A Portrait Request From My Nan

So my nan came up to me today and asked me if i could take a contemporary portrait of her and my gramps together, as it happened i had just that week built a small studio in my kitchen and i was immensely happy to oblige her request.

My studio was far too small for too people so ended up taking two images one of each of them and joining them together, this meant that i had to pose the two individually but make them look like they were having their photo done together. This was a real challenge and i decided to be a little more creative and to try and bring out the personalities in each of them, for example my gramps has this very old fashion manly man façade but underneath he is a loving and caring man so i tried to bring that out in the image. My nan on the other hand is very much the amazing traditional house wife, she will do anything for anyone and put everyone else before herself and so i really wanted to bring across her loving and giving spirt in the final image.

I hope i have done this justice and below is the image.

Fashion Week - Re-edits

After the mount wise shooting day i received an email on Facebook from one of the designers Tre Worsley asking me if i would be interested in performing some re-edits on the my photos i took of her dress from the day but also if i could print out some 10x8 inch prints as well. Naturally i accepted the job as i thought it would be great for my work based learning module to add another day to my increasing work count. 

I was asked to colour process some of my images to a crisp colour output, and to turn some into Black and White as well, i was also asked to crop one of the images down to square format as the wall behind was distracting.

My folder will contain all the information with emails and costings and time scales etc.

Below are the final selection of images i sent off to print.   

Fashion Week - Mount Wise Pool Shoot

During march we had fashion week, there were lots of different activities to do and different lectures. Part of fashion week was the collaboration between the BA Fashion students and the Photography department to produce images for the fashion students of their final pieces before they have their final show.

The same thing was ran last yea too but it was so popular i wasn't able to get on it. This time however i was first in line as i have a huge interest in Fashion and Portraiture in my work and have never worked with a fashion designer so it was a really exciting opportunity.

All the paperwork was sorted out by the fashion department, including model release forms, property release, health and safety and insurance, however as seen in an earlier statement i do have my own public liability insurance with cover up to £2000000.

The day was really interesting but not as fast pased as i was expecting and hoping for, i prefer to work under a certain amount of pressure and to a time frame, its how i do my best work. This day was far too relaxed and not regimented enough for my liking but i think i got some pretty decent images out of it and in fact i got a job offer for some re-edits and printing from one of the designers which i will be writing about in my next post.

Below are some examples of images i took on the day.

Images From My Day

My Day With Nick Williams

Saturday 25th February, I spent the day assisting a professional and award winning wedding photographer, Nick Williams, on Bristol based wedding.

The wedding photography lasted just over 6 hours, with me being exhausted from the amount of learning I had achieved in the short amount of time. Nicks style is immensely fast paced and energetic with a great deal of emphasis being places on laughter and jokes to make the whole ordeal of having the photos taken, that bit easier on everyone.

Nick uses a huge amount of off camera flash and plays with natural light amazingly well, with well over 10 years experience in the bag he really has achieved a great platform in which to shoot fantastic weddings.

For me, the day has told me that I need to become a lot more confident in the way I shoot, and pay a huge amount of attention to where the light is in relation to the wedding party i am photographing. With such small time frames in which to shoot, positioning of people has to be done immensely fast, with the same happening when it came to camera settings.

With 6 hours worth of shooting and my own editing time nearer 4, I feel this should equate to 1.5 days towards my work based learning.

Above you will find a select few shots from the day.    

Public Liability Insurance (continued)

I HAVE MY INSURANCE

WOOP WOOP!!!!

I decided to go with a company called Finsbury, reason being simply that they were the cheapest for the level of cover i required.

I have £2000000 cover which i feel is the safest amount, my dad works in insurance anyway and informed me that a large personal injury claim for something like back issues, would very quickly wipe out cover of only £1000000.

So i thought £2000000 was a better call :)

My Insurance Quotes

After much hunting, it would seem that so far a company called Finsbury are the cheapest for the 'basic' cover of £2000000. There are other companies offering just £1000000 cover, however i have been advised that if a big case was put against me then £1000000 cover would not be enough. I have a few other companies to search through.

Insurance Quotes

I have currently been looking into public liability insurance with a view to purchase. I have been in contact with Nick Williams, who is a wedding and portrait photographer in bristol, I approched him with a view to getting a work placement, however after a discussion we came to the conclusion that I needed public liability insurance and so began the search.

Advert Posted on Gumtree

I have just posted an advert on the Gumtree website offering my services as a wedding, portrait and events photographer with the link to my page being

http://www.gumtree.com/p/business-services/professional-wedding-portrait-and-events-photographer/94456597

Hopefully this will start me on my way to getting a bit more freelance work, wish me luck :)

Communication Stoppage...

It is now 11/01/12 and i have yet to receive a follow up email from my client saying whether or not he has managed to overcome the file issue or not. I did send a follow up email on the 8th, so fingers crossed the issues have been overcome.

The File Issue

30/12/11 The images were sent off on a cd to my client, because of the sizes we were working in i had to compress the image files into a zip folder before they would fit onto the cd, simple enough i thought.

