Category Archives: murphyz
Smoking Gun
The HMS Liverpool was recently docked in the Canary Wharf area for a day and were kind enough to let the general public aboard to take a look around the top deck and check out a few missiles and such. I popped along with John who has a boat fetish and seems to know the ins and outs of them, which comes in handy if I have any questions as I can just point to something he’ll be able to indicate what it’s for. I’ve no idea if he speaks the truth of course, but if there’s one thing I like better than learning stuff about boats it’s sure to be learning lies about boats.
Towards the back of this battle ship someone had parked a helicopter, though with it’s tail hanging over the edge of the ship I’m not too sure if it was really meant to be where it was. It did have a nice big gun on it though, and so I popped up onto the seat to place myself behind it and get this shot with my hoodie character.
It Looks Like We Made It
Here we are. It’s been a year now and I have uploaded a new blog post every weekday without fail, and a few on the weekends too. Come public holidays, vacations, illness or a hangover the posts have been going up daily and I’ve managed to maintain a level of passion for this wonderful hobby that I feared may not last, and which has no signs of slowing down.
Whether it’s happy birthday or happy anniversary I don’t know, but I’m thankful for everyone who has stuck with me along the way and given me the motivation to continue to post my images and work hard to try and get unique shots. This one’s for you, and for the year ahead.
To celebrate this occasion it was suggested by @foolhandy and @andthesewalls that I post my top ten images and have you lovely readers vote on which of them is your personal favorite. Finding 10 is a tough task, and my recent New Year run down was only made easier because I had to choose one from each month of the year, which is not the case here.
So below you will find 10 images which I either class as my favourite or which mean something to me for one reason or the other, and I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to look through them and then vote for your personal favourite using the polls – I’ve placed the poll before and after the images for convenience, but you can only vote once I’ve removed the bottom poll as it doesn’t appear to work too well. Thanks again for all of your support, and have a great weekend.
1. Inferno (Dante) – One of my earliest and most successful attempts at spinning wire wool.
2. Staircase – My favourite black and white shot.
3. The Day The Music Died – An image which turned out far better than I had conceived when composing the shot.
4. Cell 3 – The one shot I wanted from this urbex location, and I was pleased with it when I got it.
5. London’s Burning – Revisiting this popular spot after learning a lot more about HDR made it clear to me how I had improved.
6. St Paul’s – World AIDS Day – This shot won me 1st place in the competition held by St Paul’s Cathedral.
7. Double Tap – One of the rare shots that turn out exactly as I had conceived when setting it up.
8. Alone – This location in the far north of Scotland was awesome, and had me running barefoot through the sea to get several shots.
9. The Bridge to St Paul’s – One of the first images where I appreciated how much other people enjoy my work.
10. Shard Sunrise – My favourite view from my favourite location during a great sunrise.
Self
Friday at last, and what a long week this has been!
Here’s a quick shot of myself, or the hoodie character if you prefer, as I’m descending in a 1930′s lift. Looking at the shot through the eyes of tonemapping, tonal contrast and a few other filters it also appears to have not been cleaned since 1930.
I hope everyone has a great weekend lined up; mine will be pretty chilled – hopefully a bit of photography will be thrown in there. See you on Monday.
2011 Roundup
I’m not one for New Year resolutions. I have tried them in the past and never stuck with them…and as far as I’m concerned I have a long list of things I want to do, and places I want to be and when the real motivation is there for me to do them, they’ll get done.
I do, however, have a list of things that I want to aim towards in order to take a further step with my photography, and it’s a list I’ve had for a while now but haven’t really done much with. A few are hopefully going to progress in the following year, but I’m not going to hold myself to them and if they don’t happen then so be it, I will not beat myself up about it.
So, here’s a quick look at a few things I wish to do in the near future, a few words to those who read this blog, and also a look back at some of my favourite shots over the past year.
The list:
New camera. I wish to take the leap into full frame and will hopefully do that very shortly. I’m awaiting the outcome of something else to see if I have the available funds, and then I’ll likely jump right in there and buy the Canon 5d Mark II. My only real stumbling block is whether or not to hold off for the announcement of the 5d Mark III which will likely be in the around the end of Q1/start of Q2 of 2012. Knowing me, though, I’ll just buy the Mark II and consider an upgrade if it’s worth it and if the price is right when the next model is released.
