Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) …welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
It’s been a pretty miserable, wet Saturday (the kind of day where you mostly stay inside and listen to the rain doing its thing). But when I stepped out for a minute, this red rose caught my eye. It was completely covered in raindrops, every petal holding onto its own little bead of water.
…As you know I always notice these things, and my brain tells me to get the camera, it just felt like a perfect moment for a macro shot. One of those everyday things that suddenly looks a bit magical when you actually notice it and the creative brain see’s an image before it’s even taken.
….So I grabbed the camera and spent a few minutes getting close, following the curves of the petals and trying to capture the way the droplets sat on them.
I love this set of images, exactly what I wanted to achieve, looks wise! A splash of colour doing its best to brighten up an otherwise grey day.
Hi guys hope you’re doing well? Time is flying by lately isn’t it?
I spotted this little blue flower this evening just as the sun was dropping, the light from the sunset hit the wooden fence panel behind it in an intense golden orange glow. One of those moments where your eyes go, “Oh hello…” …Photography mode instantly activated!! I legged it inside, grabbed the camera, came back out, and this is what I ended up with…
What made me laugh afterwards is that I’ve been learning about the colour wheel recently, a food photographer I follow was talking about it and suddenly it all clicked when I looked through the viewfinder and these colours came into focus. Blue sits opposite yellow/orange, which means they complement each other and create that really striking contrast. And here it was, happening right in front of me in the same week I’d been learning about these things….. it’s like nature was doing the homework for me in real time haha. It’s funny how once you start learning these little things, you begin noticing them everywhere. Makes the whole process even more enjoyable when you get to put it into practise.
Anyway, thought I’d share this one with you, see what you think of the colour combo? Taken with my Canon 5D Mark IV coupled with the 100mm macro! ☺️
Good evening you lot! 😊 I’ve been doing more plant photography at work lately, and it’s definitely spilled into my own time. Once you start noticing the tiny shapes and colours, you can’t really switch it off, although I’ve always been a ‘noticer’ of nature and all things wild, it seems to be a bit more prominent (especially with flowers) since that extra plant focussed photography through work. These amazing looking little heart-shaped blooms, pulled me right in, so of course the camera came out.
Perfect little heart shapes, like nature showing off without even trying. It still amazes me how something so small can be so precise and delicate. That’s the bit I love most about photographing plants: so many varieties I haven’t even started to scrape the surface after photographing probably a good few hundred now…. and still get these moments of “how is this real?” 🤯
….Sharing things like this with you guys has become something that I love to do and I can’t thank you enough for all the confidence, inspiration and belief you have helped install in me. I’ve had people on here say they look through my blog with their family, in hospital, to give them a happy lift, while studying, some people say they just check in because they enjoy my work….and that makes me happy – because if this space can give someone a bit of happiness, a bit of colour, inspiration, calm or just a reason to look a little closer at things in their own world, that’s what it’s all about. Of course it’s also documentation for my own journey but to connect with you guys the way that I have is incredible and means a lot to me, a massive bonus.
Plenty more plant stuff to come I think I’ve fallen down the plant rabbit hole now, and honestly, I’m quite happy down here. 🙂
(This plant is Dicentra spectabilis aka Bleeding Heart)
As you probably know by now, I’m someone who can’t help but document the world around me. 😀 If there’s colour, a bit of texture, or a plant doing it’s thing, I’m already halfway to taking the photo before I’ve even realised it haha. I love catching things in real time it’s not ALWAYS a planned shoot. Which is why a lot of what I’m sharing at the moment is unapologetically spring themed! The blossoms, the tulips, the tiny woodland flowers… they’re all putting on a show right now!
I really enjoy sharing these views with you guys, whether you’re following from somewhere else in the world and wondering what spring looks like here in the UK, or you’re in the UK yourself and just curious about what’s happening where I am :). It’s nice to think these little snapshots travel further than the footpath I took them on.
Lately I’ve been carrying on playing around with different angles and perspectives too, especially with plants. Getting low, shooting through petals, letting foreground blur do its thing… it’s been fun experimenting and seeing how a tiny shift can completely change the mood of a shot.
Thanks, as always, for the support. It means a lot. Have a great weekend and if you spot something blooming, take a second look. Spring moves fast.
