Getting back into it

I've been absent from this blog for some time now (almost 2 years). This was due to a combination of reasons: while I love watching wildlife, taking pictures and being outside, I'm less keen on the other side of the coin: activities like downloading, editing, and especially posting images on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. As posting on these sites takes significantly less time than writing a blog, they tended to get more service, and this blog rather fell away. Trying to make money out of photography makes me feel I should be doing absolutely everything to get photos out there in front of potential clients, but with other things on such as university and everything that goes with it, I've struggled to keep this up, and will often post regularly for a couple of months, before leaving it empty for just as long.

Recently, it is becoming harder to increase followings on social media. Sites are now doing everything they can to take money off you, offering you the chance to "promote" your posts. Obviously what this actually means is that if you don't pay to promote posts/images, the number of people that see them in their newsfeed is vastly reduced, compared to the number of people that have liked your page or follow you. This reached another level earlier this week, when I saw a number of articles reporting that Facebook is trialling a system for Pages, whereby almost all non-promoted posts (i.e. ones that you do not pay to increase the reach of) are moved to a secondary newsfeed, so people that like a page will see very few, if any, content from the page, their newsfeed instead being filled with adverts and content from friends.

What with the declining benefits seen with social media sites such as this, I thought I would try resurrecting this, assuming I find enough to write about! I figure the best place to start might as well me what's happened during part of the intervening period since my last post, which was at the start of 2016. The next post will cover what I've been doing so far this year!

Back when I wrote the most recent blog, I was pretty much halfway (or so I thought) through my 3 years at Durham University studying Biology. Funnily enough, my first 3 years at Durham probably were the least productive in terms of photography. During the terms, I never had my cameras up with me (other than when my parents came up to see me and we could get out for a weekend), and even if I had done, I had no access to a car (public transport up here isn't the best!) and I doubt I would have found much time for photography anyway. That leaves the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays. During Christmas and Easter I usually managed to get out a bit, but never had enough time to start something long-term, and always had work to, so I never came away with anything I was that proud of. The photo below is an example - it's a nicely lit photo of a Stonechat in nice early morning light, but it's not exactly going to blow anyone away or win any competitions! Having said that, I still loved just being able to get out, so it wasn't all bad.

Summer holidays were generally better, although their timing from July-September meant they fall in pretty much my least favourite time for photography. However, in 2016 I spent a couple of weeks in June in Suffolk while Springwatch was on, doing some photography for the RPSB. While I was there several evenings found me stood waiting for Barn Owls which would come out to hunt just as the sun was setting. These were some of my favourite images from the year.

Later in the summer I was lucky enough to get back to Peru for 3 weeks, this time with my family. Whilst by no means a photography trip, my camera spent most of the time there glued to my hand! Although we didn't have the time (or desire!) to go as remote as I had been before, we still managed to squeeze in a few days in the rainforest, including some mid-elevation forest, a habitat I'd not previously visited. I particularly enjoyed this as it meant we had a couple of hours at an Andean Cock-of-the-rock lek! This is right up there with the best things I've seen, and despite it being over all too quickly, I managed to get a few photos.

After that it was back to Durham to start my final undergraduate year (via 10 days in South Africa for a uni field course). I did manage to fit a couple of visits in to Richmond Park before I left, though.

After a work-filled term at uni I was home for Christmas, when it was back to the Stonechats in Richmond Park, this one taken on a particularly cold morning.

If you've made it this far, congratulations - it's been a bit of an epic. I'll leave 2017 for the next post as this one is definitely long enough already. Hopefully this will be the start of some more regular posting, as I'm getting out more than I have done for a while so should be getting plenty of new images. If you feel like keeping up to date, I think you can "follow" the blog via a link on the right somewhere. I'm also going to start a newsletter, the link for which is at the top of the page, just underneath the title photo, so go ahead and sign up if you'd like!