Autumn colours in Sheffield Park

Last Friday I went to Sheffield Park for the first time in my life. I'd heard many times how beautiful it is, and finally I got to see it for myself - and the best time of the year for it, too! It was a little drizzly but very very pretty indeed. Here are some of the photos I took.

Autumn colours at Cissbury Ring

My niece visited me today in Worthing and she joined me and Zebedee for a walk to Cissbury Ring. It was a very foggy day to start with, but towards the end of the walk it started getting sunny. We also met a lovely couple with a couple of lovely Ridgebacks during our walk.

New Year's Eve at Komedia Brighton

A year ago on new year's eve I happened to hear from a friend that Brighton Ballroom are looking for a photographer to shoot their NYE event. I sent them an e-mail and they decided to 'hire' me (it was a freebie, no money exchanged hands either way) for the job. I had a great time photographing the event - it was something I'd never seen or photograph before, which I love.

Little did I know what this event in my life would lead to. I have photographed numerous burlesque and cabaret shows since and made friends with some of the best performers. It's been marvellous!

Exactly one year later, another event organiser was looking for a photographer to shoot their new year's eve event later that day (for some reason, the photographer they had hired couldn't do it any longer). I hadn't planned anything for the evening as I was going to have a quiet night, but after having had a look on-line to see exactly what kind of event it was going to be, I decided to do it, especially after having talked to the lovely Kitty Peels on the phone and agreeing on the deal, including the fact that it wasn't just me, but Miles as my second shooter so that we could spend the evening together like we had planned.

And I'm lucky I did, as it was a great, fun event! It was called Trailer Trash presents...NYE Trash Vegas!! - you can see from that page all that was going on. And here are some of the photos I took....

What a great way to spend new year's eve.... working, yes, but also having a good time with some fun, lovely people. Kitty sure is a fantastic performer and event organiser (with Rosy Carrick) and I wouldn't mind working with her again!

If you fancy going to the next Trailer Trash event yourself, go and join their Facebook Group here: Trailer Trash!

I hadn't thought about it before seriously, but when I started writing this blog post I realised that I have to put together a website for my burlesque/cabaret photography. I shall be looking into that today. I have also been wondering what I should do with my various blogs now... whether to continue this blog on Blogger or move it to Wordpress, whether to combine all my blogs to the same place... Does anyone have any recommendations, tips from experience? Anyone running a Worpress Multisite, for example?

Answers on a postcard. I mean, in the comments section below!

Sunset from our window

My non-wedding photography has reduced to this: a sunset from our window! Mind you, I think it was quite a sunset, so I forgive myself.

I did post another blog in my other blog earlier today, though - have a look! http://www.blog.lighttrick.co.uk/2011/07/23/wedding-venue-scout/

And that's all for today...

Mobile phone photos...

I amused myself today by inventing a new way to play with my mobile phone camera. I have no idea whether anyone else has done it before, but my guess is that at least 1000 people have. I was walking our dogs in the woods as usual and I saw this scene of sun shining through the leaves... and I thought "I have used soft focus filter in a situation like this before". I only had my mobile phone with me, though - no proper camera. So I thought I'd see if I can create a soft focus filter for my mobile phone camera.... by blowing hot air on it. And what do you know - this is what I got! (Ignore the intruding dog in the foreground)

So then I started trying it on different scenes as I walked along with my dogs.

Cool, huh? Well, at least I thought so, as I was getting more and more excited about playing with breathing on the camera... and taking the shot just at the right moment before the glass in front un-fogged completely.

I knew that the soft focus effect would work best with some specular highlights in the scene, so I had to wait around for the sun to come out at this spot.

Next, one of my favourite trees in Stanmer Park - and not only because it is a source of water for the dogs whenever we walk past it.

Here they are... my walking companions... As crazy and silly and fun as usual...

Getting back to photos of trees... thought I'd do a black and white conversion just for the fun of it.

And when I did that, I thought back to some other photos I'd taken recently and did a B&W conversion on another photo taken in the woods. Not that I like trees or anything...

And this last one... another favourite tree of mine in Stanmer Park.

Same in old fashion slightly tinted black and white.

I am still amazed just how much one can do with mobile phone cameras nowadays! I mean, seriously - if someone showed me these photos three years ago and said they'd been taken with a mobile phone, I would have laughed until I cried.

But not anymore!

New Weddings And Portraits Blog

Apologies for having been so quiet for so long! I have been working my little socks off and created a new blog for weddings and portrait shoots only. If you are interested, have a lookie here: http://www.blog.lighttrick.co.uk/

If the photos or the blog in general raises any thoughts, please do leave a comment in the new blog somewhere - just so that I know I haven't done all that work for nothing, and that at least someone has seen it!

Wedding photo edit

I have been too busy to do blog posts about weddings recently! One reason is that I'm planning on creating a new blog for weddings and portraits... so I'm kind of holding back on them until I have the new blog up and running.

In the meantime, I just edited one photo from my cousin's recent wedding and thought I'd post here what I did. See, sometimes, to get natural shots (especially of people who don't like their photo taken!), you have to grab one when it happens, even if you don't have time to frame the shot well. This is one of those times... The groom kissed his bride and I had to shoot even though I knew the shot wouldn't be well framed. One of those 'blink and you miss it' moments.

This is how I would have wanted the shot to be framed:

I had already edited the above photo to take off the distracting blue sign on the wall, so I took the kiss shot and placed it on this edited photo.

But then, of course, I realised that I need to edit out the groom from the background! I hoped that I had a shot without anything obstucting the doorway on the left... and I did!

So, using the area on the left from the above shot, I placed it on top of the groom...

A few tweaks of levels and tidy-up of lines, and here is the final image:

So there you go - bit of trickery pokery to get the shot I wanted, but I really wanted to capture the spontaneous, natural kiss as it happened rather than pose one, so I was happy to do the editing afterwards. If you have read my previous blogs about my camera shy cousins, you will know why I was so keen on grabbing any spontaneous, natural shots. ;-)