I decided it was time to get myself a proper logo. Sarah at Loyal Designs said she would come up with a few font ideas and we would develop it once we had a feel for what I liked. There were two that stood out for me but one in particular that I was drawn to every time. There were a couple of little tweaks that needed to be done to make it ‘feel’ just right for me but Sarah was great, making the smallest of adjustments. I hope you guys like it as much as I do 🙂
Since getting the iPhone I have been taking more images of everyday things. I haven’t set myself a 365 because everyday life gets in the way, so I’m starting off with a few images. At the end of every month I will feature the images on my site.
At present I am using thebestcamera.com to post the images to Twitter. You can find out more about The Best Camera on their site and visit my page here
A few weeks before our planned filming date, myself and the director spent an afternoon going over the D3s settings and filming some establishing shots at our chosen location. Although I have played with the video settings I had not yet been out to film anything seriously. By altering the saturation settings and manually adjusting the white balance we achieved the feel we are aiming for. We have however decided that the zoom shots didn’t really work. The zoom lens is not motor driven and didn’t hold focus through its zoom range. We want to do some further tests of zooming and focus pulling to see if we can manually achieve fluid turns of the zoom and focus rings without expensive rigs. We were both extremely impressed with the capabilities of the camera and the output looked awesome. The only major problem on the day was the lack of feeling in my frozen fingers! I can’t wait till I can show you what we are working on…
I’ve known Leighton for some time, so when we were talking about head shots and he mentioned he needed some new ones I jumped at the chance to work with him. Leighton is a British actor with an extensive list of credits in TV, film and stage, starring in a number of productions for companies including BBC, HTV, The Torch Theatre, The Emirates Theatre in Dubai. A graduate of the renowned Royal Welsh College Of Music and Drama and a former member of both the National Youth Theatre and National Youth Theatre Wales, he has recently finished work on the feature film thriller “Panic Button”.
In the last couple months, I have been learning Avid at my day job. It has been a steep learning curve with me having to edit together footage from an in-house event but it’s been a really interesting experience and I’ve learnt how to do everything from organising source material and preparing it for editing, defining my own workflow, techniques for editing sync and non sync video, customising project settings, enhance audio and levels for broadcast, using keyframes for image stabilisation and colour correction, and finally exporting for DVD creation! Unfortunately the finished product belongs to the company I work for and is not available online.
However, myself and the editor at work have become friends and in the first few months of this year we are aiming to make a short film. Over the holidays I headed out to do a location recce. Now, I’m unsure of all of the details of the film as the co-producer is also the writer but I was told to find a local graveyard!! Intriguing I know but I thought this one was quite nice as graveyards go!
This is the first short film I have been involved in and have been thrown in at the deep end as co-producer and cameraman but I’m excited to be working on it! I’ll keep you updated on progress.
Early December I went to our local Christmas Lights switch on to take a few images of Stephanie Millward, Para-Olympian and Commonwealth Games triple medal-winner. I live in a little town and Stephanie who comes from the neighbouring area of Bath sometimes trains at our local sport centre.
For a small town we had a lot going on; reindeer, a street market, a choir and even fake snow! It made it feel quite Christmassy and got everyone in the festive spirit! Obviously the fake snow wasn’t needed in the end with all the real snow that followed!
Hope you have all had a great Christmas. Best wishes for 2011 xx
My trip to London the other weekend to meet up with a friend started with some confusion. It’s never a good thing getting on the train and it starts moving in the wrong direction! The lady next to me was just as confused but between us we figured out where the train had detoured to and what route we were then taking.
On calling my friend I was given directions to the nearest Starbucks and told to wait for him there! Now I know I might sound a little odd but I’ve never actually been in a Starbucks! Yes I know – how have I managed that? – I have no idea! I found a quiet table at the back of the store with my hot chocolate and waited.
My friend and I always talk about photography; we very rarely get a chance to meet up so every time we do, we try to go out and take some images to feed each others creativity. We headed out after it turned dark. It was a great chance for me to test out the low light capability of my Nikon D3s. I didn’t take my tripod to London with me so I was working handheld, but that was no problem. The below picture is my favourite from the day…
After a long day, Ozzie was kind enough to drive me back to Paddington. The traffic was horrendous but I made it back home eventually!
Ozzie – Thanks for a lovely day x
A few weeks ago a previous colleague of mine contacted me asking if I’d be interested in doing some photos for her new website. Sarah and I both used to work for the same design company, she is now set up on her own and has just launched loyaldesigns.co.uk
We met up to take some images of a local company, Brunettes in Swindon she had produced logos and artwork for. The ladies at the salon were very accommodating, we spent about 15 mins photographing all of Sarah’s work that featured in store; everything from the appointment cards to the logo on the mirrors and the window.
We sat in a coffee shop caught up and went over the product shots she needed of her wedding invites. Sarah offers an exclusive wedding design service and needed product shots of some of her previous designs including order of service, table placement cards and of course invitations. We discussed the composition of some of the shots and where the images would be used on her site.
It’s been a while since I’ve done product shots having specialised in doing photography of music and extreme sports for so many years but it was great to do and was great to catch up with Sarah! She is an awesome designer and amazing to work with. Check out her website for more on what she does and to have a look at the images I took!
Back in the summer I was fortunate enough to work on the music video for Sick City Club’s ‘Save Your Life’. Sick City Club are a band hailing from Birmingham. Since forming over seventeen months ago, their life in music has seen them play shows with the likes of Zane Lowe, The Futureheads, Underground Heroes etc. Championed on Radio 1, Xfm, Kerrang and countless other stations their tunes have caught the ear of people like Steve Lemacq, Nick Grimshaw and Tom Robinson.
The location for the shoot was in Birmingham’s O2 Academy in the centre of the City. It was the first time I had met the guys but they were great to work with and made the shoot really easy. Part of it was made up of the sound check and backstage footage so it was all very natural and the guys made me feel quite at home!
They later performed to a packed venue and really got the crowd going!
Guys you were a pleasure to work with, look forward to seeing you again soon 🙂
Check them out at:
Sick City Club
I decided I needed some new business cards to go with my site. I have used Moo.com before and know they offer a great service. When you cover different types of events you need different cards to suit, right? That’s why I love these cards so much.
