My name is John Bidmead.  I am a keen amateur digital photographer.  This is a blog to showcase my work and give a little insight into what I get up to.

It started in 2009 when I borrowed my fathers DSLR to take on holiday to Devon.  I really enjoyed the photographing experience and after some positive feedback felt that I had a bit of an eye.  I did some research and later in the year purchase a Nikon D5000.  I read a few books, various websites and blogs and continued to enjoy what I was doing.  I felt the next step was to get some tuition, so in early 2011 I signed up for a Beginners Digital Photography course at Leicester college.  This was a part time, 3 hour a week course which gave me a better understanding of the manual modes on the camera.  Early in 2012 I then signed up for my second course, Studio Photography, again at Leicester college.  This was another excellent course and gave a different perspective on photography.  Where before I had learned to set the camera to make the best use of the light I now set the camera and adjusted the lights to suit.  The natural progression after these courses is to do a HNC in Photography.  I am starting this in September 2012.  This is another evening course, but is a minimum of 4 hours a week and lasts for 2 years.  As well as experiencing lots of different types of photography a large part of the course is insight into becoming a professional photographer.  Being able to make some money from your hobby even if it’s just to pay for the new lens that you’ve had your eye on!  Keeping a blog of my progress is one of the units on the course, so here I am!

Starmead is the amalgamation of my wives maiden name, Startin, and my surname Bidmead.  It was a bit of a joke when we edited a couple of home video’s for family but seems like a good name to promote myself under as it’s a bit more exciting than John Bidmead Photography!