Because of the U.K lockdown due to the Coronavirus Corvid-19 pandemic we are following the advice given by the government and staying at home. This has been a lot more difficult than we initially thought it would be and we are desperately missing our freedom and the every day social aspect of normal life. Our job as wedding photographers in Northern Ireland allows us to meet and interact with lots of different people and with no weddings allowed to take place at the moment that won’t be changing anytime soon.

The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind and most of our time has been taken up working with our clients to help find them alternative wedding dates. While yes of course that has had an impact on ourselves financially the most difficult thing has been the disappointment for both our clients and us for these plans having to be changed due to something that is completely out of anyone’s control. We feel for all of our couples who have been forced into changing their wedding plans and completely understand their frustrations as we feel the same way. We absolutely love what we do and to have that taken away from us for any length of time we have found to be extremely difficult.

Most of all though we are missing photography!

To try and keep us both sane and to give us something interesting to do during the lockdown we have decided to put together a personal photography project for ourselves. Each day we will be adding a new photograph taken by us that day along with some details around how we captured each image with the hope that other people interested in photography might find that advice useful. This sounds pretty easy but we don’t think it will be, as being stuck at home we will have to find interesting subjects without being able to venture further afield which is something we are definitely not used too. So unfortunately there will be no epic landscape shots shown here.

Feel free to ask any photography related questions in the comments section below and we will do our best to help.

Day 1: Sunday the 29th of March 2020
Subject: Dora, our minature Jack Russell

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1250, Aperture f/1.8

Photographing pets is a skill set all of its own which is why you will usually find that professional pet photographers specialise in that field. Animal’s move fast and dog’s in particular move at incredible speed compared to people. Believe it or not, our little Jack Russell Dora was running at full pelt chasing a ball when we took this photo. This is why for this photograph we have used a high shutter speed to freeze her movement. We also wanted a dreamy out of focus background, so this is why we have chosen an aperture of f/1.8 and used a longer focal length lens.

We are in lucky position of having access to professional level equipment and the Sony a9 camera we used for this photograph has advanced technology like real time tracking and animal eye autofocus which does make it easier to get more keepers. We also took a few shots using other lenses including the Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM and the Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM, these would normally be our first choice when shooting any sort of portrait. Lens choice is an important aspect of any type of photography and here the much cheaper and supposedly not as good Sony 85mm f/1.8 proved to be the best option. The 135mm lens was a little too long in our small garden and the 85mm f/1.8 has much quicker autofocus than its big brother the 85mm f/1.4 GM.

Day 2: Monday the 30th of March 2020
Subject: Red flower found in our garden

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 640, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/5.6

Macro photography is something we have never really had a huge interest in. We have always had macro lenses but we have generally only ever used them for photographing wedding rings, jewellery and close up details of the bride’s dress etc.

Getting closer however can make what would otherwise possibly be a boring subject a lot more interesting. We found this flower growing in our garden, we have no idea what type it is but we liked its deep red colour. At first, we took a few normal types of flower photos and we also tried photographing it suspended in a bowl of water but we weren’t really feeling any of those. Looking at this flower, we thought it’s most interesting feature was its pistil (the centre of the flower), to us it almost looked like a miniature bouquet of flowers by itself. To enable us to get close enough to capture that we used our macro lens. If you don’t own a macro lens and it is a type of photography you would only do occasionally a cheaper option would be to use extension tubes on say an 85mm prime lens. Extension tubes for all the different brands can be purchased from Amazon or Ebay for around £30 and work really well. If you don’t own a camera but enjoy taking photographs with your phone, companies like Moment and Olloclip make dedicated clip on macro lenses that can be used with a smartphone.

In an ideal world for this type of photography you will get better results using your camera on a tripod with a remote shutter release as this ensures no camera movement. With macro you will generally be using manual focus as getting close and using autofocus generally doesn’t work well. While most macro lenses have autofocus, that is really there so that you can easily use the lens for other things as well. We however took the lazy route and decided not to set up a tripod so this image was taken handheld. Because of this, we used 1/125 shutter speed which meant pushing our ISO to ISO 640. If we had of used a tripod, we could have dropped our shutter speed and decreased our ISO using the same f/5.6 aperture.

Generally, for macro photography we would normally use a smaller aperture, for example with wedding rings we usually shoot them at anywhere from f/8-f/16 depending on the available light to ensure they are in critical focus. For this though we preferred the depth of field f/5.6 offered us, plus choosing a smaller aperture like even f/8 for example would have meant increasing our ISO to around ISO 1000 to ensure the same shutter speed and produced more noise.

Day 3: Tuesday the 31st of March 2020
Subject: Garden birds

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM
Camera Settings: ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/4

Who would have thought that taking a simple photograph of a bird would be so difficult and time consuming! Our back garden is filled with small birds at the moment and their dawn chorus wakes us up early every morning. For bird or wildlife photography a long lens is pretty much a must have piece of equipment and preferably something in the 500-600mm range, but we don’t have one of those. At the moment the longest lens we have is our 135mm f/1.8 GM. This made trying to photograph the small birds that visit our garden very difficult and frustrating. If we owned a longer lens more suited for the job, we could have nailed this in a couple of minutes. To try and get around this we needed to get closer to them, so to get them to trust us a little more we offered them up some food. After a bit of coaxing we were able to get them to come a little closer.

As they where still a little further away than we wanted we switched on the APS-C crop mode on our cameras. While this isn’t any different from manually cropping in our photo editing software later, it gave us the equivalent field of view to a 202.5mm lens which helped with our composition. As birds move lightning fast, we chose a fast shutter speed of 1/1000, and as we wanted to get some nice feather details as well as a nice out of focus background, we set our aperture to f/4. The nice early morning light meant that we didn’t need to increase our ISO beyond ISO 400 to get the rest of the settings we needed to make this work. We also used our Sony A9’s as nothing else is better in terms of fast auto focus performance. When photographing a human or an animal we are always trying to nail critical focus on the subject’s eye and having equipment with great autofocus performance really helps with that. While the resulting image is heavily cropped to get us closer, it still prints very well at normal sizes like 8x10.

Day 4: Wednesday the 1st of April 2020
Subject: Walter White from Breaking Bad Bobblehead figure

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 55mm f/1.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar, 5 in 1 reflector, Fractal Filters classic
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/100, Aperture f/2.2

As photographers one of the things we like to do is find things to shoot through, at weddings we will often shoot through flowers, bushes or just anything else we come across that looks interesting. To a lot of people when you say filter and photography in the same sentence these days, they straight away think “Instagram filter” or something along those lines but that is not what we used here. Fractal filters are a company that make glass prisms for photography. A while back we bought their classic set so that we could bring them along to our weddings, just for something a little bit different. The pack we bought includes 3 filters but our favourite is the one we have used here. This filter creates an almost kaleidoscope look and we just think it’s fun, we have already used it at a few recent weddings and we really like the effect.

Using the filter is quite easy you simply take your photograph as normal but hold one of the filters in front of the lens. The effect changes the closer and further away you hold the filter. The manufacturer recommends using a 50mm lens or equivalent at f/2.2, which is why we have used our 55mm as that was our closest equivalent. We have found using manual focus works best when using these, because shooting through another object even glass can sometimes cause autofocus issues.

We took this photograph in our kitchen with the only source of light being our kitchen windows on the right-hand side. Because the light was only coming from the right side Walter’s left-hand side was in shadow so we used a simple 5 in 1 type reflector on the left-hand side to bounce the light coming from the window back on to Walter from the right giving us a nice even spread of light. We could also have used a flash off camera to do the same thing but for something like this a reflector was the easiest option.

Day 5: Thursday the 2nd of April 2020
Subject: Chilli Oil

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/60, Aperture f/8

All photographers appreciate shape, form and colour and we are no different. Having seen a few macro photos recently of oil suspended in water we thought we would take a crack at it ourselves.

The process for this is quite simple, we poured a glass of water and then topped it off with some chilli oil. You can use any type of oil, they will all float on the top of water. We chose chilli oil because we liked the bright colour. Then it is just a matter of agitating the oil and it will start to form bubbles, we used a tooth pick as we found using it made the oil form smaller bubbles than it did when we used a spoon. You do need to be quick to grab the photo though as the bubbles soon disappear.

You will also need to push some light in there as well under the oil. Choosing a different side will produce different effects, as the reflected light is what provides depth to this style of photograph. You could use a flash or a torch but we used a Neewer L.E.D video light as we could just rest that against the glass and you can adjust the brightness up and down easily. If you decide to try this for yourself, we would suggest using a tripod to avoid camera shake, as you will need to close down your aperture to between f/8 -f/16 to get the best results.

Day 6: Friday the 3rd of April 2020
Subject: Our eldest daughter Megan

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 55mm f/1.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar, Godox AD200 flash, Godox beauty dish with a Godox honeycomb grid, Godox Xpro S wireless trigger
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/4

It is very rare that our kids let us get a camera anywhere near them these days and we usually have to resort to bribery when they do, but not today. We have a fully equipped studio at home, but when we are photographing a wedding we don’t have the luxury of having all that equipment at hand. So, for todays challenge we thought it would be more interesting to show how easy it is to take a studio style portrait using only one light and without using a studio backdrop. For weddings we generally prefer to use natural light for portraits, just because that suits our style of photography better, but we live in Northern Ireland and it rains here, a lot! Having the equipment at hand to enable us to work indoors when we need too and the knowledge needed to do so is important.

