal Cave is well way marked and provides great views over Grasmere, Rydal Water and Grasmere village.

This is not natural cave, but was made by quarrying in during the 19 Century and were part of the Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry, which provided stone for building.

Inside the cave you’ll find a cathedral like structure which provides a home for bats, the water in the pool makes an idea home for frogs and newts if that’s your kind of thing.

The water inside the cave can be crossed by stepping stones, which create a great leading line, but if you want to shoot this, go off season or when you can see it isn’t busy. This cave is not a hidden gem, and as such it does get very busy, especially during peak tourist season.

Looking out of the cave, lots of the surrounding vistas can be framed in an almost window-like composition, using the cave entrance as a natural frame.

Once you’re done here, I would recommend heading down into Grasmere village and getting in the queue for gingerbread - I can almost guarantee it’s the best gingerbread you have ever tasted, all served by people in traditional costume!

Daytime - Tarn Hows

Once you’ve filled up on Gingerbread, hop in the car for a drive of around 20 minutes to Tarn Hows. The closest car park is at National Trust Tarn Hows. Free parking here if you’re a national trust member. There’s a lovely circular walk here and it looks amazing during the autumn. It’s about 1.5 hour walk around the water with compositions aplenty and some great reflections if you catch it in the right weather.

Once you’re done here, you can head back into Grasmere or can choose something different and head to Ullswater.

Sunset - Choose from Grasmere or Ullswater

Time to catch that final golden hour! Your choice here is between a 30 minute drive back to Grasmere or you can opt for a longer drive (around an hour) up to Ullswater at Pooley Bridge. My preference here is for Pooley Bridge, especially if you’re leaving the area to go home as it’s much close to the M6 and to the Rheghed Centre, where there is a place which sells the most incredible ice cream (the rhubarb and custard is my favourite, or if you’re feeling adventurous, how about brown bread and lemon curd?!).

The sunsets at Ullswater are incredible if the conditions are favourable, and stopping in Pooley Bridge puts you in amongst a lot of amenities, including pubs and restaurants as well as small number of other shops.

The famous composition here is The Duke of Portland’s Boathouse, it looks great in the golden hour light, but the views across the Far Eastern Fells (including Arthur’s Pike, Bonscale Pike, Loadpot Hill, Hallin Fell, and Place Fell) are fantastic and the people using the lake for paddle-boarding, swimming, boating etc. can provide a real sense of scale and drama in your images.

Once you’re finished shooting, I would say that after today, you have definitely earned a spot in one of the local hostelries (you’ll need this if it’s winter as it gets really cold!) and a bite to eat before you head home for the day.

<— Paddle-boarding at last light, Ullswater; this image is available to buy as a print in my shop

Final Words:

So there you have it, a 3 day photography itinerary for the Lake District, which you can complete all in one go, or split across several days or visit to The Lake District. I have listed some of my favourites in here, so I hope you have found this useful and that you enjoy making images in this incredible landscape just as much as I do.

Best Places for Sunrise and Sunset Photography in the Lake District - Updated for 2025 with map!

The Lake District wears light like nowhere else. At dawn, soft mists drift across valleys and still waters mirror pastel skies. By evening, the fells glow with the last fire of the day, their silhouettes falling into shadow.

Whether you’re planning a full day of shooting or just chasing that golden hour, here’s a guide to some of the best sunrise and sunset spots across the Lakes — grouped by region so you can plan your route.

I have also included a map at the very bottom of the page to help with route planning as well as a downloadable sunrise and sunset compass. The pins on the map will get you to an approximate location for each of the shots I have listed, but you will have to scout for the absolute best location for your shot depending on the local weather conditions and the time of the year.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of places to see the sunrise and sunset in The Lake District, there are hundreds, if not thousands of places you can seen these awesome feats of nature, these are just of my favourites, which are also some of the most easily accesible.

Sunrise Photography Locations

North – Keswick & Surrounds

• Latrigg – Wide views over Derwentwater and Borrowdale, often with morning mist.

• Castlerigg Stone Circle – Prehistoric stones silhouetted against pink skies over Blencathra.

• Friars Crag & Crow Park – Gentle lake scenes glowing with early light.

• Catbells Ridge – Sunrise washing the ridge with warm colour.

• Bassenthwaite Viewpoint – The sun edging around Ullock Pike, lighting the water below.

West – Buttermere, Crummock & Wasdale

• Buttermere (SE shore) – Reflections of Fleetwith Pike and Haystacks at first light.

• The Pines at Buttermere – An iconic dawn composition.

• Wast Water – Morning light catching the Screes in dramatic style.

Central – Langdale, Grasmere & Rydal

• Blea Tarn – A still tarn reflecting the Langdale Pikes in the soft morning glow.

• Loughrigg Fell – Overlooks Grasmere and Rydal with sweeping sunrise views.

• Rydal Water – Misty, atmospheric mornings.

• Elterwater & River Brathay – Meandering water leading the eye to the Pikes.

East – Ullswater & Helvellyn

• Ullswater (Glencoyne Bay) – Calm waters and pastel skies at dawn.

• Gowbarrow Fell – An accessible fell for broad sunrise panoramas.

• Helvellyn – Striking drama over Red Tarn and Striding Edge at daybreak.

South – Windermere & Coniston

• Orrest Head – A gentle climb with a classic view of Windermere at first light.

• Helsington Viewpoint – Sweeping southern panoramas at sunrise.

• Coniston Water (north end) – Morning sun spilling across the lake.

Sunset Photography Locations

North – Keswick & Surrounds

Surprise View & Ashness Jetty – Derwentwater glowing in evening light.

• Catbells – Looking west into the warm dusk sky.

• Bassenthwaite Viewpoint – Last light over Ullock Pike.

West – Buttermere & Wasdale

Buttermere (Gatesgarth side) – Evening alpenglow on Fleetwith Pike.

• Wast Water – Great Gable and the Scafells framed in fiery dusk light.

Central – Langdale, Grasmere & Rydal

• Blea Tarn – Sunset behind the Langdales, dramatic reflections and silhouettes.

• Rydal Water – Warm reflections as the day fades.

East – Ullswater & Helvellyn

• Pooley Bridge – Sunset stretching along Ullswater’s length.

• Helvellyn – High-level colour falling over Red Tarn at dusk.

South – Windermere & Coniston

• Gummer’s How – Big, open views down Windermere at sunset.

• Tarn Hows – Still waters glowing with evening light.

• Helsington Viewpoint – Wide skies as the sun dips towards Whitbarrow.

This map shows the locations which have been discussed in this blog. The locations are approximate, but will get you in the right area. Red pins represent sunrise and the blue ones represent sunset

Planning Tips for Photographers

• Keswick Sunrise Loop – Latrigg, Castlerigg, and Friars Crag make an easy trio for first light.

• Orientation Matters – East-facing tarns (like Blea Tarn or Ullswater) reward early risers, while west-facing valleys (Buttermere, Wast Water) shine at sunset.

• Quick Wins – If time is short, Surprise View or Ashness Jetty are drive-up classics for the evening.

Downloadable/Printable Sunrise and Sunset Compass.

This is only approximate guide to help you on location. To use it, orient the “compass” north/south and you will be able to see roughly where you can expect to see sunrise/sunset at your location. There will be some variation depending on the time of the month/year that you are using the compass and it is more accurate the closer you are to the central Lake District.

If you’re struggling to download the file, then you can right click and “download linked file” or whatever your chosen browser’s version of this is and this should enable you to download the file to a location of your choosing.

For accurate information about sunrise and sunset, you should consider using some of the apps in my essential apps for photographers blog.

Want more guides like this? Join my mailing list for photography tips, behind-the-scenes shoots, and exclusive print releases straight to your inbox. You’d also make my day if you could head over to Instagram and drop me a follow!

Must Have Apps for All Landscape Photographers

I have a lot of apps on my phone. Most people would probably say that I have too many, but one thing I have found is that many of them benefit my photography in some way or another.

As a landscape photographer in The Lake District, I am constantly using these apps to plan my shoots, to know what ungodly hour I need to set my alarms for (or how late I am going to have to stay up at night), see whereabouts the RAF and USAF are flying their jets and try and second guess if they will be coming through LFA17 where I can photograph them, decide whether I need to take a waterproof jacket or whether I need to make sure I have a hot drink available.

This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive guide to each of these apps, but just a quick overview of what it does and why it deserves a place taking up memory on my phone.

Let’s go!

Photopills

This is probably one of my most used apps, not just during the planning phase of my shoots, but also when I am out in the field.

Photopills is one heck of a useful app, and I think it is a must if you are taking your landscape photography seriously. It is loaded with a whole host of great features and these can do things such as calculate exposure times (really useful if you’re using ND filters to try and extend your shutter speeds), it will help you to calculate minimum focussing distance or hyperfocal distances and will help you to work out angles of view based on a number of variables.

The tools I use in here most however, are the planning tool and the map. These are really useful to identify places to go and shoot, especially if you are looking to shoot sunrise or sunset. These sections of the app allow you to see where the sun will rise, the arc it will travel through and where it will set. You can change the dates to see where it will be at a certain time in the future and then use this to help you plan. It also has a display that will show you where the Milky Way and the galactic core will rise and set, so if astro photography is your thing, this is a vital tool to help you to plan.

