A Virtual Open Studio: Black Suns and the Autumn Diary
This Sunday’s Open Studio has had to be postponed, so this weekend, the Open Studio comes to you. So grab a brew and enjoy…
Fresh from the Camera: An Eclipse Evening at St Aidan's
The partial solar eclipse must have been this week's most anticipated and presumably most watched outdoor spectacle. Maybe even more talked about than Count Bin Face. For the rare event I decided to head with the family St Aidan's near Leeds. It’s an old opencast coal mine, now handed back to and reclaimed by nature. The beauty of a place like this is that it offered interesting landscapes, nature and wildlife but also people too. It was fairly ambitious and frenzied. I took two cameras one with a 500mm the other with a 24-70mm. There is a genuine concern that without the specialist filter the sunlight can damage the sensor. To be honest I took a chance, using a standard ND, ensuring that I didn’t point the lens at the sun for longer than a second. For my son’s Canon 7D we ensured he used the mirror up function essentially turning it into a mirrorless.
A word of care, because it matters: a partial eclipse is never safe to look at directly, not even with nine tenths of the sun covered. Certified eclipse glasses for your eyes, and a proper solar filter over any lens before it points sunward. In a pinch, a spare pair of eclipse glasses held flat over a camera phone lens will get you a record shot safely. The Royal Observatory's guide is worth a read before the next one.
Gear News & Rumours
Sony revived its big-zoom bridge camera line with the RX10 V (a bridge camera is the all-in-one type with a fixed superzoom lens). This has always been a popular style camera for people who want to capture everything and I’m sure the latest incarnation will be no different.
Panasonic added a premium pocket compact with a proper viewfinder in the Lumix L10, and.
Rumours should always be taken with the usual pinch of salt, but it wouldn’t be an open studio without some gossip!
And in the Canon corner of the mill has been spinning fastest:
The loudest whisper is a retro-styled EOS R8 Mark II: a 32.5 megapixel camera with in-body stabilisation. Talk is of an announcement within weeks rather than months.
A new PowerShot compact is pencilled in for September, if the whispers hold.
Long lens dreams for the wildlife crowd: a rumoured RF 300-600mm f/5.6 zoom (hence the new Studio Clearout section added to the site!)
A 105mm f/1.4 macro might be the most unexpected rumour doing the rounds.
What is a surprise is the much-requested EOS R7 Mark II seems to have drifted towards 2027. Hopefully it will be worth the wait!
Canon Rumors and Photo Rumors are the places to follow along. And the honest footnote to every rumour season: no announcement will improve your photos as much as half an hour spent getting to know the camera already in your bag.
Catching My Eye: Darren Almond's Moonlit Landscapes
Appley Bridge born artist Darren Almond has spent more than two decades photographing landscapes by the light of the full moon. His work came up recently in a RPS newsletter. The Fullmoon series is made with long exposures using light from the moon, often a quarter of an hour, so faint moonlight slowly builds into a picture. The results look almost like daylight at first glance, then not at all: water smoothed to milk, stars beginning to stretch, colours drifted somewhere dreamlike.
There's a beautiful Taschen monograph gathering the series, and the Prix Pictet pages make a good introduction. If you've ever stood somewhere dark and felt there was a photograph your eyes couldn't quite see, Almond is proof that the camera can be more patient than we are.
Film Night: All That Breathes
Shaunak Sen's documentary follows brothers Nadeem and Saud, who run a makeshift bird hospital from a Delhi basement, mending the black kites that drop from the city's smoke-heavy skies. It is a belter of a film and I found it a real work of art. It took top documentary honours at both Sundance and Cannes, and you can rent it on BFI Player.
From the Bookshelf: Black Sun by Søren Solkær
Two days after watching a blackened sun over St Aidan's, the book on my desk is called exactly that. Danish photographer Søren Solkær made his name on portraits of musicians, then went home to the marshes of southern Denmark, where "sort sol", black sun, is the local name for the vast starling murmurations of spring and autumn. Solkær followed them across Europe, and his photographs land somewhere between wildlife document and ink drawing: ribbons, waves and whale shapes written in birds against the last light. Colossal has a lovely selection, and there's more at sorensolkaer.com. I’ll definitely be adding more murmuration photo walk dates soon, so watch this space!
Worth a Wander: Exhibitions Across the UK
A few shows worth building a walk around, with my usual gentle lean northwards. Two close at the end of this month, so a little hurrying may be required.
Costing the Earth, South Square Centre, Thornton, Bradford (until Sunday 30 August, free). Presented by Impressions Gallery, with Mandy Barker among four artists counting the environmental cost of fast fashion through photography and textiles.
LOOK Photo Biennial 2026, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (until Monday 31 August, free). Two shows in one: Is This a Garden?, about the gardens at the edges of everyday photographs, and Yan Wang Preston's The Perfect Flower, a hydrangea's-eye view of horticulture and history.
Jillian Edelstein: Among People, Stills, Edinburgh (until 24 October). Decades of portraiture from a photographer with a rare gift for putting a whole life in a face.
World Press Photo 2026, MPB Gallery, Bermondsey, London (21 August to 30 September). The year's news photography in one room; bracing rather than cheering, but essential looking. Details in Amateur Photographer's round-up.
Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now, The Photographers' Gallery, London (until 27 September). Twenty-seven photographers rewriting a history. And one for the diary: a major William Eggleston show opens there on 14 October.
In the Diary: Three with Spaces Left
The autumn diary is mostly full, but as I write there are still spaces on three outings. Groups are kept small on every one, for greater viewing opportunities and more tailored guidance.
Golden Hour at the Norber Erratics, Saturday 26 September, 3pm to 7.30pm, £45. From the village of Clapham we climb through classic Dales scenery to one of Britain's strangest sights: huge dark boulders carried by glaciers and left stranded on pale limestone thousands of years ago. We time it for golden hour, the last warm, low light of the day, when the shadows stretch and the stones look their most otherworldly. Open to beginners and old hands alike. Around 4 miles on rocky, sometimes slippery paths with sharp inclines; parking fees apply; six places in total.
Astro Multi-Day Workshop, Monday 28 to Wednesday 30 September, £260. Three days built around two nights under Yorkshire Dales dark skies, where the quiet is half the experience. Daytime studio sessions cover the settings and the planning, the nights are for shooting, and the editing sessions show you how to draw out what the sensor caught. You'll leave with your
