Subscribe to my Simple Photography Tips

Celebrating 2025 in Pictures is a stroll through some of the images I’ve used this year to illustrate the joy of photography. As I share and celebrate the year in photographs, I hope you’ll 'join the walk', the same quiet lesson I’ve been learning: to stop more, look more, and accept the images that waft into your awareness.

In some parts of the world, where it's warm and sunny - go and find a lizard and sit still, breathe slowly, and just watch it - two minutes, five minutes. Look at it, and notice things you'd never noticed before. Look around and notice. If it's wet and miserable, go and watch a branch drip, notice the light shining through, move a little and watch it from a different angle.

There's something hugely healing about walking through woodland, slowly, maybe with a camera in your grimy mitt. Your slower than normal pace allows you to notice the way light falls across a path, or is excluded by a tree blocking the light to form a shadow.

Facts aside, to me they tell a story of things that have remained hidden as they grow, their value and importance increasing in those dark places. To be found only by those in the know, with the skill to uncover such things. The similarity with human kind: where many folk feel in darkness, but it is this that produces strength of character. "Learn not to fear the dark places. It’s often where the best things come from, Like truffles under soil."

Please go and try it, take yourself, with family if you have one, and just play the game - it is surely one of the most mentally restorative things you can do. Especially if you pause and admire the leaf you catch. You're even allowed to smile, laugh, yell, squeal or whatever - this is complete release.

A friend suggested that I share some of the images, with the thought that you may one day go on a trip that you want to take images of with a view to telling a visual story of the trip - Storytelling through Pictures.

The geese had already left, there were a few mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) still snoozing, a handful of teal (Anas crecca) feeding, and a solitary grey heron (Ardea cinerea) slowly wading through the middle of the pond. I had one of my Nikon Camera's, fitted in case you're interested with a 70-200mm f2.8 and 1.7 teleconverter. If you have one of the latest iphones or similar, you could still make a good effort, as you will understand in a bit.

Today marks six months of my Simple Photography Tips - twice a week, with the "motto ut aspias, done videas" - that you may look until...

With the summer holidays in full swing, it’s the perfect time for families to get outdoors and enjoy some creative fun together. If you’re looking for things to do with young people—or just want a relaxing, activity for yourself—why not go on a photography adventure? One beautiful and accessible subject this season is the sunflower. While entire fields can create breathtaking landscape photos, but don’t overlook the detail in a single bloom.