I've just got back from showing Hannah and Dylans their images from their fantastic wedding. I first met Hannah and Dylan back in March when we talked about their day then took a few pictures (link to their pre wed shoot) .
Having had such fun on that day I had no doubt their wedding day would be a real fun event and it certainly was.The church (St. Mary the Virgin) was just a few minutes away from Hannah's parents house (where the party was to be held), so the pressure of getting lost was non existent taking away something that can be a major stress, I did raise a smile when I mentioned to a nervous Dylan at the alter that the girls were going to be late cause the sat nav had gone wrong.
The ceremony was ministered by Dylans uncle so it really was a tight family service. After a few pictures at the church it was time to head back to the marquee set up in the garden.
The evening couldn't have been any better with some fantastic food, top notch speeches and a band that really rocked the house (well marquee). A truely magical day and an honour to have photographed.
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.
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.
OK it may sound strange but I can promise you one thing, in the business world the most risky thing you can do is play it safe ...... So then it stands to reason the safest thing to do is take risks. Don't believe me? Find a self made millionaire (or for that matter a successful business) that hasn't taken a risk.
Can you imagine the conversation Simon Woodroffe must have had when he was trying to tell people how his Yo Sushi restaurants would work ....... Conveyor belts would carry food past people who would take it if they wanted it ..... a bit like the generation game.
I've always said if you want to be noticed do something noticeable. Believe me it works!
So yesterday was my birthday and I'm now officially another year older. Is it just a male thing that the mental age stays at around 19? I really believe there's not a guy out there who doesn't believe he could fly a helicopter, run a marathon and serve with the SAS if he wanted too, just life took them in a different direction. Of course we're wrong but we like to believe we could (helps us sleep at night).
January is traditionally a slow time for most businesses and the photography trade is not exempt. Having said that over the last few days the enquiries seem to be coming in again so it looks like there may be food on the table in the near future. In truth the early part of the year is when a lot of people find their wedding photographers and that trend would seem to be holding true.
I've finally managed to find a date for my next two day "shoot to sell course" which will be the 21st and 22nd April. For anyone that's interested its a two day marketing and sales course designed around the photography business. It includes the methods to identify, find and capture clients and then practical advise on selling and sales techniques. It has proved very popular in the past and i don't know of any other courses specifically written for photographers. You can read what previous attendees have said here or here . This course has the added benefit in that I have teamed up with and excellant image display company who will be helping us over the two days by showing exactly what they can do with our images (in display terms).
Also don't forget I'm running a one day lifestyle photography day on the 30th March. This is a whole day spent where i show some of my methods which help me to get natural photographs. A wide range of people regularly attend these days from amateurs who have recently bought a new camera through to professionals looking to have a change in direction. Just drop me an e-mail to martin@martinwilmottphotography.com if you think either course may be of interest and I'll send you the info.
Oh and i nearly forgot I'm booked to give a talk for the Baddow Camera Club on the 26th Feb so if you're in the area why not come and say hi. Full details can be found here, or just go to www.baddowcameraclub.com. The talk is free but you should let the club know you wish to attend.
I really hope we can meet up some time in the near future ....... that's if I'm not busy flying helicopters, running marathons or training with the SAS.
I was recently commissioned by John Peasemotorcycles in Braintree to capture some images. As well as web / press image the brief was to show off the newly redesigned parts / accessories area. One thing that has proven popular with those who choose to frequent two wheels is a good looking woman. Something that has been proven over many years and adverts so who am I to argue. Some times you just have to go with the flow, it's a times like these photographers wonder if they would be happier behind a desk in some dull boring job ....... for about a millionth of a second.
The shoot went well and we managed to get shots in both the Yamaha and Suzuki showrooms before heading up to the parts / accessories area. I've put a couple of images on here for you to see, the rest you'll have to visit John Pease for or have a look on their website in a few weeks time.
Many thanx goes to Paul the Manager of John Pease, and of course the lovely Marta who was our stunning model for the day.
Whilst setting my video to record the American football on Tuesday night I noticed a programme on channel 4 at 5 in the morning called "picture this".
