James Sheppard Photography's photostream

I always fancied giving photography a go, so I bought a Fujifilm Finepix S1000FD about a year and a half ago, a basic £100 bridge camera - not too much of a risk if I didn't like the hobby. Well, I certainly didn't need to worry about that. I got absolutely hooked.

Since then I've upgraded to a Canon 450D DSLR, and through reading copious piles of photography books (when I probably should have been reading novels for my English Literature degree - oops) and a load of practice, I feel I've definitely progressed from where I started. Still a HELL of a lot to learn though, and it's fantastic after every shoot to be able to see what I did wrong and learn from my mistakes for next time.

It wasn't long after getting into photography that I joined flickr. Without a doubt it's the best photo community site around, and I've thoroughly enjoyed displaying my pictures to people, receiving feedback, and exploring an enormous range of different photographers like me and their works, instilling both admiration and inspiration. Please give me some critique, and be as honest as you like. I'll be very grateful!

My kit at the moment consists of:

- Canon 450D with Opteka battery grip (seriously, they're fantastic. Consider one if the official ones are out of your budget)

- 18-55mm IS kit lens

- 70-300mm Sigma APO DG MACRO. Not a bad budget telephoto lens at all, with a "half macro" (1:2) feature which I use for the majority of my closeups. On a cropped sensor, the range is something like 112-480, which is pretty awesome.

- 50mm 1.8. The famous value-for-money prime for portraits on a cropped sensor.

- Canon Speedlite 580 EX II - a surprise purchase which I managed to get for a bargain.

- Rubbish Velbon video camera tripod that weighs a ton. I don't like tripods (I know, I should...)

- Various filters, about 25GB worth of SD cards, remote shutter release, Gorillapod SLR Zoom; the usual photography junk.

- Lowepro Fastpack 200 to put it all in.

Wishlist:

- Canon 5D MK II. We can all dream

- Good quality telephoto with IS.

- Dedicated macro lens <- especially this

- Fisheye lens, for a laugh

- Decent Manfrotto tripod. I should probably start using the things, to avoid being shunned from the photographic community. I just love the liberation of holding my camera freely, is all.