Landscape photographer

Is It Worth Entering The Landscape Photographer Of The Year Competition?

February 19, 2020 in Landscape Photography, Night Landscape Photo

Warning! These Landscape Photographs Will Make You Feel Like You’re A Terrible Photographer!

I used to enter photographic competitions until I realised my money was better spent on learning more.

When you look at the incredible quality of the photographs made by these international photographers, it almost dumbs you down and puts you in your place. It’s actually difficult to become inspired by them because they’re just so damned good and I think to myself that the places these guys and girls are making photographs are pretty much not accessible to me or the average human being without lots of available time, lots of money for travel and the ability to support yourself while out there making photographs about pretty places on Earth.

So these are my initial thoughts and then when I look at the pictures again, wow, they’re simply amazing. Shall we look at them now?

Ok,

Here are the winners from the 2019 competition…

Bonaire, Dutch Carribean by Sander Grefte (Netherlands), Second Place

Badain Jaran Desert, China by Yang Guang (China), Second Place.

Bláfellsá, Iceland by Oleg Ershov (Russian Federation), Winner

Gruissan, France by Magali Chesnel (France), Winner

Grizzly Lake, Yukon, Canada by Blake Randall (Canada), Third Place.

Fleswick Bay, England by Oleg Ershov (Russian Federation), Winner,.

Kimberley, Western Australia by Mat Beetson (Australia), Top 100,.

Eastern Sierra, California, USA by Carlos Cuervo (United States), Top 100.

Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil by Ignacio Palacios (Australia).

Lençóis Maranhenses, Brazil by Ignacio Palacios (Australia), The Abstract Aerial Award 2019..

Page, Arizona, USA by Craig Bill (United States), Top 100,.

Bronte Beach, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia by Gergo Rugli (Australia), Top 100.

Madeira, Portugal by Anke Butawitsch (Germany), The Lone Tree Award 2019.

SpaceX rocket exhaust plume, Sierra Nevada, California, USA by Brandon Yoshizawa (United States), The Heavenly Cloud Award 2019..

Ramshead Tor, Kosciuszko, New South Wales, Australia by Blake Randall (Canada), Third Place.

Sharqiya Sands Desert, Oman by Peter Adam Hoszang (Hungary), Third Place,.

Central Balkan, Bulgaria by Veselin Atanasov (Bulgaria), The Snow and Ice Award 2019..

West Mongolia by Ricardo Da Cunha (Australia), The Wildlife in Landscape Award 2019.

See what I mean!!!

They’re quite amazing aren’t they?

Now do you feel inspired to go outside and make some landscape photographs?
My own personal style of landscape photography has been born out of isolation. I have never had the money to travel to these heroic and trophy like locations, so have always had to make do with my local environment.
I have rural farmland surrounding me and I’m in the middle of the urban sprawl of a small market town in the middle of England.

I try to make the best of my surroundings, regardless of where that is and still encourage you to do so as well.
Once you understand photography and all the rules and all of the different ways of breaking the rules, making photographs wherever you are becomes much simpler.

You learn to see the beauty of life and not just in the pretty parts of the planet.

So it’s a choice on whether you wish to enter your work in to the LOPTY competition but remember how stiff the competition is and look at the level your work has to rise to, even for consideration to be shortlisted amongst about 3,400 pictures. You also have to pay for the privilege of entering, as you do many photography competitions these days but that’s a whole different story that I have strong thoughts about.

Maybe another time!

By Paul Hands.

Inspired by an article written by Jessica Stewart (18,2,2020), https://mymodernmet.com/international-landscape-photographer-contest-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3xoaagEHpDR6A_8wNKzo6W42RjOWYdHs-xLn8ZIcdMvWB3v0ZPpOUstMo

Business Calendars 2020

October 17, 2019 in Hinckley Calendar, Landscape Photography

Give your customers a calendar for 2020.

They’ll see how much you care about your customers, be reminded of your company every time they look at, use or turn the page.