After a little research it was a TV programme about four aspiring photographers who are to be put through several tasks with the chance to win a book deal and a display in a gallery.
It sounded good so I set the video and actually managed to watch it today. To me it summed up everything that i hate about photographers and photography. Don't get me wrong the technical abilities and photoshop skills were impressive and the finished images were technically correct.
However the photographers were so self centred they completely failed in their tasks. For example one of the tasks they were set this week was to produce portraits of each other. To me a portrait should be all about the person being photographed and should tell their story. So for example if i was commissioned to create a photograph of a photographer I would shoot them at work or in a dark room etc. Between the 4 people one decided the sitter should be tied up on a park bench bondage style ....... How is that a portrait? The guy wasn't into bondage (that we are aware of). The second decided to make the guy look like her and dressed him in her clothes and watch etc ????? the third had his fellow female photographer scrubbing the streets on all fours ??? The last was the only one that came near a portrait and pictured the sitter on a settee in the street next to a graffiti wall, in fairness I liked the composition of this shot.
However what really hacked me off was when they were tasked with photographing people in a British seaside town. One of the photographers got a couple of children to dance with their parents in the background of the shot. He then photoshopped a sign into the parents hands that said "the children are dancing for crack". Personally i found this disgraceful that he would betray the peoples trust to make them look like crack addicts.
At this stage I turned the video off.
I know these are my personal views but I really do believe it's the photographers job when being tasked to take a portrait to photograph the real person. In my opinion a photographer who imposes what they want and not what the client wants is a failure.
If the task had been to create art my views would have been differant but it wasn't. The brief was to take a PORTRAIT.
It seems to be a growing trend that weddings are now taking place throughout the year.
On Saturday I was lucky enough to shoot a wedding at Layer Marney Towers near Tiptree. It was a fantastic day and the wonderfull couple were obviously so in love.
Shooting in the winter brings new challenges, the main ones being lack of light (it gets dark by 4pm) and lack of warmth. We were really lucky on Sunday that all the rain fell the day before and the sun actually came out and did its best to keep the temperature above freezing.
I was really pleased with the above shot, I used the light from the video mans camera to backlight the couple and just natural light to capture the image. All in all a fantastic day spent with fantastic people.
Being as we are so near to the end of the year I thought I'd put together the slideshow above of some of my favourite images. I struggled to cut down the images and could easily have had treble the amount of photographs but finally settled on these. You can see it larger if you click here.
For those of you still waiting on your Christmas cards don't panic I haven't forgotten you, I'm still waiting for them to come back from the printers so it should be any day now ...... sorry.
I was recently approached by the Baddow camera club to give a talk on my work and lifestyle photography in general.
The talk will take place on the 26th February 2008 starting at 19.45 and It's completely free (although tea ect will be for sale). You don't have to be a member of the club to come along. The location is the BAETelford Systems theatre, on West Hanningfield Road in Great Baddow near Chelmsford.
I'll be showing some of my images and sharing a few secrets of how they are achieved, in my normal witty way. There will also be a time at the end where I'll be happy to field any questions people may have.
Before I start I want to make it clear to my insurance company and any health and safety bods that may happen to be reading this the following story is actually completely made up and totally fictitious.
OK, so today I was booked to do some commercial work which involved shooting a companies lorries at their yard. It had to be today as the shot is required by Thursday and weekends are the only time the fleet is at the depot.
Unfortunately it was also the day we got a weeks worth of rain in one day, but being as there was no chance of a re shoot we pushed ahead regardless. Endless shunting of vehicles back and forth and we were eventually ready for the shots.
Anyone who's read my free down loadable photography tips from my website will know one of the things I constantly talk about is finding interesting angles to shoot from, normally high or low. I'm not afraid to climb on top of something or lie down if I feel it will add to the shot. With this in mind I asked the boss if it would be possible to bring a forklift out for me to get a bit of height.
The forklift trundled out to where I had thought the best place would be with a pallet for me and my tripod to stand on. I mount the pallet grab hold and say to the driver "take it up as far as it will go" at about the half way point I realised that i had underestimated the maximum height of the forklift. I thought it would go to about 6ft where as in actual fact it went to about 30ft (or at least it felt that way).
