Portrait Training Day

Yesterday was the latest "day of discovery" lifestyle portrait training days that I run at the Pontlands park hotel.

I started these courses because I always find it's easier to show someone what to do than to try and tell them.

I always have great fun teaching these courses and meet some great people. It's surprising the energy a group of photographers can create as the creativeness starts to take over and confidence grows.

Big thanks goes out to everyone who came along and I look forward to seeing your images. Also thanks to our great models.

We were really lucky with the weather but I guess as it's the start of the British summer that's how it's going to be from now on ..yeah right.

Andrea Simmons who came along yesterday kindly sent this image of me teaching yesterday. Although I think she caught me mid sentence or perhaps I was chewing a mint.

I'm pretty confident everyone left with a lot more confidence with new found skills and abilities. Also I have a whole new bunch of new friends.

Weddings at the Landmark hotel

Yesterday I was honoured to be employed to shoot a wedding in central London.

The west end of London is not the easiest location to work, mainly down to the 24hour traffic that sucks the life out of the city. I must admit looking out of the window in the morning didn't help, driving snow.

Luckily enough the snow soon melted long before the cameras came out of their bags however it was still very very cold and the wonderful bride and groom were like troopers never complaining once.

The wedding reception was booked for probably my favourite hotel in the city the Landmark. take a few minutes to look around their website and you'll see why its a great favourite with photographers, an absolutely stunning venue.

Not only is the venue fantastic but the staff work very hard to ensure the customers are completely satisfied (including the workers). The serving staff are all full time (rare at most hotels) and as such are well drilled ensuring everyone at the table gets served their meal at the same time. Little things like this go a long way in making a difference.

All in all a fantastic wedding made even better by great service and a wonderfull venue.

Blackberry 8310

I have a new toy!!

The other day I received a phone call from O2 telling me that they were changing my tariff as the one I was on was so old it had become defunct (I've had the same number since 1994).

Taking advantage of the situation I told them I needed an upgrade to which they agreed. I searched the phones available and came across the Blackberry 8310 which took my fancy.

It arrived the next day and after a small hiccup of having to wait a further 48hours to be hooked up to the wireless network I began playing.

The Good points. I can now receive and send e-mail without a computer, a real bonus for me as I spend long periods away from the office. I can search the Internet for basic websites again really handy when looking for hotel addresses phone numbers etc. it has a 1 gig memory which can hold loads of mp3 music tracks and so replaces my mp3 player. The in built camera has a flash (hoorah) so that solves the problem of taking a small camera every where I go (I don't think it will be replacing the Nikon just yet though). It also has various neat widgets that allow things to happen i.e. updating my facebook page or even (so I'm told) this blog (I haven't tried it yet).

Now the bad points, firstly I must emphasis I'm very pleased with the phone and these are just things I have come across and not worked out how to solve as yet. Every time I receive an e-mail the phone vibrates. Also there's no spam filter on the e-mails. When you add together the fact the phone vibrates when they arrive and the fact I rarely turn my phone off I've been woken up several times this week at 2 in the morning by e-mails offering to sell me various gadgets to make a certain member of my anatomy bigger, not very impressed !! The in built sat nav is poor in that although it can give you a root and you can follow it on the screen it doesn't talk so it is of no use when driving, although admittedly would be good if you had to walk somewhere.

After a couple of days surfing I started to get the following message, "a problem occurred while trying to render the page" this started on a few sites and very quickly spread to every web site. The cure I found was this, open the browser, select the options menu. Then select the Cache Operations, delete the content cache ...... make sure the browser configuration is set at the standard default. That did the trick for me and it's now working fine.

All in all a great phone, i'll just have to learn to switch it off at night, although there is a setting for that to happen automatically and then turn itself back on in the morning!

Bingo Lotto

I was asked last weekend to do some publicity shots/ PR for the British American football association and the Bingo lotto TV show.

The basics of it are the Bingo lotto launched last week and had a large photo call in Trafalgar Square. The hosts of the show, Joe Pasquale and Suzanne Shaw were there as well as representatives from various sports from all over the UK.

A percentage of the money raised from Bingo lotto goes back to sports. As well as Joe and Suzanne Antonio Fargas was also their as a guest of British American football.

Antonio is best known in the UK for playing the part of Huggy Bear in the 70's show Starsky and Hutch. He also spent time in the jungle along side Joe Pasquale in the show "I'm a celebrity get me out of here". A slightly less known fact (at least in the UK) is that his son, Justin, plays for the Oakland raiders as a running back in the NFL. As can be seen here all the celebs were more than happy to pose with members of the Colchester gladiators youth team after the all important PR shots had been captured.