Friends, I'm on the lookout for a fun couple keen to head over to Paris for a photo shoot on Monday 19th October.
You: - Fun couple who like having their photo taken - Happy to spend a fair bit of time posing for photos - Can get yourselves to Paris on Monday 19th October (I'll be getting an early train from London and a late train back, circa £79 return) - Want to make friends jealous with stunning photos in the world's most romantic city
Me: - Looking to build a truly international portfolio - Loves going on photo shoots like the one in the video below.
Drop me an email if you're interested simon.bills (at )gmail.com
On Saturday my good friend and Old Street Photography running mate Danny whipped up his patented chilli con carne and had Yvonne and I round for dinner. As the light was so nice we decided to come round a bit earlier and head to a little park down the road where roles were reversed and I fulfilled a childhood fantasy of becoming a super model.
About a month ago I took Danny and his wife Bec out for a shoot around London, we both thought it was pretty important to experience what it feels like to be on the other side of the lens to improve how we relate to the couple we're shooting, at the end of the day once you've got your technical wings photographing people is ALL about building rapport with your models, making them feel comfortable and getting them laughing and smiling naturally and enjoying themselves. I'm notoriously rubbish at having my photo taken, I tend to get a bit camera shy, can't smile naturally and generally get a bit awkward - I'm the camera shy photographer - but NO MORE!!
It's a lot easier having your photo taken with someone else, the style that Danny and both shoot is basically getting the couple to relax and have fun with each other - we're just shooting a couple of hanging out (sort of, there's more to it than that but you get the idea). It's a not a structured "Stand here, look at the camera, smile, NEXT". After we'd done some couple shots it was time to go solo, but this was fine as I was used to the camera pointing at me by now and my smile was looking less like a grimace than ever before!
Keen followers of my blog will remember Chona and Rich, a couple I met at J-Fo's party many moons ago who were looking for a wedding photographer. Well, those many moons came and went, and yesterday Danny and I finally shot the wedding, and what a wedding it was.
The standard chaos of a wedding day was in full effect, Chona's make up artist was caught in traffic and couldn't make it on time, it was looking like she'd have to have her make up done en route in the wedding car which was far from ideal. Thankfully the bridesmaids had a different make up artist who stepped in and saved the day, crisis averted. (Chona - I didn't catch the details of the make-up artist savior, drop me an email and I'll put her details in!!).
Chona had a stunning dress made by Kosibah Creations, the dressmaker Yemi was on hand all day to make sure the dress was looking perfect for the photos which certainly made our job a bit easier!
Once the early drama was over with the day unfolded beautifully, speeches were great (particularly liked Rich's younger brother's speech which likened Rich's approach to being an older brother to Wayne Arnold from the Wonder Years). Some early delays cut into some photo taking time (the planned 45 minutes turned into 6!) but in the spirit of rolling with the punches we all pulled together and got some great images.
In typical simonbills.com fashion I'm breaking convention yet again, 2 blogs in 2 days if you don't mind. Yep.
So, this evening I spent a bit of time playing round in Lightroom setting up some presets to automate the export of photos in a blog friendly manner, I think this new way of presenting the images looks a bit classier. I'm all about automating things and creating shortcuts when it comes to life (not the type of shortcuts that involve buying cheap fire extinguishers and never testing them, I'm talking about the good kind of shortcut), so I'd rather spend 2 hours setting something up and saving 5 minutes 100 times over the next year. What better way to check out how these new shots look on the blog than to put them on the blog? So, enjoy, here are a few more shots from Barbados last month.
What a weekend! Mum wins the US Open, Dad loses it (to a 20 year old kid no less), and sheep number 3 wins the annual Sheeplechase at the Pet Personality Awards in Regents Park. I really don't know which result was the most surprising.
The weekend began with one of those moments, you know the ones, where you're lying in bed half asleep and the radio comes on and tells you something that can't possibly be true, and through the haze of semi consciousness you kind of fill in the gaps yourself. I had this experience a touch over 8 years ago when I woke to September 11, and now on September 12, 2009 I woke to the news that "Kim Clijsters is through to the US Open final after her semi final was stopped early when Serena Williams threatened to KILL A LINE JUDGE". The full story, while still excellent, isn't quite is crazy as I'd imagined it to be. The rest of the day sort of went down hill when I popped into the office to pump out a few hours work which ended up taking all day, and as luck would have it I'm pretty sure that was the last good day we're having in London this year (I walked home in the dark rain tonight FYI).
But Sunday was a new day and I was excited to catch up with Siobhan and Shane, friends I met on a photography course years ago and whom I'd not seen for way too long (you remember Shane, right? He was my 2nd shooter at this wedding). We decided to meet for a picnic in the park if the weather was good or a Sunday roast at a pub if the weather was not good. The weather was not good. After much searching we stumbled upon a great little pub just off Marylebone High Street which served roasts as delicious as they were expensive (at £14.95 you know that these were some tasty roasts). Over the course of our feed the conditions outside improved marginally so we decided to take to the park and see what we could see. I think you can imagine our delight when we found a flyer advertising the Pet Personality Awards.
