About Me
This is me on my way to a surf lesson in Cornwall, UK. All looks fine here, but a few minutes later it was a chaotic floundering of limbs and board! My dog Rufus was uninterested!
I am one of a large army of enthusiastic amateur photographers having forever loved form, structure, colour, light and composition. I have often indulged myself in projects, whether getting up early for the golden dawn light or standing roadside at dusk capturing light trails on busy streets. Holidays and walks have frequently entailed my wife and son patiently waiting for me to catch up as I lagged behind finding new subjects, views and angles, and in the last few years I have subjected my wife to disturbed nights as I head out in the early hours to point my camera at the stars!
I can't say I have a speciality in any way as I've enjoyed landscape, macro, sports, portraiture, studio and night-time projects though the last few years have seen me focus on astro/nightscapes. A small handful of commissions and one wedding is the limit of my semi-professional work. Recently becoming more of a technical photographer (necessary of course with astro as well as fine art) I have always paid attention to colour temperature (white balance), depth of field, shutter speed and also some of the core tenants of composition such as lighting (front, side, back-lit/rim lighting), the rule of thirds (with the subject on a third axis, either horizontal or vertical) and leading lines (visual cues drawing your eye to the main subject). And then I frequently break the rules!
And of course, if the subject or composition doesn't stand up, no amount of digital help will improve the image. Ansel Adams - "A good photograph is knowing where to stand".
As for equipment, I have used a number of cameras ranging from mobile phone cameras (always great for that moment), compacts (Rollei and Canon), bridge (Sony) to full frame cameras with my current kit being the Canon R5 mirrorless plus Canon R8 (astro-modified) with RF15-35mm, RF24-105mm, RF85mm and RF100-500mm lenses, as well as tripods, geared heads etc. My MSM Nomad Star Tracker is an essential part of my night kit for long exposures. I also use a selection of filters (several ND, graduated ND, polariser, HA) made by Urth as well as Maven.
Post processing software includes Photoshop, Lightroom, Starstax, RC-Astro and Starry Landscape Stacker.
David Sykes