At last!
16/07/10 18:21
Well... after two weeks of being offline due to my previous hosting company going out of business I have finally managed to get my site back! Which is just as well really considering that I have done a load of shoots in the last few weeks which all need blogging!
I am actually starting back to front with this one as I should really start with the first one, but as I am in a rush today, I’ll blog the last one first.
This was just a couple of weeks ago when I did some promotional shots for Celia at Ipanema Hair & Beauty Salon in Gorse Hill, Swindon (They are creating a site using these photos so I will post that link when its up). These commercial photographs were taken in an improvised studio above the salon itself with three great models and Celia doing all the hair and make-up.
First up is Annie and a really funky messed up hair-do:
Secondly Polly with very cool hair that looked great both up and down:
Last but by no means least, my wife, Cátia, sporting more of a wedding style design:
I had a lot of fun doing these! You can see more from the set here on my Flickr page
I have had a couple of them blown up quite big to give to the girls as thanks for their hard work and really love to see my work on paper... there is just an extra level of quality you get from hard copies of photos done properly!
As I said before, work is picking up and I am already behind on my blogging! I will be updating the site as well over the next few weeks and probably transferring my blog over to blogspot, so do keep your eyes open for a change in my sites layout and a change to any RSS feeds!
Speak to you all again soon - much much more to come!
I am actually starting back to front with this one as I should really start with the first one, but as I am in a rush today, I’ll blog the last one first.
This was just a couple of weeks ago when I did some promotional shots for Celia at Ipanema Hair & Beauty Salon in Gorse Hill, Swindon (They are creating a site using these photos so I will post that link when its up). These commercial photographs were taken in an improvised studio above the salon itself with three great models and Celia doing all the hair and make-up.
First up is Annie and a really funky messed up hair-do:
Secondly Polly with very cool hair that looked great both up and down:
Last but by no means least, my wife, Cátia, sporting more of a wedding style design:
I had a lot of fun doing these! You can see more from the set here on my Flickr page
I have had a couple of them blown up quite big to give to the girls as thanks for their hard work and really love to see my work on paper... there is just an extra level of quality you get from hard copies of photos done properly!
As I said before, work is picking up and I am already behind on my blogging! I will be updating the site as well over the next few weeks and probably transferring my blog over to blogspot, so do keep your eyes open for a change in my sites layout and a change to any RSS feeds!
Speak to you all again soon - much much more to come!
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Luciene
20/04/10 18:50
Well, early Sunday morning I spent four hours with the delightful Luciene going through the nicest chunk of her wardrobe building up her modelling portfolio. Despite her claims that she is not photogenic she has been the easiest of all my previous models to work with, and has been able to constantly nail the right poses just as a good model should. Add to that her very latino face and very well proportioned body and I have added some of my best ever work to my own portfolio!
Starting early on a Sunday morning in Swindon’s Town Gardens at this time of year offers some unparalleled access to some great backdrops against which to shoot. The flowers out at the moment are amazing and the lack of other people makes it so much easier to get the right photos.
We started off quite simply, this first set going from straight natural light shots like this one to some in my portfolio which also had the use of a reflector:
A wardrobe change later and with Lu much more relaxed having seen how great she actually looks in front of the camera we took things up a notch with some off-camera flash:
With the gorgeous carpet in that area we also made sure to get some close-ups of her face:
Over to the pavilion for some fun on the steps with a great outfit and some great light (in fact my favourite setup of the day... she just looks great bathed in what is quite traditional beauty light):
She just has a fierceness to her stare that she can turn on at will which comes across really well on the camera. Definitely my favourite photograph of that day:
Mixing up the clothes again for the final outfit of the day she gets more of a chance to show of her body as a model:
Shots like these just make you want to go out and enjoy the sun don’t they?
This was one of the most relaxed shoots I have done in a while, and certainly the most relaxed modelling session I have ever shot. Once she saw the first few shots on the back of the camera (the top photo was one of the first shots of the day) she was able to relax which comes across on camera. I was also able to try a few things in terms of photography that I haven’t had a chance to try out yet, some worked and some didn’t, but Lu being the great model she is, let me goof around a little in trying to get better shots of her.
More photos from Lu in our modelling portfolio - do check soon as I am going to strip the portfolio down soon to just a dozen or so images in each genre. The complete album is however going to stay on my Facebook, Orkut and Flickr (info for photographers on my Flickr page) pages.
