It looks like 2010 is going to be a good year, I’ve started off with my first cover shot. The magazine is Equestrian Life and top horsewoman Becky Blissitt with her amazing show hack The Wizard. Both Becky and the Wizard are familiar faces at such prestigious events as th Horse of The Year Show and The Royal International Horse Show.
The magazine wanted something that looked seasonal so we spent a couple of days in the freezing snow to get the shot.
I used a touch of fill flash from a single SB900 to bring out The Wizard’s lovely colour and pop a little light under the brim of Becky’s hat. Shot on my Fuji S5 Pro to try and make the most of the dynamic range.
I’m absolutely delighted to announce that I have been chosen to be a Photodex featured photographer. What’s Photodex I hear you shout, well they are the company behind the fantastic Proshow software that I use for my slide shows. If you haven’t had a look at what can be done nip over to the weddings page and check out the showreal.
I’ve been using Proshow for several years for both my own shows and for clients, I started with Proshow Gold which is really easy to install and learn but have recently upgraded to the Proshow Producer (Thanks guys for the upgrade deal). One of the great things about Producer is that I can integrate it into my workflow using the Lightroom plugin, and it will create shows that can be uploaded straight to YouTube, written to DVD or many other options.
I very proud to be one of their featured photographers considering the incredibly high standard of work they have from guys like Mark Ridout and Peter Atherton. If you have a few minutes it’s well worth having a look at some the shows in their gallery, just click HERE
I am very pleased to announce that Applephoto have been appointed “Official Photographers” for Bride Beautiful Exhibitions. Starting in January 2010 we will be at the wonderful Normanby Hall, followed by Grimsby Central Hall in February and Reeds Hotel in March. Full details of all the events can be found on the Bride Beautiful Exhibitions website. There are loads more exciting venues arranged for later in the year.
As well as photographing the catwalk shows, these are going to be something really different by the way, I’ll be around all day together with the rest of the Applephoto team to chat with anyone that wants to come and say hi.
We’ll also be giving away some great prizes including a Little Red Book boudoir shoot.
For more information on the events visit www.bride-beautiful-exhibitions.co.uk or for information on our wedding photography click here.
Actor Ceri Ashcroft currently appearing as Lola in Charlie and Lola’s Best Bestest Play popped into the studio at the weekend for some updated headshots. Ceri has made a career of playing young parts, here’s her quick resume:
Ceri trained in devised and physical theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama. Her recent projects have included: Charlie and Lola’s Best Bestest Play (Polka Theatre with Watershed Productions and BBC Worldwide), Present:Tense 11 (Nabokov Theatre at the Southwark Playhouse), We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (Polka Theatre with Lakeside Arts), Red Ladies (Clod Ensemble), A Servant to Two Masters (Rose Theatre, Bankside), Havisham (BAC) and Through the Arch (Cultural Olympiad 2012 launch). Ceri also performs in her own one-woman theatre clown company, Jugglingspinster, at festivals around the country. Last year Jugglingspinster performed at festivals in Norway and the UK. Ceri has played a variety of surly teenagers for film and TV.
Charlie and Lola’s Best Bestest Play is tipped by The Times as one of this year’s must see performances.
Over on the right of this page there is a little box named Blogroll. This is a list of some of the other blogs that I follow and I am very grateful to David Hobby of The Strobist for pointing out this fantastic video from Chase Jarvis. The action is in New Zealand and he is capturing some ski and snowboard shots for Sandisk, watch out for his interesting terminology and of course the Profotos flash units keeping up with 8 frames per second on his Nikon D3.
Don't Dress for Dinner
OK, so it’s the Grimsby Telegraph and I’ve had my images published in it numerous times over the years but this one is a bit special. Firstly it’s a full page in colour and secondly it features my wife Helen as she is about to start a run of Don’t Dress for Dinner. For those of you who don’t know, Helen is also my Make Up Artist and Stylist and goes under the name of Pinklady on many of the modelling websites. (Pinklady – apples – get it?) She is also a bit of a luvy and is often treading the boards or directing at our local theatre. She says she gets it from our daughter who is currently in her final year of an acting degree at East 15.
Anyway, back to the pic. I always shoot promo shots for the theatre and as this play is set in a stylish barn conversion just outside of Paris I thought we’d borrow the local kitchen shop for the shoot. Studio 21 of Louth were very helpful and let us choose which set to use, I love the bright colours of this one and got my lights all set-up then realised every surface was highly reflective! Challenge number one was to position the lights so there was no glare from the worktops and unit doors, challenge number two was getting everyone lit evenly.
I put my SB900 on a stand to camera to camera left, about 6′ high with a white shoot through brolly. It was set well back towards the units at the rear so it was firing across the scene. My SB800 was to camera right again fired through a brolly but at a slightly lower height to fill the shadows. I had to carefully feather this one to avoid reflection in the wall units. I shot it with the D90 instead of the D2x because of the on camera flash which controls the speedlights via Nikon CLS. Normally I switch off the on-camera flash by setting it in the camera menu but for this I wanted a bit for direct fill so left switched on but at 2/3 stop below the key.
