If anyone needs an entry form, I can send one over to you. While we’re not part of the Rotary Club, we are backing this competition (I’m one of the judges!) to encourage kids in something I’m hugely passionate about (no, I don’t mean old single malts!)

Of course, when someone submits that superlative image that I absolutely wish I had taken, I may feel ever so slightly differently…!

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

So, a huge ‘thank you’ to Graphistudio for asking us along (it’s a huge honour to be working with these guys – and their albums are simply stunning!) and to everyone who came and sat through our musings. We’ve had loads of really lovely comments so I hope everyone found it useful/amusing/entertaining/a good place to sleep*

For everyone who was there (and for anyone else who’s interested) we’re posting the two AV’s we used yesterday. I know the plasma wasn’t brilliant but hopefully it didn’t prove too much of a distraction.

I should point out that we have now licensed this website with the music guys at PRS/MCPS (I think they’re now called the Music Alliance) so that we can use and show our slideshows online. This is something that we couldn’t really do before so watch this space and hopefully we’ll get more of our slideshow content up here.

Cheers
P.

*delete as applicable (I’m joking about anyone falling asleep – though I did keep a look out!)

We’ve added this high-res camera to our trusty D3′s as we’re doing an increasing amount of fashion and commercial work (though I’d love to see a wall-size family canvas generated from this thing) and the extra resolution is a real help. One thing about commercial work is that the designers/clients like to have additional cropping room in an image and this compromises the overall resolution (i.e. picture quality) of the image. The D3X has twice the resolution of the D3 (and, at 12 Mega-pixels, these weren’t bad by any means!) and when you put some of our beautiful lenses on the front, the image quality is utterly compelling. The designers’ wish is our command!

We’re very lucky here to have many friends who’ll help us out – even at stupidly short notice – and so Sophie (the fantastic model we worked with recently for Sassy & Co.) agreed to pop round and help me to quickly put it through its paces. Half an hour later and we have these really lovely street/studio images. Believe me, the camera is working perfectly (admittedly, it helps that Sophie is stunning of course!)

With bags of resolution, this thing is going to be a joy to work with. It will slow me down, however, as the files do take a while to both write to the memory cards and to work with in production. However, they’re worth the wait! And you never know, it might be a good thing to slow down the ol’ continuous shooting!

In a few of the images below, I’ve cropped into the image (the crops are roughly 4 Mega-pixel images taken from the 24MP original) to show just how much fun we’re going to have! Please note that the website doesn’t quite do them justice (we’ve compressed them down or you’d be waiting a long time for them to load!)

Tomorrow we’ll be working with it for real. I’ll keep you posted, but for now there’s a great big fat grin permanently planted across my face!

But, as always, nothing should get in the way of a good photo. At least, that’s what we were hoping when we arrived and stepped out into a cold, blustery, drizzley and gloomy December’s Saturday morning in Thame. There’s nothing quite like assembling one of our large reflectors – a 6′ x 4′ frame that could work equally well as a small sail – in the wind but Kelly (our assistant) is an absolute pro and (so far at least) has never failed – or been blown away!

To be fair, it’s more about our clients than it is about us and, to this end, the Garratts were really easy to photograph and didn’t mind (or at least, didn’t say they minded) being out in the open on such a harsh wintery day! We photographed all of this in Thame down beside St Mary’s Church. This is a beautiful spot to work and provides a real mix of settings and backdrops, particularly along the disused road and bridge. That coupled with a really nice (and notably hardy!!) client and we have some beautiful images.

I don’t know why, but this session really lends itself to black & white – maybe I was picturing everything in my head for those really beautiful wintery shots or maybe the December light simply created those beautiful tones that a monochromatic picture accentuates. Either way, I particularly love the black & white shots we’ve captured. Beautiful.

Let us know what you think

Take care
Cheers
P.

However, I’m really excited about having finished the first cut of this year’s showreel and so wanted to get it visible while we work out some slight redesigns on the site to incorporate it properly.

I’d really appreciate any feedback on this as it’s the first time we’ve run a proper online slideshow so let us know what you think.

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

OK, so this post is simply a quick one to plug the fact that sometimes it pays to have the best equipment there is.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between semi-pro and pro gear, Monday was where it showed. We have always invested heavily in our equipment and my faithful Nikon D3 and 70-200VR lens (both top of the range professional bits of kit with unfortunately hefty price tags to go with them) proved their worth. Toward the end of Clare and Matt’s the wedding, the rain came clattering down and both me and the equipment got absolutely soaked (and I do mean soaked). And all without so much as a murmur (well, my equipment didn’t moan anyway…)

Just as well as I would have missed some of the really cool and romantic wedding shots had I been worrying about keeping my gear dry.

So take note when someone informs you that you don’t need the best equipment (and not just the best equipment but backup cameras and lenses as well) to be a professional photographer: they may well be right for 90% of the time (it is, after all, the photographer NOT the equipment that sees and captures the magic of a moment) but what about that extraordinary 10% like Monday? The equipment wasn’t a concern even for a second – and that, I think, is the way it should be.

I photographed Deborah, Jonathan and Alice (and the two canine family members, Lucy and Sam) up at Coombe Hill on the most gorgeous hot and sunny afternoon. Blooming lovely – the indigo and violet curtain call of this season’s Bluebells, dappled light drifting lazily through the new leaves and the dulcet tones of people yelling “Rover come, come. Rover, ROVER, ROOOOVVVVVEEERRR”. Ah, halcyon days indeed.

Anyway, the stage was set for capturing magical images and we were not to be disappointed. Alice in particular was, to put it frankly, an absolute star.

Whatever shot we were trying to get, she tirelessly worked the camera throughout the session. I don’t think was much that she couldn’t do, from those heart-warming grins that would melt any parents heart to the more serious expressions with real depth behind the eyes that will translate into framed pictures that seemingly magnetically draw you in. And all of it done as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Just stunning.

Our approach for capturing images that are relaxed and informal is, funnily enough, to purposely make the session relaxed and informal (with a big pot of invigorating tea midway through – well, we are in England after all) however, you can clearly see in the images that a small degree of staging (I prefer the term to ‘posing’) is used to structure whatever look we’re searching for. And, with Alice’s ability to translate requests into different looks and poses, and a remarkable confidence in front of the camera – along with particularly unnerving enthusiasm for climbing trees – we have a load of gorgeous images.

Other than to fill an album, I really am not sure how we’ll whittle this lot down!

Now please, don’t get me wrong, I’m as partial to a nice McChicken Sandwich or Chicken Royale as the next man, but I have to say this one has properly got to me. Call me old fashioned but animals should not be sitting in their own crap for two weeks before we plastic wrap ‘n’ roast ‘em and feed ‘em to our kids. I swear the programme has nearly sent me over the edge and created one more vegetarian on the planet – though I think the smell of a barbecue steak would always be my undoing and, besides, the kids would kill me if I single-handedly took sausage’n'mash (only Parminter’s finest bangers you understand) off the menu.

Either way, I would like to think we’re giving the kids the best possible food (for goodness sake, even our soppy mut of a spaniel, Oscar, gets dog food that wouldn’t look out of place on a dinner plate!) even if I still hanker after McTuckyKing’s best.

Clearly, should I distractedly stumble across a takeaway after a hazy evening of fine refreshment and gentle wit and repartee, I doubt I’ll be paying much attention to any single aspect of the delicicies on offer – in fact, probably the only consideration will be it’s propensity for filling a void – I shall, however, be sourcing free-range birds for every other purpose. Given that the farms in the Haddenham area also produce free-range stock, I reckon it’s not a bad thing for the local economy either.

Can’t be bad, now can it?