Another really useful section of this app is the “Sun” section, and this gives you at a glance information about when golden hour and blue are, as well as sunrise and sunset times for your location. I’ve included a screen shot of this to the left.

You can see the the yellow line for sunset, the orange line for sunrise and the path of the sun illustrated by the dotted, curved line. You can scrub through the time line at the bottom to get super accurate locations for the sun at any given point of the day.

This is a paid app (£10.99 one off purchase), but in my opinion, it’s worth every penny!

Lightroom Mobile

This offering from Adobe just keeps improving and it’s becoming quite the powerhouse. It makes editing on your phone much easier, clearer and quicker with each update. A lot of the things you are able to achieve in Lightoom on your computer can now be achieved just as easily in your phone. I have used this on phones with a variety of screen sizes, and must concede that the process of editing on your images is much better and much more accessible if you’re using the app on your phone. I have a Pro-Mac version of my current iPhone and this is about as small a screen as I would really like to use this app on.

Photoshop

This is another entry for Adobe into the list and again, it’s one that just keeps improving and getting more powerful. Whilst it is a great app, I don’t find it useful for doing things like drawing complicated masks or cutting out things with the pen tool. That said, if you want to use it to throw overlays on your images, or want to apply something like a gradient or just use the AI masks like sky and object selection then it’s nice to be able to do it on the go, but I must admit, I tend to break out the iPad and Apple Pencil to carry out anything that needs some finer detail applying as doing it on a phone is a bit too fiddly.

This a quick screen recording of photoshop mobile on an iPhone 14 Pro Max so you can have a quick look at some of the interface (no sound).

Weather Apps

I am going to lump these all into one section and will compile a list so you can see which ones I use. I don’t use all of them all of the time, but there a some which offer different bits of information that the others don’t. Even if you look at the same time on the same day on three different apps, they all might say slightly different things depending on where they get their information and how they put all of this together to display to you.

I used to really favour an app called “Dark Skies” as this adjusted what it was saying based on information it received from weather agencies as well as live user information about current conditions. Unfortunately, this app no longer exists as it was bought by Apple a number of years ago and much of the tech now appears within the Apple Weather app.

I’m based in the UK and we do love to talk about the weather, this I think is, in part, due to how changeable and unpredictable it can be!

Some of the weather apps I am currently using are: BBC Weather, Apple Weather, Clear Outside (really useful as it tells me the dew point), Ventusky, The Met Office App (this is the the largest weather agency in the UK and is where the BBC gets its weather data from) and I have also recently installed Weather and Radar, which I am really enjoying using as it has some great, clear radar information which you can play through to check things like rain patterns and where cloud cover is going to appear, and when it will get there. I have found this to be really useful.

You can see a screenshot of ‘Clear Outside’ on the right.

Although it’s not an app per se, I do have a shortcut to the Mountain Weather Forecast. Landscape photography in the Lake District could potentially be dangerous if you don’t check this app and you’re heading out climbing Wainwrights! The weather at ground level could be incredibly different when you’re high up in the hills and I would always recommend checking this out before you go out walking, especially in the fells. You can see from the screen shot on the left, even in the summer (this was taken on 17/8/2025) there is a 10mph difference in windspeed between the valley and then at 900m, so imagine what the difference can be be like when the bad weather has set in for the winter.

If you’re out doing landscape photography in the Lake District in the winter months, then you should also be checking the fell top assessor’s reports. These are compiled by experienced mountaineers, who climb to the top of Helvellyn every day, so that we can have accurate information about the state of the fell tops. You can see their reports by clicking here.

Space weather alert is another one I use, but more just to notify me about any solar flares or any other solar activity which may lead to the Northern Lights being visible near to wherever on the Earth I am. I don’t solely rely on this, but it triggers me to check some other sources. I am very lucky where I live to be part of a Facebook group which is run by some very knowledgable chaps who have achieved a level of ‘nerd’ that I can only aspire to and who are incredibly good at interpreting solar information from a number of sources.They use this to create clear and concise information if they suspect that there is a good chance you’ll be able to photograph the aurora, if you’re lucky enough to have clear skies!

Finally, if you’re a coastal photographer and like to get down onto the beach, then you should definitely have a tide times app for your locale on your phone and if you’re out in the same place regularly then you should buy a copy of the official tide times for that area, you can get these from most fishing shops or newsagents in places that are near the sea, and a lot of places will have them posted on noticeboards near to locations as you walk to access them. You don’t want to get caught out and be cut off by the tide, especially if it’s a fast moving one such as the one at Morecambe Bay or the Severn Estuary, and then need to be rescued. Be safe out there, you’re much more use as an alive photographer with no photos than what could be the very worst outcome.

And on that note, let’s move on.

Peak Finder

This is one of my favourite apps; it’s an augmented reality type app which helps you to identify which hills, fells, mountains, Munroes, Wainwrights etc. are laid out in front of you. All you do is install the app, and then when you’re on location, open the app, point your rear camera at what you’re looking at and it will scan the scene and label all of the major, named peaks in front of you.

I have found this really useful, particularly with some of the less well known fells and it’s helpful when I am writing engaging captions for my Instagram posts.

You can grab a screenshot of what you’re seeing on the app and save this for later when you’re editing and curating your social media captions.

Sky View

This is essentially the same process as Peak Finder, but this time you are identifying things in the night sky. Probably especially useful for astrophotographers, but my interest here is purely as a hobbyist. I do find it fascinating to see all of the satellites as well as the planets, the moon phase and the space station. Point it at the sky and watch the app label everything that you’re looking at, and follow the arrows/lines to see new things that are in view above the horizon.

Nisi Filters App

I see this as a little bit like “PhotoPills light”, it purely exists to help you to calculate exposure times when you’re using ND or VND filters. Just plug in the the correct information and hey presto! Your exposure time will be calculated right in front of you - not necessarily ground-breaking, but great for quick and easy to input/read information to help you to nail your exposures.

Unsqrd

Unsquared is an app which I have found particularly useful given Instragam has so much hype about how its algorithm is working at the moment. What this app does (at least what I primarily use it for), is take panoramic photos and divide them up for you, into Instagram-friendly formatted images that are constrained to Instagram’s square crop ratio. This allows you to create a seamless carousel style post which will allow your followers to enjoy your image (almost) as you intended.

However, this does mean that you will be posting the image as a carousel style post if you’re sharing it on Instagram. According to most of the information I am seeing online, carousels are a great way for you to leverage the algorithm in your favour as it means that people will spend longer on your post. Instagram themselves have said that they will be updating their insights panels soon too, this will give you a better understanding of how people are interacting with each of the images that you are sharing as part of this carousel.

Flight Tracking Apps

I have the Flight Radar 24 app installed on my phone, but find myself increasingly reaching for ADSB exchange. I am lucky enough to live in a part of the world where the RAF and USAF do a lot of low level flight training, and even luckier to live somewhere that regularly sees planes flying low right by my house.

Having access to the information which allows me to see where and what these aircraft are (usually Typhoons, F15s and F35s, Hawks, Texans, and less frequently the huge cargo style planes such as the C17 Globemaster and if I’m really luck, The Red Arrows).

I haven’t taken any aviation shots that I am happy enough with to share yet - I still need more practice, but having this information at my fingertips lets me know when I might get a lucky shot if I can get out in to the garden to shoot.

ADSB exchange has become my most frequently used app of this type in the last 3 or 4 months as it has easy to set and remove filter options which makes the military planes easier for me to predict.

The screenshot on the right is from adsbexchange.com. Clicking the ‘U’ button at the top filters out everything bar military flights and then clicking the aircraft icon for a particular flight opens up the panel in the bottom left corner which tells me exactly which plane I am looking at and gives me some more information. Bear in mind that this is the military so not every single flight they have going on is going to display in this app!

I’d also recommend checking social media for groups that are local to where you live or where you shoot as you can get up to date information from aviation photographers who are often at airbases watching them take off and scanning the frequencies to see where the pilots are headed based on their radio conversations!

Blackmagic Cam

This is my go to for when I need to record video and I want some more control than my camera app gives me. It does a lot of stuff that the iPhone camera app does, but the controls are much more easily accessible when you’re shooting with this app, so you can change shutter speeds to match what you’re doing, or to try something more creative.

This app also allows you to add codecs to your video and includes HEVC, (H.265), H.264, all of the standard Apple Pro Res codecs, all with bit rates up to 54MBPS.

You also get a choice of colour spaces - rec.709, rec.2020-HDR and P3 D65.

I think the thing I like most about this is that all of the controls are on the screen, along with a clear histogram and an audio level so that you can make sure that you’re audible but not clipping.

Using this app when shooting on a gimbal, for me, makes my life a bit easier by virtue of the fact that I am able to access the settings quickly, to get the exposure and the effect I am looking for.

I don’t shoot a ton of video, (I should do more), but having something which is this easy to use makes it much more straightforward for me when I do.

There might be better apps out there, but this is one that suits me and that’s why it gets to stay on my phone. It is also a Blackmagic app, so the integration of the files with DaVinci resolve is seamless, making the editing a bit of a dream.

It doesn’t shoot a true log profile, check out Filmic Pro if you want something that gets close to that, but this does come at a cost of £9.99 a week or about £30 for a full year’s subscription.

