day out photos | Mike Turner Photoshoots

Leigh is the nearest town to our studio in Lowton and a place I have spent much of my early life, actually living in the town for many years. As I have got older I have become increasingly interested in the towns history and begun to take notice of the towns older buildings and architecture.

Although the town has changed dramatically over the years with the decline of the mills, the closure of the mines, and emergence of a more retail oriented town, some of the towns past still is there to be discovered.

It amazes me how little I had noticed as I went about my visits to the town, walking around with my eyes wide shut much of the time. The town has some great architectural heritage which is sadly poorly maintained.

We’re enjoying the weather while we can, great to be able to sit out in the garden on a very warm and sunny August day. I just wish we had more of these kind of days in the UK. Hazel is a keen gardener and has certainly got green fingers. So while I sat in garden I thought I would capture some of the wonderful colours we have around us, hope you enjoy them too.

Making sure the light is coming from a direction other than from your camera position provides more interesting image, otherwise it can appear somewhat flat, which isn’t particularly appealing. A good rule of thumb is having the sun at between 45 – 80 degrees to your camera position and the subject you are photographing.

Get an interesting composition, I prefer close up shots myself as you can see. Using a shallow depth of field helps to blur the background, I was using f5.6 for this shot. This isn’t a macro lens so I couldn’t get particularly close to the flowers and achieve focus, but I used the zoom to fill the frame more.

I would love to know which image you prefer and why

flower image