Playing around

As always I was out and about with the camera the other day and had the opportunity to take some photos of a close friend of mine, Raj Grewal. Raj is currently a police officer based at Heathrow Airport, soon to transfer out. As I had a couple of Nikon SB800's with me, I thought I'd take some shots of him as the evening light started to fade. With one SB800 on my Nikon D200 and a friend holding another SB800 off camera, I exposed for the sky so the clouds and vapour trails from passing planes would show up, and used the flashes to light up Raj. With a little tweeking in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom ie boosting the contrast, this is what I came up with.

Getting Ready ....

Here's one of the photos I took of Christina getting ready before the Wedding Ceremony. Using Photoshop, I've added a little noise to this image and converted it to black & white as I think this gives it more of a 'behind the scenes' feel.

Wedding Celebrations

Well, on Saturday just gone, I was not only a guest at a Wedding, I was also the official photographer. The Wedding was that of a good friend of mine Dave Gurnhill to Christina Lally, and was to be held at the Elvetham Hotel, Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. The day started nice and early with me getting there just after 11am. This was mainly because I wanted to do a recce of the grounds again, to see where the 'must have' photos could be taken as it was really hot with not a cloud in the sky. At 1pm it was up to Christina's room to take photos of her getting ready and then at 2pm, Dave was due to arrive. The ceremony started just after 3pm and then it was out onto the lawn at the rear of the venue to celebrate and start taking the official photographs. I had until 5pm to get all the necessary photographs in and thankfully with the help of Steve Pratley who was with me, taking the reportage photos and organising the posed shots, we finished on time, much to the relief of the Toastmaster, Eric Gill. Having enjoyed a wonderful meal, photographs were taken of the speeches, cutting of the cake and then on into the night... All in all, it was a fantastic day - hard work which required a change of clothing, but well and truly worth it. Dave & Christina are now away on their honeymoon in Cape Verdi so I have until the 1st May when the return, to sort through all the 771 photographs and come up with a top selection to present to them as a slideshow prior to arranging their Wedding Album.

It's all in the presentation

Here's the second of the two images I've done for John on his retirement. Incase you're interested, the photos were taken using my Nikon D200 and the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 lens (Thanks to Matt Kloskwski of NAPP for this recommendation)

Retirement Present

I said on a previous post that I'd been out taking photos of some of the guys from CO18 Aviation Security onboard the now retired Concorde at London's Heathrow Airport. As one of the guys, namely a good friend of mine John Steele, is due to retire at the end of the year, using Adobe's new Photoshop Lightroom Software (which is a MUST for any serious photographer) I sorted through the images to see if I could make a leaving present / reminder for him. I've attached one of the final images to show what I came up with; tweeking them a little in Lightroom and adding a few of my own touches in Photoshop. Good on you John!!!

Additions to the Portfolio

Well thankfully there seems to be a never ending supply of people who are willing to be part of my new portfolio. For the time being, I'm looking for singles, couples, in fact anyone that's willing to put themselves infront of my lens so that I can build up a more extensive portfolio to submit to the B.I.P.P. (British Institute of Professional Photographers) for my Licenciship. As a way of saying thankyou, one print is given free but any others are charged for. The photographs attached to this post are a couple of the ones taken in the last 10 days; all with the 1 metre softbox, lastolite collapsible background and a white lastolite reflector.

13,000ft and climbing...

A HUGE thankyou to a good friend and colleague of mine, Mark Gibbons who invited me out with him this last weekend up at Weston Skydive in Oxford. Mark, currently a Police Sergeant based at London's Heathrow Airport is an ex RAF Phantom pilot, who in his spare time flyes aircraft at either Weston, Oxford or Netheravon for Skydiving Schools. Sat in the front passenger seat, camera in hand I was with Mark for some 23 lifts. The day was a total blast and one I'll never forget. Oh yeah, and I managed to get off quite a few shots too; both in the air and from on the ground.

Onboard Concorde

Well as always, I've been out and about, camera in hand looking for any photograph opportunity. Well, as luck would have it I got to photograph some of the guys from Heathrow Airport CO18 onboard Concorde. Now when I say onboard, I really mean, onboard as the guys got access to not only the interior of the plane but also got to stand out on the wings. I think in what was a short space of time I rattled off something like 160 photographs; not all of them 'keepers' but the ones that are, I think work really well. I've attached one of the shots to this blog. The guy in the photograph is a good friend by the name of John Steele, due to retire at the end of this year.