Oliver Bryant Photography - Blog

My first international trip of 2025 kicked off with Berlin, Germany. I have personally wanted to visit Berlin for a long time, My Grandad was a guard during World War II in the UK zone. The city has architecture that varies from the West and East, I have nothing but love for Berlin as a city and the kindness of those in the City. I consumed a lot of currywust and enjoyed visiting the museums and monuments.

When heading into Berlin I took note from travel vloggers like Steve Marsh, Wolters World and Planes, Trains, Everything as well as speaking to german individuals.

Germans appreciate privacy, With that reguard I decided not to photograph certain places out of respect. I would advise people to use common sense, For example the Holocaust memorial has rules such as walking slowly through it. I would also like to add an additonal rule which is don’t use it as a snapchat/social-media location. The memorial is for individuals who died during the Holocaust, show respect and put the camera away.

When I did take photographs I would always ensure that my camera was only pointing at objects/animals and not at people, I kept my camera facing downwards with the lens cap on to show that I was not capturing indvidiuals.

Friday

• Got the train from the airport, Google Maps sent us on a bit of journey. Our hotel was based at Berlin Alexanderplatz. Google suggested FEX to Berlin Ostkreuz then we took the S-Bahn which got us to Alexanderplatz. I am now aware of other train services that are direct to Alexanderplatz, If your interested to see the rest of them [here is a list]
• Checked into our Hotel.
• Went to Curry61 to get a Currywust.
• Walked to Checkpoint Charlie, Got a taxi back to Alexanderplatz.
• Went up the Berlin TV Tower.

Saturday

• Went to THF Tower/Observation Deck at Tempelhof Airport.
• Visited German technikmuseum (German Technology Museum) and saw Trains, Airplanes, Cars, Computers, Radio systems, Factory/Industrial Technology.
• Went to the Berlin War Memorial.
• Went to Electric Social (arcade bar).

Sunday

• Visited Zoo Berlin.
• Visited the Holocaust Monument.
• Visited Bradenburg Gate.

Monday

• Went to the DDR Museum.
• Checked out of the Hotel.
• Got a Taxi to the Airport.

I enjoyed my trip to Berlin. I have made two galleries from my trip to Berlin

Gallery One

Gallery Two

In May 2025 I visited the Buttercups Santuary for Goats in Boughton Monchelsea, Kent. The charity helps goats whom have been abandoned and also takes on goats from the RSPCA. The charity has days that the public can go up to the goats and give them feed and (if they permit) pet them!

The santuary is fantastic, people come and sit down among the goats and relax, the goats don’t judge they do their thing and if they feel comfortable they choose you!

One goat stood out inparticular to me and my wife, a small chocolate brown fluffy goat who took a deep interest in my camera. What I realised was what he wanted was me to give him pets! So I obliged. I went away from the Santuary wishing I could do more and I’ve come up with a idea.

Postcards for Good Oliver Bryant Photography x Buttercups Santuary For Goats

I am in the process of developing my own line of postcards which will go on Sale at Buttercups Santuary. Any proceeds from the Postcards will go 100% to the chairty.

As soon as these postcards go live I’ll let people know on this blog. I’m also very keen to sell the postcards online via my website again once this is up and running I’ll let people know.

I’m looking forward to this collaboration with the Buttercups Santuary For Goats.

Spring 2025 has been perfect weather in the UK. Thanks to those that support my art I have been fortaunte enough to travel to some beautiful places to take photos.

Hothfield Heathlands Nature Reserve in Ashford, Kent

King’s Wood in Challock, Kent

Hampton Court Palace in London

Kenward Place in Yalding, Kent

Hever Castle in Kent

This concludes my spring collection for 2025. Thank you to those who have supported me in getting from point a to point b, you know who you are. I am also grateful to my Wife who has helped and inspired me to keep going.

As announced on Instagram Project Flower is going to be coming to my online gallery in Winter 2025.

