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!

Norfolk Skies

Its been ages (well it seems that way) since I have had the time to sit down and write a post. Things have been really busy, my summer courses for the wildlife trust have sold out and we are now adding extra places to some of them. I have got bookings on my other workshops all the way into November!

But - hey I'm not complaining! One of the other reasons for my blogging absence is that I have been away in Norfolk doing some charity work, teaching sailing on the broads. Blah blah I hear you thinking, what about the photography....well here's a couple from my week up there...

This shot of an oar was taken directly into the sun in order to get the spray really standing out to give a sense of action. Its pretty much as it came out of the camera with just a minor curves adjustment.

On a more serene front is this landscape - Norfolk is famous for its big skies and it didn't disappoint. This is a shot of a disused wind pump taken from just outside Hunters Boatyard at Womack. I underexposed it by about a stop to make the sky really stand out. Click the pic for a bigger version.

Double Page Spread in Natural World

Hampshire Wildlife trust contacted me and asked if I could provide them with a landscape photo of one of their reserves - Noar Hill - for publication in the Natural World.

Natural World is The Wildlife Trusts' UK membership magazine, it is published three times a year, in March, July and November and is mailed to almost 300,000 households in the UK.

Noar Hill is unsurprisingly a hill...with an undulating landscape created over many centuries by successive excavations for chalk, the unusual topography meant the area was unsuitable for modern farming and the land was left for wildlife. The reserve is now considered to be a nationally important haven for wildlife as it supports such a wide range of downland plants and butterflies. I am running an orchid photograpphy course there later in the year if anyone is interested....

Anyway...I a took a shot of the hill (from the edge of a nearby field) and submitted it to the trust consequently it was used as a double page spread in the current (March 09) issue of the magazine. Here is a small version of the magazine layout, if you want a better look you will have to get hold of the magazine!

Shooting on a Plane

Every now and again I get a really unusual shoot opportunity. This one has to rank amongst the best of them, British Airways wanted some shots of their nice new terminal, their staff in a studio and best of all the inside of one of their planes - a 777 (if you're into that sort of thing it's BA's largest passenger aircraft). So three different shoots with three different locations for one of the largest and most prestigious companies in the world. Not bad going!

Unfortunately I can't share the air-side shots with you as they are confidential - and needless to say, on no account would I waste 5 valuable minutes of the time my Client is paying for by sitting in the pilot's seat of a multimillion pound aircraft and pretending to be Biggles....of course I am probably unlikley to find another client who also has a 777 sitting outside their office....however if Boeing call I'll be ready....

Here is one of the terminal just to give you a taste....

Shooting Seals

I was fortunate enough to spend a day taking photo ID's of wild seals for the hampshire wildlife trust as part of an international project to form a database of pictures to aid researchers in tracking the seals movements. It is a completely non invasive method of tracking the seals and it is possible to get software to aid in the identification of the individual animals from its markings.


There are a few issues with shooting seals from a boat,

1. The sea is moving
2. The boat is moving
3. The seal is moving
4. If you do it in feb it is likely that you will be shivering!

All of the above add up to a requirement for a fast shutter speed, Image stabilisation, and a lens you can hand-hold, and as we were out on the water pretty early to catch the tide, a high ISO.

Ok so I admit that the first pic doesn't really aid in the ID of the seal, but I liked it, and you can't be outdoors and not notice your surroundings. 5 brownie points if you can tell me what type of seal it is in the picture....

If you want a closer look, try this....

Hair Competition

So there I was, driving my kids home from nursery when I notice a sign outside a hair salon 'models wanted for hair cut and photoshoot' so on the off chance I give them a call to see if they have anything organised on the photography front.

Two emails later and I have the job...8 days later I am shooting their models (bear in mind that the models are just students after a free hair cut who have wandered in off the street after a hard day of choosing the evening's kebab shop). For this job I used my portable studio set up and shot in the hair salon. Not the easiest of locations with a mirror every 4 feet and an enormous shop front window to contend with.

The shots are to be used for the L'Oreal hair design competition - so best of luck guys!

Beating the Yanks

So I get a call from a massive company - over 10,000 employees worldwide, they provide telecoms equipment to a whole host of other businesses and governments including the foreign office and number 10! They want to showcase some of their best talent and need a photographer to provide images for their marketing campaign showing their people in their work environments, doing what they are good at.

Only one problem...they have already started the campaign in the states and the UK pics have to match the style of the ones done over the pond. So do you get all arty and refuse to work in a style except your own...well you could do, but that wouldn't put shoes on the poor cold feet of your kids

So instead - I view the pics they have already got, reverse engineer the lighting techniques and then go along to the shoot and mimic the style of the existing work.

The results? Excellent. The shots are now being used worldwide to promote the UK office - the client was delighted and has since asked me to provide some shots of their new offices which are currently under construction.

Are your kids safe on the web?

That's the question that the Government Education Agency wanted to help people answer. So they called me in to get some pictures that would convey that message. Of course it wasn't just me they called, it was an entire classroom full of kids!

So how do you turn a school IT room full of kids into a scary cyber zone? Well...start by lowering the ambient light (i.e. turning them off!). Then use a blue gel over one flash for background whilst lighting the subject with a heavily snooted second flash to avoid him looking like a smurf.



Of course if you really wanted to shut out the entire school background, turn off the gelled flash and just leave the snooted one to light the subject. Oh and of course turn the camera to give it a bit more atmosphere.



The only trouble with this job was the jitters I got every time I had to walk past the headmasters office....

Spend a Day With Me...

Could you be any luckier?! Hampshire wildlife trust are holding a photo competition for which the first prize is to spend a day on a wildlife photography workshop with me, at one of their nature reserves!

See the link to the competition entry page here

Alternatively you can book on a group course with me via the wildlife trust (10 people per course) or if you want a bit more face time, you can book directly with me for a one to one wildlife photography workshop. See here for details.

Some great ways to spend a day in the open air improving your skills.