When we use a flash for portraits, we always have our flash off camera on a stand or one of us will shoot while the other holds the flash. When we use an on camera flash on the dance floor we bounce the light from the flash off the ceiling or walls to diffuse the light and to ensure we don’t get that awful looking flash blasted look. For this photograph the flash was placed on a stand to our left. The Godox AD200 we used is almost like a miniature studio strobe light, It can only be used off camera and isn’t much bigger than a normal flash.

We used a beauty dish because this type of modifier gives a more contrasted look which is a little more dramatic. The light a flash modified with a beauty dish will provide can be a little bit harsh so we also used a honeycomb grid to diffuse the light. We took this photograph in the corner of our daughter’s bedroom, and had very limited space to work with, this is why we chose our 55mm lens instead of an 85mm or 135mm portrait lens. We could also have used a wider focal length like 35mm but because of the limited space we were quite close to our subject and using a wider lens like 35mm would have meant that there would have been some facial distortion. When you use a wider focal length lens to shoot a portrait of a person, if you are close to the subject it will exaggerate their features so someone with a normal size nose will all of a sudden seem to have a very large nose, so this is something you want to avoid.

When using flash your shutter speed controls the ambient light and we wanted to keep the distracting background of the wall behind Megan dark so we used a shutter speed of 1/125. When we use our studio, we normally choose apertures of around f/5.6-f/8 but because of texture of the wall behind Megan we used f/4 which allowed us to blow out the background a little bit more so that you can’t see that texture in the final image.

Day 7: Saturday the 4th of April 2020
Subject: Garden birds again

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 320, Shutter speed 1/500, Aperture f/6.3

On Day 3 we tried to capture a photograph of the small birds that visit our garden and as we explained at the time, we found this very difficult as none of our lenses was long enough for this type of photography. This is something we want to shoot a bit more off while we aren’t allowed by the current restrictions to shoot weddings, so we ordered a Sony 200-600mm zoom lens the other day and it arrived with us yesterday.

Excited to try out our new lens, we grabbed this photo this morning. Using a long lens suited for the job made this so much easier, this was the very first photograph taken with the new lens. Using a long lens like this is a bit different to what we are used too as you just don’t need this type of lens for wedding photography.

We are still getting to grips with our new toy but we are pretty happy with the results we have gotten with it already. When using a longer focal length like this, camera shake becomes more of a problem especially when trying to photograph a small subject, even with the excellent stabilisation in this lens. To get around this you can use a tripod ideally with a gimble head or a monopod.

For this photograph we where able to get away with using a shutter speed of 1/500 but generally for birds and wildlife you would use a faster shutter speed because of their movement. This photograph was taken at 600mm, the maximum end of the zoom range of this lens. We used the lens wide open at f/6.3 as we wanted to get a bit of background blur on the concrete wall behind the birds so it wasn’t distracting and we also wanted to test how sharp the lens was wide open at its maximum focal length. Most zoom lenses are generally sharper stopped down and at the shorter to medium end of the zoom range so shooting wide open at the longest focal distance the lens is capable off shows us how the lens performs in a worst-case scenario. We used the lens with one of our Sony A9’s as it has real time tracking which is very useful for something that moves fast like a small bird.

Day 8: Sunday the 5th of April 2020
Subject: Cadbury Creme Eggs

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.4 G.M, 5 in 1 Reflector
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.4

Is Easter even Easter without a Cadbury Creme Egg? While it’s not quite Easter yet, we would be surprised if we have any of these left by then. We were gifted a full box of creme eggs and thought, we had better grab a quick photo before they are all gone.

We wanted to draw the viewers eye to the logo on the mug so we used our Sony 85mm f/1.4 G.M lens wide open at f/1.4 focused on the mug. Using an aperture of f./1.4 reduces the depth of field, this means that only the area we have focused on will be in critical focus and the rest of the image is thrown out of focus. Using a longer focal length like 85mm close to the subject creates a compressed distraction free background.

As with some of the other photographs we have posted here this was taken on our kitchen table. Our kitchen has a large window on the right hand side of the table so to balance the light and ensure we didn’t have a deep shadow on the left hand side of the image, we used a 5 in 1 reflector placed on the left hand side of the table to bounce some of the window light back on to the subject. You can see a behind the scenes video of how we set this up by visiting our TikTok page. https://vm.tiktok.com/tA93TH/

Day 9: Monday the 6th of April 2020
Subject: Our youngest daughter Abbie

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.4

Using a photograph to tell a story is very important to us when we photograph a wedding and we think that this photograph captures how a lot of kids around Abbie’s age are feeling at the moment. With so much going on that they probably don’t fully understand, not being able to get to see their friends, having to study to take their A.Q.E although they don’t even know yet if taking the test will be an option, it is no wonder that at time their frustrations will bubble to the surface. This is a real moment, totally unscripted and real moments always trump fake ones for us.

We used our 24mm lens for this photograph as for documentary style photography a wider lens allows us to incorporate more of the story. When we photograph a wedding our most used lenses for the bride getting ready, are this lens and our 35mm lenses for the same reason.

We used the lens wide open at an aperture of f/1.4 to push the distracting elements out of focus while getting critical focus on our subject. As the light coming from the window was harsh and created some nice shadows, editing this photograph in monochrome makes the image feel more gritty and also helps set the scene.

Day 10: Tuesday the 7th of April 2020
Subject: Chester, our Labrador

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1250, Aperture f/1.8

This is Chester the elder statesman of our 4 dog strong pack. We took him for a quick walk and a run around off the lead at our local park this morning. Being nearly 14 years old he almost seems reluctant to go for a walk these days but let him of the lead at the local park and he still runs around like a hyper active young pup.

Having learned our lesson from Day 1 we used our Sony A9 with animal eye detect and real time tracking along with one of our quickest focusing lenses, Sony’s 85mmm f/1.8. This combination does an incredible job of tracking and maintaining focus on a dog’s eyes even when they are running around like a mad thing. It was a nice bright morning so we didn’t need to go beyond ISO 100 to maintain a shutter speed of 1/1250 to freeze the action.

Day 11: Wednesday the 8th of April 2020
Subject: Lego wedding mini figures

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S, iPhone 11 pro
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/80, Aperture f/4

Not sure if we are just missing weddings or if the lockdown had finally pushed us over the edge, but here we go a Lego wedding. As the mini figures are very small, we used our macro lens for these.

Using an aperture of f/4 allowed us to keep the mini figures in focus where we wanted them to be while still giving us a nice smooth out of focus background. As our macro lens has image stabilisation, we were able to handhold using a shutter speed on 1/80th of a second without any camera shake. As a general rule of thumb for most photography, you would usually try and keep your shutter speed as fast as 1 divided by the focal length of the lens. For close up subjects like this or anything that moves we would usually increase our shutter speed to at least 2 x focal length of the lens being used. We know from using this lens quite a lot recently that the stabilisation in both the lens and the camera allows us to get photographs free of camera shake even at slower speeds like 1/30th of a second. If your camera and lens does not have stabilisation it would be better in this situation to use the normal rule or use a tripod and a remote shutter release.

We used the screen on our iPhone for one photo to provide a reflection and also as base for a couple of the other shots, just to provide a little bit of extra interest.

Day 12: Thursday the 9th of April 2020
Subject: Scrabble

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/400, Aperture f/1.4

We have a cupboard full of board games that up until recently we have never really used. Being stuck at home because of the government lockdown has meant that many of them have come out of storage over the last few weeks. It is difficult to keep find things to keep our kids occupied and we are trying to avoid them spending the majority of their time on their iPad’s, phones and game consoles. However, none of us cope with losing very well, so every game played, normally equals one family argument.

For this photograph we used our 24mm f/1.4 G.M lens as the wide focal length allowed us to fit the scene. Using the lens wide open, the large f/1.4 aperture let us highlight the scrabble tiles by using only a sliver of depth of field.

Day 13: Friday the 10th of April 2020
Subject: Spider web

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S, Godox V350s
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/5.6

Having seen a few recent photographs of spider’s web and the interesting patterns they have, we had a look around for one ourselves. We did take a few photographs of a perfect web, but it was too perfect and just looked like everyone else’s photo of a spider’s web. We then found this broken-down web in our back garden and we though that this might make for a more interesting photograph.

To add some extra drama, we used a Godox V350s flash off camera at a low power setting along with a blue coloured gel. It took a few test shots to get the flash directed were we wanted it, as we wanted to keep the darkest part of the image in the centre. The end result is that this no longer seems like a spider’s web at all, but has created a photograph with interesting randomness and an almost science fiction feel.

Day 14: Saturday the 11th of April 2020
Subject: Garden birds

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 800, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/6.3

We are absolutely loving playing with our recently purchased long lens and can’t wait until the government lockdown has ended so that we can get out and about with it. This little guy visits our garden every morning and seems to get braver and cheekier with every passing day.

The light wasn’t just as nice this morning so we had to bump our ISO up too ISO800 to get the 1/1000 shutter speed we have found seems to work best for capturing these smaller birds. With modern cameras this is no issue at all of course and you can get great results even at ISO6400 and above.

Day 15: Sunday the 12th of April 2020
Subject: Our youngest daughter Abbie

Equipment used: Sony A9, Samyang 45mm f/1.8 FE
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/2000, Aperture f/1.8

Our kids were pretty excited to get their Easter eggs this morning and a couple of little presents to help keep them active while we continue to endure the government lockdown. Abbie in particular was really pleased with her new toy.

The Samyang lens we used for this photograph has hardly seen any use since we got it a couple of months ago. This is because we bought it to use as a light weight option for holidays, which unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the Coronavirus pandemic. The 45mm focal length is an interesting one, as it provides a 53 degree field of view which most naturally fits the human field of vision. For this photo we wanted to freeze the action, so we used a really quick shutter speed of 1/2000 and used the lens wide open at f/1.8 to get some nicely blurred out of focus areas.