If you want us to do something similar for you, then you can get in touch through our contact page. This is the best time of year to do it!
Just a couple of things in other news:
Firstly, this afternoon young Samuel was born (over a week late!) so congratulations to Alex and Aline and you can expect some photos of this little newborn soon enough.
Secondly, I am now starting to use Twitter as well, so please do start following me there as I will be keeping you updated on any shoot or projects I am working on and some opportunities for some discounts as well.
I do have a couple more things lined up which are going to be great, so stay tuned!
Starting early on a Sunday morning in Swindon’s Town Gardens at this time of year offers some unparalleled access to some great backdrops against which to shoot. The flowers out at the moment are amazing and the lack of other people makes it so much easier to get the right photos.
We started off quite simply, this first set going from straight natural light shots like this one to some in my portfolio which also had the use of a reflector:
A wardrobe change later and with Lu much more relaxed having seen how great she actually looks in front of the camera we took things up a notch with some off-camera flash:
With the gorgeous carpet in that area we also made sure to get some close-ups of her face:
Over to the pavilion for some fun on the steps with a great outfit and some great light (in fact my favourite setup of the day... she just looks great bathed in what is quite traditional beauty light):
She just has a fierceness to her stare that she can turn on at will which comes across really well on the camera. Definitely my favourite photograph of that day:
Mixing up the clothes again for the final outfit of the day she gets more of a chance to show of her body as a model:
Shots like these just make you want to go out and enjoy the sun don’t they?
This was one of the most relaxed shoots I have done in a while, and certainly the most relaxed modelling session I have ever shot. Once she saw the first few shots on the back of the camera (the top photo was one of the first shots of the day) she was able to relax which comes across on camera. I was also able to try a few things in terms of photography that I haven’t had a chance to try out yet, some worked and some didn’t, but Lu being the great model she is, let me goof around a little in trying to get better shots of her.
More photos from Lu in our modelling portfolio - do check soon as I am going to strip the portfolio down soon to just a dozen or so images in each genre. The complete album is however going to stay on my Facebook, Orkut and Flickr (info for photographers on my Flickr page) pages.
If you want us to do something similar for you, then you can get in touch through our contact page. This is the best time of year to do it!
Just a couple of things in other news:
Firstly, this afternoon young Samuel was born (over a week late!) so congratulations to Alex and Aline and you can expect some photos of this little newborn soon enough.
Secondly, I am now starting to use Twitter as well, so please do start following me there as I will be keeping you updated on any shoot or projects I am working on and some opportunities for some discounts as well.
I do have a couple more things lined up which are going to be great, so stay tuned!
Fashion Shoot: Naomi Part I
21/10/09 20:13
Well, after the fun we had with Ana last time, we where approached by Sarah who was looking for some cool stuff for her hair & make up portfolio. Better yet, she already had a model. And a plan. We where sold when she said 'China Doll' 
I would have held off to post this until all the photos were done, but I have a nice paid project which will keep me busy over the next couple of weeks meaning that personal projects like this are going to have to wait. Once it's done I will post it here as it is pretty cool and might be an interesting side of the business we haven't really explored. I knew however I couldn't let poor Naomi go with any photos for a couple of weeks so I picked three that I really liked and played with them today.
So let me introduce you to Naomi:
Young Naomi was a real trooper in the cold weather we had! A Thermos full of hot chocolate helped and we kept changing the scene more than normal mostly to allow her to put her coat on between shots.
All three of these shots where taken with the Nikon 105mm Micro VR f/2.8 which I borrowed from a friend of mine for the shoot. I am going to have to get one of those as soon as I can - its an amazing lens! This first one was a bit of fill coming from a brolly on the right hand side of the frame otherwise all natural light.
The light on this one should be pretty obvious from the catch-light in the eye! This was f/3.0 and I love the effect - as I said above, I need to get one of those lenses! I actually did hardly any post work on this, just a bit of sharpening and some smoothing on the nose which looked a bit odd this close up.