For my current setup I use a multi-layered approach to fighting dust and dirt on my camera lenses…

It’s starts in Norway…

It’s September 2024 I’m on my honeymoon with my beautiful wife taking snaps when I suddenly realise I have dirt that’s impacting photos in the end I had to edit the dirt out in PhotoPea (a free alternative to Photoshop) and I got my camera serviced, the camera shop recommended me a dust pump and UV filters which changed how I cleaned my cameras.

In 2025 I was using the air puffer and no matter how much I tried to remove the dirt it just didn’t get it off. I ended up having to use camera cleaning fluid for the uv filter. I also became aware of electronic dusters in various price ranges from £30 – £79 on Amazon but they seem bulky and not something I could easily throw into my backpack but then…

I discovered the Nitecore BB Nano

It’s a tiny little duster that’s usb-c chargeable, compact and does the job! Before I go out and when I return back I use the BB Nano to dust my cameras.

I bought my BB Nano on AliExpress directly from Nitecore. Although I am acutely aware Nitecore does sponsor photographers on social media this was a purchase I did on my own using my own money to provide a truthful and honest review and currently I am very impressed by the duster. I spent £30 ($39.80 USD) and got the basic model without any of the fancy attachments and it’s taken a job I typically hate doing and has made things easier to do.

If your going to buy a BB Nano I would recommend the NITECORE Official Store as the experience I’ve had so far as been absolutely fine, as the item is being shipped from China it does take longer than Amazon and others but the item is cheaper and if your willing to wait it’s worth it.

I have recently been spending more time using my 70-300mm Tamron Lens and during this process I’ve been able to capture close-up shots of bees.

While this has been very cool for people to see I wanted to upload a video to instagram showcasing the detail of the Bees up close in editing i couldn’t believe the detail of the bees but I wanted to also show the original composition. To achieve this I needed to use video editing software. Historically I would have booted up a Laptop, launch Adobe Premier and then edit the video but I decided to set myself a small challenge to edit a video only using my smartphone.

At the moment a lot of the video editing software packages available for Mobile are “AI enabled” but I wanted to have the freedom and creative control so I opted to go for “LumaFusion”, the app was a one time purchase of £29.99 and is available from iOS and Android. I should state LumaFusion isn’t paying me to write about this app. I decided to write about it because I wanted to share with you my experience of editing using on my phone.

An example of how the editing interface works

It took a while to get used to editing the videos. In iMovie on iOS you pinch zoom on the clip to crop but in LumaFusion you have to double tap on the clip to be able to make the adjustments and then key frame each element to animate.

It reminded me a lot of Adobe After Effects, if you have animated with as you should be okay to do it with LumaFusion.

By default LumaFusion doesn’t have its own transitions so I had to animate them by hand which was a simple process. The community has also made its own transitions but I opted to make my own.

When I looked up LumaFusion online I also noticed that Resolve another very well known editing package was also available for iPad but I opted to go for LumaFusion as it was available on my phone at the time.

here’s a link to the video

So in conclusion would I recommend editing the video on the smart phone? If you’re on the go, absolutely. However traditional video editing packages have their own advantages and features too. For now it’s a bit of a trade off from functionality to features and storage for assets. If you’re making short videos LumaFusion is the perfect fit. The ability to have multi-tracks on app is more useful than iMovie. The ability to animate and have more control over footage also great.

If your willing to use a computer there are plenty of free/open source video editing packages now available.

It started with a facebook post on a local photography group. A member of the public complained that their image had been stolen and re-uploaded to Facebook without their consent or permission. To my horror people in the comment section did not understand that re-uploading an image without permission is potentially “Interlectural Property Theft” trying to defend the person who stole the content as being “justified” claiming “so what it’s just a picture” so let’s break down the real costs of “just a picture”

1. Camera Cost + Lens Cost

2. Travel

3. Insurance and Public Liability

4. Web Hosting

5. Camera maintenance

6. Adobe Subscription

7. Paid photographer membership

So it’s not as easy as “just a photo”…

So here’s my current stance as of April 2025.

