adamreading – the beginning of a new direction

Well,

I’m not really sure how to go about this, as I’ve never really blogged before. In myspace I usually cheat and just post my Photos with as little text as i can get away with, but apparently in this “modern” society pictures alone do not count for 1000 words.

 My friends (and the Gadget Show) tell me it has to be tagged to be seen, and honestly for me that’s what it all boils down to: How many people have looked at my Gig Pics?

I’ve always been a bit of an exhibitionist – got my first tattoos at 17 and haven’t stopped yet (I’m 37 now), maybe if we get to be friends I’ll even show you one or two of them.

 So the photography becomes a kind of 3rd person extention of all that. I did Photography A level at College (Henley) 20 years ago. That’s just made me feel really old. Failed it, apparently my experimental photography was too experimental, which in hindsight was probably just a nice way of saying “crap”. I was so devastated at the time I put the camera aside, and to be honest, apart from the usual holiday Point & Shoot never picked one up until about 6 months ago.

 I’d been going to lots of gigs anyway, and always tried to “capture the moment” with a camera phone, I naively believed these shots were worthwhile and took lots. However when viewed off camera they were just a muddy mess, even with the latest greatest camera phones. So I bought myself the best compact point & shoot I could – a Fuji F31FD, a tiny 3200ISO miracle of a camera. I started taking lots and lots of pics at gigs and started to believe I was taking good pictures. I posted them onto Picasaweb and bands said they liked them, and even started using some on their Myspace.

So I decided to move up a level and about 2 months ago bought a Fuji s6500fd “bridge” camera. This was a big big mistake. I based my decison on the fact that as it had the same sensor as my F31 but a bigger better lens, the pictures should be better. Not true. At all. I was given a fantastic opportunity in October, I managed to get a photo pass to The Hoosiers at Oxford Carling. Incredibly excited I took about 500 shots on the night – they all looked fantastic on the little lcd screen at the back of the camera, got home, pants.

The in camera processing had turned 70% of the shots to mush, and what was left was certainly no better than what I had been achieving with my F31. It was great at normal daylight, outside shots and anything non low-light, but for Gig shots – no way.

So in a state of some misery, I ordered a Canon EOS 350D, and after some consultation and testing complimented it with a 50mm F1.4 Prime and 17-55mm F2.8 IS USM wide zoom. This is what I am currently using for my shots, though I would welcome ideas, equipment suggestions, critic etc on my work.

 I will upload some here soon, but until then please check out my pics at

www.flickr.com/photos/adamreading  you can look in the sets by venue or by artist and if you click on a pic you can see them and download them at various sizes.

 All I ask in return is that if you do use one of my pics non-commercially, that you include a link back to my flickr or here or myspace (www.myspace.com/adamreading).

So I suppose that is a blog.

 If its not please tell me what you want to know and I’ll try to do better next time.

regards

Adam