Good morning everybody it's a fantastic morning this morning we've got some fog lying in all the
lowlands around the Malvern Hills and British camp i've been here quite a few times before
but i had to come out today we've got Bredon hill in the distance that's poking out and then a few
other hills just poking out as well now towards the west there is less fog but there is still a
little about in the valleys further west should be able to get some great photos today hoping for a
nice wide of the Malvern Hills as the sun comes up and hits it then i'm probably going to get my long
lens out and photograph some of the hills that are poking out of the fog then you've got this wispy
edge to the fog down here as well so there's lots to photograph i just hope it doesn't burn off too
quickly my first composition is going to be a very obvious one it's this path going down towards the
malden hills it's a really nice leading line into the shot i've got the malvins in the background
now this is where you've got to act quickly clouds have gone really pink and it looks fantastic so
hopefully i can get this before that goes probably should have been faffing around a little bit less
let's go vertical it's gone super pink over here but not quite up here yet but
i'm going to take a shot anyway my 15 mil is a manual focus lens so and go f11 i'm going to
focus where are we at with that that's okay just to be on the safe side i am bracketing
those pink clouds above are really nice give a nice bit of color and detail in the sky let's have
a look at it come on oh yeah so i'm just trying to improve on that composition by wandering around
and moving my camera until i get it where i want it
now when the sky does go pink like this you do have to act quickly because that pink area
will just drift through the sky quite quickly but it's fantastic that i've got this line coming down
i've got the malvin hills coming in so it's like they're kind of matching each other now the one
thing i wanted to talk about today was something i've been thinking about for a while and it's
about photography you see so many videos online all about gear and let's be honest i do love my
gear i've got these two cameras i've got another camera in my bag i've got a handful of lenses
there's so much to do with gear there's so much to do with well if i get this camera or this lens
i'll be a better photographer but i was thinking that there's something about photography that's
much more than this but first i want to grab a few shots of all these things with the longer lens
i buy longer lens i cheat a little bit i've got my rx10 which is another camera probably should have
grabbed my tripod then so i'll grab my tripod and go instead so i put the rx10 on which has
that 24 to 600 full frame range and this is a great camera for just picking out little bits
what i'll do is i'll press record so i'm recording on this to show you what i mean
now there are these hills all in a row we've got the fog in between them i think it looks pretty
cool i'm probably going to shoot them with a vertical frame yeah that looks much better
oh yeah that looks good so i've got this hill just in the foreground then i've got those in
the background i might shift over a little bit to try and get those trees in that looks pretty cool
now i do keep going on about the rx but it is a fantastic camera the reason for that is i was
just shooting something at probably around about four or five hundred mil and then i can zoom all
the way out to 24 mil whip it around and get a shot very very quickly so even though the
sensor is tiny the versatility of this camera is just ridiculous nowadays as well with bracketing
which is what i've just done there you can increase the dynamic range of the shots let's
say you've got a camera that doesn't have a really wide dynamic range you take a load of shots stack
them all together in lightroom or whatever program that you use this increases the dynamic range of
your camera basically so with this rx10 i can go from a really close up to quite a wide shot and if
it's not wide enough i can also do a pano stitch nowadays this camera gives me almost everything
that i need and if i didn't do this for a job i would probably just have this as my one camera
i'd probably go for the mark four though because the focusing on the mark three is pretty rubbish
so i'm trying to focus on the hill over there over on breedon hill it's really not focusing so
and i'm not shy either while taking photographs i'll take loads you get these people who say oh
you should only take a few photographs but look at that for the size of uh memory cards these days
you can take as many as you want he focused this time
and the sun's just poking out so that 600 mil gonna get a shot of that
now i mentioned it a bit earlier about photography being gear centric i came up this idea that it's
not really about the gear it's about you it's about how you use that kit no matter what kit
you have no matter whether it's a camera phone or whether it's the best camera in the world
it's up to you how you use that kit you could have say a 1dx mark iii sony a1 or anything like
that if you don't use it you're not going to get any decent shots with it whereas you could have
a camera phone and go for a walk every morning and get some amazing photographs with it so it's
more about you and who you are as opposed to what kit you have so the sunlight's just starting to
hit some of the hills in the distance and hopefully it'll start catching this as well
it's a fantastic morning i'm gonna get a few of these little hills just as the sun catches those
and see what else we can get with the big zoom range that i've got now you're probably
thinking it's alright for you mike you've got all of this kit already but if i didn't
and if i had just a kit lens and a camera you can still go out and get some fantastic shots
and like i said before if you've even just got a camera phone you can go out and get some shots
but the main thing is just to keep going out and keep using your camera no matter what kit you have
oh come on focus focus you've got to focus no i really need to get the mark for they
really need to update this and give us a mark five yes got that one here we go
here we go here we go now if you did just have a kit lens be a little bit harder to do this
but there are quite a few options out there where you can get quite cheap zooms and i'm going to do
a video about that soon so if you'd like to see that comment down below and let me know i have
been looking at a few really cheap zoom options some manual focus some autofocus but there are a
lot out there and even if you've got quite a small budget you can still get a nice decent telephoto
lens and a nice wide angle lens as well now even though photography is my job i do just love going
out and shooting and i do it for the love of it i do it for the craft of photography going out and
getting behind my camera to take those photographs if you're very gear centric and you're trying to
buy the latest and greatest things you're kind of missing the point this will help your photography
just ever so slightly but if you don't get out and use it on a regular basis you're not going to get
better if you get out and shoot and get out and shoot as much as possible whenever you can get out
the weekends get out whether the weather's bad get out when the weather's good you'll get better and
you'll start to take some fantastic photographs come on folks why are you not focusing hopefully
basically you just need to get out and shoot and i'll keep going on about this on my channel
the only true way to get better as a photographer
is to keep going out on a regular basis with your kit taking photographs getting
used to your camera getting used to the settings and taking better photographs
there we go oh battery's running low let's see if i can get another one before the battery runs out
sometimes when i go out i'll completely mess up my settings i'll get the camera soaked or i'll
just mess up in one way or another but it's more about those experiences than about what kit i have
i actually saw a stat the other day that ansel adams took around about 12 portfolio worthy
photographs every year so don't worry if you're not getting an amazing shot every single time
sometimes the conditions will be rubbish sometimes you just won't be feeling it
and other times things just don't come together and this is okay just go out and take photographs
knowing that it's a long process you will learn year after year and you will get better