So there you have it…

These are some of the apps I have on my phone that I use in my day-to-day when doing landscape photography in the Lake District (and beyond!). Some of them get a lot more use than others, but they are all a vital part of my workflow. The important thing with these apps is to find what works for you, we all have different preferences and ideas about what we want to get out of our apps, and we all use them in slightly different ways. The apps I have written about are what work for me, you’ll need to find what works for you!

All of the apps I have talked about here are installed and up to date on an iPhone Pro Max on 17/08/2025.

If you’re heading to the Lake District and want to test out PhotoPills at sunrise or sunset, then be sure to check my blog on where to shoot sunrise and sunset in The Lake District.

Things in my landscape photography bag that just make sense.

Welcome to another blog, which I think might end up being uncharacteristically short, but I want to talk about some of the things that are not strictly related to photography but (I think!) make sense.

This isn’t going to be a huge entry, it isn’t a massive list, but there are some things on here that I think are quite important to have with you, some of it straight forward, some of it a bit unusual, but I hope that its all helpful. Let’s jump in.

1) Head Torch

This is a vital piece of kit for shooting sunrise and sunsets, generally, it’s either dark when you get there or getting dark when you leave and you need this to be able to find your way back to the car.

It’s important that you know where it is, that it is bright, comfortable and is always fully charged or has some decent batteries in it - the torch on your phone ins’t going to do the job! The one I have is the Victoper Head Torch, which I got on Amazon. It has great battery life, charges quickly via USB and it’s bright enough that anyone walking towards you is going to think they’re heading towards a BMW. It also has a red light mode, which is great for all of the astro shooters amongst you. You can check it out by clicking this link.

2. Disposable Shower Caps.

Yes, you read that correctly, disposable shower caps. I always keep a stack of these in one of the pockets of my bag, and I have a bulk supply of them in the studio to replinish the ones I use. Why though? Quite simply, because they make great, cheap and lightweight rain covers for your camera. They slide over the top and across the back, the touchscreen still works and you can still work all of the buttons and see what you’re doing. These aren’t going to weather seal your camera, but they are great in a pinch when you caught in a brief shower but still need to get the shot. I got mine from Amazon, and there’s a hundred in the pack for less than a fiver!

3. Small Rig Camera Tool

Small but mighty is how I would describe this. It’s got all of the common attachments to do any of the jobs you might need to do to your camera/tripod/other when you’re out in the field. It’s great for tightening up L-Brackets, Arca Swiss plates, tripods… the list goes on. I like its versatility, small form factor and light weight. Definitely something you should pick up. You can get them here on Amazon.

4. Battery Packs

I have two of these, and they are both made by Belkin. I got them on a whim from Costco during a visit there as the price was too good for me to miss out on. There are two different sizes, one is 10k mAh and the other is 20k mAh. They are fairly lightweight and so far, they have proven to be rugged - I have dropped them more times that I can remember and they are still going strong. If I had one complaint about them, it’s that they take a long time to fully charge but if you leave them overnight, they are usually full by the morning. Having two sizes is good, as if I’m going somewhere overnight and won’t have access to power then I can take the larger one, saving the smaller one for shorter trips. I can’t find a link to the exact ones I have, but you can get a twin pack of the 20k ones by clicking here and heading to Amazon.

5. Pen/Sharpie/Notebook

I actually carry a pen and a notebook most of the time, so this one feels like a little bit of a cop-out, but suffice to say, these items always come with me on shoots.

Thank Peter McKinnon for this one, his use of journalling and carrying a notebook is a habit I have developed following his video about it.

I use a small field notes book, which I keep tidy in a leather sleeve, both of which came from Amazon. They’re handy to have with you when inspiration strikes and you need to make a quick note so you don’t forget that incredible idea that you’ve had. I also use mine for shots lists and general reminders as well. I use Pilot pens to write in them and I keep one of these with the notebook.

I like to have a sharpie with me, not entirely sure why, but the amount of times it’s come in handy is untold, and so it remains a part of the contents of my bag.

6. Cables

This could be an endless list, but generally I will have a USB cable, a USB C cable, a charging cable for an iPhone and probably a spare phone charging cable, just incase (those things never seem to be able to take much of a beating). These aren’t the most exciting things, but they are always useful, especially on longer walks/trips when it’s great to be able to charge things up when you’re taking a break or getting in your sleeping bag for the night.

7. Water Bottle

Probably an obvious one, but you should always have some water with you, especially if you’re going on a longer hike and if you’re not carrying a load of water then maybe some water purification tablets as well. We’re not short of flowing water in the Lake District, but you shouldn’t just be drinking it straight from the source! I like this Nalgene one as it's tough and fits neatly in the pouch on the side of my bag.

8. OS Map + Compass

This one is dependent on where I am going, and what I am doing. If I’m heading to the local nature reserve in the fog and walking around the nice safe, way-marked boardwalk, which is about a mile long, I’m not taking the map and compass. If I’m going out in the fells then these two things are definitely coming with me. I like the Ordnance Survey ‘Landranger’ series for walking, and I buy the waterproof ones, they’re a bit more pricey, but by the time you’ve ruined three maps in the rain, it makes them a sensible investment.

Please don’t just rely on the OS app and/or Google maps to get you home. You can’t guarantee your signal and you also can’t guarantee your phone won’t die. Always have a map with you.

For compasses, I have the Silva Ranger Compass, it’s well made and easy to read/use.

9. Toss Up! Game

This one is a bit of a left field choice, but sometimes, there is a lot of waiting around and if you have someone with you, or you’re out for the night then this can be a good way to pass some of the time, especially if you’re not out with another photographer who doesn’t enjoy your photography chat! It took me a long time to get hold of my copy of Toss Up!, but it was worth the wait, it’s fun, small, light and gets oddly competitve for a dice game. If you can’t get your hands on a copy of Toss Up! then a pack of cards is just as good but weighs about the same!

10. Money!

Fairly straightforward this one, but I always have my card with me, but also cash to around the value of £20. This can be handy for any number of things, but some places don’t accept cards and it’s also nice to support small businesses by paying with cash too! Just don’t blow it all at the start of your walk, you never know when you might need it!

Having cash hasn’t saved my life yet, but it has furnished me with numerous coffees and ice creams when I have ‘needed’ them!

Stock Image credits: Night sky head torch: @cikstefan (unsplash.com), sharpie: @charlesdeluvio (unsplash.com), map and compass: @henrikmorkel (unsplash.com)

Gear Review: Canon EF 16-35mm F/4L - Still Worth It In 2025?

I am REALLY late to the party with my purchase of this lens, it was released in 2014, way before I had even picked up a camera and started to take it seriously for the first time, but it is a lens I have wanted to get my hands on for a long time, so when I found a “Like New” copy of this lens on MPB.COM, it wasn’t long until it was on its way to me. I did however, order late on Thursday and missed the deadline for next day delivery, but was pleasantly surprised to be told that it was going to be delivered on a Sunday.

This lens has been on the market for well over 10 years now, and what I want to explore and try to answer in this blog is the question of whether or not you should go and spend your money on this lens in 2025?

So, why buy the f/4 version, when the f/2.8 MK III version exists and people rave about it? There were a number of considerations for me here. First of all the weight, I am carrying this lens about with me a lot and every gram/ounce of weight I can save is really important to me, the f/4 comes in at 615g, which is over 150 grams lighter than its wider apertured counterpart.

I also don’t need the extra stops of light/depth of field that the wider aperture will afford me. Like I said in my blog about Landscape Photography in Lake District vs Cityscape Photography in London, I am less focused on shallow depths of field and much more concerned with getting images that are sharp. This lens still gets me the shallow depth of field when I want it, but there are some obvious caveats as to how I am able to go about it.

There’s also the price difference, we all know that faster lenses = more expensive, and the difference between these two lenses is in the order of £420, when you look at lenses in ‘like new’ condition. Brand new, the f/4 version is still being sold by Canon for in excess of £1400 so if you can buy second hand and find a decent condition one, there is a huge saving to be made.

Finally, the f/4 version of this lens boasts up to four stops of image stabilisation, which is something that none of the three iterations of the f/2.8 lens are equipped with. This is a real boost for some of those handheld shots where you just don’t have the time (or the inclination) to get out the tripod!

I’m going to be using this lens on the front on an APSC crop sensor (Canon 80D, with a crop factor of x1.6), so in effect, the lens is going to have a focal length of 25.6-56mm. This still gives me good coverage across the full range of focal lengths when held up to the rest of the lenses in my arsenal. The bonus here is that when I finally get round to upgrading to a mirrorless full frame, I will still have a great set of lenses to use on my new camera, which will work in combination with the camera and an EF to RF mount converter.

One thing I did find difficult when I was researching this lens before buying it was trying to find some sample raw files to have a look at, so I’ve linked some at the end of this blog that you can download and have a play around with before you decide to commit if you so wish.

The files still have the exif information in them so you will be able to see what settings they were taken with.

What’s in the box?

You’ll get the lens itself, a bag to store it in (I like these bags that Canon supply, and they provide another level of protection when it’s getting knocked about in the hills), the EW-83 lens hood, lens caps for the front and rear of the lens and an instruction manual.

As you would expect from Canon, the lens is well packaged and everything arrived in one piece!

Please remember that this lens was purchased in ‘like new’ condition. This means that it came with the original box and all of the original accessories. What you receive is going to be dependent upon the condition of the item you buy - do your research and make sure you’re not disappointed with what you receive.

My experience with the lens.

