Family portraits in Covington (La)

It seems like so long ago since I was in New Orleans. One of the last things I did before I left was a very quick family portrait session for Debbie with her mum and dad (or should that be mom and pop?).

Finally i've managed to get them uploaded, click on the picture or here to see a short slideshow of the images.

It's looking highly likely that i'll soon be heading back across the pond (maybe even in the next few weeks).

Taking photographs in another country is such an adventure!

Portfolio Shoot

I recently was requested to carry out a portfolio shoot. As you can see we got lucky with the weather (sunshine in January).

It was a fun afternoon and I'm confident we got the images we needed. Click the image to have a sneak peak of some of the images or click here.

Howard Robbins Wedding

Congratulations to Howard Robbins and his beautiful new wife Janine on their excellent wedding.

Every wedding is different, some organised, some less so but when one of the highest ranking toastmasters in the country is getting married it's like a military operation.

The actual wedding took place on New years eve with the party going on till the early hours of 2009. It was a truly fantastic day and the guest list read like a who's who of the wedding industry. Some of the best caterers, toastmasters, photographers, videoographers in the country were there to wish the couple the very best.

It felt great to spend new years eve at a party where I knew a lot of the guests. The reception was at the Royal Majestic which is fast becoming a very popular venue in London.

It was one of those jobs where you new everything had been taken care of, including the excellent "surprise" entertainment after the meals.

Even though he was the groom he just couldn't help making sure everyone was briefed correctly .... "Howard that's why you have a toast master ... lol"

Winter Weddings

First things first if you're reading this today, happy new year!

As a pro photographer on of the biggest challenges of a winter wedding is the lack of light. Especially if like me you love to shoot out side. Capturing a good exposure in the dark can be extremely challenging and takes a lot more than putting the camera in programme mode and attaching a flash. At the same time the Bride and groom are normally freezing and all they want to do is get back into the warm.

I was lucky in the early part of my photography career there were no digital cameras and I used a manual Hasselblad. exposure and flash settings all had to be worked out manually which meant unless you didn't want to stay in the business long you soon learnt how to work out the best settings for different lighting. I guess with modern cameras we've all become a little bit spoilt, but it's occasions like the one above (taken last week) that can separate the people who take pictures and those that make them.

A piece of advice for anyone wanting to learn photography would be, go and buy a cheap film manual camera and learn how shutterspeeds and apertures work together. Modern cameras are fantastic at working out exposures but they can't think and can (and often do) get things wrong.