Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Travel
In this second episode of my new travel and photography vlog, I spent a few days in London. It was actually two separate short trips, and I took the opportunity to do some street photography on the streets of London, as well as relaxing and enjoying the unseasonably good weather of last week.
I was passing through a very sunny London city twice over the last week. On each occasion, I was only there for a day or so, and so I didn’t have a lot of time for photography, but I still managed to squeeze an hour or two in on both trips. I hadn’t really intended to shoot street photography specifically, but it sort of ended up that way. I was originally planning to do more “travel photography” style shots, and I was also shooting a video for my new travel vlog series, but in the process of trying to avoid the typical shots of London everyone takes, I somehow ended up shooting street photography. I was actually really lucky with some of the shots too.
I’ve been travelling for the past week and a half, and over the course of my trip, I’ve been taking pictures at every opportunity. So far, I’ve been in four countries and four different cities and towns. I’m still not finished, and I’ll be doing some more work before getting home, but I wanted to share a few of the images I’ve taken while travelling.
I’ve started a new series of videos on my Youtube channel, which I’m pretty proud of, covering my travel photography. I’m currently on the road with a few stops across different cities and towns in Europe, so I thought I would cover the trip with a series of Vlog style videos. The first is set in the beautiful city of Cambridge in the UK.
A few years ago I was in Oslo, Norway, and I took lots of photos when I was there. There was one set of images that I really liked from that trip, but I never really used them. Recently when looking back over some old photographs, I realised that this particular sequence of shots would make a good photo essay, so I set about preparing them, and I decided to make a video of the process.
In the previous issue of my travel diary, I talked about visiting the German city of Darmstadt on a dull day. I had deliberately gone for an industrial and rigid look to the photos for that piece, to enhance the mood of the dull weather. While this certainly suited the atmosphere, it does perhaps misrepresent the town of Darmstadt. During on the rest of my time there, the sun was out and the feeling couldn’t be more different. It’s actually a lovely city and a very green one.
During my recent stay in the German city of Darmstadt, I was scanning google maps one evening looking for places to go, when I noticed that down the road from where I was staying, there seemed to be a rather large area of forest. This was strange in and of itself, because where we were staying was in an industrial estate, with big modern buildings, but just down the road was a huge forest.
While exploring the German Town of Darmstadt, I came across an impressive sight. I was walking out through the town, when I wandered into a large open square with a very unique looking set of concrete structures and an imposing, but starkly beautiful building down the far end of it. I had read about it previously in the guide books, but it was something else to see it in person. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. It was the Darmstadt State Theatre.
There are articles you see all the time on Photography blogs and websites that go something like: “5 Common Mistakes Photographers Make when…”. YOu’ve all seen them. I hate those pieces, as they always come off as patronising and insulting to other photographers, even though they mean well. So, Instead of telling you all the things that you’re doing wrong, I’m going to tell you the stupid things that I do on a regular basis, so you can avoid my mistakes.
Welcome to the first of a new series on the blog. This will be similar to my Street Photo Diary series, only for travel. I’m going to be travelling a good bit over the next little while, and so I thought I would keep a running diary of sorts of my photographic adventures along he way. At the moment I’m in the German city of Darmstadt, which is just outside of Frankfurt.
Over the last little while I’ve been trying to sort out some of the ever sprawling mess that is my photo library. While sorting through a drive falloff images, I found a lot that I had either forgotten about or wasn’t happy with the way that I had originally processed them. One particular set was from a trip I trip I took to Washington DC a few years ago, and in particular to the beautiful suburb of Georgetown.
Last week I posted some black and white photos from my time in the little town of Heppenheim in the German countryside. I had taken a lot more photographs while I was there and I’ve finally had the time to go through them to my satisfaction. The residents of this sleepy little town clearly lit as you can see a real sense of pride in the way the buildings are adorned with flowers and decorations. Photos were taken with a Fuji X-Pro 2 and Nikon D700
Last week I was travelling in Germany and I got to spend some time in the beautiful town of Heppenheim. Heppenheim is a little town about 40 minutes outside of Frankfurt and is filled with some really pretty medieval buildings. I had been there last year too and I had gotten some nice shots, but this time I was trying to do things a little differently, and so I was focussed more on the details. Images were taken with the Fuji X-Pro 2.
Ok, that headline is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s better than some of the others I’ve been thinking about for this post. Basically, I’ve been doing something that’s probably a bit silly from a workflow point of view, but is actually a bit of fun and is producing some interesting results. Basically, I’ve been using VSCO Cam on the iPhone to process some of the images I shot in London on my Nikon D700.
I've been travelling a bit for the last few days and I got to spend some time in London. I've only been in London a few times before and every time I've enjoyed it (well, except tat one time I wasn't well) . This time we decided to stay on the south bank and we had a lovely time. The weather was very mild, and it only rained once. It has been very warm for this time of year, ranging between 12-14 degrees Celsius. We only had a few days, but we managed to pack in as much as possible, including an incredible tour of the BBC and a trip to the top of the Shard. Of course, I took as many photos as possible!
I’ve started a little experiment that I wanted to share with you. I’m working on some tutorials on how to photoblog, and as part of my research I’ve been trying out various platforms. One service that was missing from my repertoire was a wordpress.com blog. Unlike a self hosted Wordpress installation, a wordpress.com blog is fully hosted, and is kind of more like Tumblr. I was curious to see how the platform worked, and how it differed from a self hosted Wordpress install, so I set up a blog to test it out. The blog in question is called Photo Wander
After my trip to Berlin last week, my wife and I travelled by train to Frankfurt and then on to the picturesque town of Heppenheim. This sleepy little hamlet is nestled in the hills of southern Germany among vineyards and forests and is a beautiful setting with gorgeous old medieval buildings and according to Wikipedia, the town has 408 cultural monuments that are under monumental protection.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to Berlin for a few days as part of a trip to Germany. Berlin is a city that I've always wanted to visit, as it has a reputation for attracting both artists and funky technology startups. I had also heard that it has a somewhat bohemian vibe to it. I was not disappointed. While I wasn't there specifically to photograph, I couldn't not shoot really. I wasn't able to see as much of the city as I would like to, but what I did see was great.
