justin welch photography

I have just spent the last four days in Paris celebrating my birthday and as I usually do, spending several hours walking the streets creating images. In this blog post I am sharing a few of my images of the Chinese New Years celebration parade that was held on Saturday.  I hope you enjoy them and I’m open to comments.

 I have recently been battling two things. Firstly, as many photographers experience, I am struggling to find any kind of inspiration to go out and shoot. And secondly, I am trying to refrain from shooting what anyone with a camera shoots, the bog standard point and shoot type image, you get me? I am trying to push myself to create more artistic, fine art type images and to shoot less but spend more time thinking and visualising what I want to create. Resulting in more unique pieces.  I still tend to be a reactive photographer, photographing what I come across, rather than seeking out a pre-visualised image or scene. Something I need to work on I guess!

So  I decided to brave the elements on Friday morning and ventured into Richmond Park to try capture some images in the snow. I arrived in the car park, got my kit on and got my gear out and not knowing where to start, I just walked out into the open to survey my surroundings. I had a vague idea of the type of image I wanted to shoot, I just had to find it, or something that came close to my vision.  

I walked through some woods and then came to the site I thought might have promising subject matter. Resisting the temptation to start shooting, I spent some time walking around the scene, trying to find the correct composition and perspective. It seemed to work and I eventually started to see the images I wanted to create clearly in my head. It’s a nice feeling when you suddenly become “zoned in” and everything outside the scene you are looking at vanishes and then you know it’s time to start capturing your images.  And no, I wasn’t on anything herbal or chemical to get zoned in! It just happened and felt right.

I spent just over one and a half hours walking around taking these images. At this time I knew I had some keepers, and knew if I didn’t want to crawl back to the car, I should leave now before my feet froze (next time I’ll wear my snowboard boot and not my wellies – lesson learned!)

I named the series ‘edge of freezing’ and I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

The full series can be viewed on my website here: http://www.justinwelchphotography.com/edge-of-freezing

Cheers
Justin

While recently on holiday in South Africa, took time out from shooting wildlife, to shoot some black and white fine art images. On the day I took these I was doing a walk along a gravel road into the mountains when I stopped, and just looked around for some inspiration. The more I looked the less I saw! So what I did was close my eyes and then just opened my eyes and decided to photograph the first thing that caught my eye. I then moved around the local area shooting different plants, focusing in shapes textures and light.  And this is the result.

Tried something new today. Let me know your thoughts on the results……….

It’s been a while since my last post but that doesn’t mean I’ve been lying idle in some dark and damp corner. Oh no, in actual fact I’ve been a busy bee. To sum up the past couple of months, I’ve been abroad, yes again, and I’ve photographed two designer shoots as well as 3 separate shows at London Fashion Week.

Let’s start with my international excursions. I went across to Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, for two and a half weeks to photography the city and it’s inhabitants. Unfortunately this was not a commission but more of a personal project. Apart from 2 days visiting surrounding towns, I spent most of my time walking the streets of Zagreb, with my trusty camera in hand. I shot a variety of subject matter from buildings, street scenes, people, graffiti and abstract images. My standard kit for the days out was my trusty 24-70mm f2.8 L lens and a recently purchased Lensbaby Composer.

From the gallery on my website you can see I captured and created some amazing images.

I then flew directly from Zagreb to Brussels for a two day exploration trip of the city. Here I also walked the streets photographing buildings, street scenes and the people going about their daily activities.

Eurostar back to London on Friday evening, followed by a studio shoot for a handbag designed, Embellished Truth, in Fulham on the Saturday. The shoot went well and we had a fantastic team including my assistant, Johan – Paul Hion, make-up artist and hair stylist and the designers assistant. The images are on my website under Client Gallery as they are awaiting final sign-off by the designer, who has already raved about them.

The following day I spent with fellow Putney LIP (London Independent Photographer) togs, shooting “The City”. Although the weather was not very cooperative, we still managed to bag some real quality images.

On Monday I began my week on a high note by shooting London Fashion Week (LFW) which was very enjoyable and I managed to cover 3 fashion show.

Images from The City and LFW are located in the Client Gallery on my website so venture over to it and have a look. Any comments welcomed.

