Simon Bourne is a Cornwall landscape, cityscape and wildlife photographer with a wide portfolio of striking images. He has been a keen amateur photographer for over 50 years and has enjoyed the new digital age of imagery since 2009. From 2011 onwards, when he sold his civil engineering consultancy, he has worked as a professional photographer. Based in Tintagel on the dramatic north coast, he enjoys the fine balance between the artistic challenges of the shot and the technical skills needed to get the best out of the image, both in-camera, and in Lightroom and Photoshop afterwards.
To produce photographs that can be readily sold essentially requires images that most others simply cannot produce – this means putting in the time and effort to capture the unusual events in the very best lighting conditions. So, waiting for the right moment and the best, or most unusual, lighting conditions are features of Simon’s photography. The golden hours around sunrise and sunset often offer the most dramatic lighting conditions, as do the blue hours! On top of those features, Simon concentrates on long exposures for landscapes and cityscapes, and on very short exposures for wildlife. He also creates a large number of panoramas, which are merged in Photoshop from 2 to 5 photos, producing high-definition images that are 10,000 to 16,000 pixels wide. Again, all of these images need time, effort and the right equipment, and cannot be caught on an iPhone!
While trying to capture the best photograph in-camera alone is always the goal, the vast majority of all images will benefit from the subtle adjustments in tone that are possible on the computer afterwards. As with any area of life, one needs skill and a lot of hard work to achieve the best results – and most importantly, one needs a passionate desire to get the best overall shot with the finest of details.
For further details of how to purchase large, fine art, exhibition-quality prints, see the Sales page.
For his latest pictures, have a look at Simon’s most recent Blog.
You can also see a small collection from Simon’s portfolio on his Instagram profile – Simon Bourne at Instagram.
Simon has always been a Nikon user and has just moved from a main DSLR to the inevitable mirrorless Z system. Having had a wonderful full-frame (FX) D810 DSLR for years, his main kit is now the Z 7II FX camera, together with the fabulous cropped-sensor (DX DSLR) D500. He tends to use the Z 7II for landscapes and cityscapes, and the D500 for wildlife (due to its extra reach and speed).
His main lenses on the Z 7II are now the superb Z 14-30mm f/4 S wide angle and the fabulously versatile Z 24-120mm f/4 S. On the D500, he uses two wonderfully sharp lenses, the 70-200mm f/4 telephoto and the 200-500mm f/5.6 super-telephoto.
He uses Adobe CC for post-processing, with Lightroom Classic as the main tool for all his photographs, which is supplemented by Photoshop for the final work on all production images that go for sale.
