I appreciate that Covid has really messed with our lives right now, but we have to try as hard as we can to still maintain some sort of normality... don't we?? 

Here in England we are only supposed to go out for essential supplies, exercise and work if we can't work from home. It could be argued that as a professional photographer then I could use the 'work' reason! It doesn't really sit well with me to travel far and wide in pursuit of my work, so I decided to only travel within a couple of miles of my home.

What I have found, however, is that exploring my local back yard has been particularly rewarding. In normal times I would be looking to travel abroad or around the UK, but keeping in this tight radius of home has allowed me to see far more than I have ever done of my local environment.

Take this image above for example. I went down to the main Quay, which is in Poole Harbour, where ferries, fishing boats and tourist boats all work from, and spent 2 hours exploring. From the quay I could see this solitary dingy moving around on its anchor with a sea defence marker behind it. I kept my eye on it as I really wanted it to be beam onto me if at all possible as it would make a great composition.

Just before I pressed the shutter to take the image a seagull alighted on the bow... great timing!

I could see the composition below as I moved slightly and then had a totally different set of technical issues to deal with! I wanted the water to be silky smooth which meant I had to take a far longer exposure than normal. This image was exposed for 15 seconds, which meant I had to try and take the image in between people walking along the path behind the railings!

I then just turned slightly to my right hand side where I found this composition with Brownsea Island ( home of scouting) in the background. I wanted this image to be as minimalistic as possible and I'm really happy how it has come out... what do you think?? Tell me

Finally, as I was packing up my equipment, I saw this fisherman walk across the beach and start going down this outlet pipe to start fishing. I don't normally want to include members of the public in my images, but I felt including him helped with the narrative of the composition.

For me, this was now a typical day out shooting landscapes locally. I seem to 'see' far many more compositions than I ever did, especially now as I give up so much more time to one area instead of hurrying from location to location!!

Until the next time...

All the best, Roy