Right then... had two shoots since I last posted, so am still getting further behind in my blogging despite my best efforts!
This one was from the wedding we did in May. This was near Edgeware Road in London, beautiful church that used to be the central synagogue. Fabio and Marcia were really pumped throughout the whole day which made it a lot of fun to shoot!

Her parents, were in Brazil watching via the internet so her Dad wasn’t here to walk her down the isle:



So Fabio came to get her half way down from under the stream of petals:



Great first kiss - thats the way it should be done the first time and everytime!



You can tell how happy these two where down at the reception too:





Really cool shoes from Faith too:



After the reception we caught that gorgeous time when the sun is low at St Mary’s Gardens which is just behind Paddington station, only a couple of hundred metres from the church. This place looked magical in this light and we got some cracking shots of the two of them:







This is one of my favourites from the day - you gotta love that Wedding Dress!



Again, this one just look so gorgeous:



Their first dance:



And by the end, everyone was tired, but that didn’t stop them still playing around!





Thank you Fabio and Marcia for letting us be a part of your really beautiful day! We really enjoyed it!

I still have a couple of shoots with the photos already ready to be blogged plus the two I did this week, so there won’t be any shortage of new content around at least for the foreseeable future!

Take care - come back for more!

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!

As you can tell I am getting behind on my blog again... and this time its nothing to do with the amount of time I am spending on the rest of my life, but actually because of the amount of photography I have got going on. Apart from this one, I have two other shoots I now have outstanding to blog, not to mention the wedding we are going to be doing in London this Sunday and the Hair shoot we are going to be doing for a local hairdressers!
Well onto todays post then... little Samuel whom you have met before was finally born a few weeks ago now, and when he was just seven days old, we had our first attempt at a newborn shoot. Unfortunately, Daddy works quite long hours, and the best time to shoot a newborn is around day six which was right in the middle of the week, we had to go ahead without him. Mummy however was on hand (as was Gran) to keep things moving forward. Starting off with a nice moment between the two of them:

Before anybody asks... that Vignette is actually mostly natural due to the lamp I had pointed at the back wall in our studio (known most of the time as our living room). In fact, that lamp was the only artificial light I used as babies don’t often react well to flashes, so my normal techniques which I use for models etc where not available to me. In fact, where you have the red background as below, it was all soft soft light coming from my french windows. I have some gorgeous shots of a hat of mine from testing where I had a sheet hung over the window to diffuse the light even when the sun was shining directly through the window as it does late in the afternoon.
He is however a wrinkly bundle of joy (despite him urinating twice during the shoot - once on my wife and the second time on me!) with really gorgeous bright eyes:


This one is an attempt at a shot I have seen many newborn photographers do before which came out alright. I was surprised at the amount of photoshop that goes on on baby shoots, finding out for example that in this type of shot the baby’s head (at least) is supported by someones hand which needs removing later (I have since bought some better bits of cloth to secure the baby so should be a bit more realistic next time...):



Lastly one of particular significance for Samuel’s parents with Samuel on top of some very important religious books which can be read online for free here. I have a decent collection of them, most of them quite old coming from my Grandparents when they studied them at college level. These ones in particular seemed the most appropriate dealing with how a child should be brought up as a Christian, the type of home that should be made for him etc. Well worth a read if you are planning to or already have your own children.
Anyway... the photo! This was the only one of the set where little Samuel was using any clothes... like a little Smee!



He was a real charm to work with, and such a gorgeous little baby! Looking forward to be able to do this again, especially with the things we have learnt this time around!
As I mentioned up top... much more to come!!!

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!

As promised in my last post, I did have a maternity shoot very recently, which although it happened a couple of weeks later than originally planned, came out beautifully in the end.
First up, the proud mother-to-be Aline, who has some real sass:

We spent our time at the Lawns wandering around enjoying the beautiful spring day we happened to come accross!

Alex the father also came across well in his photos as the strong personality he is:

I really love playing with the lens flare on my lenses and really loved the series this one came from:

Me favourite photos though I think ended up being this one of the two of them in this really cool shot. The way Alex is looking at his wife, and the way Aline is looking at her ‘bump’ really makes these two look good:

Aline is due anytime from now, so we will definitely have some more photos once young Samuel is born, so keep your eyes open for those!

Things are starting to get more active for us at the moment, so I can’t wait for some of the shoots we are lining up and us finally getting our calendar as full as it should be! Also looking forward to trying out some new print products with one of our upcoming jobs... I will be updating our site over the next few days, re-organising the portfolio and trying to make the whole site more Google friendly. I am also going to be finally sorting out a twitter account and a Facebook fan page.

