I live in the Heart of England, and most of my photographs are taken in the West Midlands area. I bought my first SLR camera, a Pentax ME-Super, in 1982; after a few years I traded up to a Minolta, and used that until my first engagement with the digital photography revolution in 2006. Back in my Pentax days I had mainly worked in what would now be called Aperture Priority mode, but with a pretty good understanding of the exposure triangle – but over the years I’d become lazy and had relaxed into auto shooting, to the point at which I could barely remember the difference between an f-stop and an ISO number.
In 2014 I decided it was time to sort myself out, and I took Nick Kelsh’s on line course Going Manual to re-learn the basics of manual shooting. At the same time I challenged myself to do a 365 – taking at least one photo on manual settings every day for a year. I decided to post the 365 on line, and chose to sign up to the Blipfoto site, where I soon engaged with a community of enthusiastic photographers and bloggers. My own daily post, which had initially been just a photo with perhaps a line of explanation, rapidly evolved into a blogging habit – and by the time the 365 ended in May 2015 I was hooked. The blog posts on this site are essentially a mirror of my Blipfoto journal, though sometimes edited to make them more general.
In February 2018 I was delighted to be made a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society, after submitting this panel.
In January 2021 I received the Credit of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain, after submitting these ten images
At the end of 2022 I took the plunge and traded in most of my heavy DSLR gear for mirrorless equivalents, which are a joy to use and have reignited my love of wildlife photography. The Canon R5 is a startlingly good camera, coupled either with the Canon RF 100-500 f4.5-7.1 L zoom or the Canon 100mm f2.8 L macro lens. Even the Canon RF 50mm f1.8 – the “nifty fifty” – can produce credible close-up images of tiny subjects, due to the cropping potential of the R5’s massive sensor. I’ve also now bought a Canon R7, using it mainly for macro work. It’s an impressive little camera, though I don’t find it as intuitive and easy to use as the R5. I shoot raw, and mostly process my images in Lightroom, though I also use Photoshop and the Topaz Labs suite of plug-ins.
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For more information, or permission to use any of my images, please email enquiries@jillorme.org.uk.