Aerospace Engineering

Sometimes it all happens in a rush. I got a call from a company that supplies materials to the aerospace industry, they were having an article published in the trade press and needed some good quality shots of their massive warehouse and facilities. The trouble is they called on a thursday, for a shoot on the friday and needed the results uploaded to an ftp site over the weekend.

The only real problem with this was that they were still working in the warehouse so there was no way I could use studio lights as I wasn't allowed to run cables across the floors so I had to light a massive warehouse using off camera flash!

It was easy enough for the component shots - employing red and blue coloured gels to make the shots of grey aluminum more interesting.

 It was more difficult to lift the greys of the racking into something more interesting, so again I employed a blue gelled flash. See comparison shots  first without flash then with it. It just makes the shot stand out from the pack.

Film Studio Marketing

Ok - so I get a phone call - please come to our brand new film studio and take some shots of the facilities so we can get our website and marketing materials sorted.

Great! Nice job - and what's better is that it is only 20 minutes from my house! So I turn up with bags of lights to be shown a guy with a huge motorbike and a girl who has never modeled before!

I used elinchrom 400s for the interior shots and then took the model out into the woods to really make the most of her potential. The outdoor shots were taken using natural light and a trigrip reflector.

I send the shots off to the client - get a phone call back almost immediately - we love them - would you consider being our in-house photographer... how could I say no?! I still work freelance - but have just added them as another client - I will be the guy they call first if they need any stills photography. Its great when it all works out.

The web link to the studios is here if you want to book it for some filming or even for some photography! Or actually if you want to look at some shots of their facilities - but I mean honestly which would you prefer - shots of a model or of some overhead lighting? 

Film Stills

I was contacted by a canadian production company to produce some film stills of wildlife in the Uk for them. We had a great time making the documentary which is to be aired on animal planet, national geographic Tv and potentially a few others.

We shot wild wallabies in surrey and te ring necked parakeets in the royal parks. If you want to see some more of the pictures I took, have a look at the website that the production company have set up. All the shots from the UK are mine. 

New baby

So - no entries for a while, but I have been busy...well not so much me, as the wife.

As with any new Dad I find myself faced with a dilemma - beautiful new baby but a hopsital ward full of tired women with new born babies. You want to get that decent picture to send to your family (and it has to be a cut above the norm - after all, you are a photographer for goodness sake).

So what did I do?

Step 1 -  take off your black jumper and place it under your new bundle of joy, praying that he doesn't decide to spit up his lunch on it.

Step 2 - Take your off camera flash and being right handed, hold it to camera left as far as you can to get a nice directional light.

Step 3 - Set a nice wide aperture in order to blur the cloth he is wrapped in and to disguise the now slightly damp jumper...

Job done. 

The more astute of you may notice that his face is in shadow from the direction of the light - this is due to the side of the cot which acted like a gobo. The nice thing about holding the flash off camera means it is not directed straight at the little man's eyes unlike with an on camera flash or a compact.

Digital Photographer Magazine

My work and bio are featured in the current (October) Digital Photographer magazine. 

This follows on nicely from the August Issue where one of my wildlife photography workshops was featured

 

The article showing the workshop can be seen here

Shoot The Homeless

That is what I was asked to do...well I guess not exactly that, but shoot some pictures for a Christian Homeless Hostel in Oxford.

It was a difficult assignment, trying to show off the hostel in its best light whilst making sure those people who did not want to be photographed were not in the scene.

The hostel had a number of rooms as well as a canteen, library, IT training area and a set of massive allotments. The work they do is amazing and they clearly make a massive difference in the community.

All the interior shots were lit with 2 Nikon SB 26 Flash Guns triggered remotely using a "poverty wizard" trigger. I have 3 of these wireless trigger sets, as for £10 a time from ebay if one set goes down I have enough back ups to keep going with the shoot. And if all else fails I can go old school and use a cable!

I chose to use the flash guns opposed to the mains powered studio lights as I only had two hours to shoot 7 or 8 rooms along with the allotments and during this time the hostel was busy serving food, providing counseling etc so having to route extension leads would have been an almightly pain. Yes, I know I could buy some meaty battery packs for larger strobes but I find the smaller flashes work well in this kind of situation where you have to shoot on the fly.

Bedfordshire Beauty Contest

I was asked to shoot the Miss bedfordshire contestants before their big contest at the Bedforshire Eagles football club.

The shoot involved a series of group portraits out on the pitch, then individual portraits in evening wear, home made eco-outfits and their miss bedforshire uniforms. Then there were a series of group shots too!

The outdoor shots were all taken using natural light. The indoor pictures were shot with a pair of elinchrom studio strobes.

 

The main light was a softbox on camera left with a rim (or hair) light on camera right providing separation from the black background. 

None of the contestants had modeled before and none had any experience in front of the camera.