So I'm now standing 30ft in the air with my camera on a tripod whilst the rain is pouring down, There are no railings and just a pallet to stand on (that seems to have shrunk since we left the ground, unlike my tripod which has expanded to take all the room). There's nothing for it other than to get brave let go and look through the camera, luckily the tripod needed only the very minimum of adjustment to get the composition I wanted. Needless to say I set the camera to bracket (30ft in the air is not the time for light readings) and shot of about thirty shots.
All in all a succesfull day even if the adrenelin was of the brown variety.
It seems there are more and more professional people that are needing portfolio images recently.
Today I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing a journalist come author who has recently won a very prestigious award for writing. He entered a competition where the first few chapters of a book had to be entered and he won. Since then he's been in demand and it would appear he has a great future ahead.
Click here to see the images we got today. Sometimes when there's only one subject it can be hard to get enough different pictures but I'm really pleased with today's results, see what you think.
I've been completely snowed under recently trying to catch up with various shoots including another two this weekend (images will be uploaded when I catch my breath).
Anyway this Sunday I took a trip down to St Albans to meet up with a good friend Mel Corley . I first met Mel we he came on one of my day of discovery days and since then we've stayed in touch.
I had been commisioned to photographs Mel as he worked.
The brief was to capture images of Mel as he carried out a portrait shoot. The images will be used to help promote him and his business. Whilst we worked together exchanging ideas, and searching out exciting backgrounds, I managed to get the shot above of our stunning model.
I strongly recommend you go to Mels site and see some of his fantastic work from the day under the portrait section ...... they're great!
I've always been a Nikon user. Ever since my first steps into photography (in the army) where an FM2 was thrust into my hand and I was sent out with rolls of film to go get some shots. I love the cameras and have got to know each one I have owned almost personally. In fact I'm so bad I've still got them all (where's the sense in that). I was very slow taking up the digital revolution as i have always been more than satisfied with the film cameras. However rising film/processing costs eventually made the decision for me (although i still occasionally shoot film). I can't be the only one who still gets inspired when opening a film can and smelling the emulsion on a fresh film can I?
Any way the main beef I had with Nikon was how all my lenses from my film bodies suddenly became different focal lengths when attached to my D2x. I suddenly found I had to be further away from my subjects and it caused me to have to change my approach to the subjects. This of course was due to the size of the image sensor Nikon used as a result I believe several photographers jumped ship and went to Canon who offered full frame. For years Nikon insisted they had no intention of going full frame and instead concentrated on new lenses specifically designed for digital bodies. All that changed last week with the announcement of the D3.
It looks a very impressive piece of kit and boasts several new widgets including, the ability to have 2 memory cards, some new fancy autofocus system and several other techy things (that if I'm honest don't interest me cause they're techy, I'm more interested in what it produces rather than how).
However I'm very impressed with the pricing policy, estimated at £3,300 that's a lot cheaper than the Canon equivalent.
Its not often that I'm at the other side of a lens so its nice when someone manages to grab a shot of me at work. This one here was taken by Sally Schrieber who attended the last "Day of discovery" training day that I ran.
Sally very kindly sent me this link to a photography forum where she commented on my training day and put up one of the pictures she got. Great job Sally.
Also another photographer, Mel Corley who also attended one of my previous training days has just recently come second in a photography competition with an image captured on the training day.Well done guys you should both be very proud!
Places are going quick for the next "Shoot to sell course". It's on the 8th and 9th of October and is two days designed to help photographers gain a boost or launch their photography careers concentrating on marketing and sales. The guys who attended the last course were blown away but you can read what they thought here. Drop me an e-mail if you think you might be interested, it could be the best thing you ever do!
Today was my latest photography training day run at Pontlands park hotel. It was a real pleasure and a treat to meet some new faces hopefully pass on some of the methods I use.
We were really lucky with the weather although it did try its best at times to stop us working outside. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing and look forward very much to seeing some images the guys took on the day as they come through. I'll post some more stuff tomorrow (when I've recovered a bit).
Thank you to our fantastic four models today you were great! (some of my shots below). Oh and of course what would I do without the help of the superbly talented Toni Bunn, who helped me out, what a star!