This one is definetly my favourite of the day despite my wife not liking this shot at all. This is a single spot light on her face which is my SB-600 with a grid. Out of the camera it was dark and a nice blue looking like really early morning, but I ended up draining most of the colour (little bit less so on her lips), using lot of smoothing making her look really china doll-like and adding progressive levels of extra darkening in Photoshop giving some real atmosphere. A very simple shot with nothing crazy done in post, but one of my favourite shots in quite a while. She really has great eyes (as you can see from the hardly touched close up above) and the glints in this shot just make it work for me.
I have plenty of other shots from this shoot and will treat them after I finish this other project which starts tomorrow and will end up with a portfolio album for her.
I also have some fairly cool shots from Sunday morning from teaching my young photography student Daniel. Once he gets a bit better I will put some more about our classes on here, but that is a few weeks away yet. Give me a chance, we have only had two classes so far!
Things are starting to look up business wise which should mean more cool photos on my blog for you guys to enjoy!
Speak to you soon...
I would have held off to post this until all the photos were done, but I have a nice paid project which will keep me busy over the next couple of weeks meaning that personal projects like this are going to have to wait. Once it's done I will post it here as it is pretty cool and might be an interesting side of the business we haven't really explored. I knew however I couldn't let poor Naomi go with any photos for a couple of weeks so I picked three that I really liked and played with them today.
So let me introduce you to Naomi:
Young Naomi was a real trooper in the cold weather we had! A Thermos full of hot chocolate helped and we kept changing the scene more than normal mostly to allow her to put her coat on between shots.
All three of these shots where taken with the Nikon 105mm Micro VR f/2.8 which I borrowed from a friend of mine for the shoot. I am going to have to get one of those as soon as I can - its an amazing lens! This first one was a bit of fill coming from a brolly on the right hand side of the frame otherwise all natural light.
The light on this one should be pretty obvious from the catch-light in the eye! This was f/3.0 and I love the effect - as I said above, I need to get one of those lenses! I actually did hardly any post work on this, just a bit of sharpening and some smoothing on the nose which looked a bit odd this close up.
This one is definetly my favourite of the day despite my wife not liking this shot at all. This is a single spot light on her face which is my SB-600 with a grid. Out of the camera it was dark and a nice blue looking like really early morning, but I ended up draining most of the colour (little bit less so on her lips), using lot of smoothing making her look really china doll-like and adding progressive levels of extra darkening in Photoshop giving some real atmosphere. A very simple shot with nothing crazy done in post, but one of my favourite shots in quite a while. She really has great eyes (as you can see from the hardly touched close up above) and the glints in this shot just make it work for me.
I have plenty of other shots from this shoot and will treat them after I finish this other project which starts tomorrow and will end up with a portfolio album for her.
I also have some fairly cool shots from Sunday morning from teaching my young photography student Daniel. Once he gets a bit better I will put some more about our classes on here, but that is a few weeks away yet. Give me a chance, we have only had two classes so far!
Things are starting to look up business wise which should mean more cool photos on my blog for you guys to enjoy!
Speak to you soon...
Birthday blog...
25/07/09 18:42
Hey everyone! Been a little while, but a really good month for me. Had a couple of great shoots which I will blog over the next couple of weeks hopefully (depending on the client more than anything else now) and keep getting more traffic through the site and more enquires. Google Ads are up as well so if you are searching for photographers whilst in the Swindon area you should see an advert for us which is starting to pull in some traffic.
Today is my birthday, so whilst enjoying the beautiful weather this afternoon we had a wonder through Coate Water’s Tree Collection. You might remember us at the entrance to it with Sarah and with Ransom and Mandy however this is the first time we have actually gone that bit further in to see what is down that path...
The biggest reason is my wife has never really used the off-camera flash, so today I took her through the basics of how to do that from scratch.
Before moving too far with the lesson, she rolled off this one as her first shot (after some experimentation to get the right exposure):
And it got better from there:
She then got a little bored so I had a play as well:
We are going to carry on practising off-camera flash as a personal project of ours this year, so I will set up a folder in our portfolio to keep track of what we have done.
Anyway.... two confirmed shoots over the next month and a bit and living in hope of a lot more! Take care, until next time!
Today is my birthday, so whilst enjoying the beautiful weather this afternoon we had a wonder through Coate Water’s Tree Collection. You might remember us at the entrance to it with Sarah and with Ransom and Mandy however this is the first time we have actually gone that bit further in to see what is down that path...
The biggest reason is my wife has never really used the off-camera flash, so today I took her through the basics of how to do that from scratch.
