Hampton Court Castle

Fun summer times with Mamma & Daughter at Hampton Court Castle in Hereford.

Blaencwm Park Lifestyle Family Session 22 08 2013

A Number of storyboards from my recent lifestyle family session last thursday in Blaencwm park. Teri was an old friend from school that I haven’t seen for around 10 years. Her and her husband Andrew really have their hands full with their little ones!! Haydn was a typical 3 year old, full of beans, no fear and unlimited energy!! However he was really natural and didnt for a second mind me running after him with my camera! I think he enjoyed it more than anything!! Lewis had a FAB smile and didn’t disappoint by bringing it out on many occasion without much persuasion!!

Rigos Pano

Friday just passed I went back home to Treherbert for a cake smash shoot in Tynewydd park, somewhere where I spent most of my childhood and somewhere I have not been for 10 years plus!! I love going back as it gives me a chance to see all my family, old neighbours and hopefully people that i haven’t seen in ages! And a cheeky Fish ‘n’ Chips!!

Im still editing the images from the cake smash and they are turning out to be fantastic, but on the way back to Hereford, I stopped at the top of the Rigos and took a 20 plus image for a pano image as the view was breathless!!

Ive uploaded them both here but both are on my website as full res images (they are massive!!) and they are available for you to download, and do what ever you like with them (as long as you don’t use them as your own).

Ive enhanced the blues a little and they are 12 image HDRs but I’ve tried to keep the process as low as possible!

SJHM

My mate Steve Morgan came down for a visit again. So we took advantage of the situation and picked up our gear and headed out to get some cool snaps! Im pretty happy with what we came back with, but i really should have checked my cameras battery before hand! That will teach me hey!!

I have plenty more ideas in store for the chap and should be able to get cracking with them next week sometime!!

If you’d like to hear Steve doing what he does best then he is here on soundcloud

I tried out a few new things in Photoshop and done some drafts of sleeve designs! Im happy with what came from the little play around and perfected some techniques in the process so double thumbs!!

I had been sketching out a few ideas in my iPad app Paper for a logo for the boy. I went for a relaxed hand drawn feel and just played around with a few ideas! Once i was happy with the final draft i sent it to my other mate PS man Pete! Fair play he helps me out with whatever Photoshop stuff i need and one is awfully grateful dude 🙂 Follow the man over on twitter

So the rest of the images are over on my flickr stream as a set here

Another day, Another (2) Image (s)

So for the past few days, ive kept my flash on my light stand and camera on my tripod. Just incase i had some kind of idea, or just felt the need to shoot something. Few days ago i had some fun with some new self portraits. The set is here on flickr!

But earlier today the sun came out and after a spot of inspiration from a fellow photographer, i decided to spend a little time out in the garden. I had fun as you can tell!!

Coffee in the Sunshine

Ive been wanting to try this for some time. balancing sunlight with flash. Using harsh bare flash to illuminate the front and sunlight s a key light from behind. The shot i would have been extra happy with would have had some clouds to add something in the sky. But its not to much of a buggy. These last few days have brought some great clouds later in the day, just the time when im busy doing life. Ill catch them one day!!

So these shots have been modified quite a lot using Lightroom and photoshop. But thats me, i use the programs as much as i can to develop what i want from my photographs. I use the clarity slider quite a lot, and also the sharpening tools. Sometimes it can destroy the image if you go too overboard but sometimes throwing it up can bring out some great results. Depending on what the overall look is that your going for.

Settings wise, I had the camera in manual mode, im quite happy with that as i have only just crept out from Aperture mode. I thing its quite a bloody big step though? Always guess the first reading. I knew that i wanted a quick shutter and as i was using flash i set this to 1/160th. I posted some portrait images a few posts back and during this session, i noticed that the rear curtain of my shutter was out syncing with my flash. So then i was at 1/200th and decided that i would have to be a touch quicker to not get this again.

