The last shoot of the year for me so I took along my new Sony A7III and Sony 85mm f1.8 lens to try out in a portrait scenario. I contacted ZeeZee Stardust to see she was available for a quick shoot so we met up at Mile End Park.

We started with a few simple shots so I could get the feel of the lens and the awesome eye detect feature of the Sony A7III. The 85mm at f1.8 produces a fantastic depth of field so I wanted to try out some shoot through shots, shooting through branches and shrubs we found along the route.

I bought the Sony A7III along with the Sigma MC-11 adapter so I could still use my Canon lenses. One of which I had with me on the shoot to test out was the 10-20mm f3.5 Sigma wide-angle lens. This lens is for a crop sensor camera so when fitted the A7III drops into crop mode automatically. This reduces the megapixel count from 24megapixels down to 10megapixels but that is not something I am worried about. The fact I can use this lens and all my other Canon lenses is fantastic!

This allowed me to get this shot of Mile End lock and surrounding buildings.

Mile End Lock - A famous place with no squirrels….

Further along the towpath, whilst dodging a few people on bikes we arrived at a bridge. We knew this was a bridge as whenever a jogger approached they would shout ‘BRIDGE!!’. Now, this was either to alert any bikers that there was a fully informed jogger with knowledge of bridges in the vicinity or that this particular jogger liked to shout out things while passing them, like ‘BRIDGE!’, ‘DISCARDED BOTTLE OF BEER!’ and ‘FISH!’. However, none of them shouted ‘SQUIRREL!’.

This under the ‘BRIDGE!!’ shot is one of my favourites from the shoot. The sun was reflecting off the water onto the brickwork so I asked ZeeZee to stand on the other side to balance the composition.

Moving further down we encountered a flight of stairs, these can be great as they produce a natural frame for the subject as they move up and down the steps. Past the stairs, the park spaced things out and there wasn’t much around. I did notice the long shadows at this time of day so asked ZeeZee to walk away from me in the middle of the path and then look back.

And then this happened… ZeeZee called it the Snow White effect. For the second time in our shoots, as we entered a wooded area, we were surrounded by seven squirrels… You could not make this up… If this keeps up I will have to bring some peanuts with me as one of the squirrels had the wrong idea and scampered up my leg….

After which we retired to the Rusty Bike Pub just up from Mile End tube station… I had Chicken Katsu Curry which was really nice!

Many thanks to ZeeZee Stardust for helping with this shoot! You can follow on her Instagram.