They’ll also feel how much you care about your local community.

Click the photograph to go to my online shop and buy a calendar.

The calendar comes with 12 high quality professional landscape photographs of rural and urban places around Hinckley, Leicestershire.

Hinckley Photographed is a project that I created in 2012 and have built an archive, which I’ve curated some of my favourite pictures from the past 8 years to be used in the first ever calendar for Hinckley.

Printed on 250gsm paper, these calendars have an artistic quality about them that feels expensive.

The days are spaced nicely apart so there’s enough space to write comfortably.

A true work of art.

Click the photograph to go to the online shop and buy a calendar.

What’s the deal?

I will produce a specific photograph to go on the cover and one that relates to your business. Perhaps one of your business or in your premises and there’s also the possibility of another stunning local landscape but with your business name and logo on the front.

On each page, there’ll be your logo and company details so that each month, your customer is reminded of your company.

Calendars are £10 each with a minimum order of 25.

Orders take up to 3 weeks to design, proof and print.

So let’s get talking about this now!

The calendar is available to buy in the current Hinckley Photographed form online in smaller quantities but not personalised to your business. Click on any of the photographs in this blog to go to the online shop.

We’ll need to discuss the artwork for your calendar so contact me asap.

Get in touch with enquiries about producing a personalised calendar for your business.

Get in touch

Landscape Photography Workshop - Hollycroft Park

August 30, 2019 in Photography Classes, Photography Workshops

Autumn Photography Workshop in Hollycroft Park, Hinckley

Join a like minded group of beginner photography enthusiasts to learn how to improve your photography skills.

On this workshop you’ll learn the following:

How to set up your camera for landscape photography
How to design a frame and use professional compositional techniques
How to study the light and create form in your pictures
What to photograph and how to identify a good picture before you look through your viewfinder
You’ll learn how to adjust the settings on your camera to go with the flow and be more natural making photographs
You’ll learn this on a nice Sunday evening in September during Autumn and be with a group of like minded people.

All you will need:

Clothes, shoes, digital camera, a tripod (if you have one) and a love for nature.

You can find more information and book one of the limited places using this link.

If you can’t make this date, sign up for news to your email inbox about up coming workshops.

Dreaming of Summer

November 20, 2018 in Landscape Photography, Tourism Photography

Combe Martin Landscape Photographs

By Paul Hands

I set out to make artwork from the landscape, while on a family holiday earlier this year in North Devon.

The golden hour falls perfectly in the summer evenings where the sun sets right in the middle of the vista. So I had a play with the light and the environment.

As it’s colder today than what we’ve been experiencing recently, I wanted to push our memories back towards those beautiful summer months we had in 2018.

This is a curated series of photographs and are available as prints or canvas, please click here for more info.

The Combe Martin Landscape, North Devon.

July 23, 2018 in Landscape Photography, Tourism Photography

Tourism Photography

Showing off the landscape for travellers and tourists.

During a trip to Combe Martin in North Devon for our holiday and exploration of the area, I was overwhelmed by the naturla beauty that surrounds the resort and reacted by making photographs that I felt showed off the place in a promotional way.

This is a skill that I apply to my commercial photography. I look for the shape of the land and work with how the light falls up on it, shaping the form and romanticising the landscape.

I'm not strictly a sublimne romantic photographer and this genre is one that I usually leave for the photography enthusiasts but when I was faced with these beautiful scenes in Combe Martin, I couldn't refuse the exposures.

This is a small selection of the pictures that I made during this trip, I hope you enjoy them?

This kind of Landscape Photography can be used to help promote holiday parks, resorts and campsites as well as support the tourism board in promoting destinations. If you'd like to make an enquiry about commissioning me for an assignment, please hit this button gently...

contact paul hands

Home to Home

February 18, 2018 in Night Landscape Photo, Landscape Photography

Night Landscape Photographer England

Home To Home

This series of pictures are part of the experimental stage of what could potentially become a new project.

