New baby photo shoot

I got an invite to join some friends for a fruit salad today, but I didn't realise what kind of fruit salad they had in mind!



Haha, joking aside - I had the pleasure of taking photos of Chloe's new addition to their family today. Remember Chloe... and her dog Marvin? Chloe and her husband are the nicest people, and I'm so lucky to be their - well, almost feels like a family photographer now. Chloe asked for black and white photos, so I have converted most photos to (at least almost) monochrome here.












When Chloe lifted Winston up like this, he looked like a cute little gnome. :-)












A couple of shots of Winston on his own.






And the last shot with the whole family, including Marvin! Marvin was about as enthusiastic as he looks about posing for the shot. :D



Wishing you lovely people endless happiness with your new baby boy!

Lucy & Joshua wedding

Not bad setting for a wedding, right?



I was in for a treat as a wedding photographer today: I got to photograph super nice and beautiful people at a great venue: the Royal Pavilion.

The ceremony was in the Red Drawing Room. I wish I could have taken a photo like this during the ceremony... but there wasn't enough space.



The room was quite dark, actually, so it was a challenge to shoot there, but I think I got away with using high ISO - Canon 5D Mk II handled it well.



Before the wedding, I asked had Lucy and Josh - if they remember to do so at the time - to turn so that I can get a photo of them exchanging their rings.



They didn't remember to do that so I didn't get a picture of their hands (and I couldn't move into a different position), but at least I got pictures of the moment... and photographed the rings in their fingers later.









As you can see from the pictures, it was a lovely, relaxed and fun ceremony. I was smiling behind my camera all through.



After the ceremony we took a few posed photos in the Music Room.












Oh, and one on the way to the Music Room...



Then outside, lots of confetti...



Before the ceremony I planned to take the group photo from this angle:



...but unfortunately, during the ceremony, the sun had come out and I couldn't take this shot as it wouldn't have meant shooting straight into the sun. So I had to do with this instead:



I was afraid that I couldn't take the planned pond shot, either, because of the sun - but luckily, with bracketed shots and a slight angle, it worked out OK.



Then it was time to move to the reception venue. On a bus.



On the way from the Pavilion lawns to the bus, Lucy and Josh got quite a few smily-faced "Congratulations!" from random people who saw them. Very sweet! Not surprised, though - they looked beautiful and happy.

We stopped at the Band Stand for another group photo...



...and I snapped a few of the couple only...






Onto the bus again...



And then we arrived at the wedding reception.









I took a photo of the rings finally. Here just a simple black and white.



And snapped a candid shot of the couple enjoying a quiet moment together.



What a sweet, lovely wedding... wishing you all the happiness in the world, Lucy and Josh!

When lights fail you

Long time no blog! I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to do any blog posts, but today I'm going to, no matter what. I've missed blogging, to be honest. Recently I haven't had time to really enjoy Photoshopping, either, as I have had to quickly deliver photos to clients - shock horror - pretty much straight out of the camera! At least I can say that my photos are good enough to deliver without post processing, eh? Look on the bright side, right? I do like a bit of editing, too, as you may know, I'm itching to learn some new editing skill at the moment. Learning new things keeps me alive.

But back to what I was going to write you about. Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking portraits of Rachel Denyer. Only a few things went wrong! Rachel is a fabulously colourful person and my mind was set to use gels in her portraits. Fine, except that once I started setting up my lights I realised that I'd left my gels at home. Luckily there were some used gels in the studio, and I managed to tape some on in front of my background light. When I had placed Rachel in front of my lights and started shooting, I realised that one of my main lights wasn't flashing! This is one of the Bowens Gemini 500W that I bought two years ago... it's the first time it hasn't flashed. Nothing got it going, so I had to assume that the flash tube had gone, and loose the light from my set-up. And so I started shooting with one main light with a shoot-through umbrella, and a 'snooted' background light.



I was getting quite strong shadows on Rachel's face, but with a bit of post processing, I think I probably got away with it.



To be honest, I started really liking the lighting - it was different from what I have been using recently, and I think it was giving Rachel's portraits more character.






What do you think? Feel free to comment. :-)