Retrospective February 2025
The difficult second album
Hi there, welcome back. Is it just me or has February flown by? It feels like it was only a few days ago that the January retrospective was published and here we are already.
There has been a lot of spinning plates this month and I’ll be honest, things that are not finished. I have footage from a photo walk I talk more about below, and footage for a short form video from my last trip to the city for work.
It was a super busy month with pretty much everything, more adventures, lots of cool things happening at my tech job, Bronte growing up and just continuing to be the best, chatting with some very cool people (check below). Looking back it’s very easy to see why it has felt like it’s flown by.
I met Becca Farsace
That’s actually Becca
Becca and I started chatting after her episode on the Prime Lenses podcast with Iain Farrell and she saw the print that I had sent Iain. A little while later I got a message about taking a look at the video on the Leica M11 just to make sure there weren’t any huge inaccuracies that would bring out the pitchforks from the Leica community (A slightly melodramatic recount from me).
The video was great and has some really nice graphics in it and a great little explainer of how a rangefinder works so well worth a watch. It was also kind of crazy just shooting the breeze with someone who I have taken inspiration from for projects.
Website rebuild
I had my website on Pixieset which was a really good platform but for a similar kid of price I was able to unlock a few more feature options I can leverage in the future over on Squarespace.
To be honest did I really need to start a website rebuild? No. Do I like new and shiny things? Yes.
It’s not fully finished bringing over some of the blog posts from the previous site which will happen eventually over the next month and some more writing to come!
Lumix photo walk
I joined 7 other photographers lead by the fearless Zakari Kha to head on a incredible walk to Kaloo and Olympic pools which was roughly an 8km walk (with one hell of an elevation change at the end). The walk was organised through Lumix Australia and I am really looking forward to more events they do in the future.
It was really nice meeting other photographers, chatting about gear and getting out into the incredible Australian landscape. I took the M10, Osmo Pocket 3 and the S1, in hindsight the S1 probably could have been left at home as it stayed in the back all day 🙃
I took plenty of footage and got some incredible images which I am still yet to finish putting together for a new video to the channel. I would have loved to have had this finished but that’s just the way it goes.
Plenty of footage to go through
Queenstown set submission
Gibbston Valley Winery
Lake Wakatipu
Nest Bar + Kitchen
I want to put together the best pick of images from my honeymoon trip to Queenstown and do an editorial writeup to submit to some travel publications. I think getting something published is on every photographers list of things they would like to achieve. If you know of somewhere I should submit too please let me know.
Basic Barista
I did some work with Basic Barista taking some images of the AJI Cotton coffee filter they sent me. It was my first time trying a reusable filter for making V60 coffee’s and I really liked it so it will 100% be going into my rotation.
I also have a little 30s reel I shot and edited which I think came out really nice so I am sure that will end up on someones social media.
Worth a closer look
Laowa 55mm f2.8 1:1 T/S Macro lens — I have a Laowa 58mm f2.8 2x macro I use on my Lumix S1 and it's incredible. I love shooting smaller things and have always been interested in tilt shift lenses. Laowa seem to be answering my prayers once again, but in doing so condemning my wallet to damnation.
Creative bloom article – This is a really perfect time for this article to come out about creators building their own communities rather than ‘renting’ them on a platform that can change and go away.
The Johnny Decimal system – I use Obsidian.md for all of my note taking, writing, brain dumping and basically any thought I have. Fun fact the ideas of what I write about for each months newsletter happen in Obsidian. The Johnny Decimal system I really like the idea off and I want to try and bring some more programatic scaffolding to my current black hole of thoughts.
Best of January 2025 Gallery
That wraps up February
Well they always say the follow ups is always the hardest. I can get stuck with feeling like I haven’t achieved progress because I have the video edits not finished and I will just focus on those things but thats just the way it goes sometimes.
Getting out and meeting new people both in person and through a monitor is awesome and I feel like I am already seeing som really great conversations and friendships come from getting out there more and interacting with people in the space.
Onwards we march to March!
Bye for now,
Tom