Keep tuned folks! Speak to you soon...

Well, the day before I went on my course which you will have read about, my wife and I were privileged to be invited to photograph the Christening of Leon & Preston. They were Christened at the beautiful little Church of St Andrew in North Swindon by Rev Haslam. It was such a lovely service and the reception afterwards at the maternal Grandparent's house was also great. It was the first time I have ever seen a Hog Roast anywhere!
On with the some of my favourite photos from the day:

















As usual more photos in the Portfolio.

We really enjoyed the time we spent with the family and the warm reception by all. The CDs are now with the parents and I am now awaiting delivery of the book which should be very beautiful considering the people and relationships that make it up.

Until next time...

Ladies, Gentlemen, Photographers and others...

I must apologise for the delay, life has been a bit problematic of late which may or may not be good in the long term for my photography, but I really don't want to dwell on that!

I have some great photos from a Christening we did recently which have come out beautifully and are now awaiting the clients approval before posting, so keep your eyes out for those hopefully in the middle of next week.

The day after the Christening I took part in an amazing course hosted by Callum Winton whereby he invited the larger than life Bert Stephani. I have mentioned Bert before on my Facebook page for his work with Squeeze the Lime and we spent two days with him in a portrait lighting seminar. We had a great group from all over the UK down in Richmond, London for the workshop and we all had a great time.

The first day involved Bert going through some theory and running a couple of setups picked at random by the class. The below photo is Bert with model Prabha Shiyani and Callum holding the Umbrella overhead. Bert was on a really cold White Balance, and using a lot of CTO on the flash to make it look like night. Don't ask about the horses head... You can see Bert's shot here.



Day two was much more practical with us running around Richmond Park in groups whilst Bert strolled around between the groups with his 5D and 50mm f/1.4 (for his 50/50 personal project you can read about on his blog) giving sage advice and direction as needed.

Assignment 1 was lighting a model with natural and using flash to liven up the background. After a few tips from the master I ended up with some photos of fellow photographer Graham Binns who was our model in this one. Simple setup really with a handheld flash agains the back wall. This is under a railway bridge which is why we have such a cool textured background.



Just as I was happy with this however Nick Crispini (one of the professional models we had for the day) walked over, and what could I do but have another go? Hence the below:





Assignment 2 was the other way around... a naturally lit background with a lit subject. After having seen him change his shirt for the above shot, I knew this one would just work. Light is a flash bounced into the white side of my Sunbounce Mini. The light looks great over his body... but then... how could I take a bad photo when he was looking like that?


There where another few shoots in between but I ended up being more grip or model than photographer for those... only one of any interest was of fellow photographer Matt Franklin which is only of interest because I used a fold flat soft box with my SB-600. First time I have ever used a softbox and although I really don't like this photo, I now know that I don't want to buy one yet, but can understand what I would need one for. Its just as well really having seen Joe McNally using one and thinking I needed one to become as good as him. Now I see it won't be much to use to my work until I have at least another couple of lights which I think I would need to be able to use it well:



To end up the day, Bert used the two models for a final shoot each, the most interesting of this was again with Nick who wanted something a bit darker for his portfolio. Bert used natural light on his face in the middle of a tunnel so light coming in from both sides. He used a Sunbounce (with me holding it for most of the shoot) camera right to block off some of the light coming in from that side which was a bit stronger. Add a gridded light on the back wall and some white balance playing and you get his final shot as you can see here. The photo below is after someone else took over the role of light stand holding the Sunbounce.



It was a really cool day and you can see more from the others who were there here.

A real Thank You to Callum, Bert, Nick, Prabha and Emma the make-up artist we had on the day as between you and the rest of my fellow Seminarees, I had a really great time and learned a lot!

More to come...

Okely Dokely... two posts for you today, the first is a party we went to last night. In June in Brazil which is the end of their agricultural year (like October kind of thing up here) and they celebrate this with what is called a Festa Juninha or Festa Caipira. That Wikipedia entry there is nothing like what I was told by them... but I wouldn’t doubt it being true!
Basically, everyone dresses up in the style of the Beverly Hillbillies (the more uncooth the better) and has fun dancing, eating and the usual.
So with some help from Gabby who was having a go on the camera these are all taken natural light with the 50mm f/1.8 on my D80:








Final shot with the 18-55m II and a Stofen on my SB-600:


Whilst there however there where a couple of shots which came out really artsy and which I absolutely loved. The first was one of me by Gabby:


The second which was my favourite of the day was this one:


I was very proud of that one... and you can’t even tell his sideburns and handle-bar moustache (just about visible) where painted on!

