A little bit late with this post considering that the awards for April were announced over a week ago, but better late than never! April was a good month for me with the monthly SWPP photography competitions. I have mentioned in a previous post that the SWPP have changed the competitions this year and there are less categories and they are generally tougher. I love the changes and love the fact that there have been on average around 30 Golds in total each month from hundreds of entries. April I won 1 Gold and had two images Highly Commended…and one of those is from an area of photography that I “stopped” doing 2 years ago….lol. Anyways, here are the images.
The above image won Gold in the Monochrome Photography category for the month of April. It is a black and white version of the same image that won a Gold Award last month in the Open category. I explained a lot about this band photography image in that post, but will talk a little bit about it again. This sort of photograph, is an area that I feel is my strongest strength when it comes to creating images. I have the finished image in my head when I start and I set about shooting each element of the image on it’s own (excluding the dog here…she was shot with Ben and his icecream) and then combining the best of all the shots in Photoshop. I do this for a number of reasons, but the main reasons are that I get to ensure each member of the band is properly lit, and I get to ensure that each member has the best pose, expression, and feel. Sure, I could have done it all together as a group shot, but inevitably there will be someone blinking, a weird shadow, or just something generally not right about a pose. This allows me to ensure every element of the image is perfect….and this is probably why the majority of the photography awards that I win are for composite images like this.
This image was Highly Commended in the Portrait Avante Garde category for the month of April. Some of you might recognise the image from my recent shoot with Norwich pop-punk band Keep It Secret. I entered it into the Avante Garde category for a number of reasons, the most important being that this image is very much against the rules in that I used a very wide lens, very close to the subject. This gives it the more cartoonish look cause by the lens distortion. Why didn’t it get a Gold Award? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons really. The key light is just about spot on, but there is very little light in the eye camera right. I also think that instead of having one light directly behind I either should have added a third light and put it 45 degrees to one side behind…or just moved the rear light to one of the sides. This would have added a better separation / rim light to the subject…as it stands here, there isn’t much to separate the subject from the background.
This image is the one that surprises me a bit. It surprises me that it was awarded anything at all as I don’t do wedding photography at all. But, this image was Highly Commended in the Wedding Portrait category. I should state again for anyone reading this…I don’t do weddings anymore! This wedding was booked 2 years ago just before I made the decision to stop doing weddings. But, I was able to apply a little bit of the style and processing that I do with my band and musician photography and give this couple some wedding portraits that they loved…and amazingly was Highly Commended as well.
So there you have my photography awards for April 2012. Hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to leave any comment or questions below, and if you need any photography be sure to get in touch.
Not very often that I get to photograph musicians other than bands, but a couple of weeks ago I was contacted by the amazing boy band Nicole Jane (NJ). I refer to them as a boy band, and I hope they don’t mind my referring to them that way, but it’s the best way to describe their amazing talent. Working with them was awesome as well as they are three brothers that have been full time professional musicians for a number of years now. This meant that they had great chemistry with each other, and were used to have a professional photographer boss them around. :D Easy to pose, naturally charismatic, and fun to work with all make for a professional photographer’s dream.
With the musicians scattered about London, we decided to just meet up at Liverpool Street Station and head out from there. They loved the backgrounds in my photography portfolio, so I figured we might as well head to my favourite shooting location in Shoreditch. Little did I know that I would have a very hard time remember how to get to a very specific spot, but we got there in the end….after much wandering through the very big crowds on Brick Lane. While I got us lost though, I did bring us to another spot I love just next to the Aldgate East tube stop. We spent a bit of time at this location and most of these photos were shot here.
 
As a professional photographer specialising in bands and musicians I loved my shoot with Nicole Jane and look forward to working with them again. They were extremely nice and fun to work with and really got into the shoot. Be sure to check them out at their facebook page here. Feel free to leave any comments below and if you need a promo shoot, video shoot, or just require a professional photographer be sure to get in touch.
I have been meaning to post this update for some time, and I have finally gotten around to it. About a month ago now I had the great pleasure of working with Norwich pop-punk band Keep it Secret. They had booked me to not only shoot their first music video for the first single off their forthcoming album “supernova”, but they also took advantage of my video / photoshoot package. This made for a long day, but such a fun day. We spend the vast majority of the day inside a sheet metal workshop for the music video shooting, and after we were done with the video shots we did a quick little band promo shoot as well. After that, we headed out to California, Norfolk to shoot the rest of the scenes we needed for the music video. I have found that combining the music video production with the promo shoots is working out great. It is giving the bands a full product to market their albums and singles with, and it is making shooting a bit easier as we can do everything at once instead of being spread out over a couple weeks or even months. Anyways, enough rambling from me….let’s see the latest music video that I produced!
  Keep It Secret – Me and You
Hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed filming it! I have been extremely lucky in my music videos in that I have always been shooting videos for songs that I love. It’s works out good because I must hear these songs around a hundred times whilst putting the video together, and I can’t imagine it would much fun if I hated the song!
Now onto the photography shots from the day. The brief from the band was simple….we are a fun band, let’s use this amazing space while we have it. So, I quickly moved from my video lights onto my photography lights and in 20 minutes or so shot these images….