Have to admit that we are not usually a fan of Samyang auto focus lenses, while their manual focus lenses perform very well due to some nice optics, their autofocus lenses don’t compare well in terms of autofocus performance with the professional lenses we would normally use. This being one of their most recent lens releases seems a lot better in that regard so if you are trying to find a low cost, light weight lens around this focal length this one is well worth taking a look at.

Day 16: Monday the 13th of April 2020
Subject: Spring

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm Macro f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/8

Old and rusty items because of the textures they have, always make for an interesting photograph, especially if you can get close. We found this old spring from a broken clothes peg in our garden.

We used our macro lens for this at an aperture of f/8. Using a normal lens it would have been difficult to get close enough to the subject. We chose f/8 because while that still gives us some texture detail it still allows us because the subject is so small to have some interesting out of focus areas as well. Stepping down to a smaller aperture like f/16 and stacking images together would have allowed us to get the majority of the spring in focus, but we preferred this version.

We have mentioned before that if you don’t own a macro lens that using extension tubes on a longer focal length lens like an 85mm prime will give a similar effect. Another option would be to purchase a macro attachment lens like the Raynox 250 which is simply a magnifying lens which attaches to your existing lens to create a macro effect. Having owned one of these many years ago they do work quite well and using an adaptor they just attach to the filter thread of the lens.

Day 17: Tuesday the 14th of April 2020
Subject: Megan

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 135mm f/1.8 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1250, Aperture f/1.8

Both of our daughters have their own cameras and have a keen interest in photography even though these days they spend most of their free time making videos for TikTok. This morning Megan decided to join us on an early morning walk to photograph some daffodils that are growing just around the corner from our house, so that she could take a few photographs herself using our macro lens.

For this photograph we used our Sony 135mm G.M lens. This is one of the best portrait lenses that we have ever used. When used wide open it produces beautiful out of focus backgrounds and bokeh whilst being razor sharp. The background for this photograph is a little busy due to a chicken wire type fence behind Megan but even with that, it has done an incredible job.

Day 18: Wednesday the 15th of April 2020
Subject: Moody clouds

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/12800, Aperture f/1.8

We were up and out walking our dogs very early this morning. Are anyone else’s normal sleep patterns completely messed up due to the lockdown? As you can see, there was some really moody clouds early on this morning before everything got covered in a blanket of thick fog.

We were totally unprepared to take this photograph though as we had our cameras set up to photographs our dogs. Just happened to look up at the moment this kite was flying, it disappeared a second later and we didn’t see it again. We liked how the bright coloured kite contrasted against the background of the moody looking clouds. If the kite hadn’t of disappeared so quickly, we would have changed our camera settings to use a smaller aperture like f/5.6, but there simply wasn’t time.

Day 19: Thursday the 16th of April 2020
Subject: Archie, our miniature Parsons Jack Russell

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/4000, Aperture f/1.8

This is Archie, he is the baby of our 4 dog pack and by far the most difficult to photograph. He is incredibly nimble and quick and it’s very difficult to get him to stay still even for a few seconds, especially when he is off the lead at the park as he is shown here. His long-haired coat also means that his eyes are usually partially covered, so it makes it more difficult for even advanced technology like animal eye a.f to be able to track him as he runs.

We had to use a much faster shutter speed of 1/4000 than we used for the photographs of our other dogs to freeze the action and nail focus on his eyes. We have mentioned here before that with any human or animal subject that it is important to nail focus on the subject’s eyes. The old saying is true “the eyes are the windows to the soul”, photographs were critical focus has not been obtained on the eyes always look a little strange and off putting.

Day 20: Friday the 17th of April 2020
Subject: Horse

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/4

We found ourselves a little bit further away from home this morning, well not that far, at the end of the road opposite the industrial estate. We were surprised to find a couple of horses having breakfast on this bit of waste ground. As it will probably be some time before we are able to photograph any proper landscapes this was a nice step change from the stuff we have been photographing at home.

We used our Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 lens for this photograph, these are very popular although it’s a lens we use very little as it is mainly a back up to the lenses we use for work. A zoom lens is a very handy option as a walk around lens when you are not quite sure what you will come across. Usually for landscapes we would use smaller apertures like f/5.6-f/8 but this lens is incredibly sharp so we knew we could just use f/4 with no issues and that allowed us to use a high shutter speed to allow for any movement from the horse while still providing enough depth of field for what we wanted.

Day 21: Saturday the 18th of April 2020
Subject: Leaf

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 500, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/8

This is just a small leaf from a tree in our garden. Photographed up close using a macro lens it has interesting shapes and lines. We used some backlighting just to emphasise the veins on the leaf. Backlighting a small and thin subject like this is very easy, we just held it up to a window.

To get a perfect photograph of this we would advise using a tripod and a remote shutter release, (we didn’t, just because of laziness). If we had of used a tripod, we could have dropped our shutter speed which would have allowed us to drop our ISO back down to ISO100 and use an even smaller aperture, the detail that is picked up at apertures like f/22 is insane.

Day 22: Sunday the 19th of April 2020
Subject: Garden Birds

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/8

Back in the garden again this morning photographing the small birds that visit us every day. With each day that passes they seem to get braver and more comfortable around us, although they are still very cautious of our dogs. This is probably a smart move, as Sakura our Japanese Akita stalks them around our garden like a lion hunting a gazelle. This cheeky little fella seems unconcerned though and has even started giving himself a bath in our dog’s water bowl every morning.

The light this morning wasn’t just as nice as it has been, so for this photo we had to push our ISO up to ISO1600 to get the 1/1000 shutter speed and f/8 aperture we have found works best with the smaller birds.

Day 23: Monday the 20th of April 2020
Subject: The world is crying

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 1250, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/2.8

Images of the earth with a tear isn’t anything new especially at the moment, but this is our take on it. We thought that it was relevant considering the current situation we all find ourselves in. This was something a bit different for us as we don’t like photographs with artificial elements added. Photoshop and other editing software are still an important tool for us as wedding photographers though. While we much prefer natural, real photography all of our images are edited to match our style and we will often need to remove distracting elements.

In terms of the actual photograph, Megan our daughter kindly modelled for us. We wouldn’t usually use our macro lens for a portrait as it’s way too sharp but we needed some fine detail for the edit to work. Adding the earth was pretty simple we just blended it to the eye using a layer mask. Adding the tear took a lot more effort as it had to be created from scratch in photoshop and we just followed a tutorial on YouTube for that.

Day 24: Tuesday the 21st of April 2020
Subject: Bokeh

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 50, Shutter speed 1/80, Aperture f/1.4

Most photographers love good bokeh, although it is often confused with depth of field, even by experienced photographers. Bokeh is a Japanese word used to describe the quality of out of focus areas caused by the lens used and the depth of field describes how much of the photograph is in focus. Most people rate bokeh good, bad and ugly based on how round and smooth the bokeh balls are in the out of focus areas of an image, and they are an aspect, however the true meaning of bokeh is that it describes the quality of all of the out of focus areas in a photograph. Good bokeh has nice round bokeh balls and smooth creamy out of focus areas, bad or ugly bokeh is harsh and rough and often distracting in a photograph.

Lenses that are capable of producing good bokeh are highly prized and tend to be much more expensive. Because the aperture you choose when taking a photograph controls your depth of field this directly relates to bokeh as does the focal length used and the subject distance. You will get more and much more pleasing bokeh using a lens wide open at f/1.4 than you would say using the same lens at smaller apertures like f/8.

The photograph we have shown here is an extreme example, to create this we simply used our Sony 85mm f/1.4GM lens wide open at f/1.4 to take a photograph of some small led lights, this lens is famed for creamy beautiful bokeh. If we had used our other Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens the bokeh would have been harsher and the out of focus area less smooth as that lens is known for ugly bokeh. We used manual focus so that all of the image would be out of focus and got very close to the lights to emphasize the bokeh created. This technique works great with things like Christmas tree lights.

Day 25: Wednesday the 22nd of April 2020
Subject: Lamborghini

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 Macro O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1250, Aperture f/2.8

Our daughter Abbie, loves Lamborghini Gallardo’s. She insists that when she is older, she is going to buy herself a bright yellow Lamborghini. We have no idea where she has got this from as neither of us has that much interest in cars. I spotted this toy car in the local supermarket while out grabbing a few essentials the other day and grabbed it for her as a little joke present. Unless we win the lottery there is very little chance of us ever being able to buy her a real one!

There is a large community of online photographers that specialise in photographing model cars and putting them in scenes that make them look like the real thing. It is very hard to tell the difference in the photograph as they use perspective in the scene and get close. They also use expensive model cars that are an exact replica down to the finest detail. It wasn’t possible to do that here as this little toy car doesn’t have anywhere near enough detail to pass for the real thing. We used our macro lens wide open to create only a very small depth of field to try and make it look a little more realistic and to try and hide how obvious it was that this was not the real thing.

Day 26: Thursday the 23rd of April 2020
Subject: Robin

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 1600, Shutter speed 1/2000, Aperture f/8

For the last week or so this little guy has started visiting our garden every morning and today he managed to grab himself a rather disgusting looking breakfast. Robins are apparently the U.K’s favourite wild bird and it easy to see why, they have a lot of character.

We recently found out that the other small birds that we see every morning are called House Sparrows, we thought they were 2 different types of bird as they look very different. As it turns out though the more colourful ones are males and the fawn/brown coloured one’s are females. The birds we photographed on day 7 are Starlings.

