SOUTH DEVON PHOTOGRAPHY AND TUITION
Apr 09

The Adobe Spark Blog

One really lovely surprise I had a while ago was a mention in Adobe’s Spark Blog!  I already knew that I had made it onto their ‘Wall of Inspiration’ which is covered in one of my older blog posts. However, it was an extra honour to feature in their blog too!  I have worked with Adobe’s creative tools for many years and each year they just keep getting better and better! Having used the Adobe Spark Pages product for developing web pages I can thoroughly recommend it.  Photoshop for photographers, in my opinion is also essential. I love to experiment with photography and I hope to do more soon. In the meantime here’s my feature.  I am blog/Spark page number 2 in the article. [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”76″ gal_title=”Adobe Spark Pages”]

The Corona Virus

The Coronavirus has brought many problems, but it has also afforded many opportunities. A problem I constantly run into is finding time to update my blog! Over the last couple of years I have worked on many great projects but sadly not had the time to document them. Coronavirus has now changed all of that for me. Therefore I’m currently taking advantage of all of my newly found free time to catch up on things I enjoy doing. This includes keeping my blog up to date. The image I’ve chosen for this opening 2020 post is one from March last year. The reason I’ve chosen this image is because it made the Wex Photographic shortlist for one of the weeks in March. The Wex Photographic Photographer of the Year competition affords some very stiff competition. Every week, photographers are invited to enter the competition with an image each Monday that they shot the preceding week. This is a great way of keeping content fresh and forces photographers to go out and shoot something new. However the competition is extremely high with entries often running into hundreds each week. Many photographers enter on a regular basis but never ever make the […]

Training to be Human

In September 2018 I was very privileged to shoot my local college’s immersive drama production called ‘Training to be Human’. This was yet another successful production which built on a previous immersive theme from the year before called Memoirs of a cinema. The cast and crew were absolutely amazing. Below are some of my favourite images from the evening. There are more images here.   [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”66″ gal_title=”Training to be Human”]    

Better Late Than Never

I’ve been so busy lately with one project or another, that my blog has taken a bit of a back seat. However with the half term holiday on the horizon, I’m able to spend a little time updating my blog with some projects from last year. What a year it was too! I undertook a number of commissions and I was thrilled to learn that Adobe had featured me in one of their blogs. I plan to document all of my missing projects from the latter part of last year, but in the meantime here is a small taster of some of what I created. [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”63″ gal_title=”Late 2018 Highlights”]  
Jul 28

Adobe Spark

I have worked for a while now with the web ‘Storytelling’ software from Adobe, called Spark.  I use Spark for almost everything from weddings to commercial photography.  Adobe Spark Pages are a quick and easy way to journal and document my images.  It’s also really easy to share Spark content too, simply a case of cutting and pasting a link.  I was therefore absolutely thrilled when Adobe asked if they could use my work on their ‘Inspiration Wall’.  My work has been there for a while now and amassed over a whopping 30k views.  My Adobe Spark Page about Bokeh shows just what can be done with a little bit of know how and some creative thinking. The project originally began as a college project.  I wanted to explain to my students the relationship between aperture and depth of field.   I also wanted to show some of the amazing effects that can be created by knowing about this simple relationship.  During the lecture I demonstrated the theory using my camera to take shots. It wasn’t until I was sorting out my old images that I discovered the work I produced that day was actually quite interesting.  In the image […]

Memoirs of a Cinema

In 2017 I covered a production by my local college at the ‘Old Picture House’ in Paignton, Devon.  The show was titled Memoirs of a Cinema and was both truly amazing and a highly immersive performance.  I have included some of my favourite images from the evening and one of my images was used as the poster to advertise the event. I am including a link to the full story of the evening and this includes many more images.  Event photography is rapidly becoming one of my more favourite types of photography as it is always fun trying to capture those special moments and action shots.  Please click on a thumbnail below to take you to a few of my favourite images. and please click this link to see the whole story of the evening.   [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”46″ gal_title=”Memoirs of a Cinema”]

Secret Shutter Photography Used for Local Festival Tickets

In 2016 I was invited by the festival organiser at Lupton House to take some images of their annual festival.  I really enjoyed the day and I managed to produce some of my favourite photographs.  I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that one of my images was being used on the Lupton House facebook page and tickets to advertise their 2017 event. I will add some of my favourite moments from 2016, so please keep checking back.  The festival was great! and I can thoroughly recommend it as a great day out! Here is my image with text.

The Brixham Pirates’ Festival

“If you love #pirates or incredible #photos & #portraiture, you don’t want to miss this series from @secrethutter” – Adobe Spark In early May 2017, I was asked if I would cover the Brixham Pirates’s Festival. I was quite excited about this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, even though I lived in Brixham for a long time I had never been to see it. Secondly it would be a great opportunity to try out my hand at event photography. The event was great! I can certainly recommend it if you like Pirates and want to dress up and enter into the spirit of things.  There’s also plenty of great food and music as well!   Setting Goals I had a rough idea of shots required by the organisers, but I also wanted to ensure that I managed to cover as many people as possible across the event.  I also wanted to try to capture the spirit of the event and show how popular it is.  I really enjoyed meeting the pirates and I must have taken hundreds of shots.  Once finished it took me two weeks to edit!  Finally I managed to get a set of photographs that I […]

My First Viewbug Awards

In May 2016, I was really excited to win my first Viewbug contest finalist award in jewellery. Viewbug is an international photography competition website that is home to some of the World’s best photographers. It is certainly worth checking out if you are a keen photographer. The photography there is simply stunning! The competition on the Viewbug website is fierce, so to be a contest finalist is an achievement in itself. You can see my entry below along side all the other finalists in the jewellery contest on the Viewbug website. A little way down on the list is my entry. One day I would love to win one of the categories, but for now it was great to be offered a BTL (Behind the lens slot on their website). BTL is where a contest finalist is invited to explain in more depth about their winning shot. Please scroll down the page to access more information about my entry.   My First Winning Entry (Moonstone) Below is my very first winning finalist entry.   My Second Winning Entry (Crows) Over the next few months I didn’t have a lot of time to enter many more contests, but in 2017, I […]

Moving Into 2017 – A Quick Update

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been a little absent since the Torbay Airshow 2016. I’ve not been lazy honest! In the Autumn of 2016, I began work as a part-time photography lecturer at my local college.  In May 2017, I was asked to cover the local Brixham Pirates’ Festival. Two the highlights were winning a Viewbug award and one of my jewellery images appearing in Devon life. Dabbling with Documetary Looking back, 2016 was a great year for moving my photography forward.  I have even begun to dabble with film. I also really enjoyed working on some images for a friend of mine. The Brixham Fish Quay was a great opportunity to shoot both documentary and commercial shots which was great! A round up of of the day can be seen on my Adobe Spark page. This half term holiday has afforded some time to update my work. In fact, I can safely say I’m really pleased to be back! Please come and follow me at my Instagram and don’t forget to keep checking back, as I’ll keep posting hints and tips for any keen photographers out there.