Well hello again, it’s been far too long since I last updated this blog so it’s time to bring it back online. The reasons for it languishing like an old sanitorium full of urbexers was primarily due to the Caterpillar Photographic Society winding up after too many people changed jobs or relocated to New Zealand and the US.
After trying to keep it running and engaging members I found that it didn’t matter how much effort I put in, if people weren’t using their cameras and working on assignments then it was never going to continue. The last photography post I made in this blog was in 2015 and contained a woeful tale about me setting up an assignment, entering the assignment and winning the competition because mine was the only image in the melting pot.
It was a shame but I carried on with my camera and I’ll go into that a bit later. The few posts between then and now were regarding the ED-209 Costume I made for wearing at the Birmingham MCM Comicon and since then there have been none published, I had started a draft on the file counts of photos with the cameras I owned to see if it made a difference on how much I was shooting.
The Pandemic
When the pandemic hit in early 2020 we all stopped moving around so much, which meant putting the brakes on wandering around with a camera. In the preceding few years I’d been generally busy going out and taking photos of my new favourite things, cities. I love being in cities be it Liverpool, Birmingham, London or New York adn I can happily amble around for hours with my camera snapping away at people, architecture, animals and anything that catches my eye.
In late March, my family and I had gone to London to see a musical, Be More Chill, and I had a chance to take a few nice photos of the city and bring them back to lightroom to see what interesting characters I’d found. A couple of days later the country came to a grinding halt, I was told that I must work from home and 17 Months later, here I am still in the same box room I call an office. It’s given me a chance to really appreciate going out and taking photos and it’s something that I find therapeutic and helps with my mental wellbeing.
By July I’d been back out and doing some documenting of the streets of my home town, Shrewsbury, as they sat empty. All pubs and shops as well as cafes and restaurants were closed, shutters down and virtually no people around. This was when I realised that, although I’m not a big fan of people, I was missing seeing them in my photos. I started looking out for people in the barren roads and shuts of the town to snap an image of someone that wasn’t in my family or a 2D image on an MS Teams smeeting.
September saw me travel to London again for some more street photography with some architecture thrown in for good measure as well as a day trip to the Mach Loop in Wales to photograph RAF and USAF jets flying through the valley below me. It was a welcome break from the drudgery of sitting in the same chair all day and all night. I must stress also that these trips were within the government guidelines at the time, I’m very careful about ensuring that we meet these safety restrictions for the health of the country.
Through the last quarter of 2020 I did very little work with my camera as I’d bought a OneWheel and had been tearing around on that, picking up injuries left, right and centre including a broken finger and a badly bruised shoulder. I’m too old for that nonsense so it went in February 21. The start of 2021 wasn’t heavy with photography for me and I took a few of some snowy scenes and some severe floods in the town centre. About this time I also bought an Insta360 One R which gave me the ability to document my unicycle rides a little easier and also to take some great tiny planet and 360° photographs which opened my eyes somewhat.
May and June saw an increase in photos taken with my DSLR as we travelled to Liverpool for our anniversary and I started taking pictures of people on the street in my home town too. This got me hooked back into photography and I can feel it gathering momentum. At some point earlier in the year I also bought an Insta360 Camera to allow me to record 3D footage of my Onewheel, Unicycle and other activities and I had some groovy first time images out of that in a tiny planet format or super wide panoramic views.
In June I started feeling like I was struggling with my Canon 6D Mk I and hitting focus on people as I was taking a photo, I’m sure it was more likely to be me than the camera so I started thinking about a camera with more focus points to choose from, the 6D had 1 cross type focus point and it always seemed a bit slow to find a focus lock and take a picture. I hunted around Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree and eBay for a 5D Mk IV at a good enough price that I could justify it to myself and my wife. It had been over 6 years since I’d bought the 6D and I loved the full frame sensor which always allowed me to crop more of an image than if it had been a crop sensor like in my old 500D.
A superb 5D Mk IV came up for sale on eBay with a comment in the description saying the seller wanted £995 for it with a lens and battery grip which seemed too good to be true. I messaged him and then had a chat on the phone and he said that he was selling it as he’d started a business and then the pandemic took it all away from him so he was selling up and cutting his losses. He sounded genuine so I said I’d arrange to meet him down in Kent in a few hours once I’d checked with my wife that I wasn’t due to be on taxi duty for our kids. When I got back to the seller though he said someone had just promised to put a deposit of £150 down on it in half an hour so unless I put a deposit down first I’d not be buying it. I knew I smelled a rat.
Once I’d told him that I wouldn’t do that as it was unfair on the other person I thought nothing of it. I checked and the eBay item went, but then came back an hour later, exactly the same item, same seller and everything. Obviously a scam, but I messaged him to ask if the person had pulled out and got nothing back, he was blocking my number so I kept an eye on the item, multiple times it went off and came back on even at one point after the ebay seller’s name had changed. Then other people started posting copies of his item with SCAM ALERT in the title. Why are there such horrid people about??
In the meantime one had popped up on Gumtree for £1900 and I’d spoken to the guy selling it, he’d bought an EOS R6 so seemed genuine, he only live twenty minutes away too. He wouldn’t take Bank Transfer or anything else, and just wanted £20 notes (plastic) in a big pile. I paid £1700 for the body and the battery grip and it’s a bargain. It’s a great camera and although I’ve struggled early doors I’m slowly getting the hang of it.
The 61 cross type focus points allow super quick focussing and after a bit of a sketchy start with the auto selection I’ve found that point selection and then recompose method seems to work well for me.
The 6D went to a Motorsport and Agriculture Journalist who’d dropped his last 6D out of a tractor so he was a happy bunny too.
Now it’s time to get back into it, more adventures to follow. A trip to London for the Euro 2020 Final Day and also another update on the count of photos for each of the cameras, as well as perhaps a new educational journey..
Thanks for reading this far and see you soon.
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