A few days ago, we managed to get a birdhouse delivered from Amazon, these little guys have provided us with a lot of entertainment over the last few weeks so we thought that it’s only fair that we provide them with some food and water. Our dogs are not amused and have taken to guarding the area around the birdhouse, hopefully they will get bored before too long.

Day 27: Friday the 24th of April 2020
Subject: Books

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/80, Aperture f/1.4

There is only so much Netflix and Prime Video you can watch, has anyone else been catching up with some reading during the U.K government lockdown?. Used books can be bought ridiculously cheap now, we had a book on U.K garden birds arrive the other day from eBay for only £2.00 including postage!

These are the books we have made our way through since the lockdown began. After taking the photograph we were struck by how much you can tell about a person from the books they read. The Paddy Crerand and Men in Black books show that we support Manchester United, the NOS 4A2 and Life Expectancy books show that one of us likes horror and the photography books are self-explanatory. The Kevin Smith and Peter Kay books show the sort of silly comedy we like and the sheer fact that there are no serious books there at all probably shows a little bit of our personality. The Borrible Trilogy is an old childhood favourite, not sure what that says. It’s funny really, we went through a stage of only reading via our kindles but have read many more real books recently. I guess part of the fun has been picking up bargains on Ebay.

For this photograph we used our Sigma 35mm Art f/1.4 lens for no particular reason other than it was what was on the camera at the time. We have two 35mm lenses this one and the Sony FE 35mm f/1.8. They are both great and are both very sharp, the Sony is much lighter weight, focuses much closer and faster, while the Sigma Art lens has much nicer rendering in the out of focus areas. 35mm is far and away our most used focal length for our wedding work and we use both of these lenses a lot as 35mm is a great do everything focal length as it can be used for everything from close up details to environmental portraiture. Although over the last few weeks it has actually been our least used focal length, as it hasn’t been a good fit for the sort of stuff, we have been able to shoot.

Day 28: Saturday the 25th of April 2020
Subject: Insects

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm Macro f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/40, Aperture f/8

Hopefully this doesn’t spoil anyone’s breakfast this morning, because insects are gross, up close and personal they are even worse. Photographing insects is a very popular hobby and while it definitely isn’t for us, we will try anything once.

Photographing an insect is more difficult than it looks because they are very small and because they move. A lot of people who specialise in this type of photography shoot dead insects for this reason. They also use a method called focus stacking. To use this method a tripod and a remote shutter release are must have kit. The photographer takes multiple photographs sometimes into the hundreds making sure that all the settings are the same for each exposure and chooses a different area of the image to focus on each time. Once the photographs have been taken, they are blended together in software to create one image. This is the best way to photograph insects to ensure maximum detail and sharpness, the same technique is also used quite a lot for landscape photography for the same reasons.

Because our creepy crawly was still moving, although a bit sluggishly, we took just one image. We chose the settings we used to ensure we didn’t have any camera shake due to not using a tripod and a remote shutter release. To light the subject, we used two led video lights on either side.

Day 29: Sunday the 26th of April 2020
Subject: Sakura, our Japanese Akita

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/250, Aperture f/1.8

Since the lockdown began, we have shared photographs of all of our dogs accept Sakura, she is very camera shy, we think it is because when she was a pup, we chased her around everywhere with a camera so much that she eventually became fed up.

She has a very different personality than our other dogs and we have always thought that she is more cat like than dog. She loves to hunt birds around our garden the way a cat does, she will get down low and creep along on her front paws and then pounce! She also once lay in wait and jumped up and took a poor little bird in mid-air. She is also very stubborn, when she was a puppy in the winter months, we had to lift her and carry her outside when it was cold and during the warmer months once she was out it was impossible to get her to come back inside. Every now and again she will still do this, even now.

This photograph would have been better if we could have used the camera at her eye level but she will never look directly at the camera, so we had to bribe her with a dog biscuit to look up instead. We used our Sony 35mm f/1.8 lens as it focuses close and most of our other close focus lenses would have either been too wide or too long.

Day 30: Monday the 27th of April 2020
Subject: Gaming

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 400, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/2.8

Under normal circumstances we usually try to do everything possible to limit our kids time on their game consoles and their other electronic devices but since the lockdown and with so little available to keep them entertained, it has seemed unfair to do that.

For this photograph we wanted to highlight the Xbox controller itself, so we used one of our wider prime lenses at an aperture of f/2.8. We could have got a cleaner nicer looking background and rendered the background more out of focus by using a larger aperture of f/1.4 but this would have meant only having a very small depth of field and only certain parts of the controller would have been in focus.

Day 31: Tuesday the 28th of April 2020
Subject: Abbie, wide angle portrait

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/250, Aperture f/2.8

Our kids are definitely starting to suffer from cabin fever. Other than when walking the dogs, they haven’t left the house in over 6 weeks. They are missing their friends and while there is facetime etc. it just isn’t the same. It is especially hard when they can see other kids out in the street playing through the window, with their parents seemingly unconcerned about the current social distancing measures. For us as parents this is incredibly frustrating as well. The longer people continue to completely ignore the measures that the government have put in place increases the chance of more people becoming ill. While the lockdown has had a huge impact on our lives and of course on our work, we would much rather bear some frustration than put our kids or other people at risk.

Every book ever written on portrait photography will say that because of distortion that you should never use a wide-angle lens for a portrait and most dedicated most portrait lenses are 85mm, 105mm, 135mm and 200mm focal lengths. The reason for this is because wider lenses change perspective and distort the subject’s features and while that can make for a fun photograph especially if you are using a fish eye type lens, the subject just won’t look like themselves and will look almost cartoon like.

However, you can get around this and break the normal rule with careful composition. For this photo instead of standing straight on we stepped back and to the side. Shooting straight on would have definitely shown some strong facial distortion as we have shot this at the lenses widest focal length of 17mm, stepping back and to the side has drastically reduced this distortion. This is a trick we use at weddings all the time. While in an ideal world we will want to use our 85mm & 135mm lenses for portraits, when we are working indoors, space is sometimes very limited and this is where having a wide-angle lens is a huge bonus. We also use this lens quite a lot for the dancing at weddings as well.

Day 32: Wednesday the 29th of April 2020
Subject: Ducks

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/5.6

For a change of scenery, we went for a walk around Wallace Park in Lisburn, thinking that we could grab a few photos at the duck pond. We thought that with the park only recently being re-opened that it might be busy so we were a little bit wary but there weren’t many people around at all. It was a bit sad seeing the kids play park area closed and unable to be used as it is normally hiving with kids enjoying themselves.

As it turns out though the photographs of the ducks in the pond itself, we thought were a little boring. We then tried to grab a few photos of them flying down into the pond. Capturing birds in flight is a lot more difficult, and it took a bit of trial and error to get a usable shot. This we thought was the best of the bunch. In hindsight we probably should have used a faster shutter speed and a smaller aperture to get a bit more detail, but we are reasonably happy with this one.

Day 33: Thursday the 30th of April 2020
Subject: Garden plants

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm Macro f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 500, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/8

The recent good weather has meant an explosion of colour in our garden with all of the little plants starting to flower. We liked how this blue flower contrasted against the deep green background.

We used our macro lens so that we could get nice and close as the flowers on this plant are quite small. Using an aperture of f/8 allowed us to capture a lot of detail while maintaining a low ISO500 and a quick enough shutter speed to enable us to handhold the camera without the need for a tripod.

Day 34: Friday the 1st of May 2020
Subject: Colour

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm Macro f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/50, Aperture f/5.6

What would life be without colour? Our kids were following some YouTube tutorials for drawing and we noticed them using this multicoloured drawing pencil and thought it was interesting. We used some of the other ordinary colour pencils for the background.

The tip of the pencil is small and for that reason we used our macro lens again. We chose an aperture of f/5.6 as it gave us a happy medium, of a nice out of focus background while keeping the tip of the pencil in focus. Hand holding a 90mm lens at 1/50th of a second isn’t an issue when the lens has image stabilisation so we where able to use a low ISO100.

Day 35: Saturday the 2nd of May 2020
Subject: Wedding anniversary

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm Macro f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/8

Today is our 11 year wedding anniversary! Our wedding rings, a bit like us, now have 11 years worth of battle scars. Like many other people have found, celebrating any occasion during the lockdown is a strange sensation as we can not celebrate in the way we normally would. Usually on our wedding anniversary we would book a night away, most years to the hotel where we held our wedding, or at the very least go out for dinner.

Our wedding photographer didn’t photograph our wedding rings when we got married, so we thought today was as good a day as any to grab a quick photo of them ourselves. Because our wedding photographer opted not to photograph ours, we always ask our couples if it’s a photo they would like to have. Wedding rings are one of the oldest wedding traditions, we recently wrote a blog post about some of the history of them, which you can find here.

WEDDING TRADITIONS: THE WEDDING RING

Just like we usually do at our weddings we used our macro lens for this photograph but really any lens which will focus reasonably close will do. To add a bit of contrast we used a sparkly gift bag for the background and a couple of led lights at 45 degree angles to light the subject.

Day 36: Sunday the 3rd of May 2020
Subject: The Wallace drinking fountains Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/2000, Aperture f/1.8

Our home town of Lisburn isn’t blessed with many historical statues due to a fire that swept through the town. Even Lisburn castle was destroyed, with all that remains being Lisburn’s Castle Gardens. When I was a young kid, I can remember being told that the great fire of 1707 which wiped out much of the town was what gave the town its name but apparently that is not the case as the name change from Lisnagarvey to Lisburn happened in the early 1600’s. There was a large fire that destroyed large parts of the town around then too but again the name change predates the fire, so nobody knows for sure why the name changed. Can’t help but think that maybe they tempted fate with their choice of name though as one fire destroying large parts of the town is bad enough, but two?

