Underwater Photography

Had an opportunity yesterday to photograph two of my friends spear fishing off a point on the South Cornwall coast. Always refreshing to photograph something a bit different and I was looking forward to the challenge of documenting the trip from in the water.

Chris and Rowan are what I would call professionals in this activity, and I quickly found out there is a lot more involved with spear fishing than simply shooting anything that moves in front of you. A key part is just enjoying the ocean and being precise in what you target for the dinner table. It's an activity which is about respecting the environment and only taking what you need, which I think is a good thing.

We must have spent about 2-3 hours in the water, and saw an abundance of sea life. Chris and Rowan had a few good catches as well including a nice size Grey Mullet, Lobster and Eating Crab.

Light was great for the trip which helped greatly with the photography although the slightly murky water did affect the pictures a bit, but I'm happy with the overall results.



Lobster catch. Lobsters and Crabs are always court by hand rather then with the spear. This one was shortly released for being slightly under sized.

Case Study: Newquay

Newquay is another location on my list of places I want to document. This was my first visit here photographing the town so I didn't have any particular ideas on what I would photograph once there, but instead decided to take a stroll and see what court my eye.

It's a touristy town which is quite build up right on the waters edge, so there where plenty of photo opportunities.

Two of my favourite captures from the session below.





A worth while shoot and a place I'll be re-visiting.

Case Study: Looe

Looe has been another town I'v been visiting recently while everything has been quiet business and surf wise. On this occasion I travelled down just before dusk and captured a few shots from around the harbour and beach. Again a few keepers and additions to the Stock Library. Below are a few of my favourite shots from the session, as well as a portrait of my friend Becky who accompanied me for the shoot.

Case Study: Polperro

Polperro is a fishing village a bit further down the coast from Looe. It's a fascinating town with narrow streets, a quirky harbour and heaps of tourist gift shops. The whole town is also located in a deep valley which gives it some great atmosphere.

This wasn't my first visit here. In a previous trip I was frustrated with how difficult the lighting was. Normally I would visit a location an hour or two before sunset to get the best quality of light while the sun is low in the sky, but with Polperro being located deep in a valley the town is in shadow way before that time. So for this shoot I had to arrive earlier in the day when the light was harsh but still illuminating the town, as a result I decided to use a technique called HDR for most of these shots.

Without getting to technical, HDR is a technique where you capture two or more images of the the same scene but at different exposure. You would them combine the different exposure together on the computer to create a single image that has a full range of tones which would have been impossible with a single shot from the camera.

A good trip, which produced a few keepers.

A few of the shots from the shoot.







You can see more of my work on my website here, or on flickr page here.

Case study: Portwrinkle

I have been pursuing a few personal photo projects lately. One of them being photographing a beach twenty minutes from where I live called Portwrinkle. It's a beautiful place which I often visit to snorkel and surf. I'v never really been able to capture it in a way I'v wanted to, so I spent an evenings here with with the aim of producing a set of seascape images for use on my stock websites and print gallery. My good friend Beckie who often assists me with my wedding shoots also joined me for this trip.



In this image I wanted to find a composition where I could show the harbour and the curve of the beach. It was difficult to get this but I managed to climb on a wall to gain some hight, and although I had to crop some of harbour out I was happy with the overall balance to this shot.



This is a composition I always crave for with my seascapes. I love to capture movement in the scene as well as depth. In this case that movement came with the foreground waves. I tried to create some depth using the pier wall and rock as foreground with the distant headland to add some scale and depth.

Altogether a really fun and productive shoot. If you enjoyed looking at these seascape pictures I have more of my work in my gallery on my website: www.mattstansfield.com.

Bodyboarding Shoots

Weather in Cornwall has been pretty awful last few weeks, so my free time has consisted of hitting the coast in the search of waves and good riding.

Last weekend I visited one of my favourite beaches, which is a semi secrete spot on the north coast of Cornwall. This spot produces some quality waves when you get deep low pressure storms coming right over Cornwall accompanies with south west winds. Managed to get good waves both Saturday and Sunday.

This weekend I travelled to the same spot again, waves where bigger then last weekend but not quite as clean. A few photography highlights from both weekends.

Night Photography

I'v been been fascinated for some time with the night sky and astronomy, long before I even embarked on photography. Something fascinating about looking at the night sky and is surprising how much you can see when you know where to look. I'm now looking at capturing this through my camera.

I have recently found two photographers that have given me some inspiration and techniques into what is possible with night photography.

The first is a photographer with the screen name of Dangerous Dave, you can view his flickr webpage here to see his work. He captures deep space images through a telescope and some of the sights he captures are quite amazing . Another photographer I'v been looking at is Ben Canales and you can see his work here , he captures images using a SLR camera and lenses in a landscape style.

I have now started a project which I will do for the rest of the winter on clear nights capturing the night sky and seeing what star scape's I can achieve. Below are a few example from the project so far.


Bodmin Moor. Travelled to the Moors last weekend with my friend Mairead, she's quite familiar with this part of the Moors and offered to drive me hear. She showed me this cool location where you have all these rocks piled on top of one another, not quite sure how they formed but there make for a fascinating foreground for the star scapes.


The moon from my back garden taken with my Canon 400mm mounted on a tripod.