Welcome to Photograph Works, travel and photography blog. You’ll find links to the most recent travel and photography articles with short excerpts further down this page. Below them, in the footer, there is a complete list of every article.
This Is A Vervet Monkey
This is a vervet monkey I photographed outside our lodge at a camp on the Eastern Cape in South Africa. The monkey stole a muffin from the tray I was bringing from the main lodge for my wife. I slid open the door, tray in both hands.
My wife screamed a warning but in that second, the little monkey had snaffled the mini-muffin and was out of the door.
I grabbed my camera and went outside and photographed it sitting on the deck and then up in the rafters. I photographed it with my Nikon D500 and the EXIF data for the photo says I shot at 1/320 second at f5 with the lens at 100mm and ISO 900.
Our Travels
In the past couple of years my wife and I have been on safari to South Africa, to Saint Petersburg in Russia, and to Vienna and Salzburg in Austria. We have also been to Budapest in Hungary, Florence in Italy, and on a trip across Andalusia in southern Spain.
Besides those trips, I have been on my own to Israel and to Nepal. So that probably qualifies me to write a travel blog. I also like to take photographs, and I have progressed up the ranks as it were, with each new camera I have used. So that probably qualifies me to write about photography and travelling with a camera, and about camera gear.
Investigating, Not Gawking
The places we travel to don’t have to be exotic, but they should feel authentic and worthy of repaying deep investigation. When my wife and I went to Austria, it was to see where Mozart lived. My wife is a pianist and she loves Mozart’s music, so she was the guide and we took full advantage of the time we had and went to concerts, to listen to string quartets playing Mozart’s music.
If we had simply gone and gawked at Mozart’s house without any background, we would have had a much poorer experience.
We are very aware that image and reality do not always come close, but we try for authentic experiences. That is what I mean when I say that education turns a flat landscape into a three-dimensional experience.
The longest I’ve been away on a single trip is a year. And often now my wife and I tend to go for just a couple of weeks, although we were away for a month on our trip to South Africa.
You can read here How I Caught The Travel Bug.
Recent Travel Articles
Which Is The Best UK Travel Agent
Which is the best UK travel agent? Someone is probably googling that right now. To which the first question is, how do you define ‘best’? Maybe it is the cheapest…
On A Game Drive
On a game drive in the bush in South Africa you bump up and down a lot. You will probably be riding in an open-top Toyota Land Cruiser. We’ve been…
Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust Wildfowl
Wildfowl & Wetland Trust: A photographic guide to the birds of the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust (WWT) at the Centres in the UK. WWT is primarily a conservation organisation dedicated…
Birds Of Eden, Plettenberg Bay, South Africa
Birds of Eden in Plettenberg Bay in South Africa is the world’s largest free-flying aviary. It covers 3.2 hectares, which is bigger than the Millennium Dome in London. It has…
Continue Reading Birds Of Eden, Plettenberg Bay, South Africa
Why Young Zebra Have Long Legs
Have you wondered why young zebra have long legs compared to the legs of an adult zebra? When you look at this young Burcell’s zebra with its mother you can…
Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary
Monkeyland Primate Sanctuary (not a name that attracts me) is in Plettenberg Bay on the Western Cape in South Africa. The sanctuary is set in the 12 hectares (30 acres)…
Recent Photography Articles
Chiaroscuro Lighting
Chiaroscuro lighting, or ‘Rembrandt’ lighting accentuates the focal point of the composition by bathing it in light and surrounding the focal point by darker recesses. The Italian word ‘chiaroscuro’ means light and dark. The contrast between light and dark areas also accentuates the three-dimensional appearance of the subject. The alternative name of ‘Rembrandt’ lighting comes…
A Guide To Framing Your Photographs
This is not an article with strict rules for framing your photographs. This article is about proportions and space, and it explains some things that have been discovered about them. You can use them as a guide to framing your photographs. But in the end, what anyone likes is a matter of personal taste, and…
Photographing Musical Instruments
Photographing musical instruments is a lovely opportunity to think about what one is doing. The environment is controlled, so there is time to take a few shots and see what works and what doesn’t. The moment when you press the shutter is like the moment you let go of the arrow in archery. Sure, when…
Why Photographs Fade
Black and white photographs shot on film and processed in a ‘wet’ darkroom don’t fade or degrade. They may have been stored in a shoebox for sixty or seventy years. Yet they are still likely to be as clear and unfaded as they were the day they were put away. Of course, they may be…
Budget Bokeh
For budget bokeh we use a standard 50mm lens on an APS-C camera and we place the subject as near as possible to the camera and smack in the middle of the frame. We make sure that the background is far away. That’s the way to get good budget bokeh. Bokeh is the way a…
Does the D5600 Outperform The D500?
Does the D5600 outperform the D500? I have a D500 with a 20.9mp sensor and a D5600 with a 24.2mp sensor. Does that mean that the D5600 has better resolution or are there other factors involved? From what I have read, this is how it works. The bigger the sensor size, the bigger the individual…