So there you have my band promo shoot / music video shoot. It was a really fun, great day as Keep It Secret are a blast to work with…and the music is amazing as well. So make sure you head over to their facebook and give them a like. Feel free to leave comments or questions below. If you need a music video or a promo shoot, also feel free to get in touch!!
I don’t think I did an update for the month of Feb…but I did get two Highly Commended awards for the month of February. But March saw me finally get a Gold in the SWPP monthly competitions. March was one of the most fun months I have had yet this year. If you didn’t know already, I had made the decision at the beginning of the year to focus the business almost exclusively on my band promotional photography and video production. It was a bit of a risk, but it has proven to be the right decision as I am having my busiest year to date, I am having loads of fun, and the creativity it is giving me has been amazing.
So, in March I had done some images for Norwich band Kings and Crows. This shoot was a lot of fun, and one of the most creative shoots that I have done in awhile. It produced what I think might be my personal favourite image I have ever produced. That same image is the one that won Gold in the Open Avante Garde category for the month of March with the SWPP. Here is that image….
If you had read my post on this shoot, you will know a little bit about how this image was created. But, to give a short little rundown on it: It is a single space composite. What this means is that each band member was shot separately and then that all combined into the final image. I did this with this image to ensure that each member was lit properly and to give each member the chance to give me their best. :D I am always amazed as a band photographer how willing bands are to “ham it up” for the camera. But, at the same time I really shouldn’t be. They are performers after all, and that is probably why photographing bands is one of my favourite things to do. They trust your creativity, and want to help you achieve it and are willing to get into any number of weird and unusual poses that I put them in. :D Winning and award for this image really makes me happy and is helping me notice a trend in the images that I do win a Gold Award with. They have all been for band photography, or promotional photography of some sort. They all also have almost all been composites in some way, shape, or form. In my opinion, I think this is because I really focus on getting each person just right when I do a composite. I use the same technique and lighting that I would on a non-composite image, but I get a variety of shots to choose from and I get to combine the best of each person into one shot…giving you a shot that looks “perfect”. And that is what it’s all about. :D
I also did a video and promo photography shoot for Norwich Pop-Punk band Keep It Secret. I haven’t yet posted those images on the blog, but that is coming soon. Most of you might recognise the name as they were the winner of the band photography competition that I held last summer. Here is the image from that shoot that won a Highly Commended Award.
This image was Highly Commended in the monochrome category for the month of March with the SWPP. I was actually a little hesitant to enter this image as it breaks a lot of “rules”. The first, and probably the most obvious, is that this image was shot with an extremely short lens. I was literally about 1 foot in front of Mattie (the singer of Keep it Secret) when I took this shot. The reason that this is breaking the rules is that being that close to your subject with a short lens creates a lot of “distrortion”. But, that’s the way that I shoot and was the look I was going for. With photography competitions though you can never be sure is they are going to be looking for strict rule following as well as technique or if they are going to see the technique as well as the creativity. I think it might have been able to achieve Gold had I used one more light on the left to separate Mattie a little from the background. But, I am not a judge so it really could be any number of things. I see all sorts of flaws with the image, but again I am probably my worst critic! :D
So there you have my two award winning images as a band photographer for the month of March. There were a lot of shoots and videos in March and I am still working my way through them. In March I had travelled everywhere from Norwich to Cambridge to London and up to Peterborough doing photography. Hopefully though, I will get some of that stuff on here soon!
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to ask them or leave a comment below!
I know it’s been ages since I have posted an update. The upside to this is that it means I have just been way to busy to even think about posting updates, the downside is that I haven’t posted anything in a long time. As I right this update, I am editing a music video, just writing while clips render…..but, I really need to get something on here so I am multi tasking to the max!
About two or three weeks ago now, I had a booking to do some band photography for Norwich based band Kings and Crows. They had an idea for something on the beach involving one of the band members dogs, and I remembered one of the great promo photographs I had seen of Madness a while back and it gave me all sorts of ideas and inspiration. The day of the promo shoot, the weather could not have been any better. We met at Great Yarmouth (out on the Norfolk coast) and just shot away. We all clicked so well that the shot went really good, so good in fact that I was worried it had gone so well. Whenever I am a band photographer, I worry that I missed something when things go as good as they did this day. Thankfully though, it doesn’t look like I missed anything and the shots that we got turned out fantastic.
This shot is the main shot that I had a vision of in my head going into the promo shoot. I knew exactly how I wanted the end product to look like, I just wasn’t expecting the band to be so AWESOME in their role of the shoot. Every member was just up for getting into the shoot and the vision that I had for the finished product….and it’s them that make this shot awesome. The energy and emotion that they depict just make it. The great thing about this shot, and what probably helped each member really get into it, was that I shot each of them separately. This allowed me to select the best shot from each of them and put it together into one masterpiece! As a band photographer, I go about my shoots doing this quite often, but I also shoot them all together as well in case things don’t go as planned. Doing things like this gives me great flexibility, and it isn’t all that hard. It’s still shot out on location, just everything is done on a tripod so that all the shots are from the exact same distance, focal length, and lighting…and I think that is also key. This method allows me to ensure that each person is lit properly and they don’t cast weird shadows over one another, something that is very likely to happen when working with a group and only three lights. Luckily for me, everything went great!
