Greece: Part One

During Summer 2013, I had the most wonderful opportunity to go to Greece for over a month and work as a Sport & Portrait photographer. Having just finished University a few weeks before this was absolutely incredible and I couldn’t wait. I didn’t know what to expect, I had been away from home before but not 100’s of miles away and had no idea what it was going to be like.

It was absolutely incredible. There was a mile hill walk every day and the digs and the food weren’t interesting, but I was in a dream location doing my dream job. Who could complain? Every day I would do something different, from photographing both children and adults waterskiing, to them playing tennis, windsurfing, sailing and much more. I also worked with the kids clubs to photograph the children whilst they were away from their parents, providing them with photographs of what the kids had been up to over the previous week. It was hard work and the hours were long, but the photographs and experience I got out of it was incredible.

Part One of this is showing some of the sport photography I did whilst in Sivota. Please check out Clare EdmeadsPhotography if you want to know any more about positions working in Greece for the summer.

Favourite Photographs of 2013

Here are just a few of the photographs I have taken over the last year, at University, working in Greece and many other different places.

Brecon Beacons

Last year, I visited the Brecon Beacons with the family for a lovely bit of time off. We went hiking everywhere, including the beautiful Waterfalls in Wales. Here are some of the photographs I took on the holiday. They are some of my favourite landscape photographs and have been some of my most popular on Flickr.

Visual Effects Photography

Whilst I was studying photography, visual effects has always been at the back of my mind, however I have never really taken the time to learn the necessary skills until a module during my final year of Uni. For the final brief of my Visual Effects module was just one word, ‘Duality.’

After a lot of research, the idea that stood out to me the most was a quote from the movie The Dark Knight (2008). The quote stated by the character The Joker is “We stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realised they were inside of us.” As I was originally going to train as a Criminologist before coming to University, this quote sat in the back of my mind and when this brief was given, this was one of the first ideas to appear in my head. 

To help describe how I would convey my message to my audience I looked back on my research of semiotics and signifiers and found research on Freud’s structural model of psyche in which he talks about ‘Id, ego and super-ego’ which all make up the human personality. This theory works well with my final photograph as it describes each individual within the bed perfectly as the person lying asleep within the bed is the ‘ego’ as he is the surface of the personality whereas the man above the bed could be seen by some people as the super ego, the part which is the conscience, guiding him along. Finally you have the man under the bed who is the Id, the constant in the personality which is dark and inaccessible most of the time.

Studio Portraits

For my Final Show, I was asked by the teacher to take photographs of my group, and then eventually other groups within the show. Here are some of my favourite shots of the lovely people on my course.

Florida

Back in 2012 I got the chance to go to Orlando, Florida. It was a lot of fun and here are some of the nature photographs I took whilst there. I still to this day feel a little hypocritical with my Dolphin photographs, after seeing them in such a small pen and hating every minute of it, the photographs did turn out very cute. I’m very against Seaworld at the moment after watching the documentary Blackfish, and there treatment of the baby dolphins was probably the worst part for me when visiting the centre. I couldn’t believe that these beautiful animals were kept in such a small pool which only allowed them to go round and round in circles. Absolutely horrible

The other image of the squirrel was one I quite liked. I was sat in one of the main parks in Orlando and it came up, sat right beside me and let me take a load of shots on my macro lens.

Music Photography

Back in 2012, I had the chance to photograph my local music festival as their official photographer. It was a 4 day event and I went around many different locations in the city photographing the musical acts. Here are some of my favourites from the events.

Misc Photography

 

Road Trip in Snow

For my dissertation I had to photograph different locations up and down the country to see what is causing the democratisation of photography and how latest technology plays into it.

One of my trips out, was in the middle of April, and I wasn’t quite expecting the snow drifts to be this high. Probably my stupidest trip out, but it was a lot of fun. We travelled from Worcestershire to Wales, stopping every now and then to document the beautiful scenes around us. Here are some of my shots.

Landscape Photography

For my dissertation as I have mentioned before, I was photographing landscapes up and down the country. Here are some photographs from my little village. I have visited this tower many times throughout my life, however  I have never had the chance to photograph it before. Here are some photographs, taken at different times, with different lenses and filters.

 

Here are some of the other photographs I took for my dissertation in and around the Worcestershire area.