Charles & Cátia's Blog

Fabio & Marcia {Wedding}

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-07-25T08:15:33+01:00

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!

At last!

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-07-16T18:21:38+01:00

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!

Samuel

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-05-20T06:30:13+01:00

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!!!

Luciene

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-04-20T18:50:26+01:00

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!

Alex, Aline and Samuel

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-04-05T19:46:45+01:00

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...

Travelling Light

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-02-14T18:37:04+00:00

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.

Standing out from the crowd...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-02-07T11:31:41+00:00

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!

Branching Out but sticking with my roots groan

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-02-02T19:30:34+00:00

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.

DIY Crazy...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2010-01-02T16:33:04+00:00

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...

New Year's Resolution: Free Photos

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-12-30T14:20:40+00:00

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...

Boudoir Shoot: Catia

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-11-26T06:46:49+00:00

Here is a personal project trying out something we have never done before; a boudoir shoot! The idea of this style of shoot is normally as a present from wife/fiance to her husband/groom. It should be sensual without being slutty or pornographic. So in about two hours we came up with some amazing shots from some very interesting poses... the best of which I can’t show! (she is my wife after all! I will be making some decent sized prints though which will find their way into our hard-copy portfolios)
But just so you know I am not lying when I say this is some of my best work to date, here a few of the detail shots which whilst sensual are far from scandalous:

All three of these are using a single light source in the form of a shoot-through umbrella and the top one also had a white reflector to bring up some of the shadows camera right. The first photo had some skin cleanup and smoothing done in Photoshop, but the colours etc are coming straight from camera which I am very pleased about.

Stay tuned because I am going to have an announcement to make which you don’t want to miss!

Fashion Shoot: Naomi Part I

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-10-21T20:13:31+01:00

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...

Christening: Leon & Preston

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-09-18T18:10:44+01:00

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...

Rumours of my death have been greatly exagerated...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-09-11T17:20:39+01:00

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...

Birthday blog...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-07-25T18:42:50+01:00

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!

Three light setup with only one flash

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-06-28T17:57:12+01:00

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

Festa Juninha

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-06-28T17:45:21+01:00

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.

Strobist Boot Camp II: First Assingment

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-06-21T20:17:35+01:00

Right, I have handed in my ‘effort’ for the first Strobist assignment this evening with the help of my good friend Jerry
You can find it here on my newly setup Flickr account.
This is a slightly bigger version of it:

This is how the setup was managed in the back garden of my new flat:

SB-600 up high set to 1/4 power, Sunbounce mini with my gorgeous VAL (Voice Activated Lightstand) holding that in place and lovely diffuse light coming from the overcast sky above. Flash was triggered using the CLS but that was on fully manual with the on-camera flash turned to zero.
ISO 100, 120mm focal length, F5, 1/100 second shutter, Auto WB.

Random Photos and news updates

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-05-26T12:13:42+01:00

Right, its been quite a while since my last post, and mores the pity, not much to say!
I have almost had a very cool shoot, but was unfortunately postponed at the last minute by the client. Hopefully we will have that rescheduled in the next few weeks. Today I was asked to do a baby’s party as well, which if I do get will be great.
As far as the site goes, I have revised the price list on our info page, and have started using Permalinks within the blog. I have gone back as far as my Brazil photos adding in the info so they appear correctly in the normal view (ie without having to click through to read the post), and all posts from now on will appear correctly as well as have a proper Permalink as this one does with the name “random_updates” which should make it easier for others to link to specific posts as well of Google finding specific posts of course.
Photography-wise we have both been playing around with some new tips and have just taken delivery of a nice Sunbounce Mini which is not all that Mini amounting to a 3’ x 4’ golden sail. I can’t wait to give that a try; hopefully we will get a chance one evening this week to give it a test drive. I bought it from The Flash Centre who where exceptionally helpful as their stock had run out and they ended up having the Sunbounce Rep bringing the cloth over from Germany and them posting that separately to the frame and flash bracket I also bought. Very happy with the service I got from them and will definitely be buying more from them as time goes on!
Hopefully we will be taking part in the Strobist Boot Camp II photography challenge over the coming few weeks trying to improve our photography through the assignments that will be set. If there are any other photographers reading this, I would really suggest you give it a go to try and see just what you can achieve with a fixed task and all your creative skill to make it happen in a way that will make somebody go ‘Wow’ which is really what all we do is about!
OK... before you all go to sleep from all the text, here are some photos from the last couple of weeks which I really liked in no particular order:

Little bit of travelling...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-05-03T22:44:30+01:00

Nice start to this little break with a trip out to Stonehenge, Salisbury and taking in the Hackpen White Horse on the way home.
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!