As usual, these and many more in my Facebook gallery.

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...

Well... as you are all very much aware... it’s been snowing in the UK!
As a sort of related note I am going to put my non-work related shoots onto my facebook account rather than into my portfolio as below:
Feel free to add me if you want, I do let people know more about what I am up to on my facebook account than on my blog that is for sure!
I say sort of related because of the photo’s I have put up there of yesterday afternoon when a few of us went over to Lydiard Park to enjoy the snow, and I of course took my camera. Having been working all week at my day job (one problem with walking to work: not being able to get the car out of the drive isn’t an excuse to have a day off) I haven’t actually had any chance to get some photos in the snow - so I figured I would make up for it!
Tech wise, I went out with the 50mm f/1.8 attached to my D80. I started using my SB-600 a bit, but the photos looked wrong even on the playback window, so I put that back in the bag. Normally some fill light is very useful especially in the pretty hard sun we had yesterday, but I suppose that the reflections coming from the snow made the light much softer. I did however get a bit bored with the 50mm and switched to a lens I haven’t used in a very long time: my 70-300mm f/4-5.6 G. I haven’t really used that lens much since possibly summer ’07 - in fact I forgot it at my Dad’s house where it stayed whilst I was in Saudi. I almost didn’t take it with me, thinking it would be a waste of time, but I am so glad I did take it as almost all of the photos I liked from yesterday where taken with it.
As a general statement I have been getting in a lot closer with my camera recently, letting my wife stand back and pick off photos with her 55-200m VR, and this was the first time in quite a while I have been doing the same.
The main reason for this post however is to show you some before and after shots with some post-processing hints and tips. Within five minutes of putting these photos onto my facebook account yesterday evening I had a good friend asking how I make my photos look like that, so here goes. Credit is due of course to the wonderful guys over at Squeeze the Lime who with their screencast on Friday’s post (watch the video here) pointed me to the ‘Sugar & Spice Sepia’ Lightroom development preset, and through that site many more presets which came in very handy for these photos from yesterdays fun and frollics in the snow.
OK then... first up this nice shot straight out of the camera (well... except of course for the cropping... and the © mark...) of Gabbi about to drop a massive pile of snow on her Dad’s head:

The colours don’t really have a lot of kick with the exception of the pink lens flare (due to the sun hazing out the image more than anything), so this one I treated with a preset called ‘PH Cold Desire’ which you can find on the same site as the Sepia one I mentioned above. The final result looks like this:

Bascially, this preset adds a fairly heavy ‘S’ to the curves, pushes the blacks further into black, brings up the blues (which is why it is called ‘cold’ ) and then adding a vignette. I was pretty happy with this one without any tweaking at all beyond this simple preset, so I left it just like that.
This shot was actually one of the first shots taken of the day, and was with the 50mm lens and the flash at arms length to my left.
After that point I dropped the 50mm for the 70-300mm. The following one of another friend of mine was taken at 70mm, f/4 1/160s exposure.

As you can see, a nice enough picture, just not very exciting with the brighter colours of the kiddy stuff drawing your eye either to the right or to the bottom left. So the first thing I did was to kill the colour, and the ‘Sugar & Spice Sepia’ preset mentioned above turned out to do the job perfectly...

Well... almost... Now with Jerry’s face without any lighting at all, he still disappears into the photo with only his teeth drawing attention. So I used a simple exposure compensation brush, fairly large in size, to bring up the highlights on his face and on the fur of his hood which makes for a much more contrasty look. For me at least the fur makes a much nicer job of framing his face, with the much warmer highlights of the folds of his coat giving depth to an otherwise flat photo which gives me my finished product below:

The last one I want to show you is a photo taken of me by Gabbi at the end of the day. The sun had already set by this time, but it being the middle of winter - it was still quite light and continued like this for another hour or so before it actually got dark. The light was great, with no shadows being cast anywhere - I couldn’t have done that artificially if I had tried which goes to show that God is a far better lighting specialist than any of us give Him credit for. This below is straight out of the camera. It took a little while to get it as I was teaching Gabbi how to select focus points and use the camera, but she is doing very well. You may remember her from other shoots (including her birthday party) and she is very interested in photography which means it is quite handy her whole family are such good friends with my wife and I! 95mm, f/4.2, 1/60s @ ISO 360 (Auto ISO keeping the shutter at a min of 60 which is what I tend to leave it on unless I have good reason to change).

