Current readings

I'm working my way through a very interesting book at the moment. The Hotshoe Diaries by American photographer Joe McNally shows examples of his work and how he has achieved the looks in particular shots using just small speedlight flashes.

It is full of inspiring ideas and is written in quite a humourous way. Joe certainly has all the equipment I think he could ever need, including the latest Nikon D3x cameras and SB900 speedlights (several in fact!).
He's been known to use up to 12 speedlights at once to get the look he's after which is more than enough to worry about!

The book is certainly giving me some ideas about how to be even more creative with my photography - I just need to get out there and try some of the things out now. It's a book that I can see myself dipping back in and out of as a kind of reference manual in the future. Should be some fun times ahead.

Bumper pack of lighting gels!

I want to start experimenting more with flash and learn about colouring my lights with gels. You can use gels to correct white balance, or gel lights to create coloured backgrounds or similar creative uses. I've had a brief go at this in the past and through the very simple use of an old Quality Street sweet wrapper, I managed to turn the whole of my living room red! The effect was way more than I had been expecting and was my first, early foray into gelling.

LEE Filters are acknowledged to produce the best filters in the world, and their range is outstanding. I discovered that it was possible to sample the delights for FREE; using their contact page I requested a sample pack. It just so happens that the sample pack gels are the perfect size for use on my Nikon SB800 and SB600 Speedlights too!

Now I will be able to to add colour into my shots in new and exciting ways. Hopefully I'll be able to get some shots done soon and then I'll post up the results.

Best image in class!

My shot of Mount Burgess (above) in YoHo National Park received the 'Best In Class' award in the lastest competition I've entered and scored a 20/20. I was really pleased with the result as I had the competition set subject in mind when I took the photo during last summer's trip to Canada.

It took a bit of work to get the right amount of detail in shadow areas of the trees without blowing out the brighter areas of the photo and I think I managed to pull it off OK.

The 'Reflections' competition was the last of the regular print league competitions of the year and all that remains now are a couple of one off competitions in May. I'll hopefully find out how I've done over the course of the year quite soon.

It's a girl!

Congratualtions to Sarah and Ben. We got the exciting news in the early hours of this morning that Sarah had given birth to a beautiful baby girl weighing in at 8lbs 9oz at around 3am.

Both mum and baby are doing well and we're really looking forward to seeing them soon.

Looks like the newborn shoot will be in the offing imminently too!

Great news.

Sarah's maternity shoot - follow up

Following on from the item a few posts below in the blog, I've now shown Sarah her photos and she's been really pleased with them - something which I'm obviously really happy about! It was a great shoot and we got to try lots of things out on the day, so thanks again Sarah for that.

With her baby due any day now, I hope everything goes well and am really looking forward to seeing your new arrival (and taking your baby shots for you!).

I've put together the slideshow in this post which picks out my favourite shots from the session. I hope you like it. It was put together with my slideshow software - Proshow Gold, and then uploaded to YouTube.

Happy viewing and any feedback is really welcomed.

Bits and bobs

Can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. Time certainly flies! It's been a busy month - though not photography wise unfortunately.

I had a week's holiday towards the end of February and spent some time up on the Suffolk coast near to Southwold and Aldeburgh. I had a bit of a foray into landscape work again and also had a try at some more HDR work which was fun. I've posted a few images on my flickr photostream that I took whilst I was away.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't really ideal for photography but I made the best out of it as I could. I got to visit some areas that I went on childhood holidays to and it really did bring back some good memories. Hopefully I'll be able to return at some point in the next couple of years.

Other things that have been happening include the good news that I have been booked to provide the event photography for a charity ball in May with around 200 attendees. My first go at event photography in February this year was a good learning experience and has helped me to refine my workflow and given me a taster of things to come. I'm also going to be offering a chance for guests to bid for a portrait session with me in the charity auction at the event. At least I've got some time to prepare!

Finally for this post, I came across a really inspiring post called "Transform" over on Zack Arias's blog that he did for fellow photographer Scott Kelby over in the States. The post is a video blog that Zack made and really shows some inner feelings of a talented photographer and how even the most dedicated can hit the buffers some time. If you have a spare 10mins, it really is worth having a watch of it here.

That's about it for now. The next post is a follow up to my maternity shoot with Sarah back in early February.

New lens for the collection

Well, after much deliberation, I finally took the plunge and bought myself a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR lens.




It is something I've been considering for quite a while and after saving up, I decided to go for it. The lens arrived yesterday and it certainly is a big beast! Weighing in at just under 1.5kgs it's probably not the sort of lens I'll be carrying around with me day in and day out but for those occasions where it does get used, it's going to be a cracker.


I've only managed to have a quick play with it but initial results are that the speed of focussing and image quality are superb. Having the f2.8 aperture available throught the zoom range will allow for some great creativity with the depth of field.


The lens should compliment my Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 lens and I'm hoping that the extra low light performance will add a new depth to my photography that has been harder to achieve in the past.

Check back soon for some test shots when I've had a chance to get out and about with it.