Sharing. I wish to share a little more about my workflow and how I produce a final image and I guess the best way to do so would be via a few videos that look at my processing an image from the camera through to release. I think this would also be an opportunity to get feedback from others on how they work differently to myself, and that would be very beneficial. Along with I’ll like to add a page with software reviews and links to discounts. I’m starting to get more and more people emailing me with questions on how I do something and taking the time to build this resource will save me time in the future, and help more people.
Participate. I’m the first to admit that I fail quite hard on this in comparison to others who tweet, comment and promote other photographers a lot more than I do. I would like to start spreading the love a little more.
Sell something. Photography is pretty consuming, and pretty expensive. I’ve recently been given an opportunity to get some of my work out there and start selling it, and I look forward to delving into this and hopefully making a little cash to pay for all of the hardware and software I use.
That’s it. Nothing too major, but steps towards doing something a little more than I am already and which I feel will be beneficial.
A few words:
I really just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who has dropped by and supported me throughout this year. Whether you leave a comment here or on one of the photo sharing sites, whether you tweet or like my work, whether you email me or link to my posts, it’s all appreciated and doesn’t go unnoticed. I don’t think I would be able to keep up a daily post if it wasn’t for those who appreciate them, so thanks very much for providing me with the motivation to do so, and helping me to try and raise my standards so that what I do post is of quality. I’m looking forward to continuing to share my work with you in 2012, and growing as a photographer.
A few favourites:
I’ve published about 237 shots on this blog since February of this year, and I have a lot of favourites within there, so much so that it is difficult to pick a top 5, 10 or 20. So I don’t bore you with all of the re-runs, here’s a simple way for me to do it. What follows is one image from each month, 11 in total as I started this photoblog back in February. Sure, there are some months that may have a few of my favourite shots, but I think it’s fair to split it this way.
February – Misty Morning
March – The Day The Music Died
April – Stairways & Shadows
May – I Dreamt I Was Batman
June – London’s Burning
July – At Night I Stand Watching
August – Lone Tree
September – Head in the Clouds
October – Shard Sunrise
November – Ascend
December – Birdwatch
A Stool For Toads
This weekend I went to Essex to visit some friends and decided only at the last minute to throw my camera in my bag along with a couple of lenses and the flash – I had no real intention of taking any photos, but then decided it would be better to have and not want, than want and not have.
On the Saturday we went for a walk around a woodland walk, and so I decided to take the camera, just with the BlackRapid strap and 50mm glass. It was a lovely walk enjoyed by both kids and adults, and here’s a toadstool that we found towards the end.
The highlight of the trip was my, unfortunately unfilmed, recreation of ‘Fenton‘ with myself playing the dog and the deer being replaced by a gaggle of geese. Much fun.
Caught in the Act
Stood high up on the corner of a building, watching as the city moves quietly below is a great sensation, and a huge contrast to the regular daytime where you are pushing your way through the hoards of people fighting for space on the streets or public transport.
It’s peaceful up there, alone with your thoughts and the heightened senses that comes with standing in a location where you know in your mind you should be safe, it is just standing still after all – something you do every day, but with the knowledge that if something were to happen it would not end well.
I fainted on the tube once, many years ago. I wasn’t sick, hand’t been drinking the night before, and was just on my way to work. It wasn’t blistering heat or anything like that…for some reason I just fainted. One minute standing up, the next feeling I was in bed and trapped in my duvet, and the next realising I was on the tube. I was sick for three days after that but the doctors didn’t find anything wrong with me.
It’s that thought I come back to often when stood on the edge. I’m confident in my ability to stand, to hold, to climb. I’m not confident that the sudden blackness that I encountered many years ago won’t return for some unknown reason.
On this particular trip, as I stood on a similar outcropping section of an incomplete building, concentrating on standing, willing myself to breathe and with my thoughts on that day that I fainted I was suddenly brought back to reality by a shout of ‘Oi…Police’ and the shining of a torch in my eyes. Not the best place to be stood when someone startles you. Unable to see anything but the torchlight on one side and a 20 storey drop to the other I walked sheepishly towards the light, happy that there wasn’t a bounding police dog to go with that shout, but sad that this particular trip should end so soon after it started.
Seven
First up, a very happy birthday to Steve who has just hit the mid-30s range of the life scale.