Easter Barbecue... yay!

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-04-22T19:42:26+01:00

Easter weekend was pretty cool, after the revelation of the Friday leading to the photos of my wife from two posts ago, plus her Birthday on the Saturday and shooting Sarah on the Monday, it was quite busy!
Sunday was no different as more than fifteen of us got together at Carla and Binho’s house for a good ol’ Brazilian Barbecue! The meat had been marinating all night, and it tasted amazing! Also worked out pretty cheap... a tonne of meat and only £4 per head!
Well, I’ll have to post some of the shots of the BBQ itself at some point, but midway through the afternoon (as in midway between lunch and lighting the BBQ again for supper...) we got some photos of those who had hung around after the first round of eating. We where practising this manual lighting trick we had just picked up so that we had it down well for when Sarah graced our presence on Monday - thankfully it came quite naturally so no problem! Full manual flash and exposure for most of this. A few are natural light... but not many ;) I do find it quite amusing how some of these photos look like we set up a garden within a studio which we certainly did not! Definitely something I will be watching though, I do need to check what look I am going for... I certainly don’t want somebody’s wedding looking like it was staged...
First up Jonas and Rejane whom you have of course seen before. Re is newly pregnant with her second child (some eleven years after her first one) so we made sure we got some shots of the growing belly!

Next up was Sylvie with her gorgeous little daughter Bia. They are new to the area, but Sylvie and her husband (who was working unfortunately) where Groomsman and Bridesmaid at Jonas and Re’s wedding!

Carla and Binho (the hosts for the day) always look great in photos... these photos just need a little more treatment too ;)

And finally put it back to full TTL flash and exposure before handing the camera’s over to Re and Carla so me and the missus can get at least a few shots together which is something we do miss.

Whilst Re was showing the others some of the photos she took, I took the opportunity to demonstrate how all of these shots had been done. Pretty simple right? By this point I was 1/125sec, f/4 ISO 100 and something like 1/4 on the flash.

Right... that’s it for now. Few more nibbles for shoots so hopefully we should have more new stuff for you coming up soon too...
Take care all!

Personal Shoot: Sarah

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-04-15T20:14:50+01:00

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!

Life is a classroom...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-04-11T22:08:32+01:00

Right... quick technique post for you based upon something I learnt only yesterday. I don’t know how I have managed to get by without this so far, but this opens up a lot for me. This tip came from Scott Kelby’s and Matt Kloskowski who run D-Town TV Episode 05. Great videos for anyone who uses Nikon, and this episode dropped one little hint about controlling flash from the pop-up of my D80. I have used it on many occasions, but I didn’t know you could set it to manual, I had all of them left on TTL. This meant that on many occasions I would end up with photos like this even running the camera on manual exposure:

I have often had issues with this, but after this first shot, I went to manual flash, messed around a little to get the right exposure, and found this:

Much better isn’t it? Watch the Scott Kelby vid to know how to turn it on and then sift through the Lighting 101 course on Strobist.com to find out how to use it. I am a very happy man.

As a little bit more info, the sun was creating beautiful colours this evening, so we ran out to a patch of grass near to our house and I got the chance to play with this new trick. I was using a 1/2 CTO Gel filter on the flash to warm it up getting closer to the sun which was most of the way down by this point. The actual setup was pretty basic, with the single SB-600 on a lightstand which was also doubling as a coat rack:

I just squatted down a little to get the dramatic sky above the line of houses behind Cátia.
These two photos are more finally treated and have been fully cleaned and whatever else. Nice enough birthday present for her? Well... she did also get the matching earrings and necklace:

Tomorrow we are at a BBQ which should be good, and we will try and get some cool shots of that, hopefully much more under control using the off-camera flash now with this new tip! I am looking forward to that, then a two part shoot with a very nice young lady on Monday will make this a photographic weekend to remember! Certainly great experience for me...

Spring has sprung...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-04-09T19:32:37+01:00

Right... its been a couple of weeks since I have blogged but it has been pretty busy for the pair of us and we have some interesting photos to show and more to come over the next couple of weeks...
To start with we where in Milton Keynes last Friday as we had my Granddad’s funeral. I was there with my Dad, one of my Uncles and my cousin carrying the coffin into and out of the church. It is pretty tough, but with somebody like Papa (which is how all of us grandchildren always knew him) its hard to be too sad... although we will miss him greatly he has left so much behind in terms of his love and influence. I will post some of the photos from the reception another time, but while we where there we went for a walk with my Uncle and Aunt near to the home my Grandparents where in. Spring is such a great time of the year, and despite the mixture of weather during the day, everything was just so beautiful.

