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Shooting at Fontainebleau, earlier today…

A recent investment in a Canon 60D and a tripod will give me a chance to expose my rather rudimentary photography skills to public scrutiny. My trusty Canon Ixus 55 has provided sterling service for 5 years, and for a little 5 megapixel point-and-shoot, it did very well, travelling all around Europe, and beyond.

Entering back into the world of SLRs will be interesting – my last SLR (a Minolta 404si) was a film camera (remember film?). The Minolta accompanied me on my first adventures through northern Europe, and documented the early days of one million dollars. But picking up the 60D feels like I’m learning how to take photos, all over again.

Sigurdór gave me some good advice last year – “go manual from the start” – and so I’ve turned off most of the automatic functions on the 60D. This means having to think about aperture, speed and ISO all the time. It’s a tough discipline to learn, after several years just pointing a lens at a target and pressing the shutter button.  It’ll take a while to get used to it… but here are some of the first images:

The Grand Palais, Saturday night last week

Fire painting at the Palais de Tokyo

Forest flower, Fontainebleau

Château de Fontainebleau

I spent much of today out in the rain, collecting footage for a little video project I’m helping with. With a video camera in your hand, it’s amazing how quickly you come to consider the city as your own private film set.

Pedestrians, traffic and background noise constantly interrupt your shots, and it gets a little frustrating. Next time, we’re going to call the police to shut down a couple of streets for us.

To help us construct a storyboard, we used Charlie Brooker‘s indispensable guide to “How to Report the News” as inspiration. Even if you’ve seen it before, it’s always worth watching again, because it’s very clever: