As promised last week, another theory post for you. This one is about part of a new philosophy I have been kind of working on, which is also a large part because of the situation in which I am being placed. It seems with my day job there will be a lot of travelling for me to do over the coming months which could be a lot of fun for my portrait work, which it seems is going to become a principle part of our business. One thing I do need to do is expand my current portrait portfolio beyond where it is now as I am really not happy with it. Whilst there are some good photos in there, they are missing something and don’t fit in with the vision I have. I am planning to redo my portfolio pages to be more representative of my select work rather than a series of books covering the different shoots I have done. That will also allow me to include some of the odd photos which currently don’t have a whole page to themselves as there are only a couple of photos from a particular shoot (such as the Boudoir stuff or other test shoots my wife and I have done with each other.
This got me thinking a lot about where we need to invest our money as previously I had a fairly fixed view of our capital outlay on equipment and such based upon Wedding Photography being our primary business. As we don’t work Saturdays for religious reasons, it seems we are not going to be able to concentrate in that direction yet. So with out portrait photography, what should we be looking to do? I have been looking at ways to simplify my gear requirements and in doing so have come to some interesting conclusions.
Nowadays, most of the time I leave the house for anything other than work, I carry with me my little Lowepro Topload Camera Bag . I had bought the bag for my Nikon D40x with its 18-55mm and was pleasantly surprised that it also worked with the 55-200mm lens. Much better than either of those however is the setup it currently carries. I carry my D80 with the 50mm f/1.8 lens attached. I was very happy to discover that my SB-600 flash will fit perfectly on top of that and still close. In the front pocket I will carry my gels, the foot that comes with the SB-600 so I can stand it anywhere and a 12” Zebra/White reflector that came free with my flash. With that little kit, I am able to take some fairly advanced photos without much effort. Take for example the below photo taken a few days ago:

This shot of spring has a lot of interest. The Snowdrops pushing their way up through the mulch of the forest floor. The morning light wafting in front camera right, the richness of the green. It all looks very idyllic. Except of course that it was taken in a tiny strip of trees not far from my house with a busy road not 20 yards from my right shoulder and that splash of sunlight came on a Saturday afternoon on a cloudy day. So how did I do it? Simple, I sat my SB-600 on its little foot way off camera right and triggered it at 1/64th power (in fact, I had to move the flash back to retain the low depth of field and still have some ambient light mixed in) which gives the kick of light you see so clearly.
So, how has this affected me and what am I going to be changing?
Firstly, I am looking to cram as much as I possibly can into as small a space as possible. I will have the car to hold thing like a light stand, but I don't want to carry much about with me. I want to have just one bag that will cover my needs for my day job and for my photography so I can always have anything of value about my person at all times without looking like a pack mule. This means some kind of field bag (originally used by Botanists) and I really like the look of the Duluth Trading Company Fire Hose Field Bag which I will try to get shipped over here to Swindon as soon as I can.
Now, work related stuff that will need to go with me everywhere will consist of a legal pad, pens and with any luck an iPad. I will need a small organiser to fit my receipts and the like in, but other than that, there should be nothing else to carry in the bag.
So that leaves me with quite a bit of space for photographic kit - but not enough for a full blown photojournalists tool kit. So what am I planning on then?
Firstly, the camera. After coming across the blog of Laurence Kim and then a few weeks later David Hobby posting a review on the same subject, I am almost 100% sure I will go for a Canon G11. Full manual control and a hot shoe for the size of a chunky pocket camera? Do I need to ask for anything else? Oh yeah... sweet sync speed allowing me to overpower the sun with a normal flash. Great for doing funky portraits even in the middle of the day. So that brings the question of triggering... as I currently use Nikon's CLS system, I am going to need something else. At a guess, I am going to go with the Cactus Triggers from Gadget Infinity. These are cheap and fairly reliable which is good enough for me. At a later date when I go for some big flash I imagine I will either go with either Elinchrom's Skyport or Pocket Wizards but am not sure on that yet.
I already own one SB600, and I am going to need a second light fairly soon if I am going to move to the Canon. Especially as the depth of field will be greater meaning I am going to have to use light and contrast to separate the model from the background in a portrait rather than being able to blur the background. I am going to have to see whether I can afford to go for a second SB600 which would be my preferred option or whether I will go for a Vivitar style thing (Gadget Infinity actually make a clone of the now out of production Vivitar).
How to hold the light in place without a lightstand then? Well, I am trying to decide between two Manfrotto parts, the 175F Justin Clamp or the Super Clamp. Both will do the job of clamping my flash to absolutely anything very well indeed.
Modifiers? Well, the Speedlight Pro Kit looks very nice indeed and isn't all that expensive, so I feel I will lean towards those in the beginning. They even have a beauty dish now which I do really want to play with.
As far as Light Stands to keep in the car, I think I am going to want something pretty heavy duty and will almost certainly buy a boom for it. That way I can easily put something above the model, even if they are jumping or moving. A couple of brollies will easily fit in the car alongside those.
So that's the gear... now about the philosophy.
As I will be travelling anyway, I will be in hotels fairly regularly. With the help of Facebook, Twitter (not yet setup on that, but I would do before trying this) and sites like Model Mayhem, I could find models/subjects in the area where I will be staying. That means, I can finish my day job and then spend time with a model taking photos in various parts of the country (and possibly the world of course...). I already have many friends in different places so can play around with different types of shoot as well. This will give me the chance to spend more time shooting, learning, experimenting and building a really strong portfolio to allow me to take bigger and better paid jobs as time goes on. Best of all - I can do this for fun and that is really what my photography is supposed to be about - me doing what I love! I have many photos in my current portfolio I am not happy with, nor in fact did I enjoy taking and that is the biggest thing I want to change. As I mentioned in my last post I am supposed to be having a Maternity shoot this weekend, which is one I am looking forward to, and as I am borrowing a second SB600 I want to try for some nice hard light + fill shots which will give my ring light a change to actually be used and then some work with my strip boxes. 

