Photography

Taking pictures is half of what I do – if I’m awake then chances are I’ve got a camera with me. It all started around 1999 with the purchase of my first digital, a vast contraption made by Sony which wrote it’s images to 3.5″ floppy disk. Since then I’ve snapped around 220,000 images and that trigger finger shows no sign of stopping. This section of the site is a collection of my favourite forays into the wonderful world of photography.

Picked up a classic Lamborghini today

Detail shot of a red and blue Lamborghini tracked crawler in front of the Isle of Man Motor Museum

All right, all right, it’s not a supercar and it’s not mine, I was just helping a friend collect it from the docks in Ramsey. But it is a real Lambo, and since it was a bright sunny day I decided to bring along the X-T3 and shoot a few snaps in Classic Chrome and Velvia, two colour profiles based on film which would have been popular when this little crawler rolled off the production line in Bologna.

Douglas Soapbox Derby

Action photo of a soapbox cart going down the hill

A small selection of pictures from this year’s Soap Box Derby in Douglas, an annual event during which competitors race self-built carts down a closed street in the Isle of Man’s capital.

S.T. Cevic Shipwreck, Ramsey

Black and white archive image of S.T. Cevic

Low tide and no rain? Must be time to explore another shipwreck, this time the S.T. Cevic near Ramsey. The remains of this unfortunate steam trawler are testament to the fact that you shouldn’t use a large unwieldy vessel to chase down a smaller one in a storm, close to rocks. Luckily nobody was hurt.

S.T. Pasages Shipwreck, Jurby

Archive image of the ST Pasages

The Manx coastline is dotted with many interesting wrecks, including the Steam Trawler Pasages. Originally built in 1917 for the Canadian Navy in Toronto, she made her way to the UK in the 1920s and was converted to a fishing trawler. In 1931 she ran aground in foul weather near Jurby, where she’s been quietly rusting ever since.

Using Camera Colour Profiles in Lightroom

Section of Lightroom UI showing colour presets

Do you want to use Fujifilm’s film simulations in Lightroom, but struggle creating your own colour profiles? I did until now, and have just found out something that just about everybody seems to know: those film simulations are right there, in the Profile Browser. In this very short piece I’ll show you where to look, and how you can configure Lightroom to apply a preset automatically.

Springtime comes to Cringle Plantation

Section of mountain bike track disappears into the distance between trees and little white flowers

I spent a couple of hours on the Stumpjumper yesterday exploring Cringle Plantation, one of the more technical mountain bike areas on the Isle of Man. Towards the end of the blue dot community trail I was transported into a magical woodland of mature, moss-covered larch, planted just wide enough to allow a carpet of wild clover to conceal the entire forest floor, and that carpet was now in full bloom.

Three Months with Fujifilm X-T3

Standard shot of Fuji X-T3

In the never-ending quest to try something new, I’m revisiting one of the brands which started me out in digital photography at the turn of the millennium: Fujifilm. This post contains a few thoughts and impressions of Fuji’s X-T3 mirrorless camera, written from the point of view of a long-term Nikon full-frame and Olympus Micro Four Thirds shooter.

Another Way?

Title image: Conundrum

As 2019 draws to a close I’ve arrived at a crossroads in my photography efforts, failing to produce any satisfactory images despite owning two interchangeable lens systems, a high-end compact, and living in one of the most picturesque locations in…

Automotive Graveyard

I was reminded today that I hadn’t actually published any of the derelict car pictures which make up some of the category’s clickable headers, so here are my favourite 20 images from a neglected and forgotten car collection somewhere in East Anglia.