I grabbed some nice informal shots of my Uncle and Aunt as well as my cousin as well:

My cousin sporting his Hillsong hoody which is the church he goes to.
Cátia was just breathing deeply in the gorgeous early evening sun we had in glimpses.

I love this time of year, and with the whole family together it was just so beautiful. I will write more about the great man that Papa was (and in many ways still is) when I put some of those photos up, but it really didn’t feel like a funeral at all. The fondness and love displayed and felt by all made it feel more like a wedding or something like that.

He will truly be greatly missed.

I am going to be doing an interesting shoot tomorrow which hopefully I will be able to post before I am back to work on Tuesday... this one should turn out beautifully... and that’s not mentioning the Barbecue on Sunday!

Well... I have to go prepare for tomorrow’s shoot, and eat something, but I will have a couple of good posts for you over the next few days, so keep your ears to the ground...

What a beautiful day hey hey...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-03-15T18:29:32+00:00

Well... after a busy week of my normal day job with little time for photography, today we made the most of the sunshine we had and went and made ourselves a nice picnic at the local park. I can honestly say that Ryvita + Philidelphia + Raspberry Jam = The best snack known to man. Hmmmmm

Oops I did it again...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-03-08T21:09:34+00:00

Right, been an interesting couple of weeks and only now am I able to get around to explaining it. I do unfortunately mean ‘able’ as my Macbook Pro has gone to rest with the fishes so to speak. The day we where off to see my Granddad it just wouldn’t start, so as we where going to meet my Mum and sister in Milton Keynes city centre, we popped into the Apple store first. Basically, from a cold start, it doesn’t even go to the famous mac ‘chime’ (for those who don’t know what that sounds like cos you are still struggling along with some Windows based, its the same sound Wall-E makes when he is done charging his solar cells up). The very helpful genius went through several possibilities and came to the conclusion that motherboard itself was to blame which meant a repair of more than I wished to spend. It being out of the warranty it was going to cost me heftily, and as I possibly had a photo shoot that Sunday, I needed a computer of some sorts, so on the way out of the store, I picked up a 20” iMac. And boy am I chuffed! I haven’t lost any files (I will have to explain my backup system as some point) but the offline version of this site which works with Rapidweaver was the only thing I hadn’t copied over, so it has taken me a week to get the MBP open to pull out the HDD which means I am now back to normal.
Thanks for prayers for my Granddad - he is past the immediate danger although of course he is ultimately still very sick.
Onto some photography for today then. Firstly onto my favourite muse: my wife! These where taken just after she got back from Brazil as she was really chuffed with her nails which she had had done just before she came back here and the pyjamas I had given her for Valentine’s day. These where very simply done with just the flash bounced off the ceiling in our living room, and in the first one I was also holding in my left hand a 9” Nikon branded reflector under her chin.

The next three where inspired by some of the latest video tutorials from Squeeze the Lime with regards to the engagements sessions. These where taken near the section of Canal near my house as we had gone out to feed the ducks. We went exploring off a little bit and found another way out of the area back to ‘civilisation’ but with a nice bit of fencing and a few cool trees around to add interest to the photos.

These where all fairly quick edits, I think I can play with them a bit more, so this post might get updated at some point, but I am pretty happy with them. There seems to be a pretty good chance of us moving closer to Coate Water in a couple of months, which will be nice for even more outside work.
Unfortunately, the shoot I was hoping to have last Sunday fell through. Firstly a guy offered to do it for free, then he couldn’t so it looked like I might be back on, but then he was able to do it again before they marked me for definite. I didn’t mind the messing around so much as I minded what I was replaced with. The guy apparently had ‘all his own gear’ including studio lights. Having seen the photos on my mates Facebook page I feel really bad. I had plans for great artistic photos, whereas this guy just stood a single strobe about a metre to his side, I would have to guess with a reflective brolly from the harsher light and type of shadow cast. The poses just don’t seem to have much life except one which my friend tells me was actually a happy accident caused by them and not the photographer. I know I could have done so much more for them for the pittance I was charging them (being for a friend and with my still limited portfolio) than what they received. I wouldn’t have minded if I had been replaced by a better photographer, perhaps a more experienced one or something like that, but I feel really sorry for them with the fact that their adverts are being made with these very bland photos.
Nevermind, we have a couple of family/couples type shoots we are sorting out terms on, so you can expect some other new stuff to fill out my portfolio - and who knows what else we might have!