Happy first day of spring to you, from the Northern Hemisphere. 😁 Slowly the days have been lighter for longer, we’ve had a few days of warmer sunshine and colour is popping up everywhere you look. Makes the world feel brighter in general so I’m here for it. Wishing my amazing followers from all over the world a happy weekend ahead. This image was taken of some Muscari i noticed when out on a walk, loved the way the sun was hitting it and also creating shadow to one side of the image, to me it’s symbolic of the slow “waking up” of spring, almost like the curtain is being pulled open to let the light in. ☀️
I recently had some photos published in the (Webbs) spring beautiful gardens magazine (a garden centre for those who don’t know it) I contributed a few images, the solar lights image, the cut out of the plum pots and all the planted up planter inspiration images. 🙂 May not be the coolest subjects in the world to some, but any photographer will agree, there’s nothing better than seeing your photos in print/ published. 😄 Just another little happy moment I wanted to share with you guys, hope you’ve had a good Monday. 📸
A few months back I had the challenge of photographing some carnivorous plants for a website image header. Such a fascinating array of these weird little plants, to me they look like something out of an alien 👽 world.
Photography-wise the shot was a bit of a challenge as the area I was shooting in had indoor overhead dim (yellow) lighting, no tripod or neutral lighting. Took me a bit of tone correction editing after, but I love the final shot, all those colours, textures, you find the eye wandering from plant to plant.👌🏻
I forgot to say; I’ve recently had a couple of photos published in magazines that are currently being distributed, so that’s always fun to see too.
I’ve decided in a world where sometimes efforts can go unnoticed, (especially if you don’t talk about them) that I’m most definitely going to celebrate anything and everything I’ve done that I’m proud of. We all should, don’t be afraid to do that, if you’re proud of something you deserve to be, enjoy the feeling. Celebrate your “little wins” and the big ones too! It’s not bragging (sometimes we are made to feel this) – but to me, it’s reward for all the effort you put in. 😊
Really loving that some of my images are floating around in corners of websites or in occasional print. It’s the icing on the cake to doing something I love. 📸😁 hope you like this shot of the little alien world! 🌍 🌱
Photography has always meant one simple thing to me above many other things, it’s always been about showing the world as it truly is.
Since starting my blog, I’ve built it around authentic imagery. Real moments, real light, real places. The kind of scenes that, if you walked past them yourself one day, you could actually see with your own eyes. That honesty is important to me, and it’s something I want to keep at the heart of everything I share.
With AI image generation becoming more common every day, photography is changing quickly and in some instances, being discarded. To be fair, AI is pretty impressive in many ways. I’m not anti-AI by the way, some of the technology is genuinely fascinating and has it’s own way of being “creative”.
But for this blog, I want to keep things simple and transparent.
Every photo you see here will be something I’ve actually photographed. Whether it’s a plant, a landscape, a person, or a macro shot with my new lens, it’s all real. No generated scenes, no artificial landscapes, just the world as it appeared in that moment for me, to share with you. That’s where the magic of photography lives. The waiting, the experimenting with focus or aperture, the excitement when you finally capture something exactly how you saw it. It’s a craft that rewards patience, hard work and learning and I love the whole process. Photography is not something that can be replaced (in my opinion.)
The ONLY area I might ever use AI tools is in a commercial context things like creating simple background elements for product photography. Even then, the product itself will always be my own photograph. Designers have layered graphics and backgrounds into product images for years, so in that sense it’s just a modern extension of the same idea. (As seen on a previous post with a product photography “experimental” shot with water splashes.)
….But in all other aspects, when it comes to ALL other photography I share here the nature, the everyday scenes, the moments I stumble across with a camera in hand that will always stay true to the real world. I want to help keep my passion, photography, in its truest form alive and I want to share those moments with you, authentically.
I hope you get my message,my lovely followers, quite simply what I’m trying to say is “My stuff is staying real” 😊
“Because sometimes the most interesting images are the ones that were simply there all along, waiting to be noticed.”
Sorry for the spam guys 😵💫🙃 as you can tell, I’m too eager to use this new lens. 😆 I’m sure that feeling will wear off eventually…. Or not. Took it to work today, so on my lunch break I managed to get out in to the sun (I know right, I’m as shocked as you are) and caught a few signs that spring is on its way and the world is waking up from winter sleep. Have a look at the detail in these shots! 🤯 The bee is dedicated to one of my followers ‘Hazel’ as she suggested to try and find one! I didn’t expect to, but I did find one basking in the sun having a recharge! 🐝 Hope you all like the shots.
How was your weekend? ☺️ I’ve been a bit busy so haven’t had a chance to be on here much. Will catch up with the comments and your blog posts now.
I also haven’t had much chance yet to get out properly with that swanky new lens. However I did quickly test it out again on this tiny daisy in the front garden. Can you imagine if you caught a bee or insect on a lens like this? Detail is going to be crazy, can’t wait for summer to come along when everything has woken up a bit!
Sebastian Stead - My Photography Blog 