Second, we have a rooftop, a multiplicity of the hooded character and a London skyline – what more do you want on a Friday? If the hooded guy has 9 lives it looks like he’s already lost 2 of them somewhere along with way – hopefully this weekend won’t see any more disappearing 
Have a great one everybody.
For Now, We Wait
During my trip to Oford Ness recently I found this empty room that I thought would be ideal to set up one of the multiplicity shots, so here it is.
The usual hooded character throughout, though this time you may note that there is one that is wearing a gas mask. Is he the leader? Does he know something that the others don’t? Or, perhaps he is just afraid to take the plunge and remove the mask for fear of what the faceless world would bring.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is, or if that answer will be coming in the near future.
For now, we wait…
The Vault
Breaking into a vault is a team effort, and here are four of the best at work. Well…one to attempt to turn the handle, one to hold the torch and the other two to sit around bickering and making snide comments about why it’s taking so long.
This shot was taken in the basement of a disused bank. It was pretty dark down there so we used a couple of speedlites to cast a little light on the scene.
Spinning
Last night I went on a quick photowalk with Think James Photo and Dfacer after work. It took us a while to get into our groove as none of us seemed to find anything inspiring to shoot during the first 20 minutes or so of the walk.
Hitting the Thames did the trick, and the usual spots along the Southbank seemed to spark the creative juices a little.
James managed to find an installation of some sort (it’s probably art) in front of St Paul’s Cathedral, one of which was a metal disc which spun around in place. After attempting a few shots of placing my camera on the disk and spinning it during the exposure, failing to capture myself in the shot due to ghosting, I had the rather brilliant idea of actually sitting on the disc myself to capture myself without the movement, and the lights spinning around me.
Voila, the above shot was born.
This is my Church
One of the shots I had in mind when I arrived at this ruinous burnt out church was to have my hoodie character in various poses around the church which I would then combine into one shot. However, back home when it came to the processing I opted to use just the first shot I took with my back to the camera as this just seemed to work a lot better on the big screen, in this case less is certainly more.
I didn’t do too much to this shot in post process, pretty much just applying the Urban Sickness filter in OnOneSoftware’s PhotoTools and a little bit of perspective cropping. Nice and simple, and quick.
Smoke & Shadows
During our Cornwall trip, John and I attempted to get a sunrise and sunset in on a daily basis, but the weather wasn’t always playing along and towards the end of the trip it seemed to have decided that we had had enough sun and it was time for us to get a little wet. After setting up camp and heading through a forest to the nearest village in order to find food we knew that we had made a mistake not taking torches as it was getting dark, and a trip back would be pretty interesting in a Blair Witch kind of way.
On the edge of this woodland area was an old church, pretty much just the ruins left due to an arson attack in the early 90s. I commented it was odd that all churches seemed to be built in graveyards, but we thought it was a great opportunity to have a little fun, especially as the drizzle had dampened out spirits (and quite literally dampened us).
It just so happened that John had a little steel wool for us to play with, and a new acquisition by way of some smoke pellets which we hadn’t quite found suitable place in London to try out yet. After a few failed attempts at using these I figured that long exposures simply weren’t going to work, so we broke out the flash and mounted this nearby – instantly better results.
Each smoke pellets last around 30 seconds to a minute, and I played around with different poses over this time period. Towards the end of one of the stints I decided to do a Platoon move and drop to my knees, hands raised. Unfortunately I landed on one of the used smoke pellets and my left knee, which is getting in a poor state due to the amount of bruising it receives from various UrbEx trips, suddenly developed a haematoma and was sore as hell. Luckily it was only a small one and the blood within quickly subsided.
For the shot above I combined two exposures; the first with my standing normally as you see in the middle of the shot, and the second of my shadow with hands raised…we are in a church afterall.
Head in the Clouds
I often have my head in the clouds, but not so literally as in this image.
I encourage others to do things only with which they are comfortable with. The majority of people I go on an urbex trip with don’t so much like the edges of tall buildings, or the edging out to somewhere a little more precarious. Others would do things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable with, but if they are happy to do it then so be it. If you’re not comfortable doing it, then don’t – it’s that simple. If you know the risks and are confident in yourself and the situation around you then by all means push yourself that little bit further.
I’ve been in far more dangerous spots that you see here, however, as this image is pretty deceptive. I’m sat on top of some window cleaning apparatus here, and sure it may be 30 storeys up, but the apparatus is firmly on the roof and so I would only fall to the rooftop below me – it will be painful and I may break a bone, but it’s not really a fatal drop, and certainly not as high as the image suggests. By cropping out the rooftop that the camera sits on the illusion of my sitting high above London like a crazy fool is complete.
