Vick & Dans Wedding

Vicky and Dan were Married in Red lake Telford, and the Day reception was held at Ludlow Castle, with an evening reception at Fishmore hall. The castle provided some brilliant photo opportunities and one of these is shown below, more to follow.

This photograph was taken on the steps to the inner section of the castle. It was also the first wedding i had shot with my Nikon D7000.

Jenni & James Wedding

Spent the day covering the wedding of Jenni & James at Old Colehurst Manor which is near market Drayton.
More information and photos to follow, but for now one image;

This was taken in the hallway prior to the service which was held in the upper part of the gatehouse.

Andy & Cheryl's wedding

Very enjoyable day spent photographing Andy and Cheryls wedding recently. Day started getting shots of Cheryl and her bridesmaids getting ready;

Followed by the church service, with photographs taken during the ceremony and outside the church;

Followed by a quick drive down to Ironbridge for a few photos;

Then onto the valley hotel for the reception.

Now the album is complete and should be going off to printers in states tonight.

Help for Heroes retrospective

The charity ball at the Park Inn in Telford for Help the Heroes was a great success not just for me, but for the charity as well, raising lots of money for this excellent cause. Guest of honour for the night was Corporal Ricky Furgusson who received the military cross for his actions in Afghanistan. A very un assuming and friendly guy.

Photos didn't start picking up until about an hour into the event and then we, myself and Jon Watkiss, had a queue forming and worked very well together shooting and selling photos we had taken up until gone 1am on Sunday morning. After taking costs for the printer, paper and a small amount for ourselves, we were very happy to be able to donate £100.00 at the end of the night to the charity.  I am looking very much forward to the next charity event.

The only downside of the night which has turned into an 'upside' was i discovered why my Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens when attached to the camera was always over exposing. I assumed in the states that the reason highlights were blowing was due to the very wide light gamut, but trying to set my camera up with the studio lights everything was over exposed. The little lever on the back of the lens that controls the blades is very sluggish. Lens back at Sigma and i managed to get the 3 year extended warranty authorised before it went back.

Help for Heroes

Big night this Saturday, 18th June. I have been asked to attended a charity ball raising funds for the 'Help for Heroes' charity and take portrait shots for the guests. I don't have anyone in my family who are in the forces, but I do hold this charity close to my heart. I used to watch the images of those poor service personal arriving at RAF Lyneham and then been driven through the crowd lined streets of Wotton Basset and feel the families pain at what they had to endure. And its no better for those coming home physically or mentally wounded, live's shattered by war. So I hope my little contribution will go some way to making someones life that little bit more bearable

Telford Juniors Ice Hockey Tournament

Spent the 4th and 5th of June shooting 1500+ photos at the Telford Junior Ice Hockey Tournament, some of those games were really exciting and the level of hockey was a great surprise. We are going to have some excellent 'Brits' coming through soon. From a Commercial point of view, not sure yet whether it will provide any income. CD sales were slow on the Sunday, maybe should have set up the stall on the Saturday as well. The computer has now finished 'De Noising', level fixing and sharpening the images, so they will be up on photobox  ( http://www.photoboxgallery.com/TJIHT ) soon. The organisers will then email the teams managers and then we will see what happens with, hopefully, a lot of sales.

*** PHOTOS SOON

Togging in Tampa Bay

During our family holiday to Florida, I had previously managed to obtain accreditation for an NHL match between Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers. It was a shock when we arrived to find I would be shooting rink side with the media team, including Scott Audette.

To start with it was a trip to their 'den', equipped with TV feeds from the games, cameras and lenses and a couple of ibooks/imacs to upload their shots straight to the NHL websites. Next off for some food, which I wasn’t looking forward to as my money was upstairs with my son and the rest of the party who had been given VIP Guest passes, but I didn’t need to have worried, I walked into a fully staffed restaurant where their were four/five entrees, starters and deserts. People in here were top management, NHL referees and Time keepers.

 Once it was time to go and shoot the match I was given my own shooting hole, Home end and off I went. The lightning in the rink was amazing and I could shoot at iso400 1/500 @ f5 instead of my usual settings at Telford of iso1600 1/320 @ f2.8-f3.2 if lucky. So was a very very happy snapper. Meeting the players and getting a few autographs at the end of the match was a fantastic finish to a day I will never forget.

A fair few of my shots have been used on the http://insidehockey.com/ website, and i will need, when i have time, to go through the Panthers players and submit them as well

Fran and Dans Wedding

The big day arrived for Fran, Dan and I. The Friday before the wedding the sun was shining, its was nice and hot and all looked good. Saturday morning though and the weather had turned into a nasty grey murky day. So I knew my first wedding was going to present challenges from the off. The first five photos, were to be honest a disaster - just those nerves again.

Once I got into the swing and the photos were coming good, the day just flew along and 6hours later it was time for dinner. A quick rest and then back to shooting the night before knocking off at 11pm. The album design took a while as Fran and Dan wanted a fair few shots, 100 plus, and as my first clients I wanted to go that little bit further, in the end I needed to add 20 more pages. Now just waiting for the return of the album.

Fran and Dan's Wedding Pre-Shoot

Saturday the 12th and went over to Hawkstone Park and met up with Fran and Dan to get a feel for the venue and check out the lighting inside, which I am pleasantly surprised to say was very good. Took a few test shots to get aperture/shutter settings worked out.

Took a photo for the 'guests' mount to sign, and finished off with a nice informal and relaxed chat over a coffee.

