Verve is a four day festival of world-class poetry and spoken word, with readings, performances, and workshops which takes place in Birmingham every year.
I’ve been lucky enough to photograph every single one of them since it’s first outing 4 years ago and each year is just continues to evolve and impress.
Here are a few of my favourite shots from this years event at the Birmingham Hippodrome.
You may have ended up here because you have a photographer friend / family member who you want to buy something for or if you’re anything like me you’re here because you’re looking for ideas on what to treat yourself to this Christmas.
Here’s a list of a bunch of things that cover every price range and experience level that I think are worth checking out.
I’m starting with some cheapish gifts that are pretty much a great choice for anyone and making my way up through enthusiast products, to pro gear to finally finishing off with a few big money choices for anyone reading this with ridiculous amounts of cash to burn.
None of these recommendations are sponsored. I’m just doing it all out of the goodness of my heart.
Merry Christmas!
The Instax range of instant cameras are a sure fire hit with pretty much everyone on the planet and come in at a very appealing price point which makes them a very easy pickup. Perfect for someone who likes snapping their friends during pre-drinks or a professional photographer who can throw this in their bag to leave as a little on the day souvenir for their clients, an Instax camera is a welcome gift to pretty much anyone who has even the faintest interest in photography.
Prices range from £59 to £130 depending on which model you pick up but for most people the Instax Mini (which is the cheapest option) will be the best choice.
Gone are the days when video image stabilisation cost thousands of pounds and required you to walk around wearing what looked like an exo-skeleton. You can now pick up a really excellent option for less than £100 with the DJI Osmo. If you want to take your video game to the next level but still want the ease of use, portibility and low cost of using your (very excellent) smartphone to film then you can’t go wrong with one of these.
If I could only have one lense in my bag (and I very often do) it would be without doubt a 50mm prime. The nifty fifty is a photography term which basically applies to some of the cheaper but still excellent 50mm prime lenses you can get your hands on. If you know someone who has a starter DSLR with only the 18-55mm lense that usually comes packaged with it the absolute best present they can recieve which will instantly increase the quality of their work is one of these lil’ gems.
For around £100 you can’t go wrong.
I also want to give a shout out to the tremendous Nikon 35mm 1.8 which in my opinion is still the best cheap prime lense out there.
If you’re not aware of what a ring light is or what it does let me explain. It’s basically a big ring of very bright LED’s which throws off some very flattering light that’s perfect for portraits. They’re also widely used by YouTubers and videographers to light their subject or themselves effectively and cheaply.
Coming in under £100 they are an excellent purchase for anyone interested in photographing or filming people. I have one in my studio and it gets just as much use as my £1000+ flash heads do. In addition I also often take this along with me to commercial portrait shoots as it’s a very easy to use and portable set up for portrait photography on the road.
If you’re getting a bit more serious about photography there’s going to be a point where you progress onto using professional quality editing software. Although other options are out there for me Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop are still the best .
Technically this plan costs £9.99 a month but keep your eyes peeled for offers on the pre-paid 12 month photography plan. I’ve bought mine for £69.99 for the last few years as there pretty much always seems to be a deal on it during both the Black Friday period and Amazon’s prime week.
At around a fiver a month for the best photo editing tools on the planet + some online storage this is one of the best purchases you can make.
This is the first item on this list that I don’t personally own but that’s only because landscape photography / videography isn’t really my thing. If however it is your / their thing then grabbing a drone is a great shout. Drones enable you to get up in the sky and grab shots that would otherwise be impossible to get or get silky smooth video footage of where ever you’re at. In addition flying a drone about is just fun regardless.
The DJI Mavic series are incredibly popular and worth taking a look at.
Take to the skies!
You may think it’s weird that it’s taken this long for me to actually recommend a camera but that’s because for the most part I believe that for 90% of people the camera on your phone is going to do the job for you. If you just like grabbing a few snaps of your family on holiday, your fancy dinner or your dog your phone camera is going to do an incredible job of capturing it.
If however you want to take it to the next level and grab a camera the question is where should you start? There are no simple answers to this but my pick of the starter camera bunch nowadays would be one from Sony’s excellent A6000 series. Mirrorless technology really is the way the entire industry is moving at the moment so if you’re getting into photography it makes sense to start there as opposed to going down the starter DSLR route which used to be the go to for new photographers.
If however you want to ignore me both Nikon and Canon offer excellent and cheap starter DSLR’s with a lense for under £300.
Whatever you end up choosing just remember that getting out there and actually using it is more important than whatever decision you make.
P.S. Look up this list and buy yourself a nifty fifty straight away. You won’t regret it.