Before moving too far with the lesson, she rolled off this one as her first shot (after some experimentation to get the right exposure):
And it got better from there:
She then got a little bored so I had a play as well:
We are going to carry on practising off-camera flash as a personal project of ours this year, so I will set up a folder in our portfolio to keep track of what we have done.
Anyway.... two confirmed shoots over the next month and a bit and living in hope of a lot more! Take care, until next time!
Three light setup with only one flash
28/06/09 17:57
Second post of the day is mostly because I wasn’t happy with the photos I got of Jerry last week for the Strobist competition. The cloudy skies didn’t give me the drama and chazzam that I had really wanted. Much as cloudy skies are great for normal purposes, like natural light or bouncing, they don’t add much drama and to add drama you need at least two light sources. This (for the time being) leaves me out of the picture.
Fast-forward to this weekend and the sun is shining... Then my wife (whilst on the phone to a friend) wanders in front of our patio door and I get the view of a cracking hair light coming from behind her. “Hold it right there!” says me...
After a little bit of playing with the settings (and the help of some props in the form of get-up my wife had bought for the Festa Juninha I swapped places with her and whilst she was using the camera one-handed still talking on the phone she got these:
Then she finished on the phone, we swapped back and I got these of her:
Now I for one was very happy with all of these and wished that I had been able to use that rim-light whilst shooting my entry for the Strobist competition. We didn’t win this one... but nevermind, there are still three more to get a chance at over the summer!
As far as tech goes, the setup looked like this:
So that’s the SB-600 camera right, sun providing rim light from behind and Sunbounce Mini on a stand to camera left. The Sunbounce was angled to pick up the flash rather than the sun.
D80 with 70-300mm G lens. Full manual (as always for my off-camera flash stuff, and as it never is for anything natural light)
ISO 100, f/4.2, 80mm, 1/200 sec. I think the flash was at 1/16, but it might have been 1/8
Fast-forward to this weekend and the sun is shining... Then my wife (whilst on the phone to a friend) wanders in front of our patio door and I get the view of a cracking hair light coming from behind her. “Hold it right there!” says me...
After a little bit of playing with the settings (and the help of some props in the form of get-up my wife had bought for the Festa Juninha I swapped places with her and whilst she was using the camera one-handed still talking on the phone she got these:
Then she finished on the phone, we swapped back and I got these of her:
Now I for one was very happy with all of these and wished that I had been able to use that rim-light whilst shooting my entry for the Strobist competition. We didn’t win this one... but nevermind, there are still three more to get a chance at over the summer!
As far as tech goes, the setup looked like this:
So that’s the SB-600 camera right, sun providing rim light from behind and Sunbounce Mini on a stand to camera left. The Sunbounce was angled to pick up the flash rather than the sun.
D80 with 70-300mm G lens. Full manual (as always for my off-camera flash stuff, and as it never is for anything natural light)
ISO 100, f/4.2, 80mm, 1/200 sec. I think the flash was at 1/16, but it might have been 1/8
Personal Shoot: Sarah
15/04/09 20:14
Right, as promised here we go... we found a great model here to try out some of this work we are doing, and on Monday we spent about and hour and a half spread over two locations making the most of the locales and of her.
We started off under this great old railway bridge on the southern edge of Swindon (which I have featured before) which offered loads of texture and colour. Whilst Graffiti can be a pain, it can definitely make great photos! The photos at this location where all done with the D80 and the 70-300mm lens. Also some fill light come from off camera flash (using my new tip...) coming through a satin brolly:
You see what I mean about the colour?
Moving slightly around the corner (on the path going up to be on top of the bridge in fact) we changed the style a bit with the way we used the flash to give a more fashion feel to the whole thing:
We then moved over the Coate Water where we relaxed a bit and went to using just the lovely gentle sunshine that had been peeking its way through the clouds gradually. Of the shots Cátia got throughout the day, these two are definitely my favourites! Sarah works at the same place as I do during the day, and this first photo is spot on to her personality, whereas the second one is just a beautiful shot! These where taken with the D40x and 55-200mm VR lens:
Once more my wife’s eye for detail beats my own:
One of the best things about this time of year is that the trees tend to be doing some pretty cool things, like this one was:
We had to get the flash back out again for these ones, using it bare:
We where really happy with this shoot, and Sarah was great to work with!
