Captured #10: November 2024

A lot of photographers complain about the winter months in the UK. Grey skies, flat light. I actually quite like it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take summer every time, but it’s not always grey and when the sun does come out, it’s so low in the sky (especially in Edinburgh) that you get this wonderful long light for most of the day. It’s like a never ending golden hour, and what’s not to like about that?

Even when the days are grey there are things you can do. Shoot in black and white. Dust off the film camera and shoot a roll of T-Max 400. Or ignore the day and do some night shooting. Night basically starts at 4pm right now which is great because you can avoid wandering those shady late night streets. For even more fun, get a pro mist filter (1/4 for wild haze, or a 1/8 to be more subtle). Sure it’s cold and you’d probably rather be wrapped up on the sofa watching The Holiday with a mug of mulled wine and a tub of Quality Street, but it’s worth suffering for your art for an hour or two now and again. Besides, that mulled wine is going to taste so much sweeter after wandering around in the freezing cold.

Snow ❄️

Speaking of freezing cold, Storm Bert showed up this month and brought with him a fresh dollop of snow. Despite being 56 degrees north, Edinburgh is at sea level so it’s not that common to see heavy snow. Up in the Highlands it will be blanketed, but not in the city, so I kept and eye on the forecast and made sure I was ready when it hit.

The snow came down heavily for a couple of hours in the early morning. I had a great time but I got absolutely drenched, as did the X-T5 with 23mm f2 but it survived admirably. The only issue I had was snow and water getting on the eye sensor which prevented the rear screen from working – not a massive issue given I can’t really use the screen by itself without reading glasses on these days!

Given how much we suffer in Scotland with cold weather, it would be great if we got more snow. I want more practice with exposure and capturing snow trails. I tried to do this, taking the shutter down to 1/30 and it kinda worked, but I had a relatively wide lens on. I think with a longer lens the effect would be better.

Here are some of my favourite photos from that morning.

Blue skies ahead

I’ve written about social media before on this newsletter. A lot of photographers have a love/hate relationship with it and I’m no exception. I want to get my work in front of people, and – YouTube aside – social media is probably the best way to attract an audience. This isn’t about likes and comments (try and ignore that obsession) but if you’re on a photography journey, having a following and some decent exposure can lead to opportunities. That’s the theory at least. I’ll probably write a bit more about this in the future as I have some thoughts.

For a long time Instagram has been the go-to place for photographers, but in recent years photographers have been moaning about it, and rightly so. Social media companies exist to “maximise audience engagement”, which is thoroughly depressing but that’s where we are. Photographs are simply not very addictive, but video really is. Instagram faces serious competition with TikTok and Snapchat, and they’re all in a depressing attention war to capture more and more hours of this pointless “engagement”, and sequence it all with ads. This means the algorithms are hard-wired to promote an infinite scrolling of short form video, not boring old stills, so your photographs are being downgraded. They’ll rarely show up in most people’s feeds.

The same is probably the case with X, but that place is a cess pit which you’re probably best to avoid. Thankfully, we now have Bluesky. I’ll spare you the backstory but essentially it’s a Twitter clone with lots of benefits over the billionaire-owned incumbent platforms. One big benefit is the lack of an aggressive algorithm. By default you’re shown a chronological feed of posts from people you follow, kinda like it used to be on heydey Twitter, and lo and behold, people are much more likely now to see your posts! I have a fraction of the number of followers on my Bluesky account compared to Instagram right now, but the engagement is far better on Bluesky. I can actually see a time when Instagram becomes almost irrelevant to photographers. The influencers will stay on there for a while yet, but the sands will shift and it only takes a few really popular people to move over to make a big difference. The brands haven’t appeared on Bluesky yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I’ll maybe see you on there, please say hi!

Be sure to check out the starter pack I created of UK street photographers. It’s not very comprehensive yet, but I’ll keep adding to it as I find new people on there.

A Few More Photos from November

Here are a few more photos I took this month. Some on film, some on digital. You can probably tell which 😊

Check out my eBook!

I’ll be trying to flog my book for a while yet, so apologies in advance for the constant hard sell. I’m really pleased with it though, and I reckon it’s worth a few quid. As a thank you for being a subscriber to this newsletter, you can buy it for a mere £5 using the code CAPTURED-24 at checkout. That’s £1.15 less than a pumpkin spice latte, and you’ll save yourself 266 calories in the process.

If you do buy it, please let me know what you think.

Reading Matter

Photography things I’ve come across this month that you may want to read.

Other reading matter:

• Black and White Photography Magazine. I’m not sure how this passed me by but it’s a really good magazine. I bought the digital version, for which you have to use the Pocketmags app to read (kind of annoying), but there’s a hard copy too.

• Issue III of the Raw Society magazine is available for pre-order. This is a huge (264 pages) edition of the diverse photography magazine. It’s basically a book. Priced accordingly.

• ‘It changed 20th-century art’: revisiting Robert Frank’s The Americans – in pictures. An iconic Robert Frank book is being re-released. I should probably buy this.

• The Neighborhoods is an email newsletter by Rob Stephenson. “Photographing and uncovering the stories of New York City, one neighborhood per week across all five boroughs.” Wonderful. I want to go back to NYC so much. 2025?

• I thought writing a newsletter once a month was hard work but Andy Adams writes articles for his FlakPhoto newsletter more than once a week. Respect 🤝

• I wrote a blog post about refurbishing my old film camera. I love my FX-D.

Technologicalities

• Postpic. Yet another Instagram alternative. It’s getting silly now.
• Arsenal 2. Phones have way better tech inside them than cameras do, but camera sensors and lenses are the indisputable image quality champs. So what if you could combine them both? Now you can!

Viewing Gallery

What’s on the box and on the ‘gram?

• Daniel Sackheim is a TV and film director and producer (The Walking Dead, The Americans, Ozark). His photography work is amazing, I love it. Check out his Instagram.
• This Walkie Talkie episode with Perry Hall is fascinating to watch. He takes up-close candid photos of strangers (with a flash!), but uses his warmth to make the interactions feel almost normal. It’s a masterclass, except for the police scene 🙈
• Those travelling photography YouTubers have popped up in south east Asia. I now want to go to Vietnam even more than I already did, which was a lot 🇻🇳
• The Leica 43 reviews are coming in thick and fast. There seem to be a bunch of tradeoffs with it, not including the eye-watering price, but I still really want one. Should I?
• Big fan of Illkoncept and his Street photography with 90mm lens video was a good watch. I rarely use my Fujifilm 50mm f2 (an 85mm equivalent) – I should try it more.

Listening Party

So much excellent new music dropping right now I’m in audio heaven. Bring the noise 🎧

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That’s it! I’m not sure I’ll get around to writing a December issue so if not I’d like to wish you a wonderful festive season! ☃️