Fungus

Sorry for lack of posts recently but I have been swamped. One of things I have enjoyed doing most is getting out and shooting some of the fungi we have in Hampshire. I ran two courses over consecutive weekends and had a great time on both of them. Hope to do more next year. Anyway here are my two favourite shots - the one above the text is a collared earth star...

Not sure what the bottom one is...but I love the background!

Gruffalo

Well, its not every day you get asked to photograph an icon. Not a fake-orange tanned celebrity but a real live (well not actually live) but a real icon...a worldwide publishing phenomenon just about to celebrate his tenth birthday...yep - its the Gruffalo. Timed to coincide with a BBC series and various commemorative events some publicity shots of this loveable rogue were needed. Who you gonna call....well me actually...

The brief was to inject some life into the soft toy to show it its cheeky loveable best. The majority of the shots were taken outside using a lasolite tri-grip reflector to inject some warm light to the scene, along with the occasional gelled strobe to warm up any really dark bits.

A couple more publications

It is always nice to see your work in print, especially when it is being used to educate or further the conservation of wildlife. This month my work has featured in two such publications. The first being an information leaflet to inform people about the spread of the red-clawed or signal crayfish. More information and a pdf of the leaflet can be found here

The second is the Hampshire Wildlife Trust's 6 monthly magazine where a number of my images are used in an article about seal tagging.

New Website

Just a quick one tonight....we have a new website www.wildlife-photographers.co.uk if you are interested in wildlife photography, photography training courses or just want to look at some widlife pics check it out!

All the small things

All work and no play makes for a dull old life, so I thought I'd post some shots from my current personal project. You may have guessed by now, but what gets my camera out of its bag in the evenings and the weekends? Insects...

Yeah ok, perhaps they are not the most exciting of creatures, but they are fascinating, the variation, the variety, the seemingly alien characteristics.

All of the shots above were shot with a Canon MP E-65 lens. Its a great piece of kit, no image stabilisation and no autofocus but it will fill the frame with an object the size of a grain of rice.
For the majority of my shots with this lens I also use the MT-24 flash. I tend to have the camera on full manual control and adjust the shutter speed/aperture combination to try to keep a reasonable amount of ambient light present in the background, to avoid that 'shot at night' look which you can get with macro flash if you're not careful.

The best thing about shooting insects is that I don't need to leave my garden! No carbon footprint tracking these down, just a gentle stroll through my vegetable patch! Although I did have to sacrifice a couple of cabbages to get this shot of the caterpillar of the large cabbage white butterfly....hey ho...I don't really like cabbage anyway, but I expect my gran will be disappointed!

Digitial Photographer (again)

Just a quick update. The latest Issue of Digital Photographer magazine goes on sale today. Three of my images are featured under the creative techniques section. Nice to see that at least someone thinks I am being creative! Here's a picture of the front cover just so you don't get confused!

Going Green

Nope this isn't about renewables....rather its a quick look at some of the chromakey work I have been doing recently. Chromakey or as it is more often known green screen (or blue screen depending on......you guessed it - the colour of the screen).

If you search around the web there are loads of tutorials on how to remove green fringes from chromakey shots. All that means is that there must be loads of people who are not lighting their green screens properly! As with all things photography related it is miles easier to get it right in the camera rather than have to fiddle with photoshop later.

So how do you avoid fringes or spillage when working with green screen or blue screen chromakey shots - easy - light the subject seperately from the screen. As by their nature the subjects in these shots will be used against a different background it is important that the lighting on them is flat and featureless so they can be slotted in in whatever scenario the designer has in mind.


The pic above is just one of many that I took for a government education project. For this shot (and the several hundred others that went with it) I used four lights - two to give a nice flat light on the green screen (it is much easier for the designer to cut out if it is all a nice even colour) and two for the subject. None of the pictures I took needed any re-touching or removal of fringes or backwash. So a DVD of the images could be given to the producer at the end of the shoot, saving them time and saving me Hassle!