The Film Era

For my first trip to East Malaysia I decided that the sights on offer warranted more than a compact camera, so I borrowed a Canon EOS 500. In addition to the 28-80mm kit lens I bought a Canon 80-200mm lens for the wildlife shots.

On that trip I taught myself the basics of SLR photography and got so into it that I bought my own SLR later that year, the Canon EOS 300. Before my East Africa trip I decided that I need more reach for the wildlife shots so I sold my 80-200 lens and got a 75-300mm Canon lens. I was very impressed with this lens and thought it was ideal for the safari. It wasn't until several years later when I realised its limitations.

I stuck with this kit for my round the world trip, but in 2003 I decided I wanted to upgrade to a better and more solid body. The Canon EOS 30E was an excellent replacement, though I decided to stick with the consumer grade lenses as I was quite happy with the results. My first trip with this camera was the USA National Parks loop in the summer.


The Digital Era

I never really thought about switching to digital for two reasons. The price was still quite high and I thought that you could never match the quality of prints you get with analogue film.

Then in February 2006 we were burgled and my gear was stolen. A blessing in disguise as far as my photography was concerned. I bought the Canon EOS 350D and I've never looked back since. As I no longer needed to scan my prints (with an inferior scanner) I was amazed by the quality of the on-screen images. I also began to take far more pictures and as a result I got better shots. I wished that the digital era had come before my other big trips as I had already been to some amazing places.

As I analysed the larger better quality images on my computer, I started to notice limitations with my current lenses. Particularly the 75-300mm telephoto from 200mm and above. To replace it I bought my first professional grade lens, the 70-200mm f/4L. The optics are excellent and it's one of the best value L lenses on the market. I also wanted to replace the 18-55mm lit lens and the Canon 17-85mm IS seemed to be the perfect replacement, but I was disappointed with the image quality, particularly on the wide end. It was also bulky and build quality wasn't good. So within a few weeks I sold that and bought the Canon 17-40mm f/4.0L. This was a great landscape lens. It's renowned for its colour and contrast and has excellent build quality.

In August 2008 I upgraded to an EOS 40D, which turned out to be an excellent investment, in much the same way the EOS 30E was. It feels much better, has better focusing and a range of features to make shooting easier. I later replaced my 17-40 with the 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, which is much more versatile as it can be used in low light indoors without a flash. It's also good for landscapes too, despite not being as good at smaller apertures.

As far as other equipment goes, I use UV filters to protect my lenses and I also have a circular polariser for my 17-55mm lens. I also purchased a 6 stop neutral density filter which I use to get long exposures during the day, particularly useful for waterfalls and coastlines.

During my time in Iceland I developed my post processing skills and, using Paint Shop Pro, I began to apply curves and levels adjustments to bring out contrast in my images and give them more 'pop'. Furthermore, I learnt to manually blend images. that is, using the RAW image, creating a dark and light images then merging the two using layers. This was my preferred method of handling bright skies and dark foregrounds.


The Next Level

Having learnt pretty much all the technical aspects I wanted to take my skills to the next level, and that required spending time with a professional, seeing how they work and getting some one to one tuition and feedback. In November 2009 I spent a weekend on a workshop in Glencoe with Dimitri Vasiliou, of Earth's Beauty Photography Tours & Workshops. I was taught many valuable lessons, including how to see potential images, the philosophy behind photography, what makes a good image and how to go about executing it, as well as technical subjects such how do develop RAW images using Lightroom, which is far better than the RAW converters I had been using. My pictures from the workshop are here. This was followed by another workshop to the Isle of Lewis a few months later, for which I had finally bought a Lee filter kit and ND grad filter and a tripod. Photos from Isle of Lewis are here.