Amy Davies

I ♥ NY: 365 days since New York

31 August, 2016 by amydavies

I don’t know where the last year has gone? This time last year it was the day before my month-long trip to New York (which also included a couple of trips to Chicago & Atlantic City). I’d wanted to visit New York for my entire life, and being freelance, and with the freedom to do such things, I decided a long weekend just wasn’t going to be good enough for me. So, when I saw a reasonably priced flight, I […]

Categories: Travel • Tags: America, Atlantic City, Brooklyn, Chicago, holidays, Manhattan, New York, New York City, NYC, Staten Island, transatlantic, travel, trips, United States, USA, vacations

Portraits: Team Chong & Buzzcut Chong with the Nikon D810

7 April, 2015 by amydavies

It’s pretty amazing how quickly the time can fly by, isn’t it? Trying not to think about that so much just lately… but these photos, for my shame, have been languishing on my hard drive for over six months. This was the second time I’d photographed Team Chong (aka Sarah and Tzevai). They’ve started a cute tradition of having a portrait session every year of their married life – and although I’m only just blogging these now, these will obviously […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Travel Photo Essay: Malaga and Seville during Semana Santa (Easter Processions)

4 April, 2015 by amydavies

I hope you will forgive me posting some pictures completely out-of-order – I know I still haven’t posted about most of my 2014 travels yet…, but I wanted to get these up as soon as it was possible so they remained timely. This past week I’ve had the fortune to be in Malaga, in the Andalusian province of Spain. I previously visited in January (and in fact I’m sure I’ll get round to posting a general Malaga post one day…) […]

Categories: Photography, Spain, Travel • Tags: Capirotes, easter, Espana, Holy Week, Los Penitentes, Malaga, Pascua, Penitentes, Photography, Processions, Semana Santa, Sevilla, Seville, Spain, travel, Travel Essay

Travel: Madrid in September

7 March, 2015 by amydavies

I’ve been working my way through some of the images I took last year on my travels. I want to post them all on my blog if for no other reason that it gives me something to look back on in years to come when I’m trapped at home saddled down with a mortgage or something. So, I’m starting with Madrid. It wasn’t the first place I went to last year, but I had a bit of a heartbreaking hard […]

Categories: Photography, Spain, Travel • Tags: Espana, Espanol, Madrid, Spain, Spanish, travel

Portraits: Lucy at the Northcote Street Lanes with the Nikon D750

6 March, 2015 by amydavies

Just before Christmas (that was like last week, right? No? What?….) I had the pleasure of testing out the Nikon D750. A great full-frame camera that sits in between the D610 and the D810, it features a lot of great features including a tilting LCD screen and inbuilt Wi-Fi. As I tend to do every time I get my hands on a high-end camera, I set my sights on a portrait shoot. Happily, Lucy was willing to oblige and, it […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography, Portraits • Tags: Cardiff, D750, DSLR, girls, graffiti, Nikon, Northcote, people, Photography, portraits, Women

Portraits: Courteney in Bute Park with the Nikon D810 and Canon EOS 1200D

13 February, 2015 by amydavies

So Bute Park – it’s pretty good isn’t it? Oasis of calm in the middle of our fair city, it’s always a good location to carry out a portrait shoot. I photographed the beautiful Courteney all the way back at the very end of August last year, just before I was about to jet off on one of my many trips I’ve made in the intervening time (yeah I’m behind on uploading photos to this here blog, but didn’t you […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography • Tags: Bute Park, Canon, Cardiff, Nikon, Photography, portraits

Camera 365: December (Gold) and Yearly Roundup!

