Are you the paparazzi?

Has the world turned upside down? If Nadal being bundled out of the French in the 4th round to a Swede, a Swede(!), wasn't weird enough London has just reeled off her second successive sunny weekend. Insanity. I decided to head out to Hampstead Heath for a picnic with Bec and Danny, but our plans were scuppered when we learned the train we'd planned on taking wasn't running. Time for plan B, which just so happened to be Highbury Fields just over the road from the redundant train station we were standing at.

I was armed with my full photographic arsenal, including my recently acquired 5-in-1 reflector which I was very keen to practise using. Contrary to popular belief bright sunny days don't make for good photos, especially when your subject is people, the harsh light has a tendency to wash out light skinned faces, make people squint, turn people into silhouettes (if you don't know what you're doing behind the lens) or even worse, cast horrendous shadows all over faces. Long story short it's a nightmare. Unless you possess, and know how to use a reflector that is. I was half way there in that I possessed a reflector, the tricky part is figuring out what to do with it.

Fortunately the aforementioned Danny is my Old Street Photography running mate, and his wife Bec was a willing model, so between us we managed put our heads together and figure this thing out.

From Highbury Fields Forever

We soon discovered where the idea of eating a strawberry had come from, that unscrupulous photo editor from the Times magazine had pulled a sneaky Derren Brown style subconscious suggestion on us with the cover of the magazine Bec was reading...





The cutest moment of the day came when I was shooting this shot of Bec and Danny



These two little girls, maybe 8 or 10 years old, came up to me and said "Excuse me, are you the paparazzi?" I assured them I was not, and that there were my friends I was taking photos of. Kids are priceless.

Managed to catch another classic London shot today, this one will go alongside my shots of Big Ben, the Millenium Bridge, and London Eye in the snow - a man putting his shorts back on after sunbathing in his briefs.



Last but not least we have my favourite "non-reflector" shot of the day.



A good day was had by all, apart from the 2 children Danny and I both hit with frisbees in separate disc related incidents, but as they say, no blood no foul, and I'm sure those kids will grow up giving frisbees the respect they deserve.

Tip Of The Week: Buy a reflector and practice with it, find some good online tutorials to learn the basics and experiment with the results of using different coloured reflectors. Get one you can fit into your kit bag, mine goes in the laptop compartment of my bag and weighs next to nothing.

A good day

It's been a good day. I've just secured another wedding booking, 4 weddings in 5 weeks in June / July will keep me busy, I've passed my life in the UK test - the first step to British citizenship, I'm enjoying a tasty Jacob's Creek Shiraz and the Flight of the Conchords is on in 68 minutes. Life doesn't get much better than this.

Except for life in Australia, where I spent a hectic, whirlwind fortnight last month. Most of the time was in and around my home town of Adelaide, although I spent a great 2 days in Sydney. I was lucky to be staying close to the Opera House, and even luckier to get a nice sunset on the evening I went to take photos. The eternal struggle as a photographer who loves travelling - to take photos as the sun goes down, or enjoy a few sundowners with good friends and just enjoy the moment? If someone invented a time machine that only sent you back 30 minutes I would be all over that.

The lovely Yvonne

From Australia - Sydney

Bondi Barrels



Opera House Sunset 1



Opera House Sunset 2



Opera House Sunset 3



Sydney Sunset



Manly Moment



Tip of the week
Oh yeah, that's right, the tip of the week is back. Big time. The tip this week is "Take note of Simon's tips of the week". I refer to my TOTW from several months back referring to setting your camera to a narrow aperture when shooting a bright light to create a star effect, my Opera House shots were all shot at f/22 which caused that cool star effect with the sun shining through, had I shot that at f/2.8 it would have looked average instead of awesome. Okay, so it was pretty lame rehashing at old TOTW, promise I'll come up something new next time if I get even 1 comment for this post!

Friday Night Project

After devouring an entire box of savoury shapes for dinner, a rare treat in London, I was left wonder how best to spend the rest of my Friday night. I was beginning to tire of *cough* 27 Dresses, I mean, as far as predictable rom coms go this was arguably the most predictable (but such is my dedication to the cause of wedding photography I'm prepared to go extraordinary lengths to understand what makes a bride tick!).

So, what to do? I couldn't help but notice the lovely late evening light streaming in through my large lounge room windows, so I made the decision to start a photographic assignment that's been on my to do list for a little while. But I had to work fast. The assignment involved setting the camera up on a tripod and shooting myself in various different poses then putting them together in Photoshop to make it look like I was everywhere at once. The problem with starting this this at 7:30pm was that during 20 frantic minutes of shooting (with no less than 6 changes of clothes) the amount of light had changed significantly which threw things out of whack.

I was very careful about setting things up and positioning myself for the photos. The way I put it together was to use the first photo I took (me on the drums) as the background then add the other shots as layers on top using only a cut out of myself and not the whole scene. To ensure a consistent look I set the camera to manual (f/4.0, 1/30th, ISO 400) and also used manual focus. With the same light the layering wouldn't have been a problem , but as the light had changed I attempted to adjust each photo in Lightroom to have the same exposure before exporting to Photoshop and putting it altogether, although this didn't really work that well. As a result I had to spend a lot of time on each photo cutting out the precise shape for each layer, if the light was the same for all images it wouldn't have needed to be so precise as the background (wall colour for instance) would have been identical and you wouldn't have been able to tell the layer from the background.

After this was all put together I imported the file back into Lightroom and applied a Surreal Edgy preset which I think suited the style of the image. So, without further adu I present the one man rock band.




As a side note I took another photo which I didn't use with me as a groupy sitting back to camera at the front of the scene. I decided not to use it as the 10mm lens distorts perspective in such a way that I took up too much of the frame. Sometimes less more.

Engagement Shoot - Chona and Richard

I met Chona and Rich at a house party of a mutual friend Jenny. They'd recently become engaged and were on the look out for a wedding photographer, and as luck would have it they'd already seen some photos from Wimbledon I'd put on Facebook after Jenny had left a comment. I was introduced to them as the guy who took those Wimbledon photos and they soon asked whether I shot weddings too. A beer or two later I'd passed on my business card and we'd arranged to set up a more formal meeting shortly, after all, being able to take good photos from the second row of the greatest tennis match of all time isn't hard to do and doesn't necessarily mean you can shoot a wedding.

Several months later arrangements were in place and the time had come for the engagement shoot. I like to do an engagement shoot before the wedding for a couple of reasons, firstly the couple gets some great casual photos to keep for life or use on their wedding invitations, but secondly, and more importantly it gets them used to having their photo taken and is a great chance to build rapport between the photographer and the couple.

The shoot was loads of fun and we were fortunate to get great lighting conditions, overcast but bright. Big thanks go to Josh for assisting with the shoot. Here's some of my favourites plus a slideshow of the day.