There is an almost enless plethora of camera straps out there for you to grab but when it comes to such an essential piece of kit that you use everytime you pick up your camera I think it’s worth investing in grabbing something of quality.
My pick is the wrist strap from Hard Graft. Personally I dislike neck straps and prefer a little loop like this that just wraps around my wrist. Handcrafted using Italian leather and 100% wool felt the quality of Hard Grafts products are incredible. I’ve had mine for 4+ years and even though I use it nearly every day of the week it’s as good as new with the added advantage that over time the leather has taken on that darker patina that well used leather develops.
At 69 Euros it’s also a relatively afforable piece of luxury. If wrist straps aren’t your cup of tea they also do neck straps as well as a range of other excellent accessories and bags.
Not the flashiest gift out there but most definitely one of the ones that every photographer always need more of. With file sizes getting bigger and bigger every year the need for storage increases.
I’d recommend you grab one that doesn’t require being plugged into mains power. Nowadays you can find 5tb external HD’s that can fit in the palm of your hand for under £100 and thats great value.
There are a bunch out there but I’ve always stuck to either Western Digital or Seagate and have had no problems.
We’re jumping up here into the realm of enthusiast / semi-pro / pro and taking a look at some high quality glass. If you’re a Nikon / Canon / Sony user then there are some really tasty first party lenses out there for you to get your hands on but if you want to save a bit of money and still get incredible image quality then make sure you check out Sigmas range of art series lenses.
The quality of these lenses is superb and are going to be a welcome addition to any photographers bag.
Although I personally no longer own any I did once have the 35mm 1.4 and it was one of the sharpest and best lenses I’ve ever used.
(Disclaimer: I’d really recommend these to Canon / Nikon users but for the Sony users out there the quality of Sony glass / some minor focusing compativility issues with 3rd party lenses means I’d recommend you stick you Sony if you can handle the cost.)
We’re fully in professional photographer territory here. The Sony A7riv is in my personal camera of choice and it’s a full on beast. I’m not going to bore you with specs, if you’e considering forking out the big money for a camera like this you’ll know what you’re doing anyways.
If you don’t need the huge megapixel count of the Sony A7riv (and most people won’t) and want to save yourself a ton of cash then consider the excellent Sony A7iii or just take a look at any camera in the A7 series, there are serious deals to be found on some of the still excellent older models.
Now we’re talking absolute baller money to burn territory. The Apple Pro Display XDR.
If you’ve got £5000 burning a hole in your pocket (plus an extra £1000 for the stand) then this monitor is worth a looksie.
A massive 32”, 6k resolution, 1600 nits peak with 1000 nits sustainted brightness (that’s REALLY bright) with professional calibration out of the box this monitor is incredible.
Of course the price tag is also incredible but this is a serious piece of kit.
Yours for only $50,000 is this obscene collaboration between German camera Gods Leica and Hermes.
In the box you get a Leica M9-P which has been customised by Hermes as well as a Summicron-M 28 mm f/2 ASPH, a Leica APO-Summicron-M 90 mm f/2 ASPH and the ultimate legend of 50mm’s, the Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH (Yes you read that right, it has an aperture of 0.95) all finished in anodized silver. It also comes with a bag and a book if that’s your thing.
Only 100 of these were ever made so if you fancy grabbing one then good luck.
My 36 favourite photos out of the 4000+ shots I took during the 8 day Pause - Closing Festival at Impact Hub Birmingham.
Chronological order.
I was recently commissioned by the Birmingham Voluntary Service Council to shoot for their new campaign aimed at reducing isolation / loneliness in their communities.
I headed out on location and met an incredible bunch of local residents who had all offered to give up their afternoon to have a go at modelling for me and they did an incredible job.
Here are a few shots from the day as well as a look at how they were used in the campaign.
Super happy to be asked back to shoot Birmingham Design Festival again this year.
Here are a few of my favourite shots from the event (in chronological order).
A few snaps from my recent trip to Ireland.
For the third year running I had the absolute pleasure of shooting Verve Poetry Festival.
I’ve whittled down the over 5000 photos I shot to an album for the client of around 800ish shots. I then whittled this album down to a best of album of around 250 and then I’ve gone and whittled that down again to end up with my favourite 20 photos of this years event.
In chronological order here they are.
Part 2 of my shoot with Macy Williams from Select Models.
Shot on location at Himley Hall.
I recently took a look back at my shots from 2017’s TEDxBrum held at the Birmingham Hippodrome and decided to reprocess some of my images from that day in black & white.
Here they are.
Last year I had the pleasure of collaborating with illustrator extraordinaire Pheeb and the brand maestros at Impact Hub Birmingham, Byng & Blyden to create a few lil’ pieces for their Best Year Ever campaign.
Here are the results.
