Photography Interview

I've been bonkers busy over the last week so I'm afraid the blog has been a little quiet. Here's some of the things i've been up to.

A while back I agreed to an interview with an online forum. Some of the questions that came forward really got the grey matter ticking over whilst others were more simple. You can read the interview here and at the same time why not join the forum?

Last weekend I travelled down to Sussex and watched (shot) the American football match between the Colchester Gladiators and the Sussex thunder (slideshow to follow). As this is the part of the world where Emma Duggan lives I dropped in and we spent some time talking all things photography.

We swapped lenses and ideas and set about shooting each other (and Emma's dog Freddie). During this time Emma got this great shot off me (not the easiest of subjects).

The "Day of adventure" photography training day has now started to fill up and I'm really looking forward to meeting everyone. It seems like we've got a great cross section of people coming from complete amateurs to all out professionals. I really love these days as there's nothing better than spending time with creative people.

Having great times with great friends.

I consider myself really lucky to have some fantastic friends who are involved with photography. One of my greatest mates is Emma Duggan. Emma kindly came and showed some of her stuff to the guys on the "shoot to sell course" at the start of this week. Here's a pic of me and Emma kindly taken by Ken Beck.

As well as being a fantastic photographer (getting far too good) she is one of the friendliest people I know. Never being afraid to talk to anyone and offer help if needed.

I spoke to everyone after the two days and they all said one of the highlights was meeting Emma and sharing some time with her. Check out Emmas Duggans' blog here, you won't be disappointed.

Here's another shot (taken by Emma) showing me with the guys on a break during the day. I had a fantastic time with all of you. I guess you are all far too busy putting in the action plan and creating a fantastic business to be reading this blog.

It was great to receive your e-mails and I too would like to thank you all for your belief in me and taking the chance to come and see how I do things. I think I will definitely be running this course again (in about six months), I'm guessing you'll all be very well established by then and will have doubled your turnover from last year!

One question how can being away for two days create a weeks worth of work? Did all my clients wait until I was away before they sent their orders through? Or is it that when you deal with things as they arrive it seems to take less time.

Photoshop Magic

Yesterday was my birthday and a great friend of mine, Emma Duggan kindly made the effort to
come up and see me for the day. Emma's also a professional photographer who has a similar but also differant style to her photography. Emma Kindly bought me the coolest and most perfect birthday card ever (see picture here) how cool is that!

As i'd promised when she arrrived (late as usual) we went to the park and I introduced her to my favourite photography props. We spent a couple of hours feeding and shooting the squirrels.

We had a great laugh and left the park when it started to get dark. We then set about playing with the images in photoshop.

One of my complaints about shooting digitally is how flat the pictures tend to be when they come out of the camera compared to film. Emma showed me some neat quick tricks (look at the differance between the two shots here) to getting the images to wake up which I will now use all the time.

Having sorted out the photoshop we went for an Indian and set the world to rights. I always find when two photographers meet up and start chatting its like nothing else. It's as if you live in a foreign land and you suddenly discover someone else who can speak the same language! Hours and hours of great conversation.

After the meal we went back to my house and started what was supposed to be a little run through on how to use flash, and how to have fun with it. I won't go into too much detail but we ended up at 2 in the morning, with stands, tripods and multiple flash guns scattered throughout the house. We then set ourselves the challenge of working out how to get a person in the same photograph twice in differant positions without photoshop. After many nearly attempts and stumbling around the house in complete darkness between flashes we finally got what we were after. GREAT FUN !!!