1 January, 2015 by amydavies

So, as you may or may not be aware, yesterday was New Year’s Eve, which for some means a night of unrelenting alcohol consumption, but for me something way more important… the end of my Colour365 project. Which, if you’ve been following the blog for the past 12 months, you’ll know it wasn’t just a colour challenge, I also had the crazy notion way back in January that maybe I could make it a CAMERA 365 challenge too. If you […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 2014, Camera365, colour365, new year, resolutions, round up

Goals for 2014 – a look back, and new goals for 2015

31 December, 2014 by amydavies

WOW! It’s the last day of the year! How does this happen every year? Something to do with the sun I hear. Anyway, that’s another 365 days whizzed by and my my my what a year. This time last year, I set myself some goals for things I wanted to achieve in the coming year. I’d never really done that before, but it helped me to think of some things I wanted to do, and while I didn’t achieve everything […]

Categories: 14 for 2014, 2015 Goals • Tags: 2014, 2015, goals, resolutions, targets, year in review

Camera 365: November – Silver round up

1 December, 2014 by amydavies

So it’s time for the penultimate monthly round-up of the year and this project. This month was originally scheduled to be brown month, but it got changed to silver/chrome – and while at first I didn’t really quite like the idea of a month of silver followed by a month of gold, silver and chrome are pretty abundant so it was generally easy to find something in the house photograph. On the downside, that meant that it wasn’t always easy […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: 2014, Camera365, chrome, colour365, colours, November, Photography, projects, silver

Camera 365: October – Purple Round Up

10 November, 2014 by amydavies

It’s that time of the month again! I honestly can’t believe there’s now less than two months to go until the end of this project. I had a wobble in October about whether to finish the Camera365 challenge as on one particular week it was proving difficult to get hold of cameras. But thanks to some VERY kind people who have dedicated time and effort to helping me source some more cameras I’m now very much on track and I […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, cameras, colour, Photography, projects, purple, travel

camera 365: august & september – red and pink round up

11 October, 2014 by amydavies

Apologies, apologies, apologies…. It’s October 11th and I haven’t updated the Colour365 since July – shameful. BUT in my defence, I’ve had a super busy two months and the time really has just flown by. In August I left the company I’d been working at for five years to pursue a freelance career – it was a scary thing to do but I have to say that so far I’m loving the freedom and challenges that come with it. (Long […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: August, Camera365, Cardiff, colour365, Photography, pink, projects, red, September, travel

Camera 365: July – orange round up

9 August, 2014 by amydavies

Uh oh, we’re fully nine days into August and I haven’t posted the round-up from July yet. Sorry! Last weekend I was on a hen do up in Chester (post of photos from Chester and Liverpool to come soon) and I’ve been incredibly busy since then… mainly social stuff so I’m not grumbling. So anyway, July. It was orange month. I quite enjoyed it in the end – I had anticipated it might be quite difficult to find orange stuff, […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, cameras, colour365, colours, orange, Photography

Portraits: Dilys in Cathays Park with the Canon 1200D

20 July, 2014 by amydavies

There’s something about Cathays Park that means I pretty much can’t keep away, especially in Spring, which was when I shot these photos of the lovely Dilys. This has to be the third or fourth portrait shoot I’ve done in this beautiful little space, which might just be my favourite park in Cardiff. Dilys was great fun to shoot – just 18, despite her extremely Welsh name, she’s actually French (her Dad is Welsh though), and she’s over here to […]

Categories: Photography, Portraits • Tags: Canon, Cardiff, Cathays Park, girl, Photography, portraits, prime lenses, woman

Helena in Barry, shot with the Nikon D4S

12 July, 2014 by amydavies

I always feel more like a “real” photographer when I use a big huge camera like the D4S. I know that’s a terrible cliche (and as we all know, it’s not about the size of your equipment), but it’s true. I’ve been wanting to photograph Helena for a while – ever since I saw her performing as part of the fabulous Siren Sisters around a year ago. I knew she’d make a great portrait subject, and happily I was proven […]

Categories: Photography, Portraits • Tags: Barry, Cardiff, girls, Helena, Nikon, Nikon D4S, Photography, portraits, Siren Sisters, Women

Advertising Portfolio: Photoshoot for Crafter Guitars

4 July, 2014 by amydavies

OK confession time … this shoot was officially now over a year ago. But, never the less, I wanted to share the photos because it was such a fun day. I’d been waiting for a while to make sure that the photos had been used for everything they were going to be used for … and then … well time got away from me. But here it is none the less. So – the back story is, just over a […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography • Tags: Advertising, Cardiff, Crafter, guitars, models, Photography, photoshoot, product photography