I often use the Nikkor 18-200 VR for these type of shots, the wide zoom range really helps when working on fast paced shoot (we had half an hour to get about 5 shots) and the lack of wide aperture wasn’t an issue as I new I needed a fairly long depth of field. This was f8.0 at 1/125, 35mm, ISO 200. The camera was set on manual and I spot metered from one of the faces.
The final image was manipulated in Photoshop to give some real “pop” to the colours, I use a mixture of layer blending techniques whcih I shall blog about another time. I’ve found when shooting for the local papers the colour needs to be “hyper real” as the printing tends to wash things out a bit.
If any one wants to see Helen, Bruce, Clive, Janet plus Kate and Robert who were cropped from the image, the play is on all next week at the Riverhead Theatre, Louth. Full details on their website: www.riverheadtheatre.co.uk
I’ve been shooting some very beautifull bridal dresses for my 2010 wedding brochure. They were kindly supplied by Proposals of Abbeygate, Grimsby. As well as capturing some normal wedding day style images we also wanted to get some that had a slightly more fashion feel to them, Proposals have agreed to display some in their shop. Here are 3 of the shots, these were all taken with 2 small strobes controlled by the Nikon CLS system from the on-camera pop-up flash.
The aim with this shot was to use the backlight from the window to frame the bride and create a glow around her. I wanted to retain a little of the detail through the window so carefully balanced my fill flash from the 2 small strobes with the external ambient light. I can’t remember the exact settings for the CLS but it was shot with the Nikkor 35mm f1.8, the Exif details say 1/60 at f1.8. The 35mm is great for getting these full length shots in doors where there isn’t a lot of room and it is very close to a 50mm focal length on a cropped sensor DSLR. I always remember being told that a 50mm on a 35mm SLR was the closest focal length to human eyesight.
The low angle makes Becky look tall, I was sitting on the floor!
The two strobes were an SB900 on a stand about 6′ high to the left of the window shot through a large white brolly and an SB800 on a stand behind the bride again shot through a brolly.
I think this was my favourite shot of the day, it was about 4.00pm and the light was dropping fast. I could see the sky was looking interesting so got Becky to pose in front of the five bar gate, there is an SB900 high on a stand to camera left but position almost level with the model, again shot through a large white brolly to soften the shadows. To camera right is an SB800 again shot through a white brolly but lower than the key light, about 4′ from the ground. The SB900 key was then tilted up to feather the light, this helps to retain a lot of detail in the dress and concentrate attention on her elegant shoulders.
My favourite lens for these type of shots is the 85mm f1.8 Nikkor, this was shot at f2.2 giving enough depth of field to retain detail in the front and back of the dress but thowing the sky, tree and to a lessor extent the gate out of focus. One of the great advantages of using something like the Nikon CLS system is it’s support for high speed sync, this was shot at 1/2000 second to bring down the ambient light. On reflection I could have juggled the ISO down from 400 to 200 and slowed the shutter one stop but the D90 does such a good job with noise at ISO 400 it doesn’t really matter.
By the time we got round to the fourth dress of the day it was completely dark outside, we started at 9.30 with make-up! My original idea was to use this very cream room in daylight with the beautiful coffee and cream dress, but I ended up lighting it entirely with 2 strobes. The room has two windows, one to the right of the fireplace when looking at it and one in the wall to the left of camera. I decided to try and copy the effect of strong morning light coming through the window to camera left.
There is an SB800 in front of the window to the right of the fireplace, about 4′ from the ground and fired through a white brolly, to camera left there is an SB900 on a stand level with the top of the window, I guess around 7′ from the floor. This had no brolly but had the opaque plastic diffuser on it to soften it a bit. I then zoomed the SB900 to 200mm and aimed it at Becky’s head, this is a tip I learned from Jo McNally, that 200mm zoom on the SB900 can give some fantastic effects.
I was very tight for space and resorted to a zoom lens, the very inexpensive 24/85 3.5/4.5 Nikkor (a great budget lens) at 35mm f4.0 and 1/60. I would have liked to be at a slightly lower angle but I was shooting over the top of the arm of a settee!
All these were shot on the Nikon D90, I’ve said before I really like this camera for location work, I still use a D2X in the studio and occasionaly the Fuji S5 pro for theatre work, but the D90 is a little cracker. Hopefully the D2X will be making way for a D3 or even D3s in the New Year, what I could do with that high ISO in dance shows!
As always comment and questions are always welcome and if you are getting maried check out Proposals website HERE.
I managed to get out and grab a few Autum fashion style shots yesterday. The wind had blown most of the leaves off, but the colours of the ones that remained were absolutely fabulous. Becky had this great tapestry style coat that I’ve been wanting to shoot for a while, so this was the ideal opportunity. We were going for very natural casual fashion, sometimes less is more and for this I just used one SB900 flash on a stand controlled by the on camera flash on my D90 (I love this camera for this casual style shooting). My trusty 85mm 1.8 lens is always great for these headshot/upper body mixed sessions and I have to move about a bit more than when I use a zoom!
This is my favourite from the shoot.
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