This is a well made lens which feels great in the hand, has a solid, metal lens mount, as you would expect from Canon ‘L’ series lenses. It’s also (in my opinion!) a really good looking piece of kit! I’m impressed with how light it feels. It’s all well and good having the weight displayed in front of you on a screen, but to hold it and experience how light it is really brings it home.

Some of the quick stuff: it fits well on the mount on your camera, it is really well made and the autofocus system is great, if a little noisy at times, which could be annoying if you are using this to shoot a lot of video, especially if you have a microphone mounted to your camera. Everything feels good in the hand, the focus and zoom rings are easily reachable and have good grips on them to get you to where you need to be. The buttons on the lens to turn on/off the autofocus and I.S. are situated where you would expect and function in the same manner as every other lens with these options. The distance scale is clear and easy to read.

The supplied lens hood has a fairly slim profile when it’s attached to the lens, is easy to fix in place and pops off quickly with a quick-release ‘switch’.

I’ve taken some shots with this, both indoors and outdoors and had a good level of success with some of these images. I’ve shot it wide open, stopped it down as far as it will go to f/22 and at a variety of focal lengths. At f/8 you get the lens at its sharpest across the whole range of focal lengths, there is a good balance of edge sharpness and centre sharpness at this aperture.

As you get down below f/16, you do start to see some diffraction in the finer details. I haven’t noticed a whole lot of chromatic aberration with this lens, which should mean that any that you do encounter (my research tells me you might get some in particularly high contrast images), should be easily fixed in post. The lens profiles for this piece of kit are built into Lightroom, and they’ve had well over 10 years to perfect them!

One thing I haven’t been able to test is the weather sealing, we’ve been having an unusually long dry period here in The Lake District, so I can confirm that I have been out in the dustiness of my local nature reserve and the dust proofing has held up well, but not even I am silly enough to sit and purposefully throw/spray water at my new favourite toy!

Whilst this isn’t a dedicated macro lens, it does a have short minimum focus distance of 0.28metres (just over 0.9 feet). This means that you’re going to be able to get some great close ups. If you’re thinking about this lens just for macro photography then there are better options out there, unless you’re going to invest in extension tubes but this will be at the expense of losing this lens’s great autofocus.

Wide open at f/4, you can still get bokeh, if that’s your thing, but you will need to get much closer to your subject than you would if you had a wider f/stop. The quality of the bokeh however, is great - you’re just not getting the buttery smoothness you would from a wider aperture.

There is some slight vignetting when you use filters on this lens at wider angles. The filter thread is 77mm (if you own a 24-105mm f/4 already then you probably already have this size in your kit) and works well - no cross threading issues so far. The vignetting it easily removed in Lightroom with no adverse affects on your final image.

Who’s it for?

This lens is going to be valuable to anyone who is serious about their landscape photography. The sharpness across the whole focal range is fantastic (I think only my primes are sharper), especially at f/8 which is something which I really appreciate. The I.S. is solid and will allow you to take handheld shots at longer shutter speeds that you may not have been able to achieve previously - I wish my 70-200mm f/4L had it as well!

Interior and architectural shooters will enjoy the lightweight feel of the lens, alongside side the well controlled distortion (barrel at the wide end and pincushion at the narrow end) means that getting solid, straight and even lines is something which is quickly and easily achievable.

The focal length is great for vlogging, giving you a wide enough angle to be able to get context in your shots, with the ability to punch in for that all important close-up! The light weight of this lens is going to mean that it’s easily balance-able on a gimbal and isn’t going to push you too close to its weight limit.

Videographers and vloggers will appreciate this lens, but should be aware of the noise from the autofocus and IS motors, so an off camera mic is likely to be required to completely eliminate it.

Should you buy this lens in 2025?

Yes. It’s quite a straightforward answer for me. I like that to an extent, it is ‘futureproof’ insomuch as if you upgrade to another Canon (mirrorless) system, you will still be able to use it, but will need to by the RF mount adapter. But hey, when you’re switching, it’s nice to have a set of great quality lenses ready to go with only the added expense of the adapter ring to buy.

If you’re looking to add something to your lens setup to replace your kit lens, then this is a great option, but it won’t give you the reach you’re used to with the 18-55mm. If you’re looking for tighter compositions, you might want to keep hold of this for the time being or have plans to invest in something which will give you that extra reach at the long end.

This is a sharp lens, especially in that f/8 sweet spot. You’re not going to be disappointed with the sharpness of the images you’re going to be able to capture. You’ll love the feel of it, the build quality and the autofocus. Oh, and it looks insanely cool on the front of your camera!

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Light weight

• Fully weather sealed with Fluorine coated front element.

• Lower Price than the f/2.8, especially when buying second hand.

• Super sharp across the whole focal range.

• Image stablisation (4 stops) supports hand-held shooting at longer shutter speeds.

Cons

• Some users, especially those who shoot in low light conditions often may find the f/4 aperture frustrating/constraining.

• Less light gathering for astrophotography work.

• The autofocus and IS motors, despite being engineered to be silent, are often audible and this could impact work, especially if you are shooting video using autofocus modes.

• Some minor vignetting when using filters at wider angles.

The Nerdy Stuff

• Focal Length: 16–35 mm (full-frame compatible)

• Maximum Aperture: f/4 (constant across the zoom range)

• Minimum Aperture: f/22

• Lens Construction: 16 elements in 12 groups

• Angle of View (Diagonal): 108°10′ – 63°

• Focus System: Inner focusing with ring-type USM for fast, silent, and precise AF

• Closest Focusing Distance: 0.28 m (0.92 ft)

• Filter Thread Size: 77 mm

• Image Stabilisation: Yes – up to 4 stops of correction

• Weight: Approx. 615 g (21.7 oz)

• Dimensions: 83 mm max diameter × 114 mm length (4.4 in)

• Coatings: Anti-ghosting coatings plus fluorine on front and rear elements for dust and water resistance

• Weather Sealing: Yes – dust and moisture resistant for outdoor shooting

Example Raw Files

You’ll need to right click each link and select “download linked file”, to save this file to your computer.

Raw Files 1-6 are images of a toy car taken in my studio against a blue backdrop and ISO 2000

Raw Files 7-12 are landscape shots.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

Street vs. Landscape Photography: A Personal Perspective

Moving from London’s bustling streets to the peaceful landscapes of the Lake District transformed my approach to photography. In this guide, I share practical tips for making the shift from street photography to landscape photography, including composition techniques, gear recommendations, and how to work with natural light.

It’s been almost 2 years since I made the move from London to The Lake District, and in that time I’ve had to learn (and will continue to learn) a lot about landscape photography, what it is, what it means and how to capture successful images. In this blog, I am going to break down some of the things that I have learned, some of the stuff that I have changed and what has had to stay the same as I continue on this landscape photography path in The Lake District

One of the things that I have learned, is that I need(ed) to adapt what I was already doing. As with so many things, there are a lot techniques, “rules” and conventions that apply to the landscape photography I do now in Cumrbia, that were also important things to remember in street and cityscape photography.

I am aiming to break down some of these below; I hope you find it interesting and maybe learn something as you read!

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may receive a small kickback if you decide to make a purchase using one of them. 

Light is Key - Lessons from The Lake District.

Yes, light is key to both styles of photography, but (in my opinion, and certainly in the way I work) you see it and use it differently. Perhaps, for me, a big part of this is that I shoot far less in low light now. There’s not a whole lot to photograph in the hills at night time unless you’re an astrophotographer (something I am yet to have a ‘proper’ go at), or you love super long exposures!

For me, the biggest difference in how I use light, is that when I am doing landscape photography in the Lake District, the light becomes the photograph, it is the subject and it is what generates a lot of the interest, especially when it’s dappled sunlight across the Fells. In my days shooting in the city, I used it in a different way, often finding interesting coloured lights and then using really wide apertures to force these out of focus to create wild bokeh style backgrounds, usually with interesting foreground texture (more on foreground later), often by the way of drain covers, or leading lines.

Golden hour, and blue hour, are important to both styles. Golden hour, the period before sunset and the period after sunrise, and blue hour, the period after sunset and before sunrise, often provide some of the ‘best’ light for both styles of imagery. In the city, I used it to photograph buildings, in the landscape, I use it to photograph entire scenes, or parts of them.

Many photographers see this as the ‘best’ light, but it does mean, especially as a landscape photographer that you are subjecting yourself to super early starts or late nights, waiting for it to arrive.

Harsh light, i.e. when the sun is high in a clear sky can make landscapes much more of challenge, whilst street photographers will likely see more opportunities with this kind of light, which creates strong, harsh shadows can make for some really interesting compositions, but because of the way that the landscape photography environment is made up, these opportunities are often fewer and further between.

Ultimately, and this feels like a bit of a cop-out, you have to be outside to experience any kind of light, you make your own opportunities, and you can’t shoot any images in good or bad light, if you’re sat in the house!

Composition in Landscape Photography vs Street Photography.

This could, and probably should be a blog all of its own, but I will ‘quickly’ touch on some of the similarities and differences that I have found whilst making the switch, this isn’t a ‘how to’ guide, but will look at some of the similarities and differences which have affected me as someone making the switch into predominantly landscape photography vs street photography.

