Little bit of travelling...
It’s the first time I have been to Stonehenge, and although it was pretty cool, I didn’t see £6.60 worth of stuff there... particularly with a fence not far from the place itself. In fact, the shot below was taken from the outside:
The only problem I suppose is that nobody ever shows photos of the other side of the rocks because most people are just too cheap to pay to go in!
From there however we went into Salisbury to grab some food and have a look around the Cathedral. I love the old Tudor houses with the overhang onto the road:
The inside of the Cathedral is fantastic of course, and wherever you are there is something to see, on all sides of you and probably both up and down as well:
On the way back we stopped at the Hackpen White Horse and took some photos in the beautiful yellow fields. I wanted to take some shots in this style whilst at the Cathedral, but it needed the hour or so of the drive back for the sun to go down far enough to be a stop or three below the power of my flash. One of the few examples I have so far had of reaching the limits of a speedlight flash and needing something with a bit more oomph.
Just a quick behind the scenes shot here. In saying that it makes it look like my friend who took the photo was aiming for a behind the scenes shot... I’m sure that will make her feel better!
Got more photos from the day on my Facebook so have a look for the rest there.
I have three or four people who want shoots done, but not yet any specific dates for anyone so I am going to have to see if I can twist anybodies arms there so you get some fresh faces onto the blog.... I am sure you are very bored of my ugly mug now! Read More...
Life doesn't get much better than this...
You can’t argue with that now can you? I am bronzing nicely as well despite spending very little time in the sun. You can just about make out the V shaped tan on my feet from wearing nothing but flip flops to go anywhere except church... expect that to become more and more obvious as time passes!
We had some beautiful rain here last night and into this morning, everything is nice and fresh and clean now which is great. It needs to rain every so often here else it gets too hot.
In the eleven days since I arrived, we have had six separate photo shoots. Once I get back to the UK and have an internet connection I will need to fork out for the Rapidweaver plug-in Collage 2 I use for our Portfolio which is made by Yourhead Software who also make the very useful blocks plug-in which is what my front page is made with. The trial only allows you four items, which is the number of albums currently held within it. Once the portfolio starts getting big I will also need to split it out by type of shoot, like Maternity shoots, Weddings etc.
I will try to get around to posting our first Maternity shoot on the blog shortly, possibly even today, and see what photos from the other shoots I can safely put on here as well. The Portfolio will have to wait until I get back to the UK in January before I even think about it. Tonight is the arrival of Santa Claus here is Goioere and my wife’s cousins daughter (yeah...) is performing as part of it, but because its a street thing and will be very late, I am not sure if we will take any cameras or anything of any value at all for that matter. On Wednesday we will be doing that modelling shoot I have been talking about which should be great fun. There are now three girls going to be there, and they are all pretty click happy looking at their Orkut pages. It can be quite fun working with people who actually want to be photographed - although it will be interesting to see how much cheesy posing they want to do.
Last night we had a Music Recital for one of the groups of teachers here which was a lot of fun. We where asked to do it by one of the teachers who is giving my wife some Piano tuition whilst she is here. Trouble is, we arrived and saw a guy from the local photo outfit there with his camera, so first question was should we be taking photos or not - I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes. Turned out there was no problem as we are not doing it for money and he was not charging per print but rather a fixed price to hand over the jpegs, so he wasn’t going to loose out. It was interesting watching him work as he does do it for a living if only in the tiny little town here. I was a little surprised at his methods though, he was using a D70s which is no shame, and I couldn’t work out what lens he was using, but it was gold banded (i.e. a pro lens) and stood next to me I only just got the group shot in the frame with my lens at 18mm, so it must have gone fairly wide. He was using an SB-800, but what surprised me was that he used it as direct on camera flash rather than bouncing. For the shots during the recital, whilst I was taking the more formal stuff with my 50mm f/1.8 my wife was using the 55-200 VR with our SB-600 on top, but she was bouncing and in fact even had a Stofen on top for even more diffusion. I would be interested to see how his shots came out as direct flash doesn’t easily come out well. Unfortunately for him, after the music stopped and he was packing away his stuff (he had a fixed list of photos and was being paid only for those so I guess that makes sense) he dropped his SB-800 with a few small pieces of black plastic going off in different directions. This was as I was setting up the brolly to get some posed shots with the various teachers and some of the students by the stage piano. I like the idea of being free to choose my shots, this guy basically took the same photo for each student with little variation. From the photos we will give them, between me doing some of the formal stuff and my wife stealing candids and detail shots with the longer lens we got a wide variety of shots of the performances as well as the audience and the whole event. Nobody mentioned there was a cake though until we saw it half eaten which was a shame, but you can’t be in all places at all times.
Well... that quick update turned out to be a bit longer than I imagined - more photos in the next couple of posts as I finish sorting through these I have here. I am surprised actually... I just looked to see how many photos we have taken between us in December, and it only turns out to be 2750 photos. I had imagined it was more than that, but hey, such is life.
Until next time... take care o/
Living La Vida Loca
After that though, it was plain sailing. Schipol is quite nice, although I didn’t get to see too much of it whilst there unfortunately. On the way back I will have a lot more time for that kind of thing with a longer stop.
Once on the plane to São Paulo however, things just kept getting better. We where in a very nicely done 777, with a brand new interior, a personal entertainment system with pause and all of that so you can start and stop watching films as you please, plus they had several films I hadn’t seen before and actually wanted to see. The food was also great, but the best thing is that the plane can’t have been at more than about 20% capacity!!! So I got three seats by the window all to myself.
In fact, as you can see below, until we got to altitude and the people from the rear compartment moved forward as they filled the plane up from the back, I have the entire row from window to window to myself!!!Follow that with a ‘Leito’ coach which has lie flat seats from Sao Paulo to here and I arrived here nice and rested, although starving having hardly eaten since leaving the plane.
As they where loading our plane in Amsterdam:
Space, space, space.... I wonder if it will be like this on the way back?
Coming up through the clouds over Holland somewhere:
This was as we where following the coast down over Brazil, somewhere not too far north of Rio de Janeiro:
We have been very busy with photography so far here. My wife had a Bridal Shower just before I came out, this being for the wedding (and engagement session) we will be doing at the end of the month as well as a school presentation with the local council here in Brazil. We have also covered two events with a local church school here where my wife’s step-sister works as well as many of ours friends. One was a sort of sports day which took place under a scorching sun, and later that evening a Christmas show for the parents. Both where great fun, although turning all the lights off for the entire Christmas show made our lives very difficult. Thankfully the last bit was candle-lit and that came out great on the photos! Unfortunately, with the number of kids etc there, we won’t be able to post many photos, mostly only of people we are good friends with and can therefore easily get permissions sorted out. That will have to wait a little while...
On top of that, yesterday we had a Maternity Session with a good friend of my wife, Jesica (yes, she only has one ‘s’ in here name) which is what I am working through this morning. I am very happy with these photos, and expect she will be too!
Whilst my wife and I where going through some things a couple of days ago I did manage this cracking shot of her which I figure I have to show you!
Lastly for now, this is just outside Nona’s (Cátia maternal Grandmother where we are staying) front door here: Mangoes
And this bloke came flying into the house yesterday. He might not look like much, but he must have been at least 8” nose to tail! I ended up having to put a bucket over him to take him outside...
Well, that will do for now. I will post again shortly with the maternity session, plus we are going to have that modelling shoot I have been promising before too long as well. We will also be doing a music recital and a graduation, but we won’t be able to post much if anything of those.
Until next time... take care o/ Read More...