Time flies when you’ve no time to have fun!

Can’t believe it has been so long since my last post. My apologies if you have been waiting for my musings and if you have been holding your breath waiting for the latest words of wisdom…my condolences to your families.

There has been a lot happening, not least my invitation to be a demonstrator at SWPP in London last January. A great few days meeting photographers and suppliers from the UK and across the world.

One of the big things I have been aware of and started using much more now is the use of high powered speed lights and studio-type strobes. the greatest advantage has been the fact that we are no longer stuck in the studio. The advances in battery technology mean that I can have much greater control over powerful lights without the restriction of being tied to mains power.
Also, in previous years, I had been limited to a certain set of parameters which were constrained by things like shutter speed sync and special flash modes. Now, the restrictions barely apply. Turning day into night and shooting with wide open apertures to give depth of field separation (blurry backgrounds) is as easy as you need it to be.

I will be running a series of workshops in the next week or so but here a sample of the kind of image we will be creating:

Here is the link to the event and I believe there are still spaces http://www.eventphotographysolutions.co.uk/take-control-light.html

See you on the other side with some more exciting news to come about Air Image activity coming up in the Autumn.

That was a fantastic meal…you must have a great cooker.

An odd title for a photography blog? Bear with me.

Have a look at the image below this blog post. Five people standing in a puddle on the beach, silhouetted against the sunset. It was taken at the end of a busy week when one of my friends suggested that as it was a warm summer night (a rarity in Scotland) we should head down to the beach, build a bonfire, roast some marshmallows and chill out while watching the sunset.
I didn’t have any of my DSLR cameras with me, only my point and shoot compact which has manual control over a few key settings such as  Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO, etc. On seeing the picture, there were two different reactions:

“Wow, your camera is amazing!”

and

“I’m sure we could give you any camera and you would get a great picture like that.”

I would like to hope that the second answer was the more accurate. I have spent a lot of time learning how to make a picture, not just take a picture. For this photo, the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, colour balance, height of shot, angle of reflections and pose were all considered before pressing the button. It is straight out of camera and no pixels were harmed (Photoshopped) in the creation of the picture.

In the same way that the cooker just heats the food and the chef makes the meal; the camera just takes the photo but the photographer makes the image.