Anyway... whilst a very nice photo in its own right which with perhaps a small push of the colours would be great, I wanted something a bit more dramatic. So out comes the preset ‘x-warm+storm’ which is also available from the same site above (for free as all of them are). It seems to push almost every slider in Lightroom upwards (with the exception of contrast which believe it or not is dropped a bit). You can also clearly see how terrible it makes this shot look!

So first thing to do to tame the whole thing is turn the exposure slider waaaay back down again. I had to drop it by nearly a whole stop to get the highlights back into something resembling control.

At this point the darker parts of the picture where back where I wanted them, so I then pushed the highlight recovery up to around 70% which brings back the detail in the sky and the right side of my face. This is one of the best portraits ever of me (although my wife has gotten a couple of beauties in the past) which is now proudly adorning my facebook profile.

I hope that has shed some light on digital post processing for some of you... I am very thankful for the weekends culmination of that video from Squeeze the Lime with great snow and good friends... Life is good... and its going to get even better because finally this coming Saturday my wife arrives back in the UK!!! Yay! We will start marketing properly now and try and get some real shoots on here which I am really looking forward to. Still planning on changing the site around a bit, probably moving the blog onto blogger and possibly my portfolio onto flickr (or perhaps picassa depending) to take strain off my site and keep my hosting charges down as I expect traffic to start picking up now. None of this should effect the site if you are reading through a web browser, but if you are reading the blog through RSS I will make sure I let you know before any changes do happen.
Well... expect big things so make sure you keep coming back to the site as we will have some cool stuff coming up - I am waiting to see if I will have a shoot week after next for a group in Swindon who want some formal portraits as well as action portraits which promises to be fun, and will give me the chance to show you some more complex lighting setups. Stay tuned - Good Night and Good Luck! Read More...

Samara & Moniel where married in Barbosa Ferras on the 27th of December (as you will note one day before our first proper wedding). Moniel is my wife’s cousin which is why we where there. We didn’t take much gear with us (in fact just the D80 with the 50mm and the 18-55mm lenses with the SB-600) as we weren’t the photographers, but we couldn’t resist taking at least a few right? Especially after the guy they had hired left after the ceremonial cut of the cake right at the beginning of the party.
First off a few taken during the service:



His sister with his niece who was a flower girl:


Once at the part I got some shots of the cake:


Plus some shots of the family take with bounced flash. The low white ceiling was brilliant, and I just kept adjusting the angle for the distance I was trying to throw the light. This shot of my Uncle (also Uncle to the groom...) and the bride’s sister was pretty cool, his comment involving donkeys:


It turns out that my photos of the ceremonial cutting of the cake turned out nicer than the ones where they really did it. The bride had snapped something in her leg the week before, and by the end of the party had her foot up and had to limp out to throw the bouquet, but she never let it get to her despite the obvious pain she was in by the end. I think that’s why the earlier ones came out better.






His sister (the blonde one from above) took her shoes off and my Uncle (the one telling the joke above) decided to exercise his artistic side with his placement of her shoes. She didn’t find it funny, but it made a great shot nonetheless...




The bouquet went way over to the girl in black just behind the bride’s ear there, whereas it seems to be her new sister-in-law (the youngest of the brood of five) who most wanted it:


Speaking of which, she put on quite a display later on with one of her cousins (her boyfriend was around somewhere, just not a good a dancer as her cousin). A shot made possible only by the joys of that low white ceiling, and I have to say, one of my favourite shots of the day (after the shot of the girls whispering up top)... I just love the flow of the fabric and the bright colours!


Right... well that sums that up, and I believe that is the last of the Brazil photos I needed to get through unless you want to see the family photos from Christmas? Read More...

And onto to the actual wedding...
Firstly the behind the scenes of the brides preparations:
Her dress was a nice mermaid design from Centre Noivas









As you can see, once she was ready she was raring to go!












At the location, the sun was on its way down when the service started:






As the bride appeared:


Father of the Bride:




Of the photo’s they have seen so far, this is their favourite shot, and I can really see why:


They had a really cool cake too:






The girls really wanted that bouquet


But when it came to the actual throwing of the bouquet, they weren’t lined up quite so politely!!!


I didn’t hear the comment, but you can imagine it had something to do with the hotel...


Their car got seriously messed up by the girls too...


