Simple photography to get some inspiration back.

Recently I have really been feeling the impact of lockdown, despite things starting to get back to as normal as they can be for the time being.

I think the majority of people have felt the strain of lockdown to some degree, and unfortunately it led to a big lapse in inspiration for my photography. Seeing people on social media with cracking wildlife shots, I felt like I had nothing much to show. Comparison is always a bad idea, especially in the realm of wildlife photography; someone is always going to have better equipment, better photographs, better destinations, so comparison is a one way ticket to getting yourself down, and I know this, I think we all do it even with knowing the consequences.

I am fortunate enough to be visiting the Lake District tomorrow and Devon in a few weeks, two places where I hope to get some beautiful shots and content for some photography blogs. But I thought before going to the Lakes and suddenly feeling a bit out of my depths I would get back out with my camera in my village and get some simple photography done. Tripod, camera and macro lens in hand I made my way down to a pond in my local village where I noticed some beautiful water droplets on the reeds surrounding the pond on a recent walk.

I think they are so beautiful

I wanted to capture the delicacy, simplicity and beauty of these little droplets of water. I spent about an hour squatted down, manoeuvring my tripod, and experimenting with the couple of mm of focus that were available to me in the late afternoon light. ‘Why didn’t you just slow down your shutter speed to allow a higher f number?’ I hear you say, well a macro photographer’s worst enemy was out in force, the wind, meaning a slow shutter speed just wouldn’t have cut it today.

I started with some top down shots, to capture the beautiful reflections caught in the water, turning one black and white to create a very different look. The detail caught in these tiny little droplets is insane, and shows that you musn’t look past the small things, there is beauty to be found everywhere.

They create their own little macro lens

I love black and white, did you know?

After getting a couple of top down shots that produced some interesting results I started to experiment –by getting low to the floor, I was able to almost immerse the viewer in a mini Jurassic park. I wanted to integrate one of my favourite photography techniques, minimalism. By keeping the droplets small in the frame I truly believe their delicacy and their ephemeral nature is highlighted.

They

Are

Beautiful

I can’t wait to get to the Lakes tomorrow, to get back into landscape photography, perhaps capture some long exposures, timelapses and beautiful landscapes.

I hope you enjoyed this mini, story-behind-the-shots style blog, I might come back to this style in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Sam