Category Archives: Lifestyle Photography

My photography is usually concentrated on landscapes or cars, but when I take pictures of people they end up here.

A Walk in the Woods

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We are lucky enough to have some woods at the top of our road, and regularly head up there for a walk – as we did today. I decided to fit my Fuji 35mm f1.4 lens to my X-T2, not a combination I would usually take on one of these walks, as the autofocus is too slow to capture the boys running around. However, I am really pleased with these photos, and am not sure I would have got these with any of my other lenses.

After barely leaving the house the last few days, it was great to get out into the woods. The boys had fun climbing trees, and I even managed to get them to pose for me. On our way back, we met up with Jen on her way back from the hairdresser. It was a lovely way to spend an autumnal afternoon.

Softplay Portrait

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I grabbed this photo of Owen in the softplay at Rock Up in Birmingham. Jen and I had taken him there so that he could show Jen his climbing skills. However, knowing that there was softplay and toy trucks that he could be playing with, Owen didn’t want to do any climbing and spent the session in the softplay.

At first Owen was the only child in the softplay so I took the opportunity to join him in the ball pit with my camera. This resulted in the photo above, which is one of my favourite portraits. I would love to say that I set up the lighting and coordinated Owen’s t-shirt to the walls, but once I had spotted the shot I just had to quickly crank the ISO up on my camera, as it was pretty dark, and capture the best expression from Owen.

Shot with: Fuji X-T2 and 18-55mm lens at 1/40s, f4.0 at ISO 3200, processed in Lightroom CC Classic.

Cholmondeley Pageant of Power: Vintage Motocross

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Vintage motocrosser at Cholmondeley Pageant of Power (Lewis Craik/Lewis Craik Photography)

It wasn’t just cars at Cholmondeley, there were boats, planes and bikes too. During a break in the track action we wondered over to the vintage motocross circuit, which actually looked like organised chaos, but was fun to watch. The rider above caught my eye, he wasn’t the fastest there (possibly due to not wearing goggles!!!) but his look and demeanour in the pits gave off the impression of a lifelong passion for motocross.

While I was writing this post I also came across this vintage motocross video on the Drive Network on YouTube, which is a must subscribe for petrol heads, it’s like Top Gear, but with the banter to cars ratio reversed, so it is a lot more car focussed!

Cheeky

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William posing for the camera (Lewis Craik)

I don’t normally take pictures of kids, but as we were with some friends for an early Xmas meal and this little chap was in a cheeky mood I thought I’d get the camera out and see if he would pose for me. He went a bit shy at first, but this image really captures his personality, Mum and Dad seem to be pleased with it too!

Rogues Gallery

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Something I have been meaning to do for a while is to get a rogues gallery in my office of people that I don’t really see enough, so after collecting some prints (at the same time as a processed roll of Velvia!) from the lab, some frames from Ikea and a few hours cutting/sticking I have the following 4 pictures on my office wall of some people who are important to me.

Simon:

Ali & Webb:

Partho:

And of course, Jen:

Bedford Photowalk

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This was me well and truly out of my comfort zone, no motorsport, or pre planned landscape shots, just a post lunch wander along the river with the cameras, which is a nice way to spend a sunny January afternoon with an old friend.

With the sun being quite low and directional getting the sun in the right position was crucial, I liked this image of the two swans, with the light coming in from the front right and semi back lighting the swans, although I’m less than happy that I cropped off the tail of the nearest swan.

I also liked this footbridge for portraits, my portrait style is heading very much towards straight lines heading off into the background drawing the viewers eyes into the subject at the centre of the frame, I need to try a few with off camera flash too, but for the meantime, here is a shot of Elaine on the bridge.

Waiting for Xmas

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Those of you following my Twitter may realise that I am up at my family’s place in Perth (Scotland, not Australia), we’re just chilling out waiting for Santa to arrive, so I grabbed my Dad’s new lens (Canon EF 85 f1.8) and shot this image of Simon, my little brother, doing what he does best.

I shot it wide open and the quality of the lens really shines through, hopefully I’ll be able to borrow it more over the next few days!

Flickr Day of the donut

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I’d heard that yesterday was “Flickr day of the donut”, so while buying Autosport (see next blog post) I decided to pick up some tasty looking ring doughnuts (for photographic purposes only of course).

The shot I had in my head, was that the top/front doughnut should have the sprinkles in focus, but that the second doughnut should be blurred. The shot below was my favourite from the brief shoot (and the doughnuts were yummy).

Donuts

Gone fishing

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Well, not me, but the other weekend I met my good friend (and very good angler) Dan Webb at Packington Fisheries, between Coventry and Birmingham. It was something that we had been meaning to arrange for quite a while, eventually our schedules matched and luckily it wasn’t raining that day.

Going back about 10 years I used to go fishing with Dan, but got fed up sitting out in the cold not catching any fish, but at least this time I had my camera so even if the fish weren’t biting I could still take photos, much more fun!

Here are a few of my shots:

 

 

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

 

Dan Webb fishing

Dan Webb fishing

New Years Eve

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While my blog was updating itself at the start of 2009, I was at a party with some of my closest friends from school. I took advantage of the lowered inhibitions to take some candid portraits, all were taken using my 50mm f1.4 lens and flash bounced off the ceiling.

Ali

Dan

Thanks must go out to Bec & Dan for stepping in at the last minute and hosting a great party.