On 27 November I attended the Devon Recovery Conference organised by Ripple Effect, a project of Exeter Community Initiatives, as the official photographer. I was there to take photographs of the presentations, the attendees and workshops. The conference was held at St James’ Park, home of Exeter City Football Club, and was attended by about two hundred people.
A few weeks ago The Mysterious Freakshow invited me to join them backstage to document their gig at Exeter University’s Lemon Grove on Sunday 09 November, where they were joined by Cornish singer/songwriter Polly Money in support of The Boomtown Rats. I could hardly pass up an opportunity like that.
I have occasionally read or heard people say that a professional photographer isn’t worth hiring when everyone has a camera in their pocket. Modern smartphone cameras can indeed take pretty good snapshots, but they aren’t able to reproduce many things that a DSLR can – depth of field and RAW image output to name just two. But perhaps more important than the tools of the trade is the experience of the photographer when assessing and editing images in post-processing.