Summer Photography

The RX100VII Settings Club is a monthly release of five different settings that I've been shooting this month, or a dive into the archives. This month looks back on NYC: what went right and what went wrong. This month, I have seven Shot Cards for you: one example of what went wrong, five shot cards, and one duplicate so you can see what the settings look like in different conditions.

TL;DR Frames 1 through 4: backlit portraits at a hydrangea bush, fill flash on, f/4.0 and ISO 100 held constant. Shutter speed was the only setting moving (1/800, 1/250, 1/320, 1/320), controlling how bright the sky and flowers behind the subject got. White balance moved once, 6200K to 6500K, tracking the same daylight rather than resetting for each frame. Last frame: flash off, f/11, ISO down to the camera's floor of 64, shutter down to 1/15 handheld. The subject walked into

Set five of fifteen. Third visit to the same wall, and this time the flowers fought back. A busy printed dress, a busy green background, and the problem of making a statement piece read. This wall is my favourite place to shoot. Set 1 it gave me flat morning light and a soft, quiet frame. Set 3 it gave me golden hour and glowed for it. Both times the hydrangeas were the star and I dressed into them: neutrals, nothing loud, let the flowers lead. This time, I turned up in a dre

Set four of fifteen. I shot most of a set at the wrong aperture, flash and all, worked out the problem right at the end, and then my battery died before I could fix it. Here's what went wrong, and the one decision that meant I didn't lose the whole thing. I nearly lost this set. Not to weather, not to a location problem: to my own settings, and to a screen I couldn't read. I was out on the pier in hard, bright sun, shooting solo, in manual mode, with my aperture jammed far to

A happy coincidence where two separate projects lined up for this unintentional head-to-head. I had two different projects in mind this morning when I set out to shoot: one on my Sony ZV-1 and the other on my Fujifilm X-E5. I have a limited window when my favourite hydrangeas are in peak condition, so I took advantage of the morning to get both of these ideas executed. The morning part is not optional, by the way. This location only works early. Later in the day, the light co

Set two of fifteen. A cooler, quieter one by the lake at golden hour: putting my new Godox iT32 flash through its paces on the Fujifilm X-E5, on my own, and seeing what a touch of fill actually does. I went down to the water around 6 pm with a clear plan: shoot out on the pier in that low, warm, late-day sun and let golden hour do half the work. The lake had other ideas. The waves were crashing right over the pier, so my hero location was gone before I'd taken a single frame.

The first of fifteen. Here's the real behind-the-scenes: the vision, the spot, and how you actually pull off a set like this with nobody holding the camera. I committed to fifteen photo sets this month. Not a challenge, not a trend: just me deciding to treat my own portfolio like a client I actually show up for. This is set one. I want to walk you through how it came together, because the finished photos look calm and easy and that is exactly the lie a good photo tells. There

Golden hour isn't really an hour, and it isn't really golden the whole way through.

A complete walkthrough for the Godox TT685S II on the ZV-1: the settings, the look, and how to fix a flash that won't fire when you're the one in front of it. There is a specific look people cannot place. The light is crisp, the subject is lifted off the background, the colours are saturated in a way daylight alone does not do, and the photo was clearly not taken by a friend. It looks hired. It looks lit. And increasingly, the comment is some version of: " How is this you, al

There’s a moment at every reception where the room goes dark, the DJ kicks in, and every guest reaches for their phone and gets the same shot: flat, washed out, bland. Skin tones gone grey, the warm glow of the room flattened into nothing, the whole thing somehow both too dark and too lifeless at once. They post it anyway, because it’s the only one they’ve got. I was at one of those weddings recently with nothing but my RX100VII tucked in a tiny bag, and I came home with fram

Summer 2026 guide European summer photography has a recognizable aesthetic: warm light, terracotta and ochre tones, slow-paced detail shots, and a slightly underexposed cinematic feel. This guide breaks down the five core rules that make a photo read as European summer, whether you're shooting on a compact camera like the Sony ZV-1, Canon G7X II, or Fujifilm X100VI, or on your phone. It covers light timing, colour palette, composition, exposure, and shooting mindset, with pra