Tigers v the dogs

Tuesday night, Sheffield Steeldogs charged into town and left with a hard fought, and at times, niggly victory. Things flared up quite early with Sheffields Andre Payette throwing his considerable weight around, dishing out late checks, dragging his stick through players when the whistle had gone, pushing people around, etc, etc.

Then things came to a head when Tigers captain - Tom Watkins unleashed on Dogs Kriss Grundmanis , and the pair went toe-to-toe for a good couple of minutes.

To be fair we never looked like we were going to win and whilst people have made comment about the dogs dirty tactics, Tigers did have a fair number of power plays thanks to said tactics, but could not capitalise on them,the dogs didn't get punished on the score sheet so just carried on, and whilst people have also made comment about Payette's playing style, would these same people make so much noise of he wore a tigers jersey, after all he was doing his job and we couldn't provide an answer to him.

Teeth, Memory cards and hindsight

Teeth, how can something so small cause so much pain, i understand that if i loose a finger or toe or break a bone I 'need' to know about it, hence the nervous system. But teeth, i can feel if they break or fall out, so why the nerves and how come the smallest part of the body can cause the greatest amount of pain. Which leads me onto Memory cards, memory cards?. Yes. They, like the teeth been small  in your mouth, are the smallest part of the camera setup, when they work they are great, but when they don't, just like your teeth, they can give you a huge amount of pain:

Sunday night I photographed Telford Tigers against Slough Jets, a game which we won. It had end to end action, a big fight and goals. I was also asked to take a couple of promo shots of Shropshire Ambulance trust,as well as the end game celebrations. When i got home, I as always, loaded the card into the computer to copy of the images. Strangely it did not recognise the card. Put it back in the camera - all OK, so tried again in the computer. This i did a couple of times, before a final push into the card reader and 'SNAP' went the card, along with all 150 shots from that night and so started a couple of hours of anguish, just like tooth ache, as i tried to restore the data, all to no avail. So in hindsight;

A) don't buy/use cheap branded SD cards, needless to say i have now got 4 Sandisk 2gb 130x cards.
B) If the reader doesn't work 1st time it isn't going to work on the 4th time
C) why didn't i try to connect the camera via the USB interface - that's the killer one !

Lessons learned and whilst still not happy with the incident, i have, as the Americans would say, closure on the incident.

Raj's 65th Birthday Celebration

I went to patshull park to photograph a 65th Birthday celebration. When I arrived at the hotel I was taken aback by the light inside the bar area - dark shadows, yellow wall lights throwing low level yellow ambient light everywhere - a photographers nightmare. This was going to be fun. I had hoped in a way it would be like this as it gave me chance to put into practice some of the things I had been trying earlier in the week at home with my 'CloudSphere'. After re watching the tutorial on Garys website, I found that my earlier tests I had been using it wrong., now I would get the chance to use it correctly;

Photograph taken with a Nikon D80 and Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 lens. 1/60th sec @ f5.6 ISO 320 with a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight in iTTL mode and GaryFong CloudSphere.

This add on is going to be great for the weddings I have bookde this year.

Tigers V Swindon Photos

Managed to catch up with 'other' photo work, which put the processing of these photos a couple of days behind. At least I now have a streamlined process in place, so I have minimual manual input into the process, Just a quick pre edit and then sit back and let the PC take the strain.

Photos are  here on my Facebook site :

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084901&id=1028221530&l=fc846376e4

MidPhot 2011

Its that time of year again, to get my entries into midphot 2011 (http://www.mcpf.co.uk/events.html). Havent been to wrekin arts  (http://www.wrekinarts.com/) for a while, working lates - children to drop off, etc. So when I went last friday discovered to my dismay that entries had to be in by Friday this week. However a phone call Tuesday night had me panicking as the digital images were needed by Wednesday morning!. Quick sort out and got them to the club secretary in time.

Last two years I have entered, I have got a couple of images accepted, so heres hoping the same this time.

Telford Tigers V Slough Jets

I will be at Telford Ice Rink this Sunday 6th Feb from 5pm onwards to take the photos of this hockey match, pop by and say hi. Hopefully the Tigers can post a win, this is a two edged sword though - if we score lots of goals it means more work for me to process them, but happy we have won, if we lose i am gutted - 'cause we have lost, but less work to do with the photos, hum.

Speculate to Accumulate

I am a firm believer in this; quite a lot of my new photo shoots are of a direct result from other photos I have done for people, either low cost or in some cases free, and sometimes just through association.
Two of my wedding bookings this year are down to me been the Telford Tigers photographer, A player and a friend booked me a couple of years ago, his fiancee recommended me to another Hockey player who have now also booked me for their wedding.
Patshull park photo shoot, is down to me shooting photographs for Admaston juniors under eights football teams. Sometimes you have to 'throw out a line' and just wait for a bite.

Steve

Family Photo Session

I am going to be at Patshull Park this Sunday, having a photo session for some friends as it is their Fathers (Raj's) 65 birthday. Looking forward to this as have taken a few portraits of the two boys in my garage studio before and they are easy to work with. Also gives me chance to try out my LightSphere cloud and clear flash diffusers in a typical wedding venue, which i have got booked through out the year.

Scarletts Christening Shoot

Had the pleasure of shooting Scarletts Christening recently at Little Dawley church in Telford. Was invited back to the house for a buffett lunch, where I managed to get a few more photos as well. It has taken a couple of weeks to nail down 30 plus images, but this has also been due to my ongoing work for Telford Tigers Ice hockey team, where I can be found most home games taking the photos for the local papers as well as for the team.

I have now created a preview DVD for the parents, so look forward to hearing their views and hoping that at least one shot meets with their approval.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=46389&l=9550d2aeee&id=173455479345497