Recently my wife and I went to an intimate concert held in Oxford by a Brazilian singer named Leonardo Gonçalves who happens to be old friends with the Pastor of the Portuguese Language Adventist Church in Oxford. When he came over to visit on the way back from Switzerland he gave a small concert. I have his current CD and really love his music, as does my wife, so we where both excited about being there to see him perform up close.
I took my normal camera bag which I take everywhere when I don’t know what is going to happen which consists of my D80, my 18-55, in this case I decided on my 55-200 rather than my 70-300, my 50mm f/1.8 and my flash with one light stand and two brollies (one shoot though, one silver) plus the normal load of small things, like the StoFen, gels etc. Quite portable and not much bother to carry around. Upon arriving, I did my normal thing for interiors which is pull out my 50mm f/1.8 on Aperture priority and have a go. The results were quite pleasing, although nothing special at all. I was almost resigned to just ‘recording’ the event rather than creating any art, when I remembered an article from David Hobby over at Strobist where he explains how to light a gym with two speedlights, which I modified to suit the locale (and the single speedlight in my camera bag). I set up the flash stage left, in front of where he would be singing from, pointed up to the far vaulted ceiling some eight metres away and further backstage which was conveniently white and controlled the power using Nikon’s CLS from the back of the camera. With this setup, the live portraits from the concert had a lot more punch in them with the double effect of hard light coming from stage left and soft fill bouncing off the ceiling coming from stage right. Add in some ambient as well and I can control the contrast with the flick of my shutter dial. So when it comes to live portraits, this setup allowed me complete freedom to move around and get different angles at different distances keeping exposure completely consistent in full manual mode. This shot was ISO 800, 200mm, f/5.6 at 1/100s and I believe the flash was on 1/2 power:

As you can see, the harsh light coming from behind him, camera right and the nice wash coming from over my left shoulder filling in his face. To get this level of contrast and therefore interest in this portrait without the flash would have been impossible. A couple of other people where there with newer and flashier cameras than me with better lenses than the 55-200mm VR however when afterwards comparing our shots, it was clear that the photos I got were much more than just a recording of what happened but a moment of true art which is something I am always striving for. It is amazing what can be done with a little light - David Hobby has really created something amazing with the Strobist movement and I have really integrated these simple tools into my portrait repertoire. Now, whether natural light, reflectors or small flash, I am flexible to solve the problems that come up. With any luck I will be able to add big lights into that mix later this year as well... but that really depends on what jobs we get and whether we will need to overpower the sun much in our portrait work, or end up doing much more studio style stuff like I did with our first Boudoir Session and like I will be doing this coming weekend for a Maternity Session.
During his set though he introduced his wife of nine months, Daniela Araujo, which was a real surprise as I had never heard of her, but she sang a couple of really emotional songs that I really loved. She is releasing her first CD this summer which I will definitely get hold as soon as it comes out. You can hear some of her music on her MySpace page.
She really put herself into her songs, and the simplicity of the backing tracks added on top of the emotion she displayed really came over beautifully. The following photo was during an instrumental section of the first song as she was meditating on the music (same EXIF as above):

I love her expression, and indeed she has a face that moves all over the place with her emotions throughout the songs.
I really enjoyed seeing both of them and look forward to new CDs from both of them soon.
Coming up I have an interesting article on why you should always have your camera with you, and in fact how to go beyond your simple camera phone to taking photos worthwhile. My day job might be up for some changes soon which could mean I will me travelling a lot which will change the way I am doing things quite a lot as I will explain.
I also have some interesting shoots coming up, including a Maternity Session coming very shortly, and some voluntary work with some community groups in Swindon involving more portraits which I can’t wait for.
So plenty to look forward too... sign up on RSS or keep coming back manually, but don’t miss out!