I'd packed my trusty 40D and 18-200 combo, not my best lens optically but certainly my most versatile with the 11x zoom, I was super pleased I'd taken this option over the 5D and 24-70 when I learned there would be dogs running through courses in a time trial format. We sort of caught the end of this so I didn't get as many shots I would have liked but it was fun to just see something so random up close.
But there was more to come. Oh yes. There was a celebrity afoot. Not the type of celebrity you'd see the paparazzi outside the house of, but a celebrity of sorts. Of course I'd never heard of her, but then again I didn't watch Britain's Got Talent. If you did, or if you're one of the 1.4 million people who's seen her video on youtube you'll recognise her as "that girl that does tricks with her dog", but I prefer the correct terminology - Canine Freestyle.
She's got a few new tricks up her sleeve, including the speccy that Aussie Rules aficionados will appreciate.
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The thing I really liked about this dog though was the respect he gave other performers, I mean just look at the attention he's giving to the Sheeplechase.
So all round a great weekend that was over way too soon. This weekend sees Danny and I re-unite to take on an awesome wedding, I'm getting super pumped about this one, white "black cab" as the wedding car, double decker bus taking guests from wedding to reception, great couple and great reception venue, this is going to be great!
Every once in a while, perhaps 12 months or so, I find myself enthusiastically agreeing to hit a London club in search of good times, carefree dancing and, well, more good times. And, like clockwork, each year I also find myself wondering why I thought it would be fun this time and why so many people go to these clubs.... while I eat a kebab and chips, or some chicken nuggets as was the case last night, on my couch at 2am, ears still ringing.
But perhaps I'm being harsh, the night on the whole was a lot of fun, but that was more to do with catching up with friends from the canal boat trip and spending a few hours at the comedy cafe. (Note to any comedy club owners who happen to be stopping by simonbills.com - resist the temptation to allow stag parties to come into your club, it might be 20 extra bums on seats but it results in 100 other punters who''ll never come back after having the show largely ruined by a bunch of lads trying to out do each other with brainless heckles). In a moment of brilliant foresight one of our party had taken the initiative to get our names on the door of at the club, that's right, no line up for us. Problem was our names weren't actually on the door when we showed up, and after 20 minutes of investigation it become apparent that she had added our names to an Australian club of the same name. I'm sure the doorman at Sydney's Cargo was crestfallen when the 10 guests for Mr Reimers' leaving party were no shows.
So, why do I hate clubs? I guess it's the combination of music too loud to talk, room too dark to see and drinks too expensive to justify. I love a night at the pub, sitting round a table with friends supping a few pints or some tasty wine and discussing the reasons the world would be a better place if we were in charge, but when the chat is removed from the evening by intrusively loud music it's just not as fun.
But you didn't come here to hear my rabbit on about getting old and not understanding the kids of today did you? Here's a few pics I took yesterday at Greenwich (I love that place, there was a wedding right around where the first 2 photos were taken, I'd give my eye teeth to be that photographer, stunning timeless scenes everywhere just waiting to be shot). I've just been playing around with creating the these 3 image triptychs in Lightroom, I think they look pretty cool and they're easy to do quickly now I have my preset saved, look out for more in the future!
Wow, I'm up to 50 posts now in this blog, who knew it had legs? (actually, I think we all probably knew it did, I mean, it's a socially acceptable way of being completely self indulgent which is right up my alley - especially when combined with photography!).
Speaking of being completely self indulgent I recently commissioned a video to be made about everyone's favorite subject - Simon Bills! I'm in the process of revamping my website and decided a video of me in action would be a great addition as it would allow prospective clients the opportunity to see how I work, and to show that a photo shoot is actually great fun and not a stressful experience. I was able to cajole my good friend and Old Street Photography business partner Danny and his delightful wife Bec into being my models, and boy did they come to the party, smiling faces, provocative poses, you name it, we all had an absolute blast and were lucky with some great light (although you create your own luck to an extent by shooting at the right time).
We got the ball rolling at St Pauls cathedral. I've been here loads of times (I used to walk past it several times a week on the way to work), but I'd never really paid much attention to the area at the top of the stairs. My goodness was this a perfect venue to start a shoot.
From St Pauls we headed over the Millenium Bridge and down the South Bank to the London Eye. By the time we made it to the London Eye the earlier good light was a distant memory so we decided to grab some dinner and nail a Big Ben shot later that night. The plan was to shoot the Big Ben shot a bit earlier than we did to get a nice deep blue sky instead of the full black that we ended up with, but in the end a tasty dinner and great conversation got in the way of a great photo, which I think is fine as long as it's not a paid job!
I tried out a few new tricks to get poses and chemistry between the couple looking natural and intimate, wanna know what these tricks are? Book me for a shoot!
But now onto the most exciting part of the day, the video. My mate Steve is traveling around the world on a shoestring, but in his bag of tricks he possesses a video camera, a degree in film making, and a flair for putting together awesome little videos. It was a match made in heaven. Oh, and also mad props to the defunct masters of funk Superfit for providing the tunes, I heard a rumor of a reunion swirling round cyberspace, here's hoping it has legs. Check out the result below, I'm super stoked with it, what do you think? I'd also love some feedback on whether you have any delays in the video loading, I'm planning on hosting it on vimeo.com when the website's up and running but I need to make sure it's nice and quick for the visitors of the site.
