D.Flynn Photography

What is Photo 24? Put simply; it's an organised 24 hour Photo event around London.  It is sponsored by Photography News in association with Nikon School and Photo 24 London. On it's fourth year, this was my first time to attend and I was a little bit unsure of what to expect.  So it all kicked off at 12am on Friday 17th of June 2016 and ran until 12am on Saturday 18th June.  Some people went off in pairs or small groups from the start and others went along for some introductory and first time tips with a larger group lead by a couple of team members from Nikon School London. As I have quite a bit of experience with photography anyway, I ended up just heading off with one guy I met and we stayed together for most of the first day into the early hours.  We walked through Covent Garden then on to Leicester Square, and onward towards Westminster and the London eye. The weather was quite different and at various times of the day, we were dealing with sun, rain a...

In my local park there's an abundance of wildlife and plenty of those are squirrels of the grey variety.  They are very tolerant to humans and will quite happily climb on you to investigate whether you have food or not.  It's not the first time this has happened to me and I've even had them climb into my camera bag in search of some peanut treats. Check out the video below to see this curious chap climb up my leg twice and even have a sniff of my camera. Curious Squirrel

Oh, you're  photographer!  what do you shoot?  it's a question I often get asked. If I was to tell people I'm an event photographer they would ask me what type of events.  If I told people I was a portrait photographer.. they'd probably say something like, oh I have a friend who wants to do portraits, perhaps you can show them.. If I was to tell people I'm a wedding photographer, I'd get responses like, my sister in laws cousins boyfriend is getting married, I'll tell them about you. So I just tell people I'm a photographer... why? Because I don't like to specialise.  That way I can keep my mind fresh, not get stuck in a place where I've done it all and then think, 'now what', how can I be different? what can I do to challenge myself with my next client?  I don't want to be cliché, I want to be confident at a time when a chef might ask me if I can photograph his food.  I want to be able to say 'I can do that for you' if a ...

You don't have to spend a pile of money putting a photographic studio together.  Here I will show you how to create professional looking product shots on a budget. By budget, I mean, using items found around the home.  A reflective surface such as a mirror, a piece of plastic perspex or even a flat cooker hob are all possible places to shoot products on.  Simple pieces of white card, black card or other diffusing methods can be used such as sheets or even pillow cases for diffusion and for directing light or preventing it from reaching your subject. above image shows the set up I used with the light coming through the window on the right. Using a Nikon D750 with a 15-30mm lens and settings are at shutter 1/60 second, f/7.1 and ISO 800. For clear images it's a good idea to use a mid depth of field so f/7.1 to around f10 and depending on the amount of light coming in and from which direction it is coming from you might need to make some adjustments to the set...

Without doubt, one of the best bird of prey centres in the UK. Set in 22 acres of woodland and wildflower meadow, there are over 150 birds of prey on view, from the tiny Pygmy Owl to the impressive Steller's Sea Eagles! Many of these birds are involved in spectacular flying demonstrations, whilst others are part of important breeding or environmental enrichment projects. The Savannah area is a large field with a seated area for spectators to witness the flight of some amazing predators, vultures, eagles, hawks to name a few are taken out and put on flying displays, even if you're not interested in photography, but have an interest in birds, you won't be disappointed by the acrobatics of these incredible birds. As a keen wildlife photographer, I was more than impressed by the display of all of the birds. Vultures soared above us, skimmed over our heads, and sailed through the skies in a remarkable ariel acrobatics. A sight rarely seen and the opportunity to w...

I've always been a fan of Lexar  Memory cards.  So having purchased my Nikon D500  I was keen to get the battery charged and get out shooting with it. I removed my Lexar Professional class 10 16GB memory from my Nikon D750 and inserted it to my Nikon D500, switched the camera on and as always 'formatted' the memory card in the camera to ensure it worked correctly. I've never had issues with these cards in the past and on this occasion, I was surprised that after taking around 3 photos, I was presented with camera lock-up.  Looking at the top menu screen, I could see the flashing Err message so turned the camera off and back on again.  Everything looked fine so I thought it was a one off issue. A couple more shots on the camera and the same thing happened so I assumed I had a bad memory card.  I swapped it out for another  Lexar Professional class 10 16GB  which I keep in my card holder with all my other memory cards and went throu...

Taking the new Nikon flagship DX body, the D500 out on the field on a bright sunny day to put it through it's paces,  I tested 2 lenses on this particular trip.  The Tamron 150-600mm f/5.6 -f/6.3 VC USD zoom lens and also the Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 VC wide angle lens. Heading off to Hampton Court Palace and in particular, Home Park, situated just behind the Palace where there is an abundance of deer and other wildlife species, woodpeckers, rose ringed parakeets and the odd swan on the small pond near the golf course. So what it it like? The Nikon D500 is like a small scale, APS-C-sensor take on the high end Nikon D5. It shows Nikon's realignment of its range too, as the next and discontinued Nikon D300S. Indeed it could be the most important camera that Nikon releases this year, or for a few of years. Of course the D5 has all the bells and whistles that you would expect for the price and some professionals will want, but its huge size and FX full-frame format aren...