Lounging Around
A bit of Friday fun.
I was walking down the South bank last Sunday after a little photowalk and noticed these large bits of furniture outside the National Theatre. I’ve no idea why they were there or how long for, but I notice they are gone now.
I set up for a shot of them and a couple were sat on the chair at the left cuddling each other (I say ‘cuddling’, a later inspection of my initial photo shows his hand down her top), they didn’t wait too long before making a hasty retreat leaving the whole scene to me.
Though intending just to take a quick shot of me in the oversized seat I quickly decided to turn this into a multiple selfie, shooting images of me in various poses and locations. It was pretty good fun.
Reflection of Self
Another fun shot this Friday, this time a self portrait taken as a reflection in my shades, which are sat on a bench in Kew Gardens.
I’m going away for a week today, setting off on a train this afternoon and heading North. Tomorrow I’ll be going up to Scotland, and then spending a week driving around that beautiful country and, weather permitting, taking plenty of photos.
I’ve scheduled some posts for next week as I doubt I’ll be able to get online, and certainly won’t be in a position to write and update a blog each day – but you have the usual 5 images coming and that will at least pretend like I’m here and online for it. I hope to have a few nice landscape shots to share with you upon my return.
Waiting for a Train
Just a quick post today as I’m super busy and running around London which is extremely hot right not; a suit and this weather is not a good thing – hope everyone had a great weekend.
This shot was taken in an abandoned train depot, and consisted of me running back and forth between the camera and a suitable shot within the 10 seconds it takes for the shutter to release. I really need to get myself a wireless remote that doesn’t break down after one trip out.
I had a lot of fun in the post process and quite like the end result.
No Fly Zone
Photography, HDR and Urbex all go hand in hand for me, and they are all very closely linked with my mind and my actual skill level.
I only started caring about photography when I learnt about HDR, and through HDR I learnt about Urbex after checking out pictures online. My first HDR image was taken on September 11th 2010, so nearly 9 months ago now. My first Urbex trip was on November 6th 2010.
On Monday 8th November I was reflecting on the trip I had taken over the weekend. It was up to a rooftop in London, my first foray into Urbex, and it lasted about an hour as I had someone in a car waiting for me. I checked out other rooftops to do in London and found another one which I then did the next weekend. Hooked, I was looking again the following week and found an amazing one which seemed to be popular at that time. My trip for the coming weekend was going to be to that location, and it was going to be awesome!
Unfortunately I didn’t know that you need to act fast in this game. If you see somewhere that’s open and doable – get out there and do it. Don’t sit back and wait to go, as I found out when on the Wednesday of that week the place was locked up meaning I couldn’t go there.
From then on I’ve hated seeing the images taken from that location as I saw them as a missed opportunity, and I was a little jealous that others had been up there and I had missed my chance.
I checked the place out a few times, keeping an eye out to see if it was open or not, but it never was.
Until recently that is.
The day before I went to San Francisco I was heading out for the evening with a few fellow urbexers. We were going to check out a place currently being built which I have been up a few times and quite like, especially now that rooftop access is available without netting and such in the way, offering clear views. Unfortunately a truck that was parked opposite the entry point showed no signs of moving, so we opted to check out this place once more – spurred on by the fact we had seen images of it surfacing again that week.
To our surprise and delight, we got in. I was finally able to go up to a place that I had been so disappointed by many months before, and I must say it’s probably the best view of London that I’ve ever had.
The shot above is me standing in front of the red safety light which, if I’m not mistaken is used as an indicator to planes that there is a building there. It’s the lowest exposure of 3 brackets, but processing this shot in HDR did nothing for it, and so I opted to just use the one exposure here. It’s pretty much straight out of camera apart from the fact I added a slight bit of brightness to it.
Obviously you can’t appreciate how high I am looking at this image, but I’m around 32 storeys high, with my head in the clouds. More to follow from this location.
I Dreamt I Was Batman
I was up a few high buildings over the bank holiday weekend, but didn’t seem to take too many shots up there. I seem to be spending more and more time enjoying the locations I visit and less time snapping anything and everything in sight.
For this shot I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve and, apart from donning a cape a mask, managed to get pretty close to it.