Life has certainly got its ups and downs...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-02-21T19:06:13+00:00

Sorry people! I know I have been pretty dodgy at updating but things have been getting pretty nutty around here.
Firstly... my wife is back!!! Yay! She arrived back on 14th February which she has yet to burn into her memory as being Valentine’s Day which made all my surprises all the better. If it wasn’t for the fact she arrived back here nicely flued up we would have been off to a masked dinner that evening which would have looked great on digital, but alas it was not to be! Having seen the photo’s of my friends who did go, I don’t think it was going to be all that good, but hey, it would have been nice.
Secondly, as you see we are now functioning as a company. I am ordering our business cards and today bought a receipt book. I have also ordered another light stand, brolly and batteries for flash. We might have a job coming up within the next week or so which is quite exciting for me in artistic terms - it will be beautiful if it comes through!
Unfortunately, the third part of my news is pretty sad: My Dad’s Dad, known to one and all as Papa is extremely sick. Any of you who are that way inclined please keep him and the family in your prayers. We will be going to stay with my parents from Thursday morning to see him, so we will have to see what God has in plan for him.
Well... trying to end on a lighter note this is the single photo I took whilst waiting for our coach sipping hot chocolate in Terminal 5. I took this one, looked at the screen and decided I didn’t need to take anymore. It was actually fairly gloomy inside, so this is up at ISO 1600 on the D40x, hence the grain, but I love the texture of it.

Up once more...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-02-11T21:14:55+00:00

Right, had some difficulties with my internet connection last night, but all back up and running again now and have finally be able to upload the newly layed out site... Still need to modify the homepage although I want a much better photo of my wife and I to stick on it...
She arrives in the UK on Saturday morning, and it’s going to be a day to remember! Photos will follow on the blog, and I am sure you will be interested in what we have lined up for you over the coming weeks!

Take care!

Moving the Blog

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-02-09T20:37:45+00:00

Hi Everyone.... just a quick note to make sure you update your bookmarks and/or RSS readers later this evening once I have moved the site around a bit. I am going to tidy things up - simplify the site a bit and make the whole thing more user friendly. Once I have done this, there shouldn’t be anymore changes unless I start getting some really heavy traffic on the site and my provider complains!

See you when the ball is over!

Chestnuts roastin' on an open fire...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-02-08T12:53:17+00:00

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!

Wedding: Samara & Moniel

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-28T20:51:52+00:00

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?

Another day in the life of me...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-23T19:56:53+00:00

I wanted to chat just a little about the way I am using lighting now, and my plans for the future. I think the best examples come from the modelling shoot we did with Karol, Larissa and Joice. Firstly the use of off camera flash.
Having discovered the wonders of David Hobby’s Strobist blog which is the source of lighting tuition on the web I have moved away from built in flash to using (with my current budget) a single off camera flash in the form of my SB-600. I have the firing on a lightstand into a silver umbrella. A great example of this is this first shot of Karol. At the top of these stairs I shut the doors to the various rooms around her to keep out the rather odd coloured light coming in, and had my flash with a Sto-fen diffuser and a 1/4 CTO (a pale orange filter) to give extra warmth to the skin tones. The light in this photo is almost entirely coming from that flash which is just off frame to the left. The mirror shows off her fine frame nicely, although the frame of the mirror itself unfortunately is a bit reflective which is causing issues on the left hand edge of the image. Cropped to 4:5 I can get rid of that, and that is how I end up printing most of my photos which works out the best shape all round for the vast majority of my shots..

Not the complete lack of harsh shadows on her anywhere which means that it doesn’t look like it was lit by a single source, but rather by a general emanation of light coming from the left hand side somewhere. It’s a great look, and very simple to achieve. Fully iTTL with my D80 and the 18-55 kit lens borrowed from my D40x.

Next up is another way to use the flash. Whereas above there is only one light source, in the below photo there are actually two. My main light is a big yellow thing called the sun, coming in from the right, and I had my flash on the left as you can see to balance that a bit and bring up the shadow to stop the shot being exceptionally contrasty. Without the flash the left hand side of her face would be practically black with the brightness that we had on that day. As below, you can see the effect of the sun on her, however she looks comfortable and not in bright painful sunlight. The whole thing fits together better. Tech as above.