This shot isn’t a composite like the first one. This was shot exactly as you see it and is another one of my favourites from the day. Again, the band were so good in taking my direction as the photographer and getting into their poses naturally without it looking posed, and this is important as the posing is what can make or break a photograph. For me, this image just portrays the band perfectly. It gives you a sense as to what kind of guys they are, and more importantly what kind of music they play. That is my main role as an editorial band photographer…to give the viewer that has never heard the band before an indication as to what they can expect when they listen to them. Hopefully I did a good job of that here (I think I did), but let me know what you think! I always love to hear feedback, so comment away!
If you want to know more about my band photographer services in the Norwich, Cambridge, and London areas please get in touch. I can also cover the entire UK including England, Wales, and Scotland.
At the start of the year, I made the decision to change the direction of the work that I took as a photographer. I wanted to focus on what I was good at, and what I enjoyed doing. What I realised was that I didn’t have to start turning away enquiries that weren’t bands or publicity shoots….I just needed to start shooting everything in MY style. This was why I was really excited when I got a booking for a maternity session, and they had booked me for my style and this was going to be a good test for me to apply the style of photography that I do with bands and publicity into a portrait session that wasn’t going to be used for promotion, but just for what it was…a maternity shoot, but done my way.
The day of the shoot started out a bit ominously when the original location we had decided on turned out to be a bust…we could no longer get in. But, we pressed on and found a nice little pedestrian subway in Peterborough to do the shoot. Beforehand, I had asked the couple to bring along some props for ideas I had. They brought those,and some more that I didn’t know about and it made for some really great shots and a really fun day. The couple have booked me for their newborn shoot and we already have some amazing ideas going around for this….don’t worry, all safety measures will be in place but I promise you they will not be like and newborn photos you have ever seen before.
So, I am going to start doing my posts a little different as well. I am obscenely busy to start this year and blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for the time being. With that in mind though, I am going to take advantage of the times that I do blog to incorporate some other things into them. So, I am going to show you some of the photos from the shoot, but I am also going to give little, mini photography tutorials with them as well. Simple things though, not getting too involved, but talking a little bit about the lighting setups, exposure, and composition…just to give some tips and tricks.
The concept for this shot was based on a couple of things. I had asked the couple to bring the cane and top hat as I had some ideas for that. I then thought about the idea that you have a pimp and the imagery of the woman at his feet. I then spun that around in my head to suit the father to be looking longingly at the mum to be and then creating a beautiful image that was still cool at the same time. There are a couple of versions of this image, but this one is more my style being shot VERY wide (10mm). Used two lights for this. You can see the obvious one set behind the couple, and I used this lighting actually to simulate a lighting setup I do for bands alot. It creates separation from the background while also giving drama by providing shadows that come towards the camera and highlighting their outline. The other light is set camera right shot through a soft box. Used a very fast shutter speed of 1/250th to eliminate all ambient light in the tunnel as I wanted all the light to be in my control. In post processing I did replace the sky simply because the sky that was there was just boring….we needed drama!
This is my second favourite image from the session, and was the easiest shot of the day…one shot and done. :D Outside the pedestrian subway was this little ridge. It only rose up about 4 feet or so, but it was enough to get the couple elevated so that I could shoot them against nothing but sky. One light here set off camera left again through a softbox…though with this one I really stretch out the stability having my stand extended as high as it would go! Like I said, this was one shot and we just happened to nail it so I stopped while the going was good. Not much post processing here, we were outside the tunnel and it was a little brighter, but I was able to perfectly expose the sky at 1/250th.
Last shot that I am going to post in this blog. Similar to the first, but different in so many ways. One of the amazing props that the couple brought with them was this old soviet hat, and I just loved it. I don’t really know why, but when she put on the hat, this image popped up in my head. Them looking off into a sunset, but of course I like to imply the sunset and things so you get the feeling that they are, but you don’t actually see them doing it….if that makes sense. :D So I set up one light, camera right, and set it much lower than I normally would to simulate the position of the sun when it is setting, and to create long shadows behind them. To help achieve this, I had the speedlight bare, no soft box. I wanted the shadows to be a bit harsh, but most importantly I wanted them to be stronger than if they were diffused. I really wanted to make sure you would see the long shadow behind them. Part of why I did this is because they are looking out of frame, which is a bit of a no-no…but by using all these lines, and the shadows add to that, I am able to create a composition that keeps the viewers eyes in frame even though the couples look wants to lead you out of frame.
So there you have a few images and some photography tutorial all wrapped into one. I am going to try and get caught up, but I right now I am booked up through mid April so I don’t know when I am going to have time to get everything up here. But, I will make sure to try and get at least something up a week. If you are interested in having unique and different portraits done definitely get in touch. I am based outside of Cambridge but cover all of East Anglia including Norwich, Peterborough, Ipswich and areas of Essex and cover London as well.
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