I wanted quite a lot of the image in focus so i set to f11. This gave me more than enough sharpness. I was using my Hänel Combi TF triggers and had my Nissin d688i mk11 on 3/4 power.

I also played around with the white balance in Lightroom to give a different style to the images. And as i enjoy doing them, i threw in a HDR to see if it would work…. not bad!!

Coffee anyone??…….

Emily Watts and Family

This one kept me on my toes!!! This little 2 year old tested my overall fitness by being full of beans, and running non stop all over Queenswood Country Park Hereford last weekend! It was a pleasure to have photographed such a nice family! They had travelled from Stoke on Trent to meet with family and saw that just 2 weeks before, I had a photo session with the little girls cousin Alfie Watts. So while they were down they decided (or Gran decided),that they were to book me for some fun and cool images to take home! And didn’t we have loads!!! I took along one of my daughters many bubble making thingys as i knew the little un would love it!!! Who doesn’t love bubbles?? The weather was our friend too as we had a sunny and warm afternoon after having a few days of nasty grey stuff!

We decided that there would be some family images with some separate portraits thrown in, nothing planned or set out, just to have a nice day with some great pictures! After little persuasion, I managed to twist grans arm and get her to have her photograph taken with her granddaughter. I get that a lot from people, that they hate having their photo taken and that they are not ‘photogenic’! How many people in this world really are photogenic?? Not an awful lot! But its those people we see most in papers, on TV etc that have turned societies attitude to beauty and self awareness to what it is today! I for one think its a massive shame! Lets put it in the perspective of this wonderful family. Emily is 2, and from what I ather her grandparents haven’t seen her too often as they live miles away in Stoke on Trent. So that should be even more of a incentive to have some wonderful snaps to remember a special moment by. Because, at the end of the day, that is all they are…. Not something to remember how one looked or how ones hair was on the day, but to see the emotion and love between family members. And from what i captured, there was bundles of it!!! I also have had first hand experience of this, with my parents living back home in the Rhondda while i went off to Finland for 8 years! So every time we were together we insisted on having family portraits taken!!!

Now to more of the technical side of things!!! I had opted for my 50mm f1.8 to be my number one lens for this shoot! As most of Queenswood is mostly covered by tree growth, then I knew that i would need to step down into the f1.8-f2.8 mark to get more light into the camera. My D3000 isnt great with high ISO but using LR i can help that a little, so its not to much of a problem. I also used this lens for framing purposes. I knew that it would be a perfect area for what i needed, it was just to move yourself around more to get the perfect angles and shots, instead of turning the zoom wheel. I used fill in flash for only a small number of shots both off camera and on camera.

There are a few more images over on flickr here

I have sent over around 100 images to the family with a few story boards and Facebook cover photos! I look forward to hearing their response!

Emily, Jamie and Lisa

A quick snap from today’s lifestyle shoot up at Queenswood Country Park Hereford. The little one, Emily, is 2 years old and was full of energy and fun!! We found some great ares to play and get some wonderful photographs for the grandparents! Mam and Dad joined in and loved playing with the bubbles I had brought for Emily! Even Nan jumped in for some photos!

Looking forward to editing these!!

lifestyle shoot

Lifestyle shoot today!! Glad the weather has turned for it! Looks like ill have to dust off my polarizer! Back up too Queenswood where this little man had a great time on my last shoot! Todays is 2 years old so i think it will be extra fun!!!

heres a link to my other lifestyle stuff over on my website if you’d like to check it out!!! http://bit.ly/11NDetv

A gloriously glum day

For the last few days, the sun had been shining, the sky’s were bright blue and the heat had finally fallen on us!! The problem was, that for my photo idea, this would not work!! What i wanted was some definition and emotion in the skye! Also, a great contrast from the bright yellow rape flower! So to be awoken with grey skys and some pretty cool clouds this morning, i knew that at some point the shot would be on. I had some other ideas in mind using various trees and Neutral Density filters that i am yet to edit. But i went straight to this and loved it! A small crop and some minor edits and i am extremely happy with the end product!!