There’s a lot of differences and a lot I have had to learn, change and adapt. I think that perhaps the biggest shift I have had to make is how to decide what to do with what’s in front of me. In the city, the environment is very much on top of you. In a city like London, where I did the majority of my photography, everything is close to you, if you walk through Canary Wharf or around parts of the City of London, then huge skyscrapers ascend above you and horizons can be non-existent. The environment limits how much you see and almost forces you into certain compositions in particular locations.

Contrast that with being out in wide open spaces, often on top of the highest point for miles around. This comes with its own set of challenges and of course, the temptation just to shoot the whole scene, or to photograph the whole of the sunset or sunrise over Derwentwater. This has been one of the hardest things for me to adapt to, especially when photographing in The Lake District, when there is a stunning vista laid out in front of me, with an amazing sunset kicking off in the background.

I have done a number of things to help me with this; I have looked at a lot of work by other photographers, (but have tried to avoid looking at other Lake District Photographers so that I don’t end up just taking everyone else’s photos), watched YouTube videos, practiced, and finally, have gone on shoots with just a longer focal length lens (usually my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L), as this takes the wide shots out of play and makes me pick out what I think are interesting features in the landscape. It makes me look for different compositions, different subjects and more creative ways to work with the light that is in front of me.

I don't always go out with just one lens, I often take something which is a bit wider (like a 24-105mm) or sometimes, something super-wide (like my Canon EF 10-18mm F/4.5-5.6), but I do try to think more carefully about my composition when I am shooting with a wider lens, which leads me neatly onto my next point about foreground interest.

When I was shooting in the city, I would use foreground interest to force background lights out of focus to create bokeh, and this kind of foreground interest is something I am trying to include more of in my landscape photography.

I just have to look a bit harder for it, and I’m also not trying to force my images to have out of focus elements (more on focus stacking later). In the city, there are interesting textures, in convenient places, everywhere. There are tons of interesting textures in the country as well, but getting them in the right places, with the right background and a pleasing composition which leads the eye through it, is much more of a challenge, but foreground interest is often key to a successful image. It could be something as simple as a boulder or a patch of heather, but having it there makes a huge difference to your images.

Weather Conditions in Lake District Landscape Photography

No blog about UK landscape photography would be complete without a mention of the weather, but it is something that I have found impacts what I shoot, where I shoot and when I shoot it way more than it did when I lived in the city. When I lived in London, the weather was any combination of hot, dry, wet and/or humid. Occasionally it snowed. Going out to shoot in good weather was a no brainer, going out to shoot in the rain or just after it, was even more of a no brainer - cities look awesome in the rain and in low light - reflections, bright lights and extra textures. You were also never very far from the warm shelter or a shop or a tube station.

I’ve become a bit obsessed with the state of the weather since landscape photography became my biggest focus - will there be rain, how cold will it be, how bad is the wind when I get further up and into the hills? Is there any lightning forecast? What are the chances of a cloud inversion? Is there going to be mist?

The answers to all of the above will influence where I go and shoot and when I decide to go there. If you’re new to photographing in the Lake District, apps like Clear Outside, Ventusky, the BBC Weather App, and the Met Office Mountain Weather Forecast are essential for planning sunrise or sunset photography trips.

There’s some great apps to help you stay on top of this, don’t just rely on one, have a look at what they are all saying, some of my favourites are Clear Outside, Ventusky and the BBC Weather App. If you’re heading out into the hills, the you should always check the Met Office Mountain Weather Forecast. The last thing you want to be is stranded half way up or at the top of fell when the weather closes in, putting yourself and others who may have to come and fetch you down in danger.

Focus Stacking

This has been a real game changer for me, but it has taken some practice. Focus stacking is essentially a different version of exposure stacking, something which I had done in my city photographs to enhance the dynamic range. If you’re trying to achieve pin-sharp images of the fells from foreground to horizon, especially during golden hour, focus stacking is an essential technique for Lake District photography.

Focus stacking, on my camera at least, is a far more manual process. What focus stacking does is to combat some of the physical limitations of your lens and allows you to have all parts of your image either acceptably sharp or pin sharp. Essentially, you take several exposures of the same scene, with your camera mounted on a tripod (this is important, as if you move the camera, your attempts are over before the have even begun!), with each exposure focused on a different point. So, for example, you may focus on the foreground, take an image, then the mid ground and take another image, and then the horizon line and take another exposure. Three generally works well, you could do more, but this can make things more complicated in post production.

When you get back to your computer, you can do all of your light room edits etc. and then export the images to layers in Photoshop. Once in photoshop, you can ask it to automate this process for you, or you can use masks to have full control. It’s slightly more involved than that, and I will do a tutorial on this at some point in the future, but in the meantime, there are lots of tutorials on YouTube that will talk you through the process

I did far less focus stacking in the city than I do in the country, I think largely because my style has shifted and I want more of the scene in acceptable focus than I did in the city when the goal was often bokeh balls.

Slowing Down Your Process

This has been a big adjustment for me. In the city, everything moves a lot quicker, no one is taking their time. Opportunities for images can be fleeting, gone in seconds and won’t come back.

Thats’s not to say that things don’t change at all in the country, but there is more time to let a scene develop. You can stay in one spot and see various stages of light, see patterns change and wait for light to move to where you want it, especially if you’ve got some great dappled light illuminating the hills above Ullswater.

<— Not me in the image, I’ve used a stock image here!

When I was doing much more street photography, I always felt like I needed to be moving, whereas with landscape photography, you have time to slow down and take things in and wait for the opportunities to present themselves, photographing the scene in front of of you as it changes. The big difference is that sometimes, it can take a long time (and a lot of effort) to get to where you want to be. In the city, hop off the train or get out of the car, and generally you’re in amongst it. The country is often a lot more uphill and not as easy to access, but that’s all part of the fun!

You don’t limit yourself by staying in one place, you have time to explore what is in front of you and enjoy the way it changes - as the light moves, so will your eyes and you’ll notice things that you hadn’t thought about capturing only moments earlier.

Gear

This isn’t going to be a ‘does gear matter’ section, but a comment on the type of gear I’m using.

I used to rely heavily on fast lenses - I was using wide apertures for shallow depth of field and often needed the extra light for shooting in low light conditions. I have come to realise that I don’t need a plethora of fast lenses for what I am doing now. I am more concerned about image quality and sharpness, which helps with the cost of things as well - fast lenses are much more expensive. Take the Canon 16-35mm L series lens, there is a difference of almost £300 in the price of the F/4 version when compared to the latest version of the same lens with a maximum attitude of F/2.8. The F/4 versions are also a lot lighter, which is great in terms of carting it around with you all day.

I do still have a couple of fast lenses, namely an F/1.8 nifty fifty and an F/1.2L 85mm Prime. The 85 is a unit of a lens, weighs almost 2kg and is incredibly sharp. These two lenses also hardly ever come out with me unless its for a portrait session or I have a genuine use case for them in the field - 2KG is a lot to carry around all day and then not use! The 85mm was a staple of my bag in London, because of that shallow depth of field, and it was great in low light as the front element is like a bucket.

The lenses that tend to come out with me now are a 10-18mm EF, 16-35mm f/4L, 24-105mm F4/L and my 70-200mm F4/L. These save weight, cover the whole range of focal lengths and give me all the flexibility I could ever need.

Some things are a given for both styles - a sturdy tripod is a must, if it’s light weight, then even better, but expect to pay good money for the privilege. The other item that has been really useful is my Peak Design Camera Clip, which whilst a little pricey for its size, is a must have for when you are out walking, but you might want to get it back in your bag when the terrain starts to get a bit trickier. Better to break a tumble with your hands and not your camera and expensive lens!

What bag you put it all in is very much a personal choice, but for short walks, I like the LowePro Fast Pack , (you can read my review of the Lowepro Fastback here), and for longer walks I take the LowePro Protactic 450 AWII. The latter is a much bigger bag and it comes with hip straps, which make longer days much more comfortable, but it does lack space for your non-camera gear like a jacket or something to eat!

In Summary

I think it’s clear that there are a lot of similarities between the two different styles I have shot, but in short, we’re still taking photos, we’re still telling stories and we are still doing it using similar equipment. We are, to an extent very reliant on the weather but for different reasons.

For me, the biggest difference is the tempo that things move at in the landscape photography world, it’s slower and at times more methodical, with a greater need for focus stacking if you want that front to back sharpness in your images.

Which one would I choose? Well both of them. I still do some street photography and still really enjoy it; I enjoy the dynamism and the change of pace it offers from the much more pedestrian pace of landscape photography, but regardless of what I prefer, I just love being out with camera, taking images, sharing images and telling stories!

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Gear Review: Pocket Dispo Lens

There seems to be a pretty booming market for this type of lens at the moment and I have wanted one for a long time, this type of lens being a disposable camera lens mounted to fit your mirrorless of DSLR body.

The problem (for me at least!) has been that they have been largely targeted at the mirrorless market, leaving us DLSR ‘dinosaurs’ feeling a little bit left out and unable to join in the fun. I love a bit of lo-fi tech.

That was until a couple of weeks ago, when I found out that Pocket Dispo now sell lenses which are made for DSLR cameras (be quick, they have been quite open about the fact that there is a limited number), and had brought out a model which fits on to my Canon EF-S lens mount, and I couldn’t have been happier about it!

The version I have, for the EF/EF-S Mount is priced at £45 when it’s at full price, but I got mine in the promotion they were running in the run-up to the 4th July celebrations (7/4, or 4/7 depending on where you are reading this), so I managed to secure a bit of a discount, which was great when you consider that the postage is £15.

