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I was out at a local woodland area this weekend. I was with my wife, and since I spend about 95% of the week taking photos everywhere we go, I had agreed that this particular Sunday would be a photography free day!

Well not quite! I couldn’t resist taking a few shots with my phone camera. I have a Google Pixel 3, and even though it’s an older model now, it does take great photos. Okay, so you can’t fully control depth of field, and there’s no shutter speed control, not to mention there’s no choice of lenses. What it does do though, it does very well. The exposure blending and processing is great, and produces really sharp images with plenty of dynamic range.

I’ve just returned from my (socially distanced) holiday in the South West of England. Having left South Yorkshire on the 29th August, my trip started with a two day stop at Glastonbury, where I got chance to climb the Tor and see the colourful characters in the town centre.

I recently entered a street photography shot into a couple of competitions. One was the APOY 2020 ‘City Life’ round and the other was a community contest on Photocrowd. This is the image I entered:

Recently Digital Photographer Magazine ran a Summer Landscapes competition on Photocrowd. Entrants were encouraged to “make use of shadows” and “look for striking but natural colour contrasts”. I entered one of my recent images from Mam Tor in the Peak Disctrict and I’m delighted to say that I finished in the top 10%!, finishing 272nd place out of 3483 entries. That’s actually in the top 8% – but Photocrowd award a badge for being within the 10% bracket.

It’s really encouraging, and I feel like my landscape photography is definitely going in the right direction. My next goal is top 5%!