50 posts and 1 video

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 Bec and Danny

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.

Photographer Simon Bills in action from Simon Bills on Vimeo.