One of my favourite photographers is Charlie Waite and I was delighted to see that he is one of the judges on the panel. His work for me has so much character and that's what I find appealing about all his images. You only have to work at the gallery page (click link) on his website to understand how I am so inspired by his work. Another thing I like, and this is perhaps why I love landscape photography in general, is the picture is what it is, there are no arty farty type messages mixed in or statements, which I have always found off-putting and overrated. There are books you can buy that actually explain to you why a certain photograph is great, even though I reckon 99% of the population see nothing interesting at all. I'd rather appeal to the 99%, not the fickle 1%. And if you have to explain why a photograph is great, then I doubt it's for most people anyway.
Another reason I mentioned Charlie Waite though is that it was through watching him on a TV programme once that led me to want to photograph the scene in today's picture, Cuckmere Haven in East Sussex. I finally had the opportunity to do that a few weeks ago and it is certainly one of the most unique landscapes in the British Isles. The wonderful thing about landscape photography, which includes great landscape such as this, is that it will always be different every time you visit because of the changing time and light, and therefore I see no reason not head back there again.
HalewoodPhotographic.com
I wanted to mention my own gallery website today because I have spent the last 2 weeks giving it a bit of a 'service'. It is actually one of the longest running websites I have, though I have never really done much with it. It's hosted by the smugmug guys, which I know are very popular with a lot of photographers but I have tended to have a love/hate relationship with. When I first joined a couple of years ago, I found the functionality very poor, unless you were of course wonderful at entering html and other coding that means jack to me. So it always seemed like a mountain to climb to get a decent website running out of it and many times I did consider cancelling my subscription (had I found that easy to do, I probably would have done it!). But as fate would have it, after appearing on the Liverpool FC website a couple of weeks ago, I had an enquiry from a lady who said she couldn't find anywhere on the web to buy a copy of one of my prints. That made sense because I'd stopped promoting any kind of web-sales site long ago, as I wanted to focus totally on just producing new pictures and seeing where that takes me. I wanted to help as well though, so pointed her to my smugmug site, and indeed like to think I have a very happy customer now.
So then I decided I would try and make something out of this website and am glad I took the effort to do it now. One of the only things that has kept HalewoodPhotographic.com going is the fact that all my photos that appear on this site are hosted from that site. I have a total of 8 galleries there now, the first one of which is simply called 'Blog' where you can find absolutely every picture that has ever appeared on this site. The remaining 7 are taken from my '7 Galleries' that appear on my official website HalewoodPhoto.com.
I am not a shopkeeper or a salesman, but I have totally over-hauled my prices on there, which range from £40 to £300+ for one of the more expensive type print formats. I have seen other peoples smugmug sites and find that they have way too many prices on there, which are simply a minefield for a prospective customer. With that in consideration, there are only 12 separate prices and products on mine, and are all priced in British Sterling (for Queen and country!), though this can be changed in the Buy Photo section.
I have linked it probably one too many times already but if you missed it, here is the link again, I'd love you to have a look! HalewoodPhotographic.com.
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