Waiting.....

Cleveden Hotel in Buckinghamshire was the location for a enjoyable job commissioned by a magazine i do a lot of work for.

The evening was a dinner and talk with Alastair Campbell who is Chairman of Fundraising for the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.

During the evening i was supposed to get some pictures of Mr Campbell before everyone went in to Dinner.

As a precaution i set up a light and got a working exposure, just in case.

I kept asking the event organiser when Mr Campbell would make an appearance as i hadn't seen him at all that evening, just as the Dinner was announced i saw him arrive at the door ready to head off to the private dining room, as i had allready set up a light and got an exposure reading allready set it was just a matter of calling him over, putting him in position and firing off about 5 frames.

I was in the Scouts, so my motto is allways 'be prepared'



Just one more.........

Time.......something that is in short supply, especially on this day.
I covered a fashion show for a magazine at the Eden shopping centre a while ago, the catwalk show was on throughout the day and i had time to get many images of the models strutting their stuff.
I decided the shopping centre's name should be prominent in the picture so i asked the organiser if i could borrow a couple of the models for a while to go a hundred yards to the big Eden logo on a wall, the organiser mentioned the models have to have a contractual break but the two models i chose where happy to have some images taken of them, so we all trouped along to the wall with the Eden logo on it.

This is where the problem started....
I started to put up a light stand only to be told i couldn't, due to it being a 'trip hazard' so i asked one of the team to hold the flash-problem solved.
As i asked the models to pose near the logo, shoppers were walking between the models and the wall and spoiling the image, so i asked someone else to stand in the way to stop people walking past-problem solved.
Just when everything was in place and i had done a couple of test shots to get the correct exposure i heard the dreaded words from the Organiser.......'we've only got time for a couple of pictures'

There is nothing worse than hearing that phrase, how does anybody else know how long it takes to get some decent images?, i pride myself on working fast, but sometimes you just need to take some time to produce a great image and you are torn between not taking up too much of people's time and getting an image that will be liked and used by the people that are paying you!

So one of my most frequent phrases when i'm working is 'just one more'

Hot and cool Harley

I recently got in contact with Jonathan through a local Harley Davidson group in Berkshire, he was happy to let me photograph him and his bike so we all met up in Marlow trading Estate for the shoot.
I had previously seen this metal 'hut' many times before when i have been on my photographic travels for a local magazine and always thought it would make a great backdrop for something or someone.
The lighting is fairly simple- a couple of flashes either side with full CTO (colour temperature orange) gels on them, combine this with a Tungsten colour balance set in camera and the ambient light that is on the metal hut goes blue and the CTO'd lights give out a warm to daylight colour on Jonathon and his bike.
Just a little photographers trick, but it can be very effective sometimes!

I photograph bikes too!



A while ago i had an urge to photograph a Harley Davidson bike, but there are not too many of them around like the one above.

I happened to see this one being driven into a petrol station in Reading, so i pulled over to see if the owner would be interested in a few photo's of his bike in return for allowing me access to the bike for a couple of hours. A few weeks later we all met up at a empty car park at the back of a office block in Woodley on a warm summer evening. After we moved the bike and lights around for a while to get some good angles i managed to get an image the bike owner really liked.

The lead in line on the concrete takes your eye straight to the bike that was being lit by two lights at 90 degrees to the camera to get an overall light onto the the highly reflective painwork. I did a few more with the bike's owner in the frame on a recently tarmaced road.

A few weeks later i managed to get a poster designed with 4 or 5 images of the bike as a thank you to the owner for his time.

Location, Location, Location......

Location is everything in an image, in this example above we have 'Silent Blockade', a rock group based in Bracknell. They were friends of South Hill Park Arts Centre so we went along to do some PR images of them.
When you think of 'Rock Band' you immediately think of dirty grungy locations such as this dark, damp corridor-it fitted the bill exactly.
Lighting was very simple, one bare flash on a stand that fades into darkness, i did a few headshots using two flashes, then we went to a light and airy room where three flashes were used.

Composing for the final image

Whenever i am asked to photograph anything or anybody i always ask how the images will be used, sometimes the reply is' 'we might use one as a double page spread'' or ''we might have text going over part of the image''

In the image above both of those requests are in use.

Composing an image under those constraits takes a bit of thought, for a double page spread the image has to be landscape orientation with the main part of the image to one side so the gutter doesn't cut through an important part, and the area that the final text will cover is best to be plain so the text doesn't mix with the background.

In the above image i placed Kyle to one side of the frame with some dark trees to the right to enable the text to show up. Lighting was the sun from back right with a flash front left to balance, there is also another flash to the right of Kyle to provide some rim light on his left arm.



Something from nothing

When i arrive at a job the first thing i think of is where am i going to take the image and what is the lighting like?. To photograph the Californian band 'Venice' i had my work cut out!
On this occasion all i had to work with was an empty dark auditorium with a curtain in the background which was also in darkness, the band were due to go on stage in about 15 minutes so i quickly put a light up on a stand to light the band members and also put a light further back to rake along the curtains at an angle.
As all the band members were not ready for a group shot i decided to photograph each one separately, then bring them together in Photoshop for the final image to appear in a magazine the main image at the top of the page.
I used a amber gel on them to give them a bit of colour against the blue background to emphasize their sunny Californian image. I took some images of them performing but the above image was the lead image in the magazine.
Definately something out of nothing!