If I’ve taken photographs at your location/place contact me to discuss and chat.

Why am I so protective of my photography? It’s simple… I don’t want my art being used in a negative way it’s why I don’t permit GenAI usage of my art or it’s use in negative and harmful ways.

I will only work with companies and entities I feel are doing good in the world with my own moral and ethical compass, if that upsets a company then so be it!

My art is only available on my gallery and my instagram.

In 2024 me and my newly married wife returned back to Iceland. On a previous trip we went to Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and the Diamond Beach on that trip we ended up on a large coach with a group of tourists from a cruiseline.

We loved Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon and I even got to take some amazing snaps but during the trip our guide told us about an Island that was on a former volcano that errupted in the 1970s. We decided we needed to find out more and figure out how we would get to this island.

Our first attempt

I booked an tour operator to go on a trip to the Westman Islands and 2 weeks before they emailed me to say they could no longer provide the service, This was a terrible time to get this news and I scrambled to find alternatives.

Private Taxi/Tour Guide? That will be £1500.

I went ont Viator to see if we could find an alternative to the westman islands. The offical name is “Vestmannaeyjar” so I started looking for options, a local tour guide offered to pick us up from Reykjavík, drive us to Vestmannaeyjar but they wanted £1500. I had given up hope on being able to visit this little island until…

Is it fate, is it magic?

We discovered a family tour operator called Magic Iceland Travel that provides a bus transfer service to Vestmannaeyjar for ISK 7,577 (£43/£56.90) each way. This was an absolute BARGIN in comparison to the private tour guide and allowed us to plan our own trip on the island.

Our Plan

1. Get Bus Transfer from Reykjavík to Landeyjahöfn

2. Get Ferry Tickets from herjolfur

3. Use the tourist hop-on/hop-off coach service to hop around the island.

4. See Puffins

5. See Whales

What we ended up doing…

1. Visited the museum

2. Saw Puffins

3. Saw Whales

4. Hiked the (non-active) Volcano

5. Went back and saw the Puffins again.

6. Had Pizza

7. Went back on the Ferry and got driven back to the hotel by Magic Travel Iceland.

That’s the TL;DR but if you want more details here they are!

We got to the ferry terminal with plenty of time spare thank to Magic Iceland Travel, We then got the ferry over to the Island and got onto the coach. We got to see a few different sites until we got to the Puffins. This is the place I took a lot of my Puffin photos, The coach then took us to the Eldheimar Museum which explains what happened in 1973, it’s an incredible experience to be up close to a property that had been previously engulfed in lava. Once we left the Museum we decided to Hike the Volcano, I loved the views! We then visited the Sealife Whales and we could hear them talking to us but the pitch was so high that others standing around us couldn’t hear them and thought we was slightly mad… The Whale came over to us and showed us his toy (a plastic shovel). After this we decided to go and see the Puffins again, My wife at this point had discovered the island’s only taxi service and we was very grateful for their assistance as they helped me go visit the puffins one last time. We returned back to the port, grabbed a quick pizza and hopped back onto the Ferry. The shots I took of the “loneiest island in the world” was taken on our trip back to the Bus.

If you are travelling to Iceland in August and you want to do something different, I would recommend Vestmannaeyjar. You can easily do your own thing on the island without the need of having to spend more on a mini bus and you get more freedom to do what you want.

Please note that the services/companies I have mentioned on this post are services I used for my travels and not a direct endorsement or advertisement of services. I paid for the trip out of my own money but wanted to share how I did this trip in case others want to try and do the same!

I have just returned from the Photography and Video Show hosted at ExCel London.

I went on Sunday 9th March 2025 and had a plan of action ready to go.

