Just having a look at the latest photos onΒ Boston.com’s Big Picture website and noticed there’s an iPhone app for it. For just Β£1.19/$1.99 I can stave off boredom for a while longer when stuck with just my phone.
Found a new site!! These guys are a great group of pros who have setup a blog website, fstoppers.com, based around behind the scenes videos. They give some grea views of the professional world of portrait and fashion photography in particular, taking away a lot of mystery. Although they are still demonstrating most of their talent on top notch gear, it’s pushes you to think how you can recreate similar effects and setups on a [much] smaller budget, but with the same enthusiasm.
This is one of my favourites so far (still working my way through them all). Being a big fan of the iPhone and since getting the new iPhone 4 with the greatly improved camera, this just goes to show you what can be done.
Have a gander at some of these: http://www.krop.com/creativedatabase/ There’s some serious lighting going on in there. To me it looks so simple but that’s the magician’s trick.
So on to the 2nd shoot that we worked on whilst at Bedford Autodrome with the MKFlickrites group. This time we went with the JP1 2 seater race car. We kept it inside the pit garages to greater enable us to control the light. The pit garages are a long narrow(ish) enclosure which I had an idea of how to use. I want to get some distance shooting down the length of the garages.
Firstly I positioned the car (not easy since they have a turning circle of what feels like 2 miles). I set it in a very generic position Continue reading »
OK, so I’ve been very remiss in keeping my site up to date. The only excuse is that I’ve been busy out photographing! My photography has changed a bit over the last few months. I blogged previously about working with local professional photographer Lee Marshall. Well that has worked out very well and I now work for Lee on a more regular basis mainly supporting his event photography business. Less about that just now and more onto the subject.
I’m sure you know of Flickr: a photography based online gallery website which has grown into more than just an online gallery, but a community for photographers of all levels to share their images and discuss and comment on each other’s work. Another output of this is the growth of smaller Flickr communities, where more geographically similar members share their photos and experiences and on occasion meetup to do the same in a more dynamic way. And so the Flickr Meetup was born.
This week I was back at Bedford Autodrome working for Lee Marshall Photography supporting and sorting his trackday shots as part of his trackday photography service. Got out and about on the track early on to grab a few shots with my gear. These were using my 70-200mm f2.8L. Lee leant me his 1.4x extender for a time too which boosted things a bit, but on the back of the camera I couldn’t help but feel it was softening the images.
It was a great day, as most track days are. The weather was better than I was expecting, with some really cold snaps the previous days, I wrapped up with several layers – tracks and airfields will always feel 10 degrees colder than anywhere else! On the day though the weather held up, just leaving a few shallow puddles and damp on the track. This made for some interesting early laps on this novice-only day. I think few left the day without having at least one spin.
For a track day there was a slightly unusual selection of cars. From a Saab 9000 to the GTRs, which where clearly superior on track. You almost expect them to be driving using PS3 controllers! As always there there was a great atmosphere from all those attending.
This was another great experience for me from a business perspective, seeing how the process and workflow of a professional photographer works. From setup to sales, Lee has a well-oiled machine – which I almost made unstuck using a different folder naming convention, but we worked through it (I quickly retracted my changes ). Can’t wait to do it again.
This is a great little utility that I used before getting Lightroom. It’s really simple to download and use to present photos in an explicit set on your own website. It’s now included as a part of the Lightroom web export tool with a good set of presets. Took a little fiddling to get it into the blog but I found the solution here: http://ishootshows.com/2007/07/25/autoviewer-and-wordpress/
Jamie has been working hard with a web developer to put the Shenley Scorpions site together using some of my shots as they headers. I’ve just finished post on the last of the coaches and team shots so I’m sure you’l see them up there soon.
OK, so the last couple of weeks have been a bit hectic on the photography front. Ever since getting back from holiday. I got some great response from the photos, and my presence, at the 3×3 tournament at Xscape which have led onto some great opportunities.
The shopping extravaganza, in prep for my first wedding, grew a bit more than I originally planned, with a bit more of a significant investment by me in me. Hopefully one day this stuff will all pay for itself. So in prep for wedding I have this week the new items ordered and arrived now include
1 x Custom Brackets flash bracket
1 x Canon fit eBay/Hong Kong Flash cable for use with bracket above)
1 x 4Gb Sandisk Extreme III Compact Flash Card
1 x Manfrotto Monopod
1 x Monfrotto Adjustable head (for monopod above)
1 x Gary Fong 1/2 Cloud Universal light sphere
1 x Canon 430EX II Flash
1 x 70-200m f2.8L USM Lens
Yes, that cracker on the bottom has broken the bank a bit. Thankfully I have savings, which are meant for other things, but after some good talks with the girlfriend, has now been invested in me as a photographer with an intention on making the money back through the photography itself. Naturally I hope that this wedding is successful for me and leads to more of the same. Speaking, possibly a little premature, but I can see wedding photography being something that I will really enjoy. People, set shots, candids, herding people about, celebration, post production, what’s not to love?
I’ve just been able to use my new lens in earnest for the first time. I’ll write that post next…
Got my first wedding coming up in just over aΒ week so it’s time to do a bit of shopping for the bits I’ve had floating around in my head. Shopping list looks something like this:
Gary Fong Lightsphere – if you’re going to do on-camera-flash, do it in style. Will be great the ceremony which is a a lovely, but very light restricted, room, as well as good for cutting through the disco lights. This has actually already been purchased and arrived the other day.
(Another) 4GB Extreme III compact flash card – I plan to shoot RAW as much as possible. This will push me to 11GB capacity. When I get through the first 2 x 4GB cards I’ll dial it down to just JPGs or stop being so click happy! I’ll have my laptop on site in case I do misjudge the volume of clicks and need to offload a card as well as being a backup. 7dayshop will be my vendor of choice since nobody seems to be able to beat their Β£19.95 price tag on this item.
Flash bracket – spotted this at a wedding I was at a couple of weeks ago. The photog of the day was using it. Gives great versatility of the flash as well as taking the light off-axis to reduce shadow and red-eye. Coupled with the Lightsphere it should be a killer combination for filling the room and reducing scrap images.
Monopod – This is a border-line decision. Took some good advice from Yuri Arcurs who, albeit in stock photography, strongly recommended using a monopod 99% of the time to maximize your hit rate (or rather minimise your miss rate). Since I’ve hired the 70-200mm f2.8L for the day I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give my arms a rest. Although it may still prove to be a little cumbersome. I think it wouldn’t be a bad investment for the future so I may well still go ahead with it.
I was invited by one of my best buds up to the Xscape building in Milton Keynes to take some shots of him playing in a 3×3 basketball tournament run by the MK Lions. It’s an annual event that the Lions put on with teams entering from across Milton Keynes. It’s some fun for the kids as well as a public demonstration of the Lions’ efforts in the communinity and a promotion of Basketball and the team itself.
Just having a look at the latest photos onΒ Boston.com’s Big Picture website and noticed there’s an iPhone app for it. For just Β£1.19/$1.99 I can stave off boredom for a while longer when stuck with just my phone.
As always there there was a great atmosphere from all those attending.
