Nick Jeffery

I bought a second-hand camera from a friend of mine just over 10 years ago as I wanted to take up photography as a hobby. 

I found starting out in photography a bit daunting, I struggled a lot at first as I didn’t know my white balance from ISO, or the difference between aperture priority & shutter priority. The instruction manual that came with the camera was just not good enough, I could not make head or tails of some of the jargon that was written down. So, one day I took to YouTube over a morning coffee to see what I could find in the way of learning about my camera and all its settings.

It took me awhile before I happened to stumble across Mikes videos, back in them days this was his 4th video he uploaded. When it comes down to learning photography, all you need is plain and simple tutorials, and Mike certainly hit that spot for me.

Now I was getting to grips with using my camera thanks to Mike, I started to buy magazines as this is a good way of reading up on other people’s experiences, how they go about taking photos and what inspires them.

One magazine invited you to send in any photos of a project that appeared in their magazine. I was inspired to attempt one project, simply because it shows how photography can take a different perspective on things that we see with might not see with our eyes. 

One early Sunday morning I took to the kitchen and went about and took an abstract photo of oil and water mixed together. What happened next was the biggest kick I got out of photography to date. I emailed the magazine with my photo for one of their projects, one months later the photo appeared in the magazine under their ‘It worked for me’ section. Next Mike invited me to appear on film by simply uploading the photo to his Facebook like page.

[See Nick doing Oil on Water technique]

Do I still get kick from my hobby these days? Yes of course I do, I attend air shows, then with the power of social media I like to upload a maximum of two photos to various pilots ‘Like’ pages on Facebook, one of them now has two of my photos on their website. Don’t forget, people like the pilots love to see themselves in action and are always grateful for photos, and they always take time out to comment and say thank you on any pictures that are taken.

So, what does the future hold? I want to take on new genres in photography, landscape and street photography being high on my list, as I feel I am too much in my comfort zone now. This will another exciting time for my journey in photography.