First Shoot of the Year
After the Eternal Winter of 23/24, sun finally came out and we made the most of it by taking this new outfit by Devil Inspire for a spin! It's taken me a while to get around to sharing these images due to how chaotic the last few months have been. We spent the first six months of the year trying to buy a house, and in June, we finally got the keys! This coincided with the general election, which we were both quite involved in as we helped our local candidate, Andrew George, with his social media content throughout the campaign. This was incredibly rewarding (especially as he won with a landslide victory!) but it meant that a lot of our personal work had to be put on the backburner for a while. So, that brings us here, to this "First Day of Spring", as these photos were taken around March or April! But anyway, we're catching up now and everything is fine.
We genuinely hadn't had a single day of sunshine - at least one where I wasn't stuck at my day job - for about six months at this point, so as soon as we saw those rays of sunshine fall through the window, we knew what we had to do. We had new toys to show off, after all! I'd just bought an incredible new lens; the Sigma 150-600mm DG DN Sports lens, which I'd had my eye on for a while! I bought it for versatility more than anything, with a keen interest in opening up the possibility to shoot some wildlife images. Willow, my fiancée had also just bought this beautiful new outfit by Devil Inspired and was just as excited to have a reason to wear it, and so we prepared our new toys and went to the local park. While there, I tested my new lens with the local squirrels, but I'll save their photos for another post. It's what came after that that I want to share here today. We explored the park, and thankfully found this lovely tree that was just perfect for what we had in mind. We spent almost an hour playing and posing in the tree to get these shots - much to the chagrin of the two young girls who waited on the periphery the whole time and ran to the tree as soon as we left, sorry! - and we couldn't be happier with how they came out! Well, I could, actually, because I made one small mistake. I tested out the new Sigma 150-600mm lens with my Sony A7 iv, but obviously that was inappropriate for some closeup shots, so I used my Sigma 50mm F1.4 instead - the only thing is, I forgot to swap it onto my Sony A7 iv and just used my Sony A7iii that it was already attached to instead. Sure, that's still a great camera and the images are stunning all the same, but when I imported the photos and you could see the A7 iv Squirrels and the A7 iii Catgirl images side by side, the lower resolution was frustratingly noticeable! And so I learned to never do that again. It's funny because unless you see them side by side, you'd never even notice! All that aside, though, I was over the moon when I flicked through these photos. I really love the depth of field granted by the Sigma 50mm; it really has this dreamy, lush quality to it. It's really easy to get carried away and take it too far, but as long as you keep grounded and ensure that everything you want to be sharp is still sharp, you're golden. It's a beautiful effect, and one I can't wait to use more in future shoots.
Have a look through the photos below and enjoy! For beautiful, detailed outfits like this, check out Devil Inspired at the link below, and if you want to capture a particular look or outfit in your own shoots, please don't hesitate to reach out! I'd love to hear from you!
https://www.devilinspired.com/
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to follow me on my social channels and check back for future blog posts.
-Dan