I’m not too deluded though. I know I’m not Batman, nor a super hero of any other kind. He is one of my favourites though simply because he’s a ‘superhero’ without having all of the actual superpowers that others possess. Spider-man has his web thing and is quite jumpy, Superman can fly, has super strength and x-ray vision etc.
Batman is just a man with a cape and some really cool tech and a bit of ninja skills. We could all have that if we had the funds and time to invest in it.
Painting a Portrait
I do love the peeling paint that you find in abandoned places, and when I think of the term ‘Beauty in Decay’ it is to this that my mind immediately goes to. Rooftops are still my favourite thing to ‘explore’, but when I find a derelict building and see the walls covered in crackling paint I get pretty excited by it.
In this shot I concentrated on the paint which is one of the columns in this room; as you can see the paint is more breaking up than it is peeling here, I would say due to both the material used for the column and the type of paint itself. I wanted to add an extra point of interest in the background so ran across the room and posed waiting for the 10 second shutter to release.
Cloning Status: Complete
One of the many rooms in the mills featured these large metal things. I can’t get too technical about them…because then I would have to kill you. It’s not because I haven’t a clue what they are…ahem.
I think they are the ends of the grain silos – but that’s a complete guess. I just saw them as these awesome structures that I could stick my head in and which made a really cool echo when you shouted from within.
The above shot was (obviously) several exposures which I then merged into the one shot so that I appeared three times. Nice and simple in this aspect, but if you’re interested in doing something similar I highly recommend checking out Cloned Self Portraits by Viveca Koh for a look at how it’s done properly.
In other news, yesterday I reached 100,000 photo view on my Flickr Account.
Thanks very much for all of my viewers who have followed me, left comments, favourited my images and linked to me to spread my work around; it’s greatly appreciated.
Asylum Seeker
Today’s monotone is of myself in my usual urbex mask as I check out an old asylum.
This was my first visit to this place, but the five people I was with had all been there previously. As such, I quickly lost them all as they went to the various spots that they wanted to shoot and I was left to navigate the place solo – something I like, but with no phone signal or idea as to where I was going I felt that part could have been better planned.
I liked the light coming through the doorways in this corridor, and after taking a few test shots decided that the closest doorway was the best place for me to stand. I originally processed the shot in full colour, and quite liked how that had turned out, but thought it also worked quite well this way and of course it fits into this week’s theme of posts that are all being done in monotone.
Stranger on a Train
This shot was taken using the 50mm prime lens. The distance between where I was stood and the camera was around 4x the length of the metal beams you see at the bottom of the image; rushing from the camera after pressing the button across these girders and into position was pretty difficult in the 10 seconds the camera offered as a countdown – I really need to get a remote shutter release that lasts for longer than one trip out (or practice my balancing skills)!
It’s taken from within a burnt out shell of a train carriage, and a little bit of a shame that I’m not slightly more centered in the door frame…the rushing across the beams before turning and freezing didn’t offer me a great opportunity to do much other than hope for the best 
Speed of Light
Today we have another image from the archives, and also another image from the top navigation banner of this site; I’m working my way through these so that you can see them in all their glory.
This particular image was taken one night sat in the middle of the road on Tower Bridge. I was sat low down just in front of a traffic island, but the cars were coming pretty close and pretty fast so I didn’t want to stay out there for too long, I think I was there for 15-20 minutes in total. Anyone who has tried to shoot light trails will probably know that it can be quite difficult as you need to get two steady streams of traffic on either side and hope that they are interesting enough to leave decent lights.
In this particular image, I have a bus on the left hand side moving away from me over the bridge, and a lorry on the right hand side coming towards me off the bridge. It’s actually two exposures which I have merged into one as I simply did not get one shot off where I had decent trails on both sides!
This image in the banner is used for my Twitter account. You’re welcome to follow @murphyz if you don’t already, though be warned that I’m not the best tweeter and haven’t really got the hang of things such as Follow Friday and I don’t RT and such as much as I should. I do appreciate everyone who takes the time to follow me and #FF and RT me along the way though – you guys are cool and so much better at this stuff than I am.