Because of that, these drinking fountains made in 1872 by the French sculpter Charles-Auguste Lebourg are an important part of Lisburn’s history. Sir.Richard Wallace donated five of these fountains to the town in 1876, unfortunately only two of them have survived to today. The drinking fountain we photographed is in Wallace park and the other is still in its original position at Castle Gardens.

For this photograph we used our Sony A9 and our 85mm f/1.8 lens for no other reason than that is what we had with us, as we were out walking our dogs and grabbing a few photos of them in the park. Because of the subject distance, we chose an aperture of f/1.8 as stepping down to a smaller aperture would have made no real difference to the depth of field for the subject and f/1.8 allowed us to have a cleaner, less busy background.

Day 37: Monday the 4th of May 2020
Subject: Spring clean

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony FE 35mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/40, Aperture f/4

We decided to give all of our lenses a quick clean and dust this morning, Silent Bob was a great help, but Jay was completely useless.

Keeping equipment clean is important and most photographers get really concerned about dust getting inside the elements of their lenses. In truth all lenses have some dust inside, usually the particles are to small too see but shine a torch into even a brand new lens and it will be there. Large particles of dust can affect images especially when taking photographs at smaller apertures like f/16 and it’s a real pita to edit them out. If dust gets into the front elements its not such a big issue, but dust near the rear elements is more noticeable in photographs. We have been a bit lazy of late with our cleaning routine, we usually pull everything out for a good clean before and after every session, wedding etc.

For this photo we used our 35mm f/1.8 as the focal length suited the photo and this lens can focus reasonably close. We could have used our macro lens but this would have meant standing back further from the subject and we didn’t really need that extreme close up for this. We chose an aperture of f/4 so that we could get enough depth of field to have Silent Bob and Jay’s face plus the logo on the lens cleaning pen in sharp focus.

Day 38: Tuesday the 5th of May 2020
Subject: Starling

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600 f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 6400, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/6.3

We grabbed a quick photo of this Starling this morning, just after leaving out our garden birds, breakfast seeds. There was a bit of a feeding frenzy and this poor little guy (this one may be female as the males tend to be brighter coloured and have more orange than yellow beak) got shunted to the side and was having to wait his or her turn.

Starlings are very common and from afar look like they have black feathers, but up close a lot of there feathers are actually dark green. We have got quite used to photographing these guys now and we have found using a shutter speed around 1/1000 of a second tends to be good enough to capture them. Today the early morning light was a bit drab and dull so we had to use ISO6400 to get the shutter speed we needed.

Day 39: Wednesday the 6th of May 2020
Subject: Duncans Dam, Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/13

This morning we went for a quick walk around Duncans Dam in Lisburn, we haven’t been here in many years. Not long before the pandemic hit it was given a well needed overhaul and clean up by Lisburn council. A lot of locals use the Dam for fishing, walking or just to feed the ducks and swans, but when we were kids it was best known for being the place to go to for underage drinking and other misbehaviour, not that we would have ever been involved in such antics of course. (Just in case Mum is reading this) There still must be some fish in there as we saw a seagull tucking into what looked like a good-sized Perch. As with all the local parks, there are strict social distancing measures in place, the kids park is closed as are some of the walkways and you now need to walk around a set one way route.

For this photograph we used our Tamron 28-75mm lens, as we weren’t sure what we would need in terms of focal length so a mid range zoom seemed like a good option. To capture as much detail as possible we used a small aperture of f/13, as this allowed us enough depth of field to ensure everything was in focus which meant that we could also capture details like the reflected sky, clouds and trees in the water.

Day 40: Thursday the 7th of May 2020
Subject: Supermoon

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 200-600 f/5.6-f/6.3 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/11

A Supermoon is reasonably rare although there was one at the start of last month as well, this is when the moon is closest to earth and appears to look much larger in the sky than normal. We photographed last months Supermoon as well, but from our garden there was a fair bit of cloud coverage so it was difficult to see much detail. There was much less cloud coverage last night though, so we decided to give this another go and we are much happier with the results this time.

Obviously as the moon is quite some distance away a long focal length is needed for this, we used our Sony 200-600mm lens at 600mm. You will also need a tripod and a remote trigger release. If you don’t have a remote trigger release with many cameras you can use an app to control the camera from your phone to do the same thing. As an alternative you could also do what we did and use the cameras self timer instead. We would also suggest using autofocus to obtain focus and then switching to manual focus before you take the photograph to prevent the camera from refocusing. If you are using a mirrorless camera that has an electronic shutter, we suggest using that as a mechanical shutter can cause vibration and movement from the shutter opening and closing. If you are using a DSLR camera you can use the mirror up option. Because the moon is so bright against the night sky, you should also use spot metering.

We were pleased we were able to nail the full moon shot, but photographing the moon at other phases can make for a more interesting photograph as the shadow say from an example a half moon will highlight more details on the moon’s surface. A full moon photograph can sort of look just like a large circle in the sky, shadow provides context. We will probably try this at another time.

Day 41: Friday the 8th of May 2020
Subject: Wash your hands

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 4000, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/2.8

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Is anyone else fed up of washing your hands with hand sanitizer 20 times a day? To be fair to our kids, it seems drummed into them by now and it’s usually them scolding us for not doing it enough, rather than the other way around. It seems unfair to complain too much about all the little changes to normal everyday life though, when so much bad news related to the pandemic is never far away.

For this photo we wanted to draw attention to Abbie’s hands so we used our Tamron 17-28mm lens at its widest focal length of 17mm, knowing that there would be quite a lot of distortion. We could have fixed this in post but we purposely wanted the distortion, as we thought it would draw the viewers eye more to Abbie’s hands. For the same reason we shot up towards Abbie to further emphasize the distortion and make Abbie’s hands look much bigger than they really are. To freeze the motion of the water flowing from the tap and the movement of Abbie’s hands as she washed them, we used a fast shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second, and to achieve that we needed bump our ISO up to ISO4000.

Day 42: Saturday the 9th of May 2020
Subject: Lemon

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 6400, Shutter speed 1/1000, Aperture f/4

When life give you lemons, make lemonade! To get this effect needs a little bit of setting up. Obviously, we weren’t going to allow our 10-year-old to slice a lemon in mid-air with a very large, sharp and dangerous knife. We sliced the lemon in half and held them in mid-air with forks on either side of the knife.

To get a sense of action and movement we used a fast shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second while we sprayed the knife from one side with water. To gain a little bit of extra depth of field we used an aperture of f/4 which combined with the fast shutter speed we needed to be able to capture the water spray resulted in us needed to push our ISO to ISO6400.

Day 43: Sunday the 10th of May 2020
Subject: Abbie, Laurene and Megan

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 135mm f/1.8 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 800, Shutter speed 1/250, Aperture f/1.8

For the first time since the U.K government lockdown began we ventured out in the car for a change of scenery to visit Sir. Thomas & Lady Dixon park. Until now we have been a bit wary of using our daily exercise time to go anywhere that we couldn’t walk to direct from home, although the government advice has now changed to allow for this. This park though is only a 5 minute drive away. We were also a little concerned about how many people might be there as it has always been a popular place and we were prepared to come home again if it looked there was too many people around. We must have picked a good time to visit, as it was reasonably quiet and everybody we did meet while walking around the park was sensibly following social distancing measures.

We haven’t been able to work for quite some time now due to the government restrictions, and it seems like forever since we were last here. This park is very popular with many different types of photographers and many couples who are getting married in the greater Belfast area choose Lady Dixon’s as the location for their bride & groom portraits, so it is somewhere we would usually visit a lot. We have also used the park many times for engagement photography, family portraits, commercial photography and model portfolio sessions. It’s quite rare not to bump into another photographer working when we are here.

For this photograph we used the “Spider Trees” area (we are not sure if that is the real name for these trees or not, but that is what they are known as locally) at the side of Wilmont House. When you are aiming to capture a natural real moment, sometimes it will need a little push in the right direction, and that was the case here. A simple, silly joke can often help ensure a real natural reaction and be a much more important element of capturing the moment than the technical side of things like what equipment or what settings were used. Lighting though is always important. When using natural light, you can only reposition your subject not the light, although you can still modify and bounce the available light by using a reflector, but we didn’t need to do that here. There was a strong back light and just enough light from the front right to ensure a nice even exposure. If the subjects had of been even 2 feet to the right there would have been some harsh shadows on the right hand side of the image and 2 feet to the left would have meant the left hand side being over exposed.

Day 44: Monday the 11th of May 2020
Subject: Pasta

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 2.5 seconds, Aperture f/16

Do you remember all of the panic buying at the start of the pandemic? When all that started, we were really busy and didn’t have time to pay much attention. By the time shortages started to become common place it was too late for us to even worry about it, as everything we normally buy was sold out everywhere. We eat a lot of rice and pasta, so that was a little annoying! We wonder now, if the people that were going to supermarkets and buying hundreds of packets of pasta at a time are down right sick of looking at the stuff by now? Pretty much everything seems back to normal now. It’s crazy really, all of the shortages were caused by panic buying, not because the pandemic affected anything.

We recently found a cheap little table top tripod for sale on Amazon for only £10. As we have being doing quite a lot of macro photography, we thought it might be handy as we are usually too lazy to go find and then set up our full size tripods for a quick photo. For this photograph we used the table top tripod which meant that we could use a small aperture of f/16 at ISO100 and a long exposure time of 2.5 seconds without any issues with camera shake. We also used the silent electronic shutter so that no camera shake was caused by shutter shock and we used the self timer function on the camera so that we didn’t have to press the shutter button, which is also could have caused slight movement.