We only had one night in Adelaide so we decided to walk it flat. And we did. It’s a lovely city and we wished we had a couple more days to explore it, and the surrounding areas and beaches. The following morning we collected our hire car and began our five-day road trip down to Melbourne.  The trip included 4 nightly “stop overs” in Robe, Apollo Bay, Port Fairy and Mt Gambier.  Oh yes, and a lot of driving. 

The drive was awesome and the highlights were…well, actually, all of those places but, in particular, Port Fairy (as pretty as its name), Geelong (a nice surprise just before Melbourne) and the Great Ocean Road itself, which begins at Port Fairy and ends in Geelong (even better than everything we had read about it and worth spending time on).

If we had another week allocated to the drive down to Melbourne we still would not have ticked off all the things we wanted to or could have done, so we had to prioritise and allocate some spare time to allow a spontaneous stop here and there (including Grey River Reserve, off the beaten track, beautiful unspoilt forest and where we saw our first koalas).

The Great Ocean Road was incredible. We stopped at London Bridge, The Arch,  the Twelve Apostles and Bells Beach. The latter was the highlight of the viewing areas.

But the huge Otway National Park was also amazing and we saw more koalas than you can imagine.  And some were even moving and not just sleeping! After seeing so many we decided to head straight to Melbourne and jokingly agreed that we would not stop for another ‘koala shot’ unless it was a mother and baby encounter.  And sure enough just up the road, a mother with her baby clinging to her back attempted to cross the road in front of us.  As I parked the car, she scampered off the road and climbed a couple of feet up the nearest tree. We climbed out the car and approached slowly and then stopped. We could see her assessing what threat we posed. After a couple of minutes she clearly accepted our company and climbed back down, she then casually walked right past us as she crossed the road, which I managed to capture on video. And that experience will stay with us for a long time!

We then headed for Melbourne, last stop Geelong, and were pleasantly surprised with what we saw. The beachfront was well laid out with areas dedicated to family picnics, grassed areas, a promenade and probably the best swimming area I have ever seen.  If you ever head to the Melbourne area, it’s definitely worth a day trip out to Geelong. 

For a complete set of images from this part of our journey, please visit my website Urban and Travel section at www.justinwelchphotography.com

Upon arriving at Uluru Resort we settled in to our room and had 3 hours downtime before our first excursion.  We had been warned that the famous ‘Red Centre’ wouldn’t be as red as expected and indeed it was actually very green due to the unusual amount of rainfall they had experienced over the past couple of months, ending a 9 year drought in most parts of Australia.  In fact flooding has now become a big problem in some areas and I certainly wouldn’t want to be a farmer in Queensland, swinging between extensive droughts and terribly floods!

That evening we were driven into the national park, past Uluru (Ayers Rock) and onto Kata Tjuta, Uluru’s neighbour, for a walk along the base and up into the rock itself for a view of the rock formations. We then walked back down to a viewing area for champagne sunset drinks. The light was amazing and, even though it was a little overcast, the setting sun still transformed the rock to an amazing red colour.

The next morning was a very early start for a sunrise over Uluru itself.  Wow! It was amazing - have a look in my landscape gallery for images of Uluru at sunrise. We then had a 4 hour guided walk around the base and ended the first part of the day with a well-deserved breakfast. 

That evening we were driven out to another viewing platform, this time for Uluru at sunset. The sun just managed to break through the clouds and catch some sections of the rock with light, turning them deep red. Due to an unexpected rain shower, we also had a special treat, with a partial rainbow forming just to the left of Uluru, something that even the guides had only seen rarely.

For our last day in the Red Centre, we had just got to sleep when we had to get up again to head for the King’s Canyon, about 4 hours drive away. Distances in this country are amazing and a 4-hour drive is a walk in the park for these coach drivers. 

En route to the canyon we stopped off twice, the first time to watch the sunrise and the second at a station in the middle of nowhere to have breakfast.  We arrived at the canyon and set out for a round trip walk of the canyon rim - the views and rock formations were truly amazing. 

We completing the walk, we continued on to Alice Springs, where we spent the night before heading down to Adelaide.  Alice Springs…well, what can I say??? It’s basically a shit hole in the middle of nowhere. It was the only place we were advised not to walk around at night and it was the only place we felt less than 100% safe. Avoid it if you can (we have heard a few other unsavoury experiences of AS since and while others may have good stories to tell, it wasn’t our kind of place and there is a simmering tension not far from the surface.

For a complete set of images from this part of our journey, please visit my website Urban and Travel section at www.justinwelchphotography.com