About
I first got into photography in Autumn of 2006 after a friend and I spontaneously booked a holiday in Africa and I decided to pick up a digital camera with a long zoom to enable me to get shots of the wildlife out there. At the time I never really expected to take it too seriously, just buying a decent all in one camera that would serve it’s purpose for the trip, but no sooner did I start to get to grips with the thing than my interest in photography snowballed and 6 months later I was buying my first DSLR. Since then my interest in and knowledge of photography has continued to grow and the more I learn the more I enjoy it.
For anybody who may be wondering about the choice of name for my site, I have no affiliation whatsoever with the famous surfing brand or anything else under the same name, Billabong is simply a nickname I acquired in secondary school which has followed me around ever since and when choosing the name for my site, after deciding that obvious options such as jbylett-photos.co.uk just didn’t sound particularly catchy, I decided that billabong-photos.co.uk did have a certain ring to it and that sealed the deal.
As the site title suggests, the majority of what you’ll see here is animal photos, as the natural world is my primary photographic interest, although you’ll also find all manner of other shots including such as a few sunsets, landscapes and assorted snapshots from my holiday in Africa.
None of my work is ‘photoshopped’, I feel that too much post processing diverges from the realms of photography into digital art, which I have nothing against, but it’s just not what my photography is about, so with one or 2 minor exceptions (e.g. cloing out a red dot from a photo where I was using a laser pen to catch the attention of a playful moggy), aside from RAW conversions and cropping, all of my photos are ‘as shot’.
In addition to photography, my other passion is for the martial ats, specifically Aikido, a Japanese art that I have been training in since January 2004 and currently hold the rank of 1st Kyu (brown belt). Previously I also achieved brown belt rank in Kickboxing, however I gave that up about 6 months after I started training in Aikido so I could dedicate my time more fully to the latter, as I found myself enjoying Aikido much more and just felt that it better suited me. There is some crossover between my Aikido and photography, as if I am not training due to injury, I have been known to make myself useful taking class photos, a few of which can be seen on my home dojo’s website (see the links page) and more of which can be seen in my galleries.
Well that’s me in a nutshell, if you’d like to know any more please feel free to drop me a line via the contacts page.