That said, you do have to bear in mind that they are shipping this from the USA (I’m in the UK), and considering it arrived in less than a week and with no customs issues, I would argue that this isn’t too much of a price to pay. I also bundled in some presets for £8, which was a discount of almost 50% against full price, which brought the total of my order to £57 (around $US78 (exchange rate correct at 02/07/2025)) and for the money, I think I managed to get a reasonable deal. I suppose this also clears up the point that this is an unbiased review as I have paid for this with my own money.

The Nitty Gritty

Price - £45 (I paid £34 in a promotion)

Presets - £15 (I paid £8 in the same promotion)

Tech Specs: 35mm focal length at fixed f/11

Material - 3D Printed ASA

Where to buy: https://pocketdispo.com

<——— The Pocket Dispo DLSR lens has a small form factor, is light weight, but in spite of this, it’s rugged and the recessed lens helps to guard against scratches.

So what do you get? What’s it like?

The lens arrived well packaged and in one piece following its transatlantic adventure. In the package there was a velvet-style pouch to keep the lens in, the lens itself and a little information leaflet with a QR code to a video and a focus map showing where the sharper parts of the lens are.

The lens itself feels solid. I love the fact that they are using genuine disposable lenses (I don’t know if these are recycled, but extra bonus points if they are), and the aim, I suppose, is to reduce the amount of disposable cameras we buy by replicating the lens and then duplicating the film with the presets (I will talk about these later).

The whole thing (aside from the lens element itself) is 3D printed in ASA. This is supposed to be more UV resistant, so it should be more durable and not degrade too much if you’re using it in the sun all the time. It is however, petroleum based and will take forever to break down, but you are buying a piece of plastic so you should know what you’re getting into anyway. Spoiler alert, I won’t be throwing mine in the bin any time soon! The material also helps to keep the price down - if you want one made out of aircraft grade aluminium, then that’s great, but expect to pay for it!

I like the feel of the lens, it is lightweight, but doesn’t feel fragile or like it’s going to break in a slight breeze or if it gets bumped around in your camera bag. I love that when the folks at Pocket Dispo have designed this, they have made the conscious decision to recess the lens into the plastic, which means that it is going to be far more durable and less prone to scratches.

It is easy to mount to your camera, and doesn’t fill you with dread that it’s going to cross thread or get stuck on your camera. The threads for the mount are solid, and there are useful marks on the rim of the lens that help you to line it up to your mount. It pops off just as easily.

What are the Images Like?

The lens itself has a fixed aperture of around f/11 so you’re getting good depth of field. According to their website, everything beyond 1.5 metres will be in focus. This seems to hold pretty true and you get some fall off in sharpness towards the edges, which, if you are after recreating that true disposable camera look, is what you are looking for.

The focal length is ~35mm, which is what you would expect from this lens on a crop sensor. 35mm, I suppose, could be described as a ‘classic’ focal length, and allows you to achieve a good balance between subject and context. It gives an almost journalistic feel to your images, furnishing them with a certain air of familiarity.

The f/11 aperture does mean that you need to be in a really well lit room if you want to use it indoors, or you need to be near some good natural light.

If you wanted to add some more ‘truth’ to your aims of recreating that true point and shoot look, you could mount a flash to your camera and fire it directly at your subject!

Remember that with this, there is no autofocus! This may seem a but obvious, but you’re buying a repackaged disposable camera lens, most of everything is in acceptable focus anyway, and besides, this isn’t really the point; we’re not trying to create technically perfect images with this. This is about nostalgia and having fun, and the latter is certainly why we do photography. The vignettes are cool, the edges a slightly soft - embrace the imperfections and nostalgic feel!

The Presets

You get 10 of these in the pack that you can opt to buy with the lens, at a cost of £15:

• CineStill 50D

• CineStill 400D

• CineStill Double-X(Black and White)

• Fujichrome 264

• Fujicolor 400

• Fujicolor Superior

• Ilford FP4 (Black and White)

• Kodak Ekatchrome

• Kodak Gold 200 (I love this, as this was the film I always used to shoot on as kid)

• Kodak Portra 800

I suppose you could argue that these are film simulations, and I think this is what they have set out to achieve when they have created these, though I can’t say how well/how truly they have created these film stocks as I don’t shoot enough film to have a solid basis for comparison.

I’m not usually a fan of presets, as I want to edit everything from scratch and have full control over the edit from start to finish, but I like these ones, they feel like they should be a part of your image making process with this lens. Usally if I use a preset, it’s one I have created, but I might use these ones more than I would normally as they feel like a part of the fun of the process of recreating the feel of the kind of images we want to produce with the Pocket Dispo. I’ve made a gallery of examples for these presets at the bottom of this post so you can have a look at what they do to the images you create. I’ve not made any changes to these other than some exposure adjustments so you can see exactly what you’re looking at.

Remember though, presets are a starting point and won’t solve all your editing issues or save you all the time you might think. Don’t rely on them to do one hundred percent of the work for you - there’s not any fun in that anyway!

Keep your eye out for the link to download your presets when you get your confirmation text/email, I nearly missed mine!

Who is this lens for?

I would say that this lens is for all photographers who want something a little bit different, that isn’t going to break the bank and who to enjoy the fun of disposable camera photography, without the guilt of all the disposable cameras going to landfill. It’s great if you haven’t been ‘feeling’ photography or you’re having a bit of a creative burn out.

I’m having a lot of fun with mine, and it has been a a great addition to the bag at a time of year when I am tired and struggle to want to go and shoot (I’m a school teacher in the real world, and it’s almost the summer holidays - we’re all shattered by this point, and I promise we’re not counting down the days…)

Where to buy?

I got mine by heading direct to https://pocketdispo.com. I haven’t found any UK retailers that are selling lenses from this manufacturer, so go ahead; buy direct and support them!

In Conclusion

This lens is great fun, and whilst it might seem a bit pricey, for me it’s worth the money. Do I wish it were a bit cheaper? Of course I do, we all do with anything we buy, be it for our camera or not. It’s a durable piece of kit, which gives your environmental conscience a bit of a boost, it’s easy to use and did I mention it’s great fun!?

It’s light, fun, and a great way to reset your photography mindset. Personally, it’s helped me push through a bit of creative burnout.

This lens isn’t going to win technical awards — and it’s not meant to. What it offers is sheer photographic joy in a tiny, clever, and surprisingly sturdy package.

Pros:

• Good build quality and small form factor.

• Constructed from durable materials which feel like they will last.

• Easy to use and mount/unmount

• 35mm focal length gives the classic point and shoot vibe.

• Hours of fun!

Cons

• If you’re not in the US then postage is a bit steep if you buy outside of a promotion.

• There can be a bit of a wait for delivery.

• At full price, they are a bit expensive so be prepared to take a small hit.

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Preset Gallery:

As mentioned previously, these have just had some exposure adjustments applied, everything else is done by the preset itself.

Top: Original (Exposure Adjustment only), CineStill 50D, CineStill 400D, CineStill Double X

Middle: Kodak Ektachrome, FujiChrome 264, Fujicolor 400, FujiColor Superia,

Bottom: Ilford FP4, Kodak Gold 200, Kodak Portra 800

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What’s wrong with my photo?

A beginner's guide to reviewing your images after your shoot and diagnosing what’s not quite right in the bad ones!

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So you’ve got your camera and you’ve chosen a lens, you’ve read my blog about the exposure triangle and you have taken some of the information from 10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Beginner Photographer, you’ve been out on your first shoot and now you’ve had a look at the images in your editing suite of choice.

You’ve managed to secure a few shots that you’re really happy with and you’ve got a few others that have got issues, they might be blurry or noisy or out of focus. You know there’s something that you should have done differently, but you’re not sure what changes you need to make.

We’re looking at some technical stuff in this one, some of which will be specific to your camera so you might want your camera and its instruction manual to hand when you’re reading this. An open YouTube tab might be handy as well.

This blog is going to aim to show you some common mistakes, what they look like and what you can do to stop it from happening again!

Blurry Images.

This image was taken at night, outside my old flat in London and it’s blurry. Really blurry.

There are different kinds of blur in photography, but the two we see most of in camera are motion blur (where the subject is moving) and camera movement (where the camera has moved as you take the shot).

This image hits the jackpot as it has both! The tree is blowing in the breeze and the camera has moved as I have taken the shot.

So what’s caused this?

There’s a couple of issues here, both related to the amount of light available. It’s a night shot, so lots of light needs to hit the sensor to properly expose the shot. To let enough light into the camera means the shutter needed to be open longer. In the case of this image, the exposure length was 0.5seconds which isn’t massively long, but certainly long enough to cause the issues that we can see.

This image was also taken hand held, i.e. not on a tripod and without a shutter release cable. When I pressed the shutter, the camera moved and in the 0.5 seconds the shutter was open, I also moved and as a result the camera moved even more. It was also a windy night, so in the same 0.5 seconds, the wind has blown the tree and this has been recorded as blur by the camera’s sensor.

As a general rule of thumb, if your shutter speed is longer than the focal length you are using, your camera should be on a tripod. So for example, if you are shooting at 50mm and to correctly expose the shot you need a shutter speed of (for example) 1/10 then you should be on a tripod.

There’s other things you could do as well that could be useful if you don’t have a tripod. You could try increasing the ISO - this would make your sensor more sensitive to the light, so you could reduce the shutter speed, but remember his could introduce noise to the image.

You could also try increasing the size of your aperture but remember, this could impact the sharpness of the image (lenses are usually sharpest towards the middle of their aperture size) and will have an impact on the depth of field of your image. This shot was taken at 50mm with a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second and an ISO of 100 - I could have increased the the ISO but it would have introduced too much noise into the image so the tripod would have been the best way to go here.

By contrast, the skyline shot above was a 30 second exposure, 15 times longer than the night image of the tree and the house, and the whole thing is pin sharp. It was shot at f/8 with an ISO of 100 at 70mm so the above rule regarding focal length and shutter speed comes into play here; this would have been impossible without a tripod!

Underexposed and Over Exposed Images.

The image on the left is one that we would use the phrase “blown out” to describe the sky. The shutter has been open for too long.

This means that when this image was taken, the shutter was open for so long that enough light hit the sensor to “overload” the photosites that it’s made from.

This means that effectively, no data has been stored in them, there is no detail there and the image shows a patch of complete white. No amount of editing is going to sort this out unless you replace the sky in Photoshop.

By contrast, the image on the right is under exposed, so the opposite is true. The shutter wasn’t open for long enough to let sufficient light into the camera to hit the sensor and so the photosites on this image are black, but this presents the same problem - there is no data present in those parts of the image.

Fortunately, the solution to under and over exposed images is simple and doesn’t require any extra kit to solve it (unless of course you are needing such a long exposure that you need to crack out the tripod). It pays to get this right in camera!

An over exposed image needs a shorter exposure time and an underexposed image needs a longer exposure time.

You should always check your exposure using the light meter which is built into your camera making sure it’s as close to the centre as possible.

You can also turn on the zebra stripes/similar in your camera. Check the manual to see how to do this, but the premise is simple, if you have over/underexposed areas of your image, the LCD screen will flash to show where the problem areas are. This a great way to see these areas at a glance and its really helpful when you’re starting out if you don’t know how to read your histogram or aren’t confident with the light meter.

But what about images that high dynamic range, and what is high dynamic range?

Images that have high dynamic range have really bright elements and really dark elements in them. You can often find these sorts of scenes at sunrise and sunset whilst the sun is rising/setting and parts of the scene are falling into darkness or haven’t been lit up in the morning light yet.

There is a way around this, and it’s called exposure bracketing. To do this, you need to take a correctly exposed image, an under exposed image and an over exposed image (you’re going to be exposing for the highlights, shadows and “midtones” in the respective images). Most cameras have this function built into them, and it will be called Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and you should consult your manual to see how to do this with the model of camera that you have. Once you’ve got this set up, you can capture the images and then blend them in either photoshop or Lightroom to get yourself an image that is perfectly exposed! In most models, if you change the shooting mode to “burst” it will take all three images without you having to touch the camera and risk introducing any movement into the image.

Spots

More precisely, sensor spots! I have highlighted some of the ones in the image to the left although they’re already quite small and the size of this image isn’t helping, but they’re there! If you look closely, you will find even more.

These aren’t uncommon, especially if you’re changing lenses a lot and if you’re not changing them in a way that can help to prevent it.

The good thing is that they are easy to deal with using the clone stamp and/or spot removal tool in photoshop and/or the clone tool in Lightroom, depending on what you prefer. Both programmes will provide good results.

Whilst these are easy to get rid of, if there is a lot of them in your image then they can be time consuming and you always find more when you start to look for them. You might also find that they appear in some images and not in others, even though they were taken seconds apart. This is because the focal length you are using and the aperture size you are using can impact how many, if any at all, appear in your image.

These tiny, yet terribly irritating blemishes are caused by tiny dust particles settling on your camera’s image sensor and are easy to prevent and minimise if you do a couple of things . Firstly, never leave your camera without either a lens or or a body cap over the mount. This prevents the sensor being exposed to the open air and dust.

Secondly, whenever you are changing the lens on your camera try to have it pointed with the lens mount facing the floor. Dust tends to fall down and not up, so by doing this, you minimise the risk that you are exposing your sensor to. The more you change lenses, the easier this task will become as you build up some muscle memory.

You should also make sure that you keep your sensor clean. You can do this, or your can pay someone to do it for you. It’s not a difficult process, but it is a very delicate one and you’ll need a steady hand. If you’re not confident in your own ability to do this then most good, local camera shops will have a sensor cleaning service. You can buy packs of sensor cleaning swabs on Amazon and they are fairly cheap. I have linked the ones that I like to use here. You’ll pick a whole pack of these up for less than half the price of a sensor cleaning service in a shop but be warned that if you cause any damage to the sensor, you have set yourself up for a pricey repair and in extreme cases, you could completely write off your camera.

Always consult the manual for your camera and the manufacturers instructions for cleaning your sensor prior to having a go at doing it for your self.

Soft Images

Or, in the case of the image to the right, soft subjects.

When we talk about soft images, what we are talking about is an image which is out of focus. Or at least the subject of the image is out of focus or “soft”.

In the image of Chaffinch on the right is out of focus, or at least the subject is. What we have is an image where the camera has focussed on the wrong part of the image, you will see that the grass and debris in the back ground is much sharper!

The grass in the foreground is also out of focus, but in a shot like this (were the subject in focus!), could actually be desirable and help to draw the eye to the subject, but as we don't have the focus in the correct place, this is a moot point.

This image is unusable and unrecoverable. Were this the only shot of this bird I had, it may have been disappointing but fortunately, I managed to get one that was in focus!

Thankfully, again, this isn’t a difficult one to sort out, but the way in which you go about it is something which is going to be partially dependent on your camera brand and you’ll need to consult the manual, or YouTube to get the right settings.

You will need to familiarise yourself with the different autofocus modes in your camera, and make sure that you have the focussing indicators turned on so that you can see, through your viewfinder, or LCD screen exactly where the camera is focussing. This will help you in most cases to ensure that you are nailing the focus on the subject.

The autofocus in many newer cameras is powerful enough to detect the subject, recognise what type of subject it is and focus on it, if you have an older camera, you won’t have this luxury so you’re going to need to practice.

The image above was also shot at an aperture of f/4, which means that the depth of field is quite shallow, stopping down to f/8 might have help to save this image and given a deeper depth of field with more of it in focus, but this would have also mean slowing down the shutter to a speed which isn’t practical for shooting faster moving subjects.

If you’re shooting fast moving subjects like birds or sports, then you also might want to explore back button focus as this can make your life a bit easier - again, the way in which your camera is able to do this is going to depend on the make and model so consult the manual and consider watching some model specific videos on YouTube which will show you how to do this.

It can be slightly different in landscape photography and still life photography, or indeed any other genre where your subject is moving very slowly, or not moving at all, as you are likely to be using manual focus. The rubber duck above was shot in a studio using manual focus and a smaller aperture to give a greater depth of field.

Manual focus gives you complete control over where you focus and how you focus, within the limitations of your equipment and settings. When you have focussed your image, use the functions on your lCD to zoom in and check that you are completely pin sharp! You could also turn on focus peaking if your camera supports it as this will give you a further visual signal as to if/when your subject is in focus.

With any discussion about focus, we should remember that lenses have limitations. They have a minimum focus distance (how far away a subject should be before the lens is physically able to focus on it) so you’ll need to be in the right place to get the subject to be “focusable”. You’ll find this information printed on the lens you are using. You can also use the tools in PhotoPills to help you calculate hyper-focal distances. This can be quite complicated, so work on the basics first and then about going down this rabbit hole!

Grainy/Noisy Images

Sometimes, when you get your photos into Lightroom, you will be able to see that they have a kind of texture to them, almost like they have been printed on sandpaper.

What we’re dealing with here is digital noise, which is introduced into images when the ISO setting is cranked up, this amplifies something called “photon shot noise”in your image which leads to the grainy feel that you can see in the grass in the image on the right hand side.

This is one of the easiest things in this list to sort out, you just need to know your camera and be familiar with how well it deals with high iso. For example, on my Canon 80D, I know that I can get the ISO up to around 6400 before the grain starts to become an issue, but this varies from camera to camera, there is no hard and fast rule. You will need to do some experimenting to find out where the red line for you is and how much grain you are willing to accept in your images.

Remember that if you reduce your ISO, you will need to adjust shutter speed and/or aperture to compensate for this. If you are working at higher ISO’s then you really need to nail the exposure in the camera, as if you try increasing the exposure too much in Lightroom you’re really going to exacerbate any noise in your image and could end up with something that is unusable.

The other way that you can deal with some noise is in post production. The latest version of Lightroom has a noise reduction function built into it and this is pretty good at removing noise, but the trade off is that you can end up with images that look a but un-natural if you use it too much or if there was a tremendous amount of noise in the image to begin with. Other tools which can do this are available, but you need to be aware of the same issue and you should check the cost of these bits of software too!

To wrap up, understanding and avoiding common photography pitfalls is all part of the journey to improving your craft. With a bit of practice and attention to detail, these issues become easier to spot—and even easier to fix. As with most things, it comes with practice, and sometimes a lot of patience.

If you’ve found this guide helpful or have any questions about your own photography challenges, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to drop me an email, or connect with me on Instagram and Facebook for more tips, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes content. Happy shooting!

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Photography.