Day 45: Tuesday the 12th of May 2020
Subject: Garden lights long exposure

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 90mm f/2.8 O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 13 seconds, Aperture f/5.6

Our back garden is lit up like a Christmas tree at nights as we recently strung led light across our garden fence. We also got these solar powered garden lights as well, that change colour every 30 seconds as we liked the broken glass style design of them.

As with our photograph from yesterday we again used the little table top tripod we got from Amazon. This was so that we could use a long shutter speed of 13 seconds and keep our ISO at a low ISO100,using an aperture of f/5.6 gave us enough depth of field top capture the detail we wanted without having to step down any further which would have meant an even longer exposure time or increasing our ISO.

Day 46: Wednesday the 13th of May 2020
Subject: Panoramic portrait

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.4 G.M
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/800, Aperture f/1.4

We went for a walk this morning along the Lagan tow path beside Lagan Valley Island. There were quite a few people around for early morning, which was a bit surprising, lots of people cycling and walking their dogs.

The technique we used to take this photograph is called many different things, portrait panorama, pano portrait etc. It became more well known a few years ago thanks to an American wedding photographer called Ryan Brenizer who popularised the process and since then it has widely been called the Brenizer method. The principal is reasonably simple with the idea being to capture many images and then blend them together later in Adobe Photoshop to create one image. This process allows you to create photographs with shallow depth of field that would not be at all possible when capturing one image.

We use this technique at most of our weddings for at least one or two photographs as it can really make the subject pop out of the background while also allowing us to show more of the landscape around them. While the idea behind the technique is simple, the execution of it isn’t. Everyone that uses this technique has their own way of doing it. Firstly, the subject cannot move as any movement will mean that the images can’t be merged together easily in Adobe Photoshop. With a bride and groom for example, they need to be positioned in a way that’s comfortable for them to hold for a few moments. We usually start with taking a photograph of the subject and we use autofocus in the first instance to gain focus, then switch to manual focus to take each image. We have found that it works much better if we use the camera in portrait mode for this and after the initial image is captured, we then shoot around the subject in a circular motion going wider with each shot.

This can be a bit time consuming and it is very easy to make a mistake like missing an area, disturbing the manual focus etc. This photograph of Megan is made up of 85 images stitched together, we often find with our wedding images that these can be made up of 100 plus images. The resulting image, we feel is well worth the extra care and attention that is need to produce it. This photograph is the equivalent of using a lens with an equivalent focal length of 32mm on a full frame camera at an aperture of f/0.45. No such lens exists and if it did, you would likely need a wheel barrow to cart it around as physics means it would be huge and it would also likely cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, which is why no camera manufacturer would ever consider producing it.

This does take a lot more work than a typical photograph and the work doesn’t stop there, editing an image of this size needs a very powerful computer and even then, it will be an extremely slow process. The resulting image files using this technique are huge, each image would be big enough at full resolution to fill a large wall in most people’s homes with no loss of detail at all. Because of that it is a great image to choose for large prints or a double spread in a wedding album.

Day 47: Thursday the 14th of May 2020
Subject: Cows

Equipment used: Sony A9, Samyang 45mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/500, Aperture f/4

We noticed these cows while we were out for a walk. They seemed a friendly bunch and crowded around the fence as we walked past so they could say hello. We suspect that they may have been hoping that we had brought along their breakfast.

As we were out for a long walk we had only brought along our lightest lens, the little Samyang 45mm f/1.8. In an ideal world a wider lens would have been better for this photograph in terms of framing. Unfortunately, we couldn’t just step back as there was a road behind us and that would have put us directly into oncoming traffic.

Day 48: Friday the 15th of May 2020
Subject: Baking

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.4

We are not sure if Abbie actually likes making buns or not. She is always asking to make them, with Top Hats being her current favourite. We think that getting to lick the spoon at the end may be the reason why. Since the lockdown began, we have made lots of buns and cakes and there has been some epic failures along the way, including some banana bread that it’s probably best not to mention.

We have taken lots of photos of our kids just doing everyday things since the lockdown began and when it’s all over (hopefully that day is not too far ahead) we will probably look at putting together a photo book of some our favourites. The 24mm lens we have used here is a good option for just grabbing a quick photo of everyday moments as while it’s wide enough to cover most scenes it’s not wide enough to cause crazy distortion, so we have taken to always having it ready and close by, for little moments like this.

Looking through our Lightroom catalogue we are already up to over to over 5000 images taken since the stay at home orders came through from the government. We have also taken a crazy number of photos on our phones as well.

Day 49: Saturday the 16th of May 2020
Subject: Belshaw’s Quarry Sculpture Park, Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A9, Samyang 45mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/250, Aperture f/1.8

We have only recently discovered that this place exists although it’s been here for a few years and is only up the road from us. The sculpture park is dedicated to showcasing geological themed art. This particular piece is called “Earth as a Machine” by Jodi Coyne and caught our attention as we walked around. It represents the volcanic forces that created the earth. There are quite a few other interesting sculptures at the quarry as well, and the area itself is nice for a walk so I am sure we will be back again.

For this photograph as we were just out for a walk so only brought along our little light weight Samyang 45mm lens with us. We used the lens wide open in a effort to blur the distracting background a little, although it’s still a bit messy here.

Day 50: Sunday the 17th of May 2020
Subject: N.H.S Mural, Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/400, Aperture f/5.6

The guys in the housing estate up the road from us have been using the time during lockdown to tidy up around the local area, including painting over graffiti etc. They have just finished painting this mural dedicated to Tom Moore the 100-year-old former army captain (now promoted to honorary colonel by the queen) who has raised 33 million pounds to help fund the N.H.S.

We knew we would need a wide-angle lens for this so we brought along our Tamron 17-28mm. An aperture of f/5.6 gave us enough depth of field for what we wanted. The sky in this photo was very dull and lifeless so although we don’t usually like over edited images, for this one we edited in the sky from another photograph, to add a little more drama.

Day 51: Monday the 18th of May 2020
Subject: Castle Gardens, Lisburn

Wallace drinking fountain Castle Gardens Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO various, Shutter speed various, Aperture various

We decided to go for a walk around the Castle Gardens in Lisburn intending to grab a photo of the Wallace memorial. Back on day 36 we photographed the Wallace drinking water fountain at Wallace park in Lisburn so while we were here, we thought it would be a good opportunity to grab a quick photo of the other remaining Wallace drinking water fountain as well. We also photographed the famous cannon from the Crimean war.

This time we brought along our Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8 lens as we knew that we would likely need a wide-angle lens to be able to photograph the Wallace memorial.

Day 52: Tuesday the 19th of May 2020
Subject: Seagull

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 G O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/250, Aperture f/8

We spotted this guy chilling out on the roof of our neighbours house this morning while we were out feeding our own back garden birds. We don’t see that many seagulls at home, so maybe he has got lost on his way to somewhere else. We have got used to dialling in a 1/1000 shutter speed at f/8 to be able to capture our own garden birds but as this bird is bigger and doesn’t move anywhere near as fast, we where able to drop our shutter speed right down to 1/250 and still get a nice sharp photograph.

We wish there was a bit more of a variety of birds around our home but we only ever seem to get Starlings and House Sparrows. Hopefully with the government starting to makes some moves towards slightly reducing the lockdown measures at some point soon we will able to travel a little bit further afield. We have to admit to being a bit jealous of our photographer friends in England who can now travel pretty much wherever they want too as long as they are maintaining social distancing measures.

Day 53: Wednesday the 20th of May 2020
Subject: How to train your parents

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 55mm f/1.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.8

We are glad our girls are reading a bit more often, but if this is an instruction manual, we are in big trouble. They manipulate us enough already. To be fair to them both, excluding a few drama queen moments, they have been great throughout the entire lockdown. We were expecting it to be much more difficult than it has been to keep them occupied.

A wider lens, say our 24mm or even one of our 35mm lenses would have been a better option for this photograph, as the wider field of view would have allowed us to show more context. We haven’t used our 55m lens in a little while and its usually a firm favourite, so we purposely chose it for today for that reason. 50mm lenses are popular on every camera system. We like this one in particular as it’s small, light weight and extremely sharp.

Day 54: Thursday the 21st of May 2020
Subject: Grey Squirrel

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 G O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 5000, Shutter speed 1/500, Aperture f/5.6

We went out to find a squirrel and surprisingly manged to find one! It was a surprise because we have gone out looking for them a couple of times before and returned home empty handed. Grey squirrels have a bit of a bad rep here as they can cause damage to trees and they also cause lots of issues for our native red squirrels.

We did a bit of reading online to find out where best to find them and came across lots of information we didn’t know before. According to the internet the greys made it over to Ireland in the 1960’s after 12 of them were given as a wedding present. They then escaped and spread across the country eventually crossing the border into Northern Ireland. Because they can thrive in environments were the reds struggle, because they out compete our native reds for food and living space and because they are a carrier of a disease that has little effect on them but is deadly to our native reds, they have decimated our native red squirrel population.

We brought along our long lens for this as we though it might be easier to photograph them for further away. When we actually found them, they seemed to have no concern about us at all and we could have easily gotten away with getting closer and using a shorter lens.

