Claire and Stephen brought their two girls to their pre wedding shoot. Both beautiful boxer dogs. I had great fun doing portraits of the four of them late one evening in Pittencrieff Park.
Showing posts with label Portraits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Portraits. Show all posts
Ruby
Be My Bear
Today was my daughter's 5th Birthday party and she had 11 of her friends around to the house for a Be My Bear Party. Carolie Hart was the party organiser and she did a fabulous job of keeping 11 girls entertained.
It was quite a party seeing 12 toy bears being assembled in my sitting room. All the bears also came with a birth certificate, clothes and a special carrier bag so each girl went home with a new best friend.
I highly recommend Catherine Hart and her team - more details of her parties are included at Bear Party Zone. I think this is a great idea for weddings where there are lots of children to entertain.
Please note the above group photograph was taken with permission of the parents except one girl who has been digitally removed from the photograph as I did not have a model release for her.
Kick
My youngest son is football daft and tonight we practised some free kicks in the local park in Milnathort.
The threatening clouds full of snow made a great backdrop as he launched shots of the crest of a hill.
Will you travel?
As we approach mid January the wedding enquiries are starting to flood in. One questions I am often asked is how far will you travel? The answer is I cover the whole of Scotland, but for distant weddings, may charge a small surcharge for petrol and an overnight stay.
Children Portraits
I love taking children portraits using specialist lenses and natural light.
A brochure detailing my portrait services will be available later this month.
Having a laugh
I have been testing Lightroom's black and white conversion tools and I have to say I am very impressed. Here's one of my youngest son, he's seven later this month and wants to adopt a seahorse!
A little laughter
A wee walk to the village store with my daughter today and a little practice with a fast prime lens.
I shoot a lot of my portraiture with a wide aperture as throwing the background out of focus gives a 3D like effect.
Here are a few images from the walk. The laughter is because she was trying to run over my foot with her bicycle.
Breaking the rules
Last Thursday I did a talk at the local camera club about professional lighting techniques. Afterwards I demonstrated various techniques such as bounce flash and wireless flash.
One of the members was kind enough to model for me so I could explain how I set my cameras, he was amazed that I turn all the automated features off and set the camera and flash manually.
Attached is a head shot from the demonstration and I have converted it to black and white using the blue channel. This is normally a no-no but I find it works well with men with rugged looks.
Hopefully the member doesn't mind me posting this portrait but I like it a lot and will be looking at this rule breaking black and white conversion technique for other male portraits
Rachel
It's competition time again. Here is a photograph I've been granted permission to enter into this months SWPP print competition. Her mum has a 12x12 fine art print of this photograph.
Rachel is very camera shy and this was a grab shot taken at my daughters birthday party. She was in a pink wendy house at the time, so I converted to black and white to lose the pink cast.
My Favourite Photograph
A bride to be was complimenting me on my children portraits this evening. I said my first wedding booking was due to this photograph of my daughter when she was 2 years old.
This photograph is framed and hung in my dining room along with two individual portraits of my sons. All of them are black and white prints, my favoured media for portraits.
Ashes and Snow
A photographer sent me a link this evening to Ashes and Snow. Some really amazing imagery to be seen here - I recommend the flash site even though it is a little weird to navigate.
Some of the images with the elephants and whales are incredible. I also like the use of split toning, grain and vignetting and will look at using these darkroom techniques for some of my wedding and landscape imagery.
I also love this quotation about whales: "The Whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song." Inspirational stuff.
Great skin tones
Today was a bank holiday here in Scotland so I spent a little time trying some new portraiture techniques.
Using my model daughter, aged 3yrs, some sweets and a step near the post office in Milnathort I captured this lovely warm portrait.
Best of all this is almost straight out the camera - i.e. colour corrections set within my camera.
I plan to use the same settings and techniques for Kelly and Martin's wedding portraiture this weekend.
The Painter
This summer we had our family holiday in Robin Hood’s Bay. We were blessed with a heatwave for the fortnight so the kids just wanted to spend most of the days on the beach.
One day while we were on the beach Angela said she thought she’d seen that artist I’d met and photographed during last years summer holiday. Last year we stayed near Filey and spent many days on Bridlington beach.
At Bridlington beach last year I met a painter called Malcolm Ludvigsen. I took a few photographs of him at work and a one of these images is shown above – some are also reproduced on Malcolm’s site (with my permission)
Having just looked at Malcolm’s Ludvigsen’s web site I note there are a lot of images of Robin Hood’s Bay so maybe Angela did see him and perhaps some of us are characters in one of his seascapes.
Mother bursts into tears
A few weeks ago we were invited to a friends 50th birthday party. As a surprise I did a framed platinum photograph of her youngest son.
Days before the birthday her daughter sneaked him round for 5 minutes - after 5 frames I knew I had caught his enigmatic smile.
Angela delivered the print while I was at Lesley and Andrew's wedding. When our friend unwrapped it she burst into happy tears.
If you are interested in a framed portrait - please contact me via my web site - see the link in the right hand menu.
Looking for monsters
I am a member of the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers and enter their monthly print competitions.
One of my favourite categories is the children's section since I am a father to two children and one soon to be teenager
Here is one of my winning images "Looking for monsters" from May's Children's Section.
I have five images entered in August competition, fingers crossed for some more winners.
Platinum Prints
I'm a big fan of black and white imagery and at the moment I am trying out metallic prints from my print laboratoty. I find these work really well with platinum images rather than pure black and whites. Here is a rare photograph of my daughter taken a few weeks ago - rare as in she isn't screwing her face up or sticking her tongue out at the camera.
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