Beginner Photography Tips from Someone Who’s Been There

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I have been working on a lot of things for beginner photographers in the last few weeks and a few people have had a read of my blog from last week, Essential Photography Gear for Beginners: What You Really Need to Get Started. https://chriskendrickphoto.co.uk/blog/what-gear-do-you-need-as-a-beginner-photographer

To this end, I thought I would go one further and think more about beginner photography and this led me to think about the things I wish I knew when I started taking photos. 

This turned into quite a long list (with some repetition!), which I have tried to distil into ten points below. I will try and keep it short and simple, but I do have habit of trying to share as much as possible - it’s all about helping each other. I’m not a gate keeper! 

So let’s jump into 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Photography…

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1. You Don’t Need an Expensive Camera to Take Great Photos

This one kind of touches on the “Does Gear Matter Question”. The answer to that, as we know, is yes. But also a resounding no. But, it does a bit and “categorically no”. 

Ultimately, what matters is that you have some gear AND you know how to use it. Some of the best time you can spend as a photographer  is time getting to know your camera (or the camera app on your phone!), what the buttons do, and more importantly, where they are. You will miss shots if you’re spending ages trying to remember what the buttons do and where they are. Its also well worth learning your menus, where to find things and what they all do.

But this doesn’t answer the question. The main point in the previous paragraph is “that you have some gear”. It doesn’t matter what that gear is, as long as it works and you know what you’re doing with it.

You can take a great photo on any camera. It doesn’t matter whether its a Hasselblad X2D or an Canon R5 MKII. Breson didn’t have either of these. Gilden doesn’t use one. What they do know how to do is to frame a shot, when to take the shot and how to edit the shot to make it exactly what they want. 

If you have camera that uses older tech, or you have a camera that is more basic, or you’re using your phone, you can take a great photo. 

Good photos mean something. Good photos say something. Good photos tell a story. You achieve a photo that does all of these things with any camera, be that the latest offering from one of the big companies, or a 20 year old DSLR. What matters is what or who you are taking photos of. 

This is one of the most important things I have learned. When I started out, I bought the best camera I could afford and paired it with a kit lens. I still have that camera now. I have added more lenses, but I still have that camera and use it most days. 

Another way to think about this. In “real life” I am a teacher and I have taught photography at A-Level. The best photography student I ever had, the one who took the best images was the student who had the cheapest camera (not just in their class, but across all 4 classes I taught) and they created some images that were genuinely first rate images. I always remind myself of this when I am looking longingly through the window of my local camera shop. 

2. Manual Mode Isn’t as Complicated as It Seems

It really isn’t. It might seem it, but it’s not. I promise. The thing you need to master is the exposure triangle. Conveniently, I have made a blog about the exposure triangle, which you can read here. https://chriskendrickphoto.co.uk/blog/a-beginner-photographers-guide-to-the-exposure-triangle

If you can master the basics of shutter speed, ISO and aperture. Get the hang of this, then you can start to think about white balance and picture profiles (if your camera supports them) and maybe go one step further and start to explore things like long exposure photography and ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). 

You should also look into aperture and shutter priority on your camera and learn to use these too.

3. Light Is the Most Important Part of Any Photo

It’s the name of what we do… The word “Photography” is taken from two Ancient Greek words “Photos” meaning light and “graphé” meaning to draw or write. Photography literally means “writing or drawing with light”. 

So yeah, light is kind of important! Without it, we can’t take images. 

But then we have low light, good light, bad light, soft light, hard light, specular light… and many more. 

A good space for us to start is Golden Hour. This is the light we have after sunrise and before sunset. The term  Golden is a bit of a misnomer, it can be about an hour, it can be 15 minutes and it’s also really dependent on the weather and atmospheric conditions where you are taking photos. If you’re covered in thick grey cloud, you aren’t going to get amazing golden light, but you will have some lovely soft light to work with.

It doesn’t have to be soft light though. Hard shadows can work really well and add drama to your photos, just look at the work of someone like Fan Ho, for example. He used harsh shadows to great effect in a lot of his work (he also shot on a dual lens reflex camera, not a mirrorless or a DSLR, because they hadn’t even been thought of at this point!) 

As you get more confident with your camera, you will find new ways to manipulate the light with long exposure and exposure stacking and this will produce you some awesome results!

Use your weather apps and maybe look at experimenting with apps like PhotoPills. They will help you to decide what the weather might be like at the location you are visiting and will tell you where the sun is going to be in the sky and this will enable you to pick the right place to make the most of the light. 

I’m going to include reflections in here as well, because they’re made of light too, right? Reflections are some of my favourite things to include in my shots; I used to live for a good reflection when I lived in the city, and the same is true now I live out in the sticks, they just tend to be a bit bigger in the countryside that in the city. But you don’t need a tarn in the Lake District with the reflection of a mountain, a puddle and tree can work just as well!

4. Composition Can Instantly Improve Your Photos

This is one of the most important things and one of the easiest ways to improve your images, quickly and cheaply. 

Composition as both a topic and a concept is HUGE. As a beginner, I didn’t know much about it, let alone the different types of composition. When I started out, I was just taking pictures of things I liked and sticking them in the middle of my frame. 

Then I learned about the rule of thirds, leading lines and the golden ratio. There’s more than this, but these are the three that you will hear the most about. You should go and find out about them and start using them - the difference you will see is huge. 

5. Editing Helps — But Subtlety Is Key

Editing is one of my favourite things to do. You need to know that it takes practice and you are constantly learning. You can never know everything about editing. 

When you first start out, one thing you are likely to do (I know I certainly did!) is to find the saturation, virbance and clarity sliders in Lightroom and drag them all or most of the way towards the right hand send. This will make your colours unnatural and it’s not a desirable look for your photos. 

Take your time, practice, look at other photorgapher’s work, watch YouTube videos to learn, but keep it subtle and let it look natural. 

When it comes to editing, less is more. Just like this section of the blog!

6. You’ll Take a Lot of Bad Photos — and That’s Fine

Time for clichés. 

We learn by making mistakes, so go out and make them. The only stupid mistakes you make are the ones that you don’t learn from (2 clichés already!).

But joking  (and clichés ) aside, embrace your mistakes, establish why it’s a mistake and then go out and try again. Rinse and repeat.  

(I’ve used stock images in this blog, but this one is mine, it was handheld and the exposure was too long for this method of taking the image, so it’s blurry and there’s camera movement!)

7. Stop Comparing Yourself to Everyone Else

“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken” Oscar Wilde. 

This was on the wall in a school I used to work in and it’s stuck with me. It works for so many things in life, but in this instance, it works really well. 

Don’t sit and compare your landscape shots to Ansell Adams’ work. Don’t compare your portraits to Annie Leibowitz and don’t compare your still like/commercial photos to Scott Choucino. These are well established professional photographers, have years of experience and have forgotten more about photography than most of us will ever know!

But aside from those I have mentioned above, don’t compare yourself to other photographers on social media. You’re not them and they are not you. Work on your own images and discover your own style!

8. Consistent Practice Beats Occasional Perfection

Use it or lose it. If you’ve ever played and instrument, you will know that you need to practise to get better. Stop practicing and it takes longer to learn the piece. If you’re a sports player and don’t train, you lose the skills you are developing and your fitness decreases and you don’t perform as well.

The same is true with photography. If I go out to shoot and haven’t done so for a couple of weeks, I really notice it and I find that it takes a while to get my eye in and I don’t always know where the camera controls are - this leads to missed shots and missed shot can’t be a good shot or a bad shot!

9. You’ll Start Noticing the World Differently

This sounds like a bit of a cop-out, but it’s true. You’ll notice leading lines, you will notice good light and you will notice that you don’t always have your camera with you when you wish you had - but we all have a camera in our pocket these days anyway, don’t we?

I have lost count of the number of times I have been driving home and have seen amazing light on the fells. The number of times I wish I had my camera with me or the the numbers of times I wished I wasn’t driving at 70mph watching the world zip by the car window is huge. 

If you look hard enough, everything can be a photo and as you practice more, you will begin to see that you can find images where you might not have thought there could be one. Even in harsh sunlight (which isn’t always the photographer’s friend), you will see that you start to see shadows that will make a great image!

10. Enjoy the Process

What is the point in doing it if you don’t enjoy it? It’s probably going to be difficult at times, but what you experience in difficulty, you will more than make up for in sense of achievement. 

Go out there and take lots of bad photos! Learn from the mistakes and use them to improve. Enjoy getting frustrated at the edits but having something beautiful at the end of it. 

I’d also recommend getting your photos printed. I print my own images but if I’m not printing them to hang on the wall or want smaller images, I use services such as Free Prints and get a stack of 6x4s delivered direct to the door for about three quid! It completes the process and brings everything full circle from scouting to shooting to editing, to having those prints in your hand - it’s nice to have a tangible reward at the end!

Photography is great fun, if at times it can be challenging and occasionally frustrating. It can be your best friend and your sanctuary, and it can also, at times, be your worst enemy and some subjects will become your nemesis, but it wouldn’t be fun if it were easy, right?

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Thanks for sticking with me through this post — I hope it’s helped you feel a little more confident on your photography journey. If it has, why not stay connected? You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook for regular tips, behind-the-scenes content, and new work. And if you’d like more beginner-friendly photography advice, early access to blog posts, and exclusive updates, make sure to sign up for my newsletter here. Let’s keep learning and creating together!