As I mentioned quite some time ago now, I had a big project that kept me busy for a while and although having finished it, I have yet to blog about it. Even more interesting is that I have actually already done the same project twice for two separate companies and am lined up for a third!
Here I am talking Web Design, and have now completed two websites for Dentists. The first, and biggest was for Market Place Dental Practice in Cirencester. This was their first site and created from scratch. One of the headshots in the page about the team was taken by myself as well. This site started with a simple template (in fact the same one I used for my current site provided by Nimblehost) which I ended up modifying quite considerably as you can see (and in fact as I did for my site). I really like the visual style and follows on from their green ‘tick’ logo. This is the splash page, feel free to have a mess around there:

Following on from that, I have just updated the site of my good friend Peter Yesudian’s personal Dental website over at http://www.dentalspecialist.info. I designed his original site several years ago in Frontpage (yeah... I know...) and had more recently updated it in Rapidweaver but it was still quite ugly despite the content being mostly fixed. Now I am at a point where I can use the software properly and have a better idea of website design in general which means I could go back and do the job properly as a professional rather than just a friend. So now, with a few tweaks to the pages themselves, I have reformed the look and feel of the site. The new site really fits in with the stationary they have at One Wood Street Dental Practice in Swindon which is his main place of work and to me is generally very pleasing. His main business is Dental Implants and so we redesigned the whole section based upon that fact.
Again, have a look around the site and see what you think:

Whilst not core business this is something I am doing well and starting to get referrals with so I am certainly available for that.

I have an interesting piece of photography from a couple of weeks ago to blog as well and have some interesting new projects coming up which I can’t wait to get my teeth into.

Well, I have been looking into all the different options for stuff I need to include in my kit and trying to work out where to spend what little money I have. For the time being, we are in desperate need of a couple more lenses (specifically the 35mm and 85mm f/1.8 lenses) and so can’t afford to experiment in terms of lighting mods which are becoming more and more important to us for our non-wedding style stuff.

One thing I have wanted to play with for a while to see how it would fit into our shooting style is a Ring Flash. They are not cheap by any means and I don’t have any friends who have one that I could play with so I had to look elsewhere. I found a heap of resources on Strobist which is true about almost anything to do with flash, and so I took all the info from the different DIY versions and came up with my own version of it:

This was before I started and was so sure of how to do it. Little did I know how tricky this one would be! What you see is two Tesco’s Microwave splatter protection things to put on plates in the microwave and a mixing jug. That cost a total of about £4 and I could do it for £2 now I know how to do it. The trickiest bit was cutting a hole in the microwave thingy as it was very brittle. Also ignore the Pritt PVA glue there... you need something that will actually dry between the foil and the plastic.
Basically, cut both ends off the mixing jug, ensuring it will fit over your lenses. Stick a cardboard disc to the thicker end of this. To the microwave thingy you cut a corresponding hole in the middle and one on the edge to snugly take your flash.
Paint the outside black for looks and once that is dry, use glue (in my case 3M spray mounting glue) to put the foil on shiny side out. Use a cloth to smooth it down and buff it up. Then you can put the two pieces together and try and glue some smaller bits over the seam.
You can see the finished product here:

I have yet to manage much in the way of amazing photography with it, I am waiting for some decent sunshine (perhaps by about June?) to try using it for fill as I think that is where it will end up most used. One I was particularly happy with though was this one I grabbed at a party, but I don’t know how much of that is down to me and how much down to her being cute:

I can’t see myself buying one of these anytime soon, but I know I have not yet put it through its paces and can’t pass judgement on it yet. I will let you know if I come to any conclusion on it at some point.