Yesterday I covered another fantastic wedding. One of the joys of being a wedding photographer is the chance to discover a different traditions.
For example traditional christian weddings have bride and grooms families on opposite sides of the church were as Jewish weddings have male and female sides (as can be seen here).
Another thing I noticed yesterday is in the traditional Jewish wedding the groom actually places the wedding ring onto the index finger of the right hand. At some stage later the bride normally moves it onto the ring finger of the left hand.Intrigued by this discovery i asked the Rabbi who kindly explained, "the reason goes back to the time of the Talmud and the difference in beliefs at that time about which finger is closer or more direct to the heart. Christianity taught the ring finger: Judaism taught the index finger."
Another thing that would appear to be apparent is how different religions view photographers. I have photographed many Jewish weddings and without exception they are more respectfull to any the professionals employed to record the day. I always find it very sad when a couple are denied the main part of their day to be recorded because the person in charge decides that's what they want (irrespective of the couples wishes). Of course there are exceptions to every rule and I have worked alongside some excellent Christian ministers.
A couple of weeks ago the Colchester Gladiators played the Ipswich Cardinals. The game was probably the wettest I've ever witnessed, torrential rain from start to finish. I certainly learnt quite a lot from working in these conditions. I had the camera wrapped in a tesco bag and had to continually keep wiping the lens. Lighting was poor too and i finished shooting the game at ISO 3200, don't you just love the British summer?
At last the British league has started again! Gives me something to look forward to on Sundays again! Sorry I haven't updated the blog lately its been really busy .... wil add some more stuff soon.
I don't know if I'm strange but I seem to measure things differently to most people. For example I regularly meet many photographers, some run great businesses, others run very expensive hobbies that they call a business.
Many people in business fall for the line that to be successful you have to be busy. I regularly hear of photographers who's only aim in life is to shoot more weddings next year. Perhaps I'm wrong but my vision of a successful business is one that aims to work less not more? Surely by taking on less work it means the jobs that you do have can be done to a much higher level?
Any way I've had a few more comments about the "shoot to sell" course I ran last week that I thought I would share. It feels great to know that the people who spent two days with me have gone out with renewed passion and now have the necessary knowledge that will help them build a successful photography business.
"Hi Martin
Hope all is well with you and you have had a well deserved rest after the course earlier this week. It was 11.45pm when I got home and I then spent another couple of hours at the computer trying to capture all the ideas that were floating around in my head!
The course content was magnificent and it was delivered in a very professional and friendly manner. I would recommend your courses to anyone who is building up or starting a photography business.
My day job finished yesterday and i am now officially a self employed photographer ..... I couldn't have wished for a better start to my business, I know that if i put the effort into using your techniques and following your invaluable advice there is no reason why I can't make a success of it.
You are a very talented photographer and businessman and i feel very honoured to have been given the opportunity to work with you. Thank you again for everything .........."
I have no doubt that Karen will have a great future in the photography world. Check out Karen Petry's website here.
Here's what Andrew Burton had to say (unfortunately I can't show you his website yet as it's not live yet)
"Hi Martin
What a fantastic couple of days I have just experienced. The best course I have ever attended, with excellent ideas and inspiration from start to finish, along with great company. I now feel all fired up to push my business forward.
Martin thanks for a truly fantastic couple of days."
I needed information, inspiration and a kick up the rear and your two day course has provided all that and more. I really enjoyed meeting the others and Emma too. You worked your magic again and now I'm buzzing with ideas of what to do next and after that too! I'm writing them all down so I don't forget them and linking them in with the notes you gave us.
I second Johns sentiments - you should definitely offer this course to a wider range of businesses especially smallish ones who would benefit greatly before making too many costly mistakes.
Thank you for all your effort and your kindness in sharing "the secrets" of your business model with us. I'm sure we will be making great use of this new and exciting information. I know I will be :-) .....................
I know from the amount of e-mails I have already received there is enough demand to run this course again. As soon as I have a date i will publish it here. If you think it may be what you're looking for drop me an email to martin@martinwilmottphotography.com and we can have a chat.
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