• I was going to buy a new camera lens.
• I was going to see how much I could get a ricoh gr iii for.
• I needed lens filters and cleaning fluid and a spudz lens cleaner cloth
• I wanted to meet some of the suppliers behind my print shop to ensure i was happy with them.

First off I visited one of my suppliers. They had just a single person attending their booth and as I tried to talk to them about paper options another member of the public came over and tried to talk to the representative who decided to talk to them. I tried to come back a few times to check their stool out but they didn’t leave me with a very good impression. I decided to visit some competitors and they seemed to give me the time to talk about what they could do! So more options is only a good thing in my books!

Wex, London Camera Group and Camera World all had massive stools offering discounts.

I picked up UX filters for half price, I got Tamron 70-300mm F/4.5-6.3 Di III RXD Lens for £563, I found it online for £649

I went over to the ricoh Japan booth and I finally caved in and decided I wanted a ricoh camera. If you haven’t stumbled across Ricoh cameras they tend to be a favourite among the street photographers as they are small compact and easy to point and shoot. They also are amazing in night time photography scenarios so I was particularly keen on getting one!

In the end I went to a couple of vendors and settled with Wex. They had the GR III for £854 during the show which is considerable as the RRP is £949 online!

I tried to buy cleaning fluid but it wasn’t for sale during the conference and the spudz micro fibre I love so much wasn’t for sale either however many booths offered free swag that tended to include free camera cloths!

I really enjoyed the show but I wanted to touch on an area that was a tad more sensitive.

As a landscape and wildlife photographer there is nothing more I love than supporting the wildlife and caring for it. There are some amazing charities that do amazing work around this. One of the charities was featured at the event and I fondly remember going to one of their nature reserves as a school child. I wanted to donate to them but was told they only wanted to do monthly financial commitments. Upon returning later to the area the same person said very sternly “what did you buy at the event?” This was very pushy and uncalled for so I decided to avoid certain areas. My wife also experienced some pushy sales tactics which made us avoid certain areas typically these would be your top-ship style booths with products that had been brought to the conference to be sold at a high mark-up.

Overall it was a very good event and if your trying to get some kit it’s probably the best place to grab it at a discount rate that being said I would always say try and get things second hand. I noticed the lean I got today I could have grabbed online a lot cheaper if I had opted to go second hand! For me this experience was more about finding new potential suppliers but pushy sales people made it a bit more difficult, in my normal profession I’ve attended conferences before and said the lines “I don’t have purchasing authority” and that seems to do the trick, I don’t think that works at these kind of conference’s so your best bet is to just ignore them.

Would I return to this show again? Absolutely.

Travel

• Elizabeth Line was down til 14:00.
• DLR was super packed due to the three exhibitions on.
• Uber tried to charge us £60 for a taxi from ExCeL to London Waterloo. We opted for the IFS Cable Car which took 20 minutes to queue for, then a mad dash when getting onto the car due to impatient people behind us, followed by Tube.
• Limited trains due to maintenance on Sundays.

Me and the Mrs went for a nice walk around Leeds Castle again on Sunday and I was able to take some really cool photos of Swans, Goose and an Owl at the Falconary in a new gallery I’ve called “Birds of Leeds Castle” if your into birds then this is the gallery for you… Don’t worry I haven’t become a bird twitcher just yet but I do enjoy photographing wild life as they never stay still your waiting for the perfect moment and also dealing with other factors like children running around.

I’m very grateful my Mrs was with me as I wasn’t aware of the Seagulls looming over me hoping for a tasty snack. The blackbird was the best surprise for us, he just landed near me let me take the photo I thanked him and off he went, what a pro!

I have released a new gallery focusing on photography of Leeds Castle I got to see the very first sign of spring incoming!

Now I think it’s a good time to discuss my plans for 2025. I’m planning to visit 4 countries in 2025 and you’re coming along with me! I’m not going to say what they are just yet but needless to say I’ll update the blog when new galleries drop.

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Thanks!

Oliver