Day 55: Friday the 22nd of May 2020
Subject: Lisburn

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/800, Aperture f/5.6

This is the view from the platform bridge at Lisburn train station. While it is by no means the prettiest view in the town, the sky was nice so we thought it deserved a quick shot. We where in this exact same spot a week or so ago at around the same time of day and it was like a ghost town. The recent slight relaxing of the lockdown rules does seem to have encouraged people to leave their homes more often, for everyone’s sake we hope that this proves to be the right decision.

Using an aperture of f/5.6 gave us enough depth of field to capture the detail we wanted. We purposely slightly under exposed the photograph in camera and raised the shadows in post so that the sky would not be over exposed. This is a quick and easy way to capture sky detail without having the need to combine multiple exposures. All of the cameras we use have excellent dynamic range so this is never an issue.

Day 56: Saturday the 23rd of May 2020
Subject: Fledgling Starling

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-f/6.3 G O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO 4000, Shutter speed 1/500, Aperture f/8

We have been watching this fledgling for a little while, it looks really strong and healthy and is actually now bigger than both Mum and Dad. It cries to be fed every single morning and still doesn’t seem to have caught on that it could grab some breakfast from our bird table itself rather than being fed by Mum.

As lighting was quite poor for this image, we had to drop our shutter speed down to 1/500 of a second instead of our usual 1/1000 so that we could bring down our ISO.

Day 57: Sunday the 24th of May 2020
Subject: Fairy light Portrait

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 55mm f/1.8 ZA Carl Zeiss Sonnar
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/30, Aperture f/1.8

This little technique can liven up a portrait when you either have a plain or ugly background, or even just for something a little different than the norm. We have used this technique quite a few times at our weddings and it is very simple. Simply wave some fairy lights in front of your lens as you take your photograph. We use a battery powered set of fairy lights that was once part of an ornament.

We have found that using a 50mm or around that focal length works best as the “bokeh balls” using a wider lens like a 35nmm are a little small in comparison, although this can work well if you have a long string of fairy lights. Using an 85mm creates huge “bokeh balls” which can work well with careful placement but for us, a lens around 50mm tends to work best. Be sure to use a large aperture like f/1.4 or f/1.8 depending on what lens you have. Using your lens wide open and keeping your fairy lights quite close to the front of your lens will help ensure that you will only see the bokeh creating by the lights and not the cable itself in your final image.

Day 58: Monday the 25th of May 2020
Subject: A boring photo of camera straps

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/30, Aperture f/1.4

Apologies for the boring photo today, a camera strap is just a camera strap! But these camera straps have actually made our work a lot easier. We use these because we found them to be the most comfortable to use for extended periods of time, like when we are photographing a wedding and we have tried quite a few different options.

The main reason we like these though and the reason they are so useful to us is simply because they are available in different colours or they were at one point anyway. At the moment they only offer these in grey and black. The reason this so useful to us is that because we mainly use prime lenses, we swap cameras between us a lot. Having each set up with a different coloured strap means that we can just shout red, blue, black or grey to each other when we need to swap. It is only a little thing, but in the moment, speed is important and this saves us having to check what lens is on what camera because we know that the camera with the 35mm lens has the red strap, the camera with the 85mm lens has the grey strap etc.

This makes these, our favourite camera accessory. Although we sometimes take 5 or 6 cameras to a wedding with us, so we wish they offered some more alternative colours to allow for this.

Day 59: Tuesday the 26th of May 2020
Subject: The Mourne Mountains

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO Various, Shutter speed Various, Aperture Various

With cabin fever setting in and having watched the rest of the country over the bank holiday weekend ignore most of the governments lockdown recommendations by heading out to visit all the tourist hotspots, we decided that we would escape from lockdown for the day ourselves.

Usually when we have an opportunity to go out for the day with the kids we head to our favourite place on the north coast, Ballintoy Harbour. Over the weekend though, we seen lots of posts on social media about how busy that part of the country was and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle or potential risk. We thought that it would be likely that the silent valley area would have much fewer people around and made our way there instead.

As we drove around the silent valley, we did see quite a few people parked up at Spelga Dam but we were able to avoid them and find a quieter spot a little further away from the main entrance. On the way we spotted some highland cattle and an impressive looking bull who was keeping a close eye to his cows from his vantage point on the hill, so we stopped for a quick photograph of that and a beautiful little farmers cottage nestled in the mountains. As we were just out for a drive and to blow away some cobwebs, we only brought along the one camera and our mid-range zoom as we weren’t really expecting to take many photographs. Off course every time we do this, we see lots of opportunities for photos and curse having left equipment at home and that off course was the case here too.

Day 60: Wednesday the 27th of May 2020
Subject: Deer

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6–f/6.3 G O.S.S
Camera Settings: ISO Various, Shutter speed Various, Aperture Various

On the way home from our day out the other day we spotted some deer basking in the sun. As we didn’t have a lens long enough to get anywhere near them, we decided to go back yesterday and grab a few photos.

When we arrived unfortunately there was no sign of them, so we eventually gave up and went to pick up a few essentials from the local shop. We obviously just needed to be more patient as on the way back home as we passed where we had seen them previously, we spotted a couple of them just coming over the hill. Within a few minutes quite a few of them appeared including a couple of very young stags.

We would have loved to have gotten a bit closer, and we had to shoot these through a wire fence but some photos are better than none so we just had to make do. It was only after viewing them through the camera that we realised that all of them are young fawns and that there was no mature deer at all. Once lockdown restrictions are eased a bit further and the park these guys call home re-opens, we would love to go back and photograph them again.

Day 61: Thursday the 28th of May 2020
Subject: Hilden Mill

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/200, Aperture f/8

Hilden Mill was built in 1823 by Barbour Threads and it eventually put Lisburn on the map as it went on to become the largest linen mill in the world and at one point employed over 2000 people. Because of its large work force the company went on to build over 350 houses, two schools, a community hall and a children’s playground to facilitate its workers. The mill eventually closed its doors in 2006 and quickly fell to wreck and ruin.

Not so long ago it was easy to still get access to Hilden Mill and there are still plenty of photographs online of its decaying interior shot by urbex photographers. The Mill at this point though is very unsafe and since the installation of security fencing all around the site it is no longer possible to legally gain entry. As we could only photograph a small section of the Mill, we purposely chose a spot that emphasised its current decayed state and used our wide-angle lens.

Day 62: Friday the 29th of May 2020
Subject: Self Portrait

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/400, Aperture f/2

We were recently contacted by a journalist from the Belfast Telegraph who is writing a story on the impact that the pandemic has had on wedding vendors, we are not sure yet when or even if the article will be published. They asked us to send them a photograph of us to use with the article but we couldn’t find anything taken recently, we spend our time behind the camera not in front of it. They suggested just taking a selfie and sending them it, but of course we weren’t just going to do that.

Long before selfies became the norm, photographers have been taking self portraits with the earliest known photo taken way back in 1839. A self portrait should be pretty simple, although we ran into a couple of issues. The easiest way to take a self portrait is to use a tripod and either a remote shutter release or by using the cameras built in timed shutter release. We have a tripod but have no idea where our remote shutter release has disappeared too. As with most camera manufacturers Sony have an app that can be used with their newest cameras. The app is called Imaging Edge Mobile, while we knew it was available, we have never actually used it for anything. The app mirrors the camera viewfinder, allowing you to see what the camera see’s on your phone, adjust camera settings and to remotely press the shutter button.

We set up our tripod and the app and got ready to take our self-portrait, it was only then that we realised that there was no option in the app to choose a focus point. After a quick look on Google this is apparently a feature that Sony removed a while back, which makes no sense at all. To get around this I had to focus the camera on Laurene, switch to manual focus so that the focus point didn’t change and then jump back into the shot myself. We had a couple of failed attempts but got there in the end. To make it a little easier we stepped the lens down to f/2 for a little extra bit of depth of field. In hindsight just because of the hassle factor, we probably should have just taken a selfie on one our phones.

Day 63: Saturday the 30th of May 2020
Subject: Water

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/8

Just this morning we were talking about an article in one of the local papers that said because of the amazing weather, the lack of rain fall we have had recently and that as a country we are using 15% more water than normal due to the lockdown, that N.I water is considering a hose pipe ban. It must be due to all those kids paddling pools and cheap hot tubs everyone snapped up from Amazon at the start of the pandemic.

Then 5 minutes later as we were driving, we spotted these sprinklers gushing out water. While a restriction on water wouldn’t affect businesses, we wondered how much water is wasted by commercial users. There was enough extra water coming of these sprinklers to soak our car when we pulled over, not to mention us as we tried to grab this photograph.

We only had our mid-range Tamron zoom lens with us which did an okay job, but in an ideal world we probably would have liked something wider as that would have allowed us to get closer to the subject and helped us capture an even more dramatic sky.

Day 64: Sunday the 31st of May 2020
Subject: The beach

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 85mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/2500, Aperture f/2.8

We haven’t been to a beach since late last summer so our kids were excited to go as you can probably tell from Abbie’s excited somersault here. The easing in the lockdown restrictions is very evident now and if you are just out driving around, other than the social distance queues outside shops and a few people wearing face masks, at first glance most things look almost normal.

With the recent amazing weather, the government now re-opening a lot of car parks at local beauty spots and with so many people still being unable to work because of the pandemic, everyone has been taking advantage of their new found freedom and the new advice around being able to meet in an outdoor setting with another household in groups of 6 . We have been trying to stay cautious as it seems there is mixed advice being given, it’s a tricky balance between wanting some more freedom and normality, whilst still staying safe.

Instead of visiting more popular beaches on the north coast or Murlough, Ballyholme etc. We went to the beach beside Orange Tree House, a local wedding venue we know well, because we knew it would be very likely there would be a lot less people. While there were hundreds of people at the more popular places, we pretty much had this beach to ourselves.