5/01/12 I get an email from my client saying he cant open the zip folder... now this is where it gets complicated, and is still being resolved as we speak now, i had made sure that the folder opened on PC and on Mac which they did and so i am trying to figure out why they wont open on his computer... and that is where we are at the minute, i appreciate that it is the 9th of January as i am writing about it but my last correspondence with my client was yesterday, just exclaiming that it still isn't working...

After The break For Christmas

After the christmas break and a rather long editing process the images were finally ready to be sent off, all i needed was the final sizes of the (to be printed) images, so that i could resize the files accordingly.

28/12/11 I receive an email with the final measurements, the prints are to be blown up to 6ft on the longest side... quite large yes... in fact 72inches long, when the final images were created the were 986mb each, the largest files i have ever created.

Falconry Continuation 2.

(12/12/11) I receive and email from my client asking if i could perform some photoshop editing work on the images, I was asked if i could remove the backgrounds from the images but also in one of them if i could replace the glove that was seen with a different one.

Naturally I accepted the request but at an increased charge for labour time. The final images took me over a day to produce which brings my total time for the project up to 2 days of labour; 1 day for the shoot itself and now another day for the editing time.

Falconry Continuation

26/11/2011, The day I went to the centre was a very exciting day, I met Ben Long, the centres owner and operator. He began explaining what kind of images he wanted me to take, he was asking for motion shots, images of the birds flying etc.

It was a very dark day, from the outset i was on ISO 1600 to achieve a high enough shutter speed to capture the birds without any lens shake, at 500mm this becomes a slight issue. Towards the end of the day nearer 4pm i had moved up to ISO 6400 which would prove a problem come editing and final prints.

Freelance Work Update... (Very Late) (but will be correctly dated within the post)

My most recent Freelance work has come form a Falconry Experience Centre, I was asked by the owner to take pictures of his Birds of Prey in flight, to put on the side of his new traveling display van. (email received 04/11/2011)

Naturally very excited about the project I accepted the job. (email sent back 05/11/2011)

Work Based Learning, The New Brief

So we got our new WBL brief today, looks a way more interesting than last years one; a bit more hands on instead of all writing. This defiantly suits me better as I respond much more to practical based learning projects. From what I can gather we basically have to get a job, in the simplest possible sense. We are required to have some sort of work placement, or do a industry job that would earn us money.

I am going to heavily look into getting freelance work for myself and focusing my project on that. As a back up however i do have a few friends, Kevin Poolman and Nick Williams who are freelance photographers themselves and has been for a number of years and have said in the past that they would be very happy for me to have a short term placement with them.

I see no reason not to include the wedding i assisted on below in the project as 2 days completed simply because it was such a relevant job.

The Baby Image Request

When i was shooting the wedding there was a young couple there with a baby, they approached me quite early on in the day and asked if throughout the day i would be able to take some images of their baby for them and they would buy a disk off me with the final images on at the end of it, it was just a random spur of the moment job that got me £20, on top of what i got paid for the wedding. It isn't much but they were only after candid images of their baby being happy and playful on the day.

Gladly i took the offer and spend a while shooting the baby as the day went on, always keeping an eye on it to see if it was doing anything interesting and capturing it when i could.

England & Jones Wedding Continued

So after a day of shooting and a day of editing the images ready to be sent off to the happy couple, all i have to do is find Tom, put the images on a disk and he can take them to the couple. Now to work on the baby images that i received a request for on the day.

Below are just a selection of images from the day.

England & Jones Wedding

July 18th 2011 myself and a professional partner of mine Tom Garrett-Downes, photographed a wedding at Bristols registry office. We spent all day following the couple around from about 9am, till well past 11 with a short break for lunch in the middle, a very long and stressful day but a great experience none the less.

The job was organised by Tom as he knew the couple from outside his professional circle, he rang me up one day asking if i wanted to assist him in this wedding he was shooting? of course i said yes as any experience is good experience. The couple wanted a very simple CD of the days photographs which was a slight letdown as i really wanted to produce a wedding album but sadly they didn't take to the idea.

Because the job was organised by Tom and he knew the couple better we decided that he would be the lead photographer and i would be second. Working as a pair on a wedding is always so much easier than working on your own, the reason i say this is that there were times when tom needed to be taking posed shots and so couldn't take some candid shots of the guests at the same time throughout the day which is where i came in and something that only a pair could do as a team.

Public Liability Insurance...

It has suddenly dawned on me that i should probably do some research into public liability insurance seeing as i want to be working as a wedding photographer, which usually involves a lot of people. So i did i quick google search and the top result was http://www.insuremyliability.co.uk. Their advert was for liability insurance from just £40. Their website says that : The standard limits for public liability insurance are £1,000,000, £2,000,000 and £5,000,000. Unlike employers liability insurance which is a required cover by law if you employ any staff, public liability insurance is not compulsory but is usually considered a key cover for companies looking to protect themselves against unexpected claims that can put the future of the business at risk. Public liability insurance should be taken out by any business that deals directly with the public or works away from home at other premises.