Once back inside and with a change of clothes, we got some more shots of Karol. Again with two lights, this time a quite diffuse light coming in through the kitchen on the right acting as a backlight having the effect of marking her body out against the wood behind her and the flash being used as the main illumination. As you can see from the photo from this scene in the portfolio of this shoot, it really works well and defines her body against the background clearly whilst also maintaining a natural look. Your mind is constantly differentiating between foreground and background, but it only manages to do that with binocular vision, with a 2D photo you need to have a much clearer distinction in terms of colour for your mind to appreciate the difference. This time with the light concentrated on her face which was the main interest in the photo (although in the one in the portfolio the roles of the two light sources are reversed). Tech as above.

Back to Larissa (a couple of wardrobe changes later) sat on the windowsill. Shots from inside looked great with and without the flash which is just to the right of her the other side of the wall I am against. Coming outside however, and being on the dark side of the house, the flash coming from inside really pulls Larissa out of the photo. The light and subsequent shadows really show off her *cough* curves, and give a true sense of depth to the photo. Without the flash, she looked drab, flat and dark against the white wall with the background in much softer shadow.

The girls did love my shiny brolly though, and my favourite shots of the day ended up being taken in natural light. This is a fairly narrow area outside between the glass on the right of the stairs and a white wall on the left. A large bamboo plant gives a lot of texture, and a lot of contrast when going to black and white. the series of three this one comes from will go on my wall at work once I get some way to hang them up. This was with the 50mm f/1.8 lens on the D80.

Final shot of the day was a sight that caught my eye: the amount of cloths and accessories the girls (well... Karol...) had brought with them! The two coloured wig never got used, but I have no idea what she was planning to do with that one!

As for the future I need at least one more flash, plus a better commander flash (either another unit or the SU-800 dedicated commander) to really get some cool shots in any ambient lighting situation. The trouble is, for weddings which will be our main work hopefully, that much equipment will just get in our way. The first things I need to buy are a pro wide/normal zoom, a pro tele-zoom and a third body before I can even think about expanding my lighting gear for a side of the business we expect to be a less important side. The art of this side though, playing with light as I read from Dave Hobby and others like Joe McNally, really intrigues me and is something I really want to push in the future. It will be really important for us in terms of engagement shoots, maternity shoots, and the occasional bit of wedding photography to, depending on the location and the pace of the day. Having a better understanding of this is also making me think much harder about the way I am taking photos even in natural light, looking at reflections and natural diffusion to make my photos better. I can’t move the sun as easy as a lightstand, but I can always ask my subject to look slightly more to the left!

Until next time, hopefully with some more interesting insights, take care and God Bless!

Wedding: Nathália & Cleidson

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-13T20:27:48+00:00

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 :D

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!

Engagement Session: Nathália & Cleidson

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-13T19:44:40+00:00

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...

Creativity: 10,000 hours

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-08T19:43:38+00:00

Wow... I have just watched a lecture by Malcolm Gladwell who writes for The New Yorker on the subject of creativity. I got pointed to it by a post on Chase Jarvis’ blog.
Absolutely amazing and very thought provoking lecture, a little over 30 minutes plus a short question time at the end with the host. Anybody who is the least bit interested in accomplishing anything with their lives would do well to take heart from his words of wisdom:

Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success

I promise I will get around to blogging the wedding today as well ;)

Fashion shoot: Karol, Larissa & Joice

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-07T20:45:19+00:00

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!

Kids shoot: Isabela

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-07T20:38:22+00:00

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!

Kids shoot: Milena

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2009-01-07T20:21:14+00:00

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

Various Events in Goioere

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2008-12-16T12:45:51+00:00

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/

Maternity Sessions: Jésica

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2008-12-15T13:41:17+00:00

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.

Life doesn't get much better than this...

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2008-12-15T12:48:13+00:00

Just a quick update to let you know how things are going here. The short answer is 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

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2008-12-12T12:34:48+00:00

Whilst waiting for Lightroom to finish exporting my latest photo shoot before I start treating my selects I figure I have a little time for an update even though I know I won’t be able to get my computer to a net connection for a little while yet. I arrived here last Friday after what has to have been the most relaxing and stress free journey (well... after leaving London anyway) to Brazil I have ever had. I had a 6:30am flight to Amsterdam as I was flying with KLM, which meant I had to catch a coach at 1:30am from Swindon. Worse still, the bus dropped me at the main bus station and after I went down to catch the train to terminal 4, I found it wasn’t open until something like 5:30am. The buses and tube also don’t start until that time so I ended up paying £22 for a taxi for a journey that should have been free. Grrrr.
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/

Frusted in Swindon

charleslethbridge@googlemail.com — 2008-11-30T14:10:17+00:00