This month’s Spotlight is for our very own Rich from VeryFishy. He is kind of a rising star in the photoblogging world, as he only started last year and already got nominated for a Photobloggie this year.

Tell us a little about yourself
My name’s Rich; I’m 27; I live in Stevenage - but I’m quite normal, don’t worry. I currently work as a Communications Manager for an IT firm and I like drinking tea [Tom: I think he really means caramel macchiato here].

When did you get interested in photography?

It’s always had this pull to me - I’ve never been particularly artistic in any medium but I can spot a well framed image in my mind when I see one on the street.  I guess it would only be time before I naturally discovered photography.

When and, more importantly, why did you start photoblogging?

I requested that people chip in some cash towards a digital camera on my birthday in 2006 and I picked out the awesome Fujifilm S9500 as the most expensive one I could get.  This coupled with the fact that I’d just bought my first domain name for my blog led me to thinking I could publish a weekly image online IF I could pull off good enough shots.  thankfully I think I was right to think so. 

Can you describe the style of your photoblog?

VeryFishy has an odd look to it, when you view it through the archives page: it’s a sea of colour and angles.  I’ve never been particularly
interested in one area of photography so it’s a sort of mish-mash of abstract, colour, mono, street and portrait I suppose.  Usually it ends up being a sign with some nice blue sky in though. :D 

What has your blog brought you so far?

I’ve been very proudly nominated in the 2007 Photobloggies under the Best Western European category which I sadly lost out to Kenny in Denmark (who takes awesome mono shots..) with moodaholic, but other than that I’ve not been picked up by anything major and had wads of cash thrown at me.  One day… 
I get a nice crop of comments, mostly from my good friend Marty who complains I don’t crop my shots tight enough ;)  Oh and my mother likes them too.

What camera(s) do you use?

When I can get my hands on it, and when I stop carressing it long enough to take a shot or two, I try to use my work’s Canon 30D but for
99% of what you see it’s the FujiMonster (Fuji S9500). 

Which tools do you use for post-processing, and do you use a lot of post-processing on your shots?

I love dumping dull, under-processed shots of mine (quite a few I might add) into Photoshop CS2, an excellent update to both version 7
and CS.  I don’t shoot RAW at the moment cause it’s not really worth it without a decent DSLR to wave about.  The good news is I find
myself having to load up Photoshop less and less each time.

Do you ever have any lack of inspiration and, if so, what do you do about it?

Constantly!  I’ve seen at lease a week go by without even picking up the camera - sometimes it’s hard to pick yourself up after a long day
at work and hit the streets actively looking for material, so I keep a few locations stored in my mind to revisit when I can.  Usually if I
run out of archived shots (doesn’t happen too often!) I head into London: problem solved. 

Would you like to share one or more other photoblogs with us which you personally like?

When he finally puts it back online Martin Spain’s Hostile 17 is excellent, full of detailed macro stuff and lots of motorsport, always good.  EVERYONE picks out Dave Nightingale so he’s just getting a mention in passing here; Owen Bilcliffe has some of the most incredible abstract shots on myglasseye.net and Paul Pratt of Kulay Photography brings one of my favourite cities, Edinburgh, to the screen with his trademarked long exposure psychedelia.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 7:48 pm and is filed under LPB Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.