Camera 365: June – yellow round up

1 July, 2014 by amydavies

I’ve got mixed emotions about the month of June. When I think about it – the start of the month seems like such a long time ago. The holiday to Portugal was one of the best weeks of my life (and felt more like a couple of months), but it feels like it happened way more than a couple of weeks ago. I have a ton of photos to edit from it – as you can imagine – so look […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, colour365, colours, Photography, Portugal, projects, travel, yellow

Camera 365: May – light green round up

1 June, 2014 by amydavies

May didn’t fly by quite so fast as the other months seem to have… perhaps that’s because I had a LOT of events, weddings, camping, etc etc…. just another month in my crazy hectic life.😉 May was light green – or just plain old green compared with the dark shades of April. Although it was a relatively easy month (green is pretty much everywhere you know), I’m glad to get on to some of the bright colours – starting with […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, cameras, challenges, colour365, digital camera, green, light green, Photography

Camera 365: April – Dark Green round up

1 May, 2014 by amydavies

Uh oh, it happened again. April flew by. But let’s not focus on that. It was nice to get away from the blue tones of the past three months and to look for other colours. And to be honest, dark green can be quite easy because there’s so much in nature that is this colour, leading to some pretty lazy shots…. which is good and bad in equal measure. This month also marked Day 100… which felt like a great […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, challenges, colour365, colours, dark green, green, Photography, projects

Portraits: Kat at Penarth Pier with the Fuji X-M1

13 April, 2014 by amydavies

First of all, I need to apologise to Kat for taking so long to get these portraits up on the blog. But, with the sun finally coming back out, I can think of no better reason to celebrate than by reminding everybody of the ridiculously hot summer we had last year. You see, these were taken all the way back in July 2013. Remember that time? Everyone complained it was too hot, the way us Brits are prone to do… […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography, Portraits • Tags: Cardiff, girls, Penarth, Photography, portraits, sunny, Wales, woman

14 goals for 2014: Quarterly Update 1

3 April, 2014 by amydavies

Seems like only a few days ago that I was making my yearly goals… but already a quarter of the year has gone by, whoosh! It’s been a pretty good year so far, I’ve been enjoying it… I thought I would do a quick post on how my yearly goals are going. This kind of self-indulgent post is more for me than for you, but if you enjoy it, bonus. If you want to keep up to date with how […]

Categories: 14 for 2014 • Tags: 2014, goals, lifelist, yearly targets

Camera 365: March – dark blue round up

1 April, 2014 by amydavies

I’m worried that I’m going to say this every month, but March REALLY flew by. I started my month off in Birmingham for the Photography Show, which simultaneously seems like forever ago and yesterday – weird when that happens. Dark blue was OK at times. I definitely don’t like the color as much as turquoise, but I think it’s around more. Bath (where I work) for instance, seems to have a lot of dark blue doors… I love a door. […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: blue, Camera365, challenges, colour365, colours, dark blue, projects

Portraits: Kylie in London with the Samsung NX30 and Sony A5000

18 March, 2014 by amydavies

It’s not that often that I get to shoot portraits in London, so it was nice to have the opportunity to photograph Kylie a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t playing ball, so the context of Hyde Park, where we met, isn’t shown… but never the less I hope you like these photos. Kylie was great to work with. She’s an Australian living in London. She didn’t even mind me asking if Kylie was a normal name in […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: cameras, London, NX30, Photography, portraits, Samsung

Camera365: February – Turquoise Round Up

1 March, 2014 by amydavies

Whoosh, how has another month gone by? I promise I will do some “proper” blogposts on here soon, I have some lovely portrait shoots I would like to share. For now – the second month of this crazy challenge is now over. So I’m now up to 59 different cameras used! Thanks to everyone that’s loaned me theirs. Can’t believe there’s still over 300 to go…. doesn’t bear thinking about! I’ve really enjoyed turquoise month because it’s my favourite colour, […]

Categories: Photography, Uncategorized • Tags: Camera365, cameras, colour365, photo a day, Photo365, Photography, turquoise

Camera365: Another crazy project… (January – Pale Blue roundup)