Our Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens is one of the fastest focusing lenses we own so using that along with using a fast shutter speed and a camera with superb autofocus performance like our Sony A9 makes taking action photos like this ridiculously easy. We could have gotten the same shot easily enough with the old Nikon system we used before switching to Sony, but it would have involved a bit more trial and error and probably a few attempts. This set up nailed it first time.

Day 65: Monday the 1st of June 2020
Subject: Inch Abbey

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/320, Aperture f/8

The ruins at Inch Abbey in Downpatrick date all the way back to 1180 and were founded by John De Courcy in an effort to atone for the original Abbey which he destroyed when he invaded Ireland in 1176. This is a well-documented historical site, it is known to have been raided by the Vikings as far back as 1002. More recently Inch Abbey was used as a location in the first two seasons of Game of Thrones. A lot of people believe that the Abbey is haunted and there are all sorts of stories going back years about it locally.

No sign of anything odd when we visited, although we wouldn’t like to be there alone at night time. We purposely chose Inch Abbey as we thought that there wouldn’t be many people around but it started getting busy not long after we arrived so we didn’t stay long. We used our wide-angle lens to fit in as much of the scene as possible. We had to be a little patient and wait to find an opportunity were other visitors wouldn’t be in the shot.

Day 66: Tuesday the 2nd of June 2020
Subject: Birthday during lockdown

Equipment used: Sony A9, Samyang 45mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/160, Aperture f/1.8

Yesterday was Abbie’s 10th birthday. Her original plans would have probably included a trip to the cinema with her friends or something along those lines. It’s on days like today that it really hits home that things aren’t normal yet at all. While she was still able to chat with her friends over facetime, of course that isn’t the same.

A birthday for any 10-year-old should mean fun and excitement but a lockdown birthday makes that a little more difficult, but we made the best of it. At least the recent relaxation by the government allowing us to meet in groups of up to 6 people outdoors meant that her grandmother was able to join us for a barbecue in our back garden on what was a beautiful sunny day.

Day 67: Wednesday the 3rd of June 2020
Subject: Titanic Belfast

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/800, Aperture f/5.6

Love it or hate it the Titanic building in Belfast due to it’s interesting design is a very popular tourist attraction. We have photographed this building many times and from all sorts of angles and it’s rare to get an opportunity like this to photograph it from the front without lots of people around.

While it was nice to be able to get a photograph of the front of the building using a wide lens, we actually preferred some of the photos we have taken of it previously from further away. Probably the best two positions to photograph this building from is the docks on the other side or from the motorway bridge just before you reach the Odyssey arena using a long lens.

Day 68: Thursday the 4th of June 2020
Subject: Very slow fast food

Equipment used: Sony A9, Samyang 45mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/2

We aren’t big fans of McDonalds food, although in saying that we have yet to meet a wedding photographer that doesn’t nip to McDonalds for breakfast before heading off to photograph a wedding.

Our kids on the other hand absolutely love it, and have been patiently waiting for them to re-open for some time. After nagging us about it all day yesterday we eventually gave in and decided to brave the massive queues. It wasn’t just as bad as we thought it might be and about an hour or so later, we were safely home and fully stocked up with all the kid’s favourites. If nothing else it was a nice slice of normality for them.

Day 69: Friday the 5th of June 2020
Subject: Home schooling

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4
Camera Settings: ISO 100, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.4

Working from home is now the new normal for a lot of people, especially for kids of school age. While some kids in England are now back at school, based on what has been reported in the press here our kids won’t be back in school until the new school year starts in September at the earliest.

This has been especially difficult for our youngest daughter Abbie who has mountains of school work to complete every day in preparation for sitting her A.Q.E exam. Although we have registered her for the exam, there are quite a few rumours going around saying that the exam may not happen at all. We are not really sure how to feel about that, we are worried that working from home has not been the best preparation for the test.

Under normal circumstances the results from her exam would help determine which secondary school she will go too and if they don’t use the entrance exam to determine that, we are not sure what sort of criteria would be used and she may miss out on getting to go to the school she has her heart set on.

We have taken a lot of photographs just like this one since the lockdown was introduced, we think that later on down the line, these will be the one’s that are most important to us. We probably should have used our 24mm lens or something else a little wider for this but we just grabbed the first camera that was to hand. We used the lens wide open at f/1.4 to limit depth of field and blur the distracting background.

Day 70: Saturday the 6th of June 2020
Subject: Rain

Equipment used: Sony A9, Sony 35mm f/1.8
Camera Settings: ISO 50, Shutter speed 1/400, Aperture f/1.8

With the amazing weather we have had over the last few months, it is just typical that as the lockdown restrictions start to open up that the weather has decided take a turn for the worse. Hopefully this isn’t a sign that we will be in for poor weather again this summer like last year, as with the vast majority of our weddings for this year having already been cancelled, we are going to have a lot of free time on our hands.

This is the view from our living room window, we used our 35mm Sony lens for the photograph as it ridiculously sharp and can focus quite close. Using a large aperture of f/1.8 allowed us to highlight the raindrops on the window.

Day 71: Sunday the 7th of June 2020
Subject: Rainy day at home

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony 24mm f/1.4 GM
Camera Settings: ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/125, Aperture f/1.4

With the weather being poor there was no chance of heading out anywhere yesterday, so the kids have been playing their games consoles. This is Megan, celebrating a Victory Royale (whatever that is) in Fortnite.

For this photograph we used our 24mm lens wide open at f/1.4. Some lenses can struggle when a subject is backlit and you can sometimes get auto focus problems and severe chromatic aberration, but this lens has no issues coping with that at all.

Day 72: Monday the 8th of June 2020
Subject: The North Coast

Equipment used: Sony A7III, Sony A9, Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
Camera Settings: Various

Yesterday morning we went for a drive around the north coast. This is our favourite local place to visit but we haven’t been in quite some time due to the lockdown restrictions. Our first stop was at the Dark Hedges. We have been coming here to take photographs for around 14 years or so, long before it became a famous tourist attraction due to being used in the Transformers movie and Game of Thrones.

When we first starting visiting here, there was very rarely any other people around, and it was easy to take photographs without too many interruptions, although it’s always been a popular location for photographers. In recent years it has become a lot more difficult to find the road empty because of its popularity and for that reason we often drive past without stopping, rather than get caught up in the crowds. Because of the current situation though, we pretty much had the place to ourselves yesterday, so it was a good opportunity to grab a few quick photographs without having to photoshop out multiple people or having to wait for the tourist coaches to leave. We noticed that many of the trees and their intertwining branches have been lost in recent years and because of that it has definitely lost a lot of the eerie atmosphere it used to have.

When we first started visiting here, we would have usually used a wide-angle lens but with so many of the tree’s and branches gone now that doesn’t work as well here anymore. For this photograph we used our 135mm lens as the longer focal lengths compression helps create an optical illusion, making the trees and branches look a lot closer together than they actually are and much more like their old selves.

After leaving the Dark Hedges, we made our way further down the coast to Ballintoy Harbour. We love it here, it has to be the most relaxing place to spend a few hours in Northern Ireland. While it’s a beautiful place, the best part of spending time here is just taking time out to watch mother nature wreak havoc on the coastline with the waves constantly crashing against the rocks. We chose a bad time to visit from a photography point of view, as while we were there early, the nice early morning light was long gone and it was quite overcast and cloudy, although it brightened up a little bit and we had some nice blue skies before we left for home.

The End

We have decided that todays photographs will be the last that we add to this project. When we started this, we never could have imagined that the government lockdown due to the pandemic would last so long or have such a huge impact on everyday life. With restrictions now starting to be eased and with small outdoor weddings now legally being allowed to take place from today we think that it’s as good a day as any for us to bring this project to a close.

We are absolutely delighted with the amazing feedback we have had from doing this and it has absolutely helped keep us sane during a period that has been extremely difficult for us both from a business and personal point of view. We know we are not alone of course and that the last few months have been difficult for everyone involved in the wedding industry and will likely continue to be so for a long time yet.

On the positive side of things though, we know that have been very lucky to stay well so far as have our close family and friends and we are very appreciative of that. Having lost close family members in recent years ourselves for other reasons we know just how devasting losing a love one or dealing with a loved one’s serious illness can be.

We never expected the response we have gotten from doing this.

We were contacted by a journalist who had come across this blog post, who interviewed us around how we have been affected by the current crisis and this was printed in the Belfast Telegraph recently.
Other photographers have shared the project on their own social media platforms. We have also come across our project being mentioned and discussed on both professional and amateur online photography forums.
Since we started the project, this blog post has been viewed by over 57,000 people across the world.
We have had photographers of all sorts of skill levels contact us asking questions about about some of the techniques and tips we have shared during the project.
We have even had couples get in touch with us about photographing their wedding, having seen only seen photographs from this blog post and none of our actual wedding work.

As this project was just about giving us something positive to do during a difficult time, we have done very little ourselves in terms of promoting it, other than posting about it a few times on Facebook and updating our Instagram stories when a new photograph was added. The only reason so many people have read this blog post, is because of all of the people who shared it on social media or sent links to their friends etc. We would like to thank all of you for that, it has given us a much-needed confidence boost at a time when we needed it the most.

While things are still far from normal and we still have a huge amount of free time on our hands with over 95% of our weddings for this year having been cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic. The reduction in lockdown measures does now allows us to leave home more frequently. We plan on continuing with other personal photography projects over the next few months and if we think there is something that would be interesting to others, we might share those on our blog as well.

Adapting to Change: Navigating The Coronavirus Project