If you look back at the photos from the Boudoir shoot I did with my wife a few weeks ago, you might be forgiven for thinking that the back wall is lit by some kind of room light, i.e. the main ceiling light. In fact the room was pretty dark throughout the shoot and the light you see on the back wall is the spill coming from the shoot through umbrella. With the kit I currently have, that is going to cause me problems every time I work in a confined space, which is most of the Winter... So the solution? Strip Boxes! So armed with more Google acquired knowledge I set to work on my own version and came up with the following:

This took a single A1 sheet of Black Mount Board I picked up for £1.99. Basically, it measured 15cm up each side and along each end and the overall length was determined by the size of the board. The inside is covered in foil halfway up sides, which being a total of 30cm width means you can do that with a single sheet of foil straight off the roll!. This 14cm leftover strip made the 3.5cm strips along the edge and I use an offcut to double up the thickness where the flash is mounted (again just with a snug fit). The diffusion material is common wax paper (baking sheet) which conveniently also comes in 30cm rolls so it is taped under the front flaps (for aesthetic reasons only) making it easy to replace should it get ripped:

To start with I wanted to see if it would work without he diffusion material the trouble being (as you can see below) that a lot of the light goes out the far end (particularly the other end to the flash) as below:

However with the diffusion material added, you get the light thrown forward much better with the wall off to the left being much less lit which is ideal:

Although I did try it out on the wife, she doesn’t want me putting shots of her in an old sweatshirt with no make-up on the net, so you will have to make do with this curvy figure:

Again, this is without the diffusion material, and the below is with the diffusion material which makes a much better photo (same settings on both):

I have made two of these and am looking forward to giving them a go on a model soon... as I mentioned in my previous post, I have some great people lined up and we are still looking for more!

Take care...

Well everybody; it’s that time of year again when everybody starts looking backing over the previous year, working out what mistakes they made and what they can do to make things work better in the new year.
My wife and I have spent a lot of time looking at our business over the last couple of months trying to work out how to lift our business off its feet and get it running properly rather than the few drips and drabs we have managed to get over the past year. From this we have drawn up a list of things we want to achieve this year, and ways we are going to achieve them. So here we go... I am sure you will like this and I hope one of the below will affect you in some way:

Weddings

We have always wanted our business to be based around wedding photography and that is the thing we are finding most difficult to attract clients for. We also realise we only have one complete wedding in our portfolio to date which we need to do something about before we can think about getting many enquiries for work in that area. As such, we want to offer two completely free weddings (shoot to CD) for two couples in the Swindon area. The weddings must be off-peak (ie not Friday or Saturday) and we will give you the top of the line package excluding any printed products. This will be both photographers with coverage as follows:

• Engagement Session

One to two hour session on location with bride and groom some days or weeks before the wedding
Relaxed portraits and gives you a chance to get to know us which makes your wedding day itself that little bit less stressful

• Wedding Preparations

Full coverage of Bridal preparations and Groom’s where possible

• Wedding Ceremony

Full coverage of ceremony at church, registry office or other location

• Formal Portraits

Maximum of five groups to be pre-arranged and shot shortly after ceremony
Short couple portrait session with Bride and Groom after ceremony at location nearby

• Wedding Reception

Coverage of reception until organised events finished

The whole wedding will be shot in the photojournalistic style which you see in the vast majority of our event photos
Once the wedding is finished we will treat the photos and hand over hi-res Jpegs on CD.
Should prints or albums be requested we can organise those for cost from our suppliers.
Get in contact if you think this fits you

Portraits

Whilst we want the bulk of our work to be based around Weddings, we want to also keep up a strong portrait business as well. We already have plenty of this kind of thing in our portfolio, but we still want to expand that to be able to split out the different types of work and be more specific in our marketing and pricing.
As such we are lining up some people in different categories but there are still a few things we want to be involved with for which we don’t have direct contacts (or enough of them). So we are looking for the following people under the same terms as above, ie provide a CD of Hi-Res Jpegs for your time and can arrange prints/albums at cost:

• Maternity Session

We are looking for one lady (or couple) for a pregnancy session. At this time of year this is likely to be in the persons house.

• Corporate Photography

We have recently finished a large project for a business which involved some photography that we will be able to post soon however we do want to expand this side of the business. Initially we are looking for local artists or dancers or the like who are looking for some environmental portraits (portraits that show the subject in their environment, in this case as a dancer or artist or something similar). We are looking to help out local arts centres and will be getting in contact with some anyway, however if there are any volunteers we will be more than willing to discuss

From time to time we will continue to give away sessions as we decide on where else we have holes in our portfolio. We might be looking more at baby photography or even boudoir photography but we want to show how good we are in a just a few things at a time and not spread ourselves too thin!

If you think you fit any of the things we need above and want to put yourself forward then please get in contact and mention this post. Make sure if you are sending this to someone else that you link to this original post so they can read the full story.

I will be updating this post as spaces are taken and even if you don’t fit into any of the above, get in contact and let us know what you want and we will see how that fits into out business needs at this time.

Hope to speak to many of you soon! Take Care...