"I leave home and return, that's the single most repetitive thing I do".

The other night I left home to go and make a series of night landscapes around my local area between Hinckley and Coalville. My search was for the unusual quirkiness surrounding our towns and villages. Some man made and some natural with street signs, giant posters in the middle of nowhere and concrete bollards in-between such beauty in the landscape.

February News

New Clients:

I'm pleased to welcome new clients Hinckley BID, BJL Group, Morris Homes, ARO PR and Marketing and JJ Churchill on board.

Also this month I'll be working on new assignments for two existing clients; Mode Transport Planning and the SFB Group.

More work will also be going in to the application to Grants for the Arts through the Arts Council for a major Environmental Portrait project I'm hoping to work on this year.

If you'd like to keep up with my news or get my blogs and pictures delivered to you via email, subscribe here. Facebook are messing around with the algorithms for pages and a lot of Creatives are not able to share their art. So this is one way for artists to stay in touch with the community.

Art of Photography Workshop

September 01, 2017 in Photography Workshops, Photography Classes

Since starting the Art of Photography Group, this is the first physical workshop I've ran. I've ran many other workshops but have improved as a practitioner and have learned how to teach people in a much better way. So I ran a mini workshop for the group on Wednesday night and it went really well.

This was a rescheduled event because the first date was a wash out, it chucked it down and then I had to try and co-ordinate 9 peoples diaries. In the end we got there, and it wasn't easy watching the weather on the run up to the rescheduled workshop!

The day before the workshop was terrifying (well maybe I'm being a little over dramatic), the Met Office predicted rain all morning and a little shower in the evening. The workshop was to take place between 6:30pm and 9:30pm. On the morning of the workshop, the Met Office said it would rain until midday and be dry for the rest. Then at lunch time they predicted rain all day and all night, until 2pm when they said it would dry up at lunch and then give us heavy showers between 7pm and 9pm.

I couldn't take this anymore! So I didn't look for another hour and they said it would be dry all evening. That was it, I shut down my mac and accepted that. It wouldn't change again!

I know from experience of watching the skies as a photographer that rain followed by a sunny dry spell usually gives a dramatic sunset. This is just what I would have ordered for my group, dry weather and a dramatic sunset.

Some of the people in the group were complete beginners and some were amateurs and all were looking to either improve their photography skills or to learn how to use their camera properly.

Each one left my workshop knowing how to use a camera on manual properly, how to set up their camera to give them complete control over their images.

What's more important with my photography group is that they all have a common interest.

I run the group in the evening once a month. It's called The Art Of Photography and we have a Facebook group that you can join if you like. We share information about photographers, styles, have workshops, will be visiting exhibitions and have artists come along to talk to us about their photography on occasions. You can visit and join the group by following the above link.

If you'd like to learn more about the group and or my workshops, please contact me here.

The Ghost of Old John, Bradgate Park

August 13, 2017 in Astrophotography, Landscape Photography

Bradgate Park's ghost of Old John has been caught on camera!

I went out to Bradgate Park in Leicestershire last night to make some photographs of the Persiedes meteor shower, but as usual I became distracted with making my own different set of photographs.

There must have been around 30 other photographers on the hill and all pointing their cameras towards Old John and the night sky. If I had set my camera up in line with them, all of our photographs would have all looked the same. I checked the backs of some of their cameras and some shots had caught meteors but no land, just sky, stars and a meteor. I felt that the interest there was lost within seconds of saying 'Oh yes, a meteor'!

I couldn't stand in front of them to get a different composition, so I spent some time observing them making their pictures and then stepped back to design my own, carefully ensuring that not one of those photographers could make or replicate mine. I decided to not collect any photographs of the meteors because I'd already done it before and I needed different pictures to everyone else on the hill.

It's probably the very thing that has stopped me from visiting this place at night to make photographs in the past, I really don't want to make the same pictures as everyone else.

Hopefully, I've achieved that, what do you think?

If you'd like to look at more of my work, try starting with my personal work.

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