Inside the car on the way to the hotel:


At the hotel, the room had been decorated for them, and after a bit more posing, we left the two of them in peace!








On the tech side of things, most of these shots where done with the D80 and the 50mm f/1.8 lens, some of the close-up stuff was my wife using the D40x with the 55-200mm VR although in the lower light she was struggling.
That’s one of the things we are looking to remedy over the next couple of months, and thats having two respectable bodies (D80+) and some more low light lenses, specifically a wide zoom and a telephoto zoom. For the tele, the 80-200 is looking promising and is going for some good prices on eBay, for the wide end I am going to have to test the Sigma out at the local camera shop as the Nikon stuff is waaaay out of my price range; at least for the foreseeable future.
I will put these and more into my portfolio hopefully tomorrow, and then I need to have a closer look as I think I might be updating the site somewhat, including moving the blog and the RSS feed, so if you are reading this through RSS (do I have anyone doing that?) then I will make sure I put up at least one more post before I move things around.
Take care! Read More...

Right... back in Swindon and back to photography at last, looking to set up the company officially over the next couple of weeks which will let me get on with doing some serious photography here. I am going to get some more shoots in over the next few weeks as well, especially after my wife gets back to the UK in a week and a half...
Anyways, as previously mentioned on countless occasions, we had our first wedding shoot to do whilst we where in Brazil over the holiday season. For them it was the middle of summer, so they had a sunset wedding just outside of the town where my wife is from. Nath is a childhood friend of my wife’s who met Cleidson whilst away studying. I already knew her parents, her brother, a large number of uncle’s, aunts, cousins and her grandparents from my previous visits to Brazil, but I had never met her before as she was always away studying, so the first time we actually met was for the engagement session just before Christmas. 11 of these photos ended up on a nice and big in a nice frame by the entrance to the reception hall which you will see in the next post.
This was the central shot of them, and it was definitely my favourite of the day...
Read More...

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...

Secondly comes Isabela. Niece of my wife’s English teacher in Brazil, this little one came to us with a warning. We where told she is very shy and wouldn’t take very good photos. I guess they switched the model at the last minute because the girl we met was great from the start and kept us busy as wherever she went or stopped or looked, there was a beautiful shot of her. The only thing we needed to do was keep up with her and be ready for that shot as there was no going back!
I was really happy with the photos from this shoot of this little gem of a girl and hope all our warnings come like that!


Hidden in the palm fronds she started bouncing in a way that gave a huge amount of life to her hair:


She brought her pet with her who


My favourite of the day however was this one, isn’t she just the prettiest?


Again, more of her in our Portfolio, and these ones are definitely worth a look! Read More...

Well... its been busy since I have come back to the UK, mostly playing with the photos of Nathalia and Cleidson whose wedding we did on 28th December. It has taken quite some time to sort through and treat all the photos we took and I can honestly say I have learnt a lot. I know I said on my face book I would blog the wedding today, but before I do that, I have added the rest of my albums to the portfolio and need to talk about them a bit first, then I can post the wedding stuff (which I have just burnt to disc) and then I can clean up any other random photos I have, as well as a couple of behind the scenes photos so you can see how I am doing some of this stuff.
First up then is Milena who is niece of (one of) my best mans wife if that makes sense... A delightful little girl who on this particular morning was full of energy. My wife and I as well as her Mum, Aunt and Uncle to be where hiding under a tree while she was gadavanting around in the bright sunshine. Her bright clothes and even brighter smile (even with that cute gap...) worked well for my wife and I as we got some very nice shots:




As usual whilst I was playing with the wider angles (in this case the 18-55) my wife was playing with the longer one, such as the below photo:


More examples of this shoot in our portfolio Read More...