As this image is all to do with speed and cars, I think it’s pretty apt to mention that the new Formula 1 season is starting in around a week’s time with the Australian Grand Prix. If you’re a fan of this then you’re welcome (and highly encouraged) to head on over to my forum at www.murphyz.com where I run an annual predictions league. It’s a small and friendly bunch who take part, so that means you’ll have more chance to win a prize by taking part with little competition. You’ll need to sign up as a member to take part…but that takes just seconds! I hope to see you there, and good luck for anyone taking part. At some point in the future I’ll explain a little bit more about the forum and my other interests, probably when I publish the ‘about me’ image.
I’ve Been Expecting You
Yesterday I made a final trip to West Park. Though I could return at some point and take a few further detail shots, or perhaps a few more such as this where I’m posing in some way, I feel it would be less enjoyable with each further visit. The construction crew are quickly working their way through the place, and were pretty angry at our being there yesterday leading to a blood pumping chase and a mini game of hide and seek. Oddly one of them ran into the building after me, shouting and cursing, and followed me into the room with the grand piano, but even though he was within 3 or 4 meters of me I managed – somehow – to avoid being seen and dived into a nearby toilet to wait out for a while.
All good fun, but the rest of the place is going to be like that soon and it makes going there for specific shots that little bit more difficult.
The above was just an impromptu shot where we had been about to leave one of the wings and the chair was simply sitting in this unexciting room really inviting someone to sit down and have their photo taken – and so I obliged. The chair was a lot softer than it looks and I seemed to melt into the back cushioning, hence the terrible posture (not that my posture is great at the best of times).
Though the mask I was wearing is actually blue in colour I thought it looked a little better in this instance to drain the colour a little bit, and I think that along with the general blur throughout the rest of the scene worked out quite well.
In other news, this post means that I have posted one image per day on my new blog for 1 month now, and this includes Saturdays and Sundays. It hasn’t been easy to always fit in processing around work, a social life and having time to actually get out there and shoot things – and I’ve only ever had 2 posts scheduled in advance at a time to provide that room – and these are generally scheduled for the weekends when I know I won’t be at my PC too much.
I really admire how you lot do manage to maintain one post per day on your own blogs, especially if you don’t do this for a living. It takes a lot of drive to do this and I’m sure your readers appreciate the consistency. I also have to admire, and thank, all of those people who take the time to comment and retweet not only my work but those of others. It amazes me how you find the time to and the energy to keep up such a routine on a daily basis – I know I look at more images from others than I comment on, and retweet less than the average photoblogger might, but I appreciate it every time I see someone come here or promote an image of mine, so thank you.
murphyz Photography
I have a regular post scheduled, but I may be moving them to a different time slot for publication so this next one, at least, will be published tomorrow at around 2pm GMT.
In the mean time, I recently ordered a set of ‘Mini cards’ from moo.com and am pretty darn pleased with them.
For less than £20 I had delivered 100 cards, with various of my own photos as the images and my logo and text of choice on the return side, along with a handy little container which carries 12 cards so it’s a great way to carry a few cards with you at all times. They’re excellent quality so I would certainly recommend moo.com if you’re looking for similar.
I have no desire to do this for an actual job, so I did of course question my use for these cards. However, as I shoot more and more I end up taking about it on a regular basis and it’s easier to simply hand someone a pile of cards so they can see a sample of my work and have a handy little card to keep which reminds them where to go later on in the day. It’s certainly quicker and easier than pulling out the iPhone/iPad just to show someone a few images.
I think the main reason I got them, however, was for the times when I’m out on a shoot and someone asks me to take a photo for them. I’m a nice guy. I don’t mind chatting to people about what I’m doing for a few minutes and really don’t mind taking a shot of someone or something on request. I’ve had people receive these greatly in the past; one family were happy I snapped a member of their clan running the London Marathon, a drunk guy gave me cash to take his photo, and so on.
However, there have been other times when I’ve taken photos on request and taken the time to process them and send them off to those who requested them and then simply had nothing in return. I think it’s quite rude to pester a photographer at a zoo, ask them to take a photo of a baby gorilla for them and send it via email only to then not even send a quick thank you in return.
So, from now on if someone requests a photo I will still happily take it, but then they will receive one of my cards. If they email me explaining that we met and that they would still like for me to send them the image then I’m happy to do so and even if they don’t respond to that they will have at least have had to make the initial effort to reach out to me and email anyway.
Plus…when they see how bad my actual shot of them on the spur of the moment was, they will come to my site and see that I can actually take a reasonable photo, so it must in fact be their fault this particular one turned out underexposed and with what looks like a tree coming out of their head due to poor composition…