See more on her page in our portfolio or through my Facebook account.
I still have photos from the barbecue from Sunday to do as well as a write something worthwhile about my Granddad, but that will need some real though to do him justice. Expect more coming over the next few days! Read More...
We started off under this great old railway bridge on the southern edge of Swindon (which I have featured before) which offered loads of texture and colour. Whilst Graffiti can be a pain, it can definitely make great photos! The photos at this location where all done with the D80 and the 70-300mm lens. Also some fill light come from off camera flash (using my new tip...) coming through a satin brolly:
You see what I mean about the colour?
Moving slightly around the corner (on the path going up to be on top of the bridge in fact) we changed the style a bit with the way we used the flash to give a more fashion feel to the whole thing:
We then moved over the Coate Water where we relaxed a bit and went to using just the lovely gentle sunshine that had been peeking its way through the clouds gradually. Of the shots Cátia got throughout the day, these two are definitely my favourites! Sarah works at the same place as I do during the day, and this first photo is spot on to her personality, whereas the second one is just a beautiful shot! These where taken with the D40x and 55-200mm VR lens:
Once more my wife’s eye for detail beats my own:
One of the best things about this time of year is that the trees tend to be doing some pretty cool things, like this one was:
We had to get the flash back out again for these ones, using it bare:
We where really happy with this shoot, and Sarah was great to work with!
See more on her page in our portfolio or through my Facebook account.
I still have photos from the barbecue from Sunday to do as well as a write something worthwhile about my Granddad, but that will need some real though to do him justice. Expect more coming over the next few days! Read More...
Fashion shoot: Karol, Larissa & Joice
07/01/09 20:45
Last of the shoots we did there before we went wedding mad was with three friends of ours in Brazil. Three very nice young ladies who wanted to do what they call a ‘book’ which is basically a portfolio. Karol is already with a modelling agency (although not much luck yet as I understand it, that might now change!) and really quite surprised me as I had her pegged as fairly shy. Turns out she isn’t the least bit shy! Larissa is really extrovert normally, but it was Karol who seemed to be pushing the envelope in terms of what they wanted to do. Joice unfortunately had other things to do (work... work... work...) but we made the most of the short time we had with her (whilst the others where deciding on wardrobe) and got some great shots on the stairs, very dramatic.
Firstly Karol put on a prom dress and really turned up the sass with the look on her face!
Then into a one piece that really works well on her...
Larissa was posing in the window frame for quite a few and we got some great ones that really show off her body, this being just one of many:
Karol was actually above my head in this one - she had climbed up a tree!
Joice on the stairs with a CTO’d flash directly onto her face from camera left. Really turned down the ambient, which is quite impressive considering the size of the window to the left of the stairs and the brightness coming through it!
Larissa really knows how to look sexy in a photo, and she gave a cracking example of that with this one:
My favourite of the day though ended up being shot with available light next to a big bamboo plant. The girls like my shiny umbrella so much they wanted to take some photos with it, and these three of Karol worked so well together:
These a bit bigger plus many more in the Portfolio section. I will be explaining some of my technique from these in a week or so once I get finished with the rest of the photos I need to post... I’ll try and do the wedding tomorrow... well, the bridal shower first, then the engagement session and finally the wedding itself... eep! Read More...
Firstly Karol put on a prom dress and really turned up the sass with the look on her face!
Then into a one piece that really works well on her...
Larissa was posing in the window frame for quite a few and we got some great ones that really show off her body, this being just one of many:
Karol was actually above my head in this one - she had climbed up a tree!
Joice on the stairs with a CTO’d flash directly onto her face from camera left. Really turned down the ambient, which is quite impressive considering the size of the window to the left of the stairs and the brightness coming through it!
Larissa really knows how to look sexy in a photo, and she gave a cracking example of that with this one:
My favourite of the day though ended up being shot with available light next to a big bamboo plant. The girls like my shiny umbrella so much they wanted to take some photos with it, and these three of Karol worked so well together:
These a bit bigger plus many more in the Portfolio section. I will be explaining some of my technique from these in a week or so once I get finished with the rest of the photos I need to post... I’ll try and do the wedding tomorrow... well, the bridal shower first, then the engagement session and finally the wedding itself... eep! Read More...