Right, I have had a look through the events we have done here so far, and without showing photos of kids from whose parents I don’t have release forms (i.e. none of them) then I don’t really have enough to justify a folder in the portfolio from any event in particular, so I will just discuss the events and what we did and where possible illustrate with safe photos. So here goes.
I have done hat and gown shots of two kids on separate occasions who for one reason or another didn’t make it to the graduation ceremonies having to copy the style of the guy they imported from the next town which was basically umbrella lighting against a backdrop - we had to make do with a wall in both instances and of course only the one brolly as opposed to the two that the pro would have had.
On 9th December there where two events with the school. In the morning they had a sort of sports/fun day at a local centre here which was great. Whilst the teachers where setting things up, the kids took to a slope on the grounds armed only with bits of corrugated cardboard which led to some great action shots. I got right in with my lens at 18mm for some good wide angle stuff. Moving on to the main events there were a few different races between the three teams (there where perhaps 80 kids in total, not a big school) first off was a sack relay followed by a water balloon relay followed by a treasure hunt looking for paper flowers of different sizes. One team managed to find all three of the big five pointer flowers plus loads of the little one pointers and took the whole thing away from the other teams who had won one of the races each. Last thing was a water slide which got pretty crowded before the head teacher managed to put some discipline into it, I got there before she did which made for some hilarious photos. Unfortunately, I can’t really show any of those on here...
That evening the same school did a Christmas presentation for the parents which was nice except that the main part of the evening was done in almost pitch darkness as their flood lights trip the electricity at the moment. As all school asset rich, cash poor so we had to make do with on camera flash, and in fact we both ended up with the pop-up flashes from our cameras. The candle-lit ending came out brilliantly on my 50mm f/1.8 though, so it wasn’t a complete loss! Whilst my wife was suffering in the main area I went scouting to see if I could find anything or anywhere to get a better photo and found Gabriel along with Mary and Joseph waiting in the wings (no pun intended):


Two days later we had our maternity shoot with Jessica, and on Sunday we had a musical recital of the Heitor Villa Lobos Musical Conservatory who where celebrating their 25th anniversary with this recital. Christmas is very definitely on its way as you can see from this first photo:


This Val is who called us to do some photography for the event. She is the second in command of the Conservatory after Ester pictured below:




Ester and one of her ex-students played the closing piece. This student has gone on and studied music through university and came back to Goioere specially for this recital (note the pro guy at the back):


And both of them together:


Sisters Joice and Larissa played beautifully and I really liked the posed shot from after the event when I set up my brolly.




There where many lovely kids who played as well and I really loved the whole thing.
Joice is one of the three girls we will be doing a shoot with tomorrow which will be interesting.

Last night after returning from the ‘Arrival of Father Christmas’ which was fairly naff to be honest with you I noticed the sky was looking pretty cool after we had turned off the lights so using the metal grid on the window, I took some shots of the night which I was pretty impressed with:


I loved the way the light from something going on over that direction spilled across the sky. It surprised me even more by showing up on the photo; normally you need a polarising filter to see rays like this. That would definitely have needed a tripod!


Right... I need to finish picking the photos from the recital to give to Val and Ester hopefully today so until next time o/ Read More...

Another first for us in the form of a Maternity shoot of the lovely Jésica who with her husband Peloi and their son João along with Miguel who is on his way out.
We arrived at her house a little before sunset and although she had just finished work (she still has over a month to go) I wanted to grab the sun which was doing wonders at the front of her house coming through the glass and giving off a lovely glow, so here we go:


I loved the colours on this one, as I mentioned on my last shoot post, having the colours desaturated out of the camera and then manipulating in post is working wonders for me!


After grabbing those, we let her go and get showered and dress up for the rest of the shoot. Whilst waiting for her, my wife pinched some great photos of her husband and son. I loved the candid one of the feet she got:




Her cousin did some makeup for her after her shower which is going to be an important part of our work with Weddings so we pinched plenty of shots of that (more will be in our Portfolio once I get around to updating it):


Some of the walls in their house have some fairly interesting textures, so we tried to make the most of that where possible including the below. I didn’t actually have to add a vignette on this one, the apparent vignetting is actually the flash which after having got some shots using the brolly, I flipped around and took some direct (through the Stofen) shots like the below. I liked the fairly dramatic nature and the specific placement of the light with the flash’s zoom set to 85mm which is the maximum that the SB-600 can manage:


A few more posed shots on the sofa, including some with the baby’s name written on her stomach with lipstick - a little cliché perhaps, but a nice photo nonetheless.


After that, we went back into their front garden and played in the foliage a bit, trying out different placements of the flash to light different parts of the garden and/or individuals. This first one was with the flash handheld off to the right:


In this one the flash was on the floor behind the bench bouncing up onto the foliage and across Jes’ face:


Back inside we finished the shoot and had some food, but I didn’t put the cameras away until we had some final candid shots whilst she was preparing the food, and I loved this close-up of her:


Just before we left her sister who is very good friends with my wife since they studied together came by as she had been doing her evening classes. Again, more oppurtinities for candid shots like this one that really capture the mood of the evening:


Once back in the UK in January I will put these and more in our Portfolio so keep your eyes opened for that.
More shoots to come over the coming days as I try to get around to posting some of the other events we have done plus the stuff we have lined up. Read More...