Just before I turned 30, Ed and I spent a few days in the Scottish Highlands. We got the sleeper train up from London, hired a car in Inverness and stayed at SYHA Ratagan. It was a lovely way to end the summer and celebrate the last days of my twenties. On my thirtieth birthday, I woke up on the sleeper heading south with Ed passing me his card and whispering “happy birthday” to me quietly so as not to wake the other people in our carriage. It was low-key but absolutely perfect. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a birthday than spending time with Ed outdoors in a beautiful place like the Scottish Highlands. I can’t wait to go back there again, perhaps for a bit longer and out of midge season!
Up until this holiday, I hadn’t been to France since Ed and I spent a week by the ocean near Bordeaux for our honeymoon in 2010. I love France, but it’s quite expensive to visit as most self-catering places are for large groups. We like to be self-catered as it’s just easier that way since we’re both vegan. We went back this year for Ed’s cousin’s wedding in Roscoff, and stayed a few extra days camping down on the Quiberon peninsula. Our campsite was really good, though the emplacements could have done with a little shade. The whole peninsula is very exposed, with very little forest cover, so I guess it was to be expected. Next time we’ll take a tarp and some extra poles and rope to make sure we can have some shade by our tent.
The first few days of our trip to Brittany were spent in Roscoff and Saint-Pol-de-Léon for the wedding, and then we carried on further south in Brittany, enjoying the heatwave that made it feel like we were down in the South-West. On the last two evenings, we went to watch the sunset on the coast further up the peninsula from our campsite and filmed some footage together which I made into a short mood film. The first evening it was calm, and there were lots of children playing on the sand and surfers out on the water, but the second evening was much more wild and savage; a good reminder of why that stretch of coastline was named La Côte Sauvage. The footage was shot on a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera with a vintage Zuiko 28mm F2.8 lens. I kept the setup simple with just the camera, a tripod and a USB battery pack as we were camping and I didn’t want to overcomplicate things.
Here are some photographs I took during a very short trip to the Czech Republic in July. The reason for the trip was that a school friend of ours was getting married in the Czech countryside outside Prague but it was during term-time (Ed is a teacher) so we couldn’t make a longer trip of it. We flew out on the Thursday evening, spent Friday walking around Prague, Saturday with friends at the wedding in a little village called Chodeč (I was taking pictures for them), and then Sunday back in Prague before we had to fly home.
I visited Prague in 1992 with my parents when we lived out in Germany. I was only 6 at the time, and so didn’t fully take in the details, but it was obviously a vastly different experience visiting in 2016. I was pleased to see that carpet puppets and traditional marionettes are still a popular tourist product as they were when I was a child.
I wish we could have spent longer there as there was so much to see, but we still managed to pack in a lot of walking and see all the major sights in Prague itself. One day I’d love to go back and visit Karlovy Vary too. I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson and love his film ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ which was inspired by visits to European cities and towns such as Karlovy Vary. I love how bright and colourful the town is!
The photos are a mix of film (Portra 400, Noritsu scanned, Fujicolor C200, self scanned) and digital. If you’d like to know more about each of the photos, they’re hosted over on Flickr and I’ve geotagged them / added information about film and scanning in the tags.
The deadline for entries to RØDE’s ‘My RØDE Reel 2016′ competition has just passed, so I thought it a good time to reflect on my experience of entering a film competition. True to form, I didn’t get around to filming and editing my short film until the 11th hour. Perfectionism was my main hurdle, as always, but there were a few other issues at play which meant I had to change my plans last minute. I think it’s been a good learning curve though, and so I wanted to write about and share my thoughts on the matter.
Filming a running documentary
I’m in the process of making a documentary about my husband Ed’s attempts to break 15 minutes for 5km. At the moment his PB is 15:09, set in the summer of 2015 at a Tipton Harriers Open Graded Meeting, and he’s itching to push his time down further. I’ve been tagging along to nearly every race over the past 6 months to capture race footage – from grim cross country events under flight paths and grey skies (Donnington National Championships in February, I’m looking at you) to blisteringly hot Midlands League events such as Tamworth where Ed has taken it upon himself to gather points for his team and navigate immovable barriers at speed. The steeplechase really is an event for masochists.
I’ve captured lots of footage, but it only makes sense in the grand scheme of a longer documentary. For a 3 minute short film, I felt that the narrative would have been all over the place moving from race to race. As such, by the time May came around I had settled on the idea of focusing on a single race for the My RØDE Reel entry: Highgate Harriers Night of the 10,000m PBs. This is an event that Ed has raced before and I’ve attended as a spectator, but this year it was extra special as the ‘A’ races were also set to be the England Athletics 10,000m championships and decide which athletes would compete at the Olympics this summer.
In this post I show you how I make my digital images look like they were shot on modern 35mm film. It is one of my most popular blog posts and was most recently updated in February 2018.
In case you want the TL;DR version of events here’s how I do it, largely in camera:
ETTR to minimise digital noise and achieve the correct shadows exposure in camera; use vintage or legacy lenses; boost the luminance in the midtones in post-production; use film presets to mimic the colours of 35mm film stock. Remember though, the most important thing is your base file. No amount of post-production can turn a bad photo into a good one.
If you want to know more of the hows and whys, as well as my suggestions for good quality film emulation presets, read on.
These photos were taken during a trip to the Brecon Beacons over February half term. It’s a bit of a tradition for us to head to the mountains during the school holidays. Over February half term, the spring holidays in late March or early April, and then again at some point in August we head either north or south to Snowdonia or the Brecon Beacons. This time it was the Brecons and the plan was to make an ascent to the main ridge for dawn.
We drove down to South Wales on the Monday and climbed the ridge in daylight to make sure that it was safe for us to go up in the dark the next morning. It was the first time we’d climbed Pen y Fan and Corn Du, and even thought we knew it to be a well trodden path, after a hairy anniversary climb in the Glyderau back in August we were feeling extra cautious. It was bitterly cold up on the ridge even in the sunshine, but the views out west over the rest of the range were incredible. Looking up over Corn Du I could make out the moon hanging low in the sky just above the peak.
Back in August, Ed and I spent a week on holiday in Estonia. We stayed in a little studio apartment in Kalamaja, Tallinn, and hired a car for the week so that we could make daytrips out of the city, too. We spent a lot of time in Tallinn itself as it is a beautiful city with lots to see, but we also took daytrips to Haapsalu and Pärnu, and on a third day explored the grounds of Palmse Manor and Viru Bog in Lahemaa National Park. The week we visited, Estonia was experiencing a rare heatwave and so we were on the lookout for shade and water. On the way back from Haapsalu we stopped at Keila waterfall and on the way back from Lahemaa we visited Jägala waterfall, both of which are worth taking the scenic slow route home to see. The photos below are a mix of film and digital. The film photos were taken on Portra 160 and Fujicolor C200, which is why the colours are a little mixed. All of the photos are over on Flickr with geotags if you want to plan your own trip.
A collection of photos from a holiday with Ed’s family in Mauritius. We stayed on a resort, but spent some time on the public beaches and exploring the sugar fields, too. Coming from the deepest, darkest depths of a northern-hemisphere winter, I was addicted to the light and barely put my camera down. The white buildings, white sand, big skies and open beaches created the most gorgeous soft box effect that I couldn’t get enough of. The photos are a mix of film (Portra 160, Noritsu scanned) and digital.
