March last year I started shooting a contract for Travel Company mainly around Devon and the South West capturing Holiday Cottages and other accommodation.
After a short break due to further lockdowns and waiting for the weather to turn things finally continued in 2021 with a large bang.
Last week I found myself on a small shoot close to my boyhood home town of Burnham On Sea.
After the shoot a gut reaction inspired me to take a detour on the way home to visit and walk along the seafront for an hour.
One of my favourite spots for creative travel photography that I captured in Greece in 2018.
It was while searching through my archive last week I came across some location photography film scans of almost the exact same area I shot 15 years ago which I had forgotten about.
Later this year I’m heading back there once again this time to shoot some motion work.
White Washed Building Against Dawn Sky Rhodes Greece
As a keen Scooterist from way back in the 80’s Im always on the lookout during my travels for old Italian Vespas and Lambretta’s.
In Greece you can still come across older Vespa workhorses still being used but it stands to reason they are becoming less frequent these days.
There does seem however a large amount of Honda Cub mopeds still on the road which is no surprise when you discover over 100 million have come off the production line so far and still going.
And my point is?… well I don’t have one except to introduce a couple of images with them in and inform you why you see the bloody things everywhere you go!
I started out like many photographers of a certain age shooting, developing and printing Black & White Images.
Even though I can fully appreciate the beauty of monochrome my real passion has always been for colour work inspired by many
of my favourite 80’s advertising location photographer heroes like John Claridge, Duncan Sim and Peter Lavery (google em kids).
So this is a rare occasion when I decided the subject worked far better in B&W.
Lilianna The Palace Of The Grand Masters Rhodes.
This is an image I applied some creative post-production upon and is created from several photographs.
It was also an image I thought would work with some creative video production applied and created using 2.4D motion as a Parallax image.
Keep an eye out for some subtle motion work.
I’d been told about this spot and the windmills many times while visiting my holiday home in Turkey.
Eventually, during one trip, I decided it was time that I grabbed my gear and checked this local landmark out and combine a little travel and landscape photography
It was a beautiful hot evening and the light was just starting to dip behind the mountains and I was keen to add the image to my travel photography portfolio.
I have to be honest after all the hype I was a little disappointed with the location when I arrived.
There were several windmills on the edge of the hillside and due to the shape of the hill I had to be closer to the windmills than I would have preferred.
This meant that the beautiful mountains and bay below were extremely obstructed by some of the windmills and the contour of the hillside.
At around this time, I was producing lots of video tutorials for a training site I owned.
I decided I would take the opportunity to use some clever photographic and post-production techniques to create a more pleasing view and also create a video of how I achieved this for the sites members.
After some careful thought, I decided that if I moved the sea and mountains up higher into the scene and did some clean up ( remove a ropy looking windmill )this would produce a panoramic scene I knew would look stunning in the evening light.
So not an image that the purists would enjoy but one that satisfied my experience of the place even if I had to move mountains to achieve it!
