Out with the old…

…and in with the new! Happy New Year to everyone. It has been a fantastic Christmas time this year, a much-deserved and thoroughly loved break with the family, and also a very positive time for my photography!

A view of Wasdale and Wast Water from Nether Wasdale

Let’s start with the big news (for me, anyway). I no longer have the Sony A7III!

Over the course of the year, I have been on a journey, one of discovery, seeing the world through the EVF of this little black box with glass stuck to the front, and working out how to translate the world in front of me into a viable, accurate, and intentional image on a screen. It started strong, with sharp learning curves barely able to dampen the enthusiasm for this newfound hobby, giving me challenges I wasn’t fully prepared for, and finding a way to overcome them, either at the time or as a note for the next time. The reason I started this adventure was to see where it would lead, and if I could use it to accompany other interests, such as visiting National Trust sites, hiking in and around the hills, spending time with the family, and small gatherings etc.

It has led to all of this and more. The freedom and joy of creativity has been a much-needed tonic at times, balancing out other aspects of life, enhancing others, and has been a kind of therapy, recharging batteries physically and mentally, and giving me focus when needed. Some of my favourite memories of this year are with a camera in my hand. I have met people through this pursuit and discovered new friendships, encouraged conversation, as well as been able to provide friends and family with a service as a gift.

It was a cold walk next to Wast Water

As I have been progressing through the year, I swiftly found more time to take photos than to edit them, and currently have about 6 months of images on the to-do list. This has created anxiety at times, made me question priorities, methodologies and general competence, but then a little grounding and self-reasoning has resolved this. I started this with no expectations, and undue pressure just wasn’t on the agenda, so don’t do it! Will I try to be better with it this year? Of course. Will I achieve it… well… maybe? But so long as I don’t let it get to me, and encourage better practices, such as slowing down, not taking 600 photos in an hour and having to painfully cull them afterwards, and being selective of the photos I want to edit, then I am sure this will all be manageable.

Imagine living and working with that as a backdrop, Nether Wasdale

So over this year, I have focused on Landscape and National Trust sites for the most part, finding pleasure in capturing the splendour of large manor houses and their gardens, but also finding more of a challenge with the Landscape side of things. It’s not so easy to arrange a composition, as I had made it out to be in my head. I blame too many YouTube videos for making it look too easy. I have skirted around portraits over the year, marked as something I know I would like to practice and improve, but not a priority, until this year, anyway, where I want to make a start in this area, basic skills, flash photography and general lighting, and posing/directions for the model/friend/family member. Also, this past year, I have quite enjoyed taking photos of small things, mostly mushrooms and some leaves, and this has sparked curiosity towards macro.

With nearly a year of experience under my belt, approximately 12,000 photos taken over a range of focal lengths from 16mm-200mm, I have started to develop more informed opinions of what I like, don’t like, and what I want from my gear. This has led to research into camera bodies, lenses and accessories, which should help me achieve my goals this year. After much thought, waiting for the latest Sony camera launch to be sure, I decided to go with the Sony A7R V camera body. This offers a 61MP full frame sensor, which would give me a lot more freedom in comparison to the A7III 24MP Sensor, so that I can use APS-C mode to get a “1.5x zoom” and still have 26MP of image to play with. This was a result of getting the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II, and still wanting more reach, without getting a new, bigger lens. This thought path also led to the purchase of the 2x Teleconverter, to also add some serious reach to the 70-200mm, effectively giving me options from 70mm-600mm, with some caveats along the way. Watch this space to see if my gamble has paid off at all.

Some fungi spotted along the way, Nether Wasdale

On top of this, I have also purchased the Sony 24-70 f/2.8 GM II, the second of the holy trinity, to support the 70-200mm, and give me a lot of options with only 2 lenses. Having used the 16-35mm f/4, I realised wide angle wasn’t high on my list at this time, and the 50mm and 85mm primes were good, but the quality of the GM lenses was enough to convince me to sell the A7III and these 3 lenses to purchase my upgrades (with some help from Santa). This combination should be more than enough to cover my varied interests. Then I remembered macro. So there may also be a Sigma ART 105mm macro lens and some Smallrig lighting options waiting for me at home to see if I have what it takes to produce the images I believe I can with this new setup.

If this wasn’t enough, I had a frustrating user experience with the Canon Selfy CP1500 (I mean, seriously, who doesn’t produce a driver for their printer after MS support has been removed, like, what??), so the knee-jerk reaction was to get something that wouldn’t mess me around. Enter the Canon Pro-310 Pigment Injet printer! What has started with, “wouldn’t it be nice to print a few images from each session and make a scrapbook documenting my progress over the year?” has turned into “well now I can achieve that, and completely take over all available wallspace in the home with prints of varying sizes up to A3+, or a 1.8m pano (?!), carefully curated by my partner for approval!”.

Decisions were made

Christmas was an opportune time for this process, where the printer arrived a few days before we broke up, and gave me just enough time to get my order of Fotospeed papers and test pack printed with profiling test images, and sent off to them for free ICC profiles for each paper type in my printer. They were fantastic, turning around the profiles (and there were a lot of them) in a couple of days and getting them back to me just before they shut their doors for the festive period. This gave me everything I needed to begin the rabbit hole of printing my own images. I could not have envisioned the level of precision required in converting screen images to printed media. Just the brightness of the result alone was a challenge and a half. Where is it going to be displayed? How bright does it need to be so that it can be viewed adequately in that space? What size should I make the image? What about frames? I can tell you, there was a lot more happening, but we got there! Now I can take pride in seeing my images around my own home, and begin to appreciate my work in a different light, giving me more to consider when out taking my next shots.

With what feels like a completely new suite of tools at my disposal, I am entering 2026 with enthusiasm, hope, excitement, and curiosity, knowing that things can only get better, as I upskill and deliver my experiences as memories that can not only be seen on a screen, but physically too. I am mostly looking forward to putting all of this into action with my family (so long as they don’t mind the 2 x multiplier on any task duration when my camera is in hand) as we discover new places around the country to walk, hike (Wainwright challenge has begun!), have a cream tea, or possibly a beer or two, and I look forward to sharing those times with you.

View towards Pillar and High Stile over Rosthwaite from Helvellyn