Taking The Long View

Steph's BIL Dan is an interesting guy. I have only met him once, he's a great family man - a loving husband, and father to two very happy little daughters. Dan is a surveyor by profession, travelling the country with his work - he's fond of Italian food, and a supporter of Man Utd.  About four years ago, he took up a new hobby- photography.

I take pictures- but mostly I just point the camera, press the button and hope. 50% of the time I get blurred pictures of Rosie's feet, or half of Bob's plate of food. Dan is much more considered in his approach. 

His specialism is long exposure photography. He tells me that this "is a great way of capturing scenes that sharply capture the stationary elements of images while obscuring the moving elements such as motion blur in the water or streaking clouds."

"To take a long exposure photo, 9 times out of 10 you need an ND [neutral density] filter to darken the scene making the camera think it needs a long shutter speed for the correct exposure. Most of my photos are taken anywhere between 1.5 seconds for water photos up to 2 minutes for streaking clouds in the sky. Using a tripod... makes the still elements stay sharp, and anything that moves while the camera is taking the photo will appear blurry creating the effects you see in my photos."

I asked him if he preferred colour or black and white colour - he responded "I’d just edge towards black and white for dramatic effect. Although each photo is different. e.g. for a photo taken in an autumn wood you would want to see all of those colours."

These are just some of his pictures - Sandbanks and Durdle Door here in Dorset, St Margaret's Bay and Deal Pier in Kent, and Lawton Bluebell Woods in Cheshire.

I think they are utterly stunning. Dan is now selling his pictures- and as I am committed to encouraging small businesses, I thought I'd do a post about his work. [Thank you Dan for supplying the background information]

They start from as little as £10 and if you want to purchase some of his artwork, just check out his site HERE