1 February, 2014 by amydavies

As we begin (already!) the second month of 2014, I thought it might be a nice time to have a look back at the month passed… mainly because in that month I decided to embark on another one of my slightly crazy projects. I’m taking part in a Photo365 with a group of other people. So far, so mundane, right? Just because I like to give myself a challenge (an understatement)… I’ve decided to try to see if I can […]

Categories: Photography • Tags: Camera365, cameras, Photo365, Photography, Project365, projects

Portraits: Jenny in Bute Park / The Castle Arcade with the Sony A7 and A7R

6 January, 2014 by amydavies

Happy New Year! If you read my previous post (don’t feel bad if you didn’t, it’s fine), then you’ll know one of my targets for 2014 (there are 14!) is to post at least 24 photography blog posts this year. That’s one every fortnight on average…. which in theory seems doable, but all too often, I let this side of my life slide. Why? Because photo editing takes time, time I have to spend inside, when I could be outside, […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography, Portraits • Tags: 35mm, Cardiff, full-frame, girl, Photography, portraits, Sony A7, Sony A7R

2014 Goals: A Break From Usual Programming

31 December, 2013 by amydavies

Please indulge me another more personal blog post on this little site as I just wanted to quickly note down some goals for 2014. You see, if they’re out there in public, it’s harder to go back on them innit. 2013 was a mixed bag of a year for me. I had some highs, some lows and some inbetweens. Pretty much the same for everybody I guess… some highlights include learning to play the ukulele and guitar, raising a ton […]

Categories: 14 for 2014 • Tags: 2014, goals, life list, resolutions, to do list

Portraits: Rory with the Sony A3000

12 December, 2013 by amydavies

I’m very lucky to have a gorgeous nephew. He’s three (and a half) and up until fairly recently he wasn’t so keen on letting me take his photo. However, with some careful bribery (promising to play outside with him when everybody else was busy), I managed to get him to pose for me just the other week – and he even seemed to enjoy it. He was very good, providing a range of expressions and looks, and I’m hoping that […]

Categories: Photography, Portraits • Tags: a3000, child portraits, children, portraits, Sony, toddler

Portraits: Team Chong (Sarah, Tzevai and Marshall) with the Panasonic GM1

6 December, 2013 by amydavies

A few weeks ago I had the fun challenge of photographing the veritable Team Chong. I’ve known Sarah and Tzevai for a few years now, I went to their lovely wedding last year – but I’d never really photographed them properly before. I’ve photographed Sarah a couple of times, such as here and here, but I wanted to photograph a couple as it’s not something I’ve ever really done before. I didn’t properly anticipate how different it is to photographing […]

Categories: Photography, Portraits • Tags: camera, couples shoot, Panasonic GM1, Photography, portraits, Team Chong

Portraits: Desi in Cathays Park with the Olympus PEN E-P5

29 October, 2013 by amydavies

Earlier this year I had the pleasure to review the Olympus PEN E-P5. I’m a huge fan of the Micro Four Thirds format, and was really excited to use the E-P5 as it’s the best PEN to date. Using the camera was fantastic, and some of these portraits really do show off what the format is capable of… one to watch if you’re a naysayer of the smaller sensor size. I haven’t done that much in the way of editing […]

Categories: Cardiff, Portraits • Tags: Cardiff, Cathays Park, colours, details, E-P5, EP5, girl, Micro Four Thirds, model, Olympus, PEN, portraits, summer

Portraits: Holly in Cathays Park with the Canon EOS 100D

19 August, 2013 by amydavies

A couple of months ago, I had the privilege to complete two portrait shoots in one weekend. Both were completely different from each other. Holly’s was actually the second shoot I did that weekend – I will blog the other one in due course, not to worry. The weather was sunny, the flowers were in bloom and Holly looked great. Cathays Park is one my favourite places in Cardiff, and as such it’s often a default location for portrait shoots […]

Categories: Cardiff, Photography, Portraits • Tags: black and white, blossom, Canon 100D, Cardiff, Cathays Park, colourful, DSLR, flowers, Photography, portraits, Spring