David at Redshift

2012-01-20T10:55:00.001Z

2012 is off to a great start and we've had a very busy January so far. We've also got some nice work in the diary for February so that keeps the wolf from the door for another month!!. We're also about to start work on a brand new Redshift Photography website which is long overdue to be honest. The current website is looking dated and we can't update the gallery anymore so the content is old too. In the past we've had crazy prices quoted for a new site but I've finally found a company that can offer us a reasonable price for a site based on a Wordpress template. As soon as it's up and running I'll post a link to it here in the blog.

Just before Christmas I took a portrait of Rowena Preiss (Creative Director) of Philips Lighting on location in London. We met at he Hospital Club in Soho for the shoot and took some pictures in the art gallery area. I've worked with Rowena before and she's a really lively and energetic person so I knew we'd get some good shots. I've included my favourite picture from the shoot in the blog.

Last week I had a shoot at the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant near St Pauls in London called Bread Street Kitchen.I was commissioned by Hoare Lea Lighting to capture the effect of the lighting throughout the restaurant. The functional lighting was taken care of by some LED spotlights on a grid system up in the ceiling and the decorative lighting consisted of reclaimed glass pendants and Anglepoise table lamps. I love the staircase lighting too where the warm continuous LED lighting really accentuated the gold metal finishes.

Another fun shoot I did last week was for JCC Lighting at the Marussia F1 team HQ in Banbury. JCC have supplied LED lighting products throughout the factory including the downlights in the main reception and it was really interesting to see the cars being hand built in the workshop and also to see the model shop and other technical areas. The LED light panels in the office and corridor areas looked superb and provided a beautiful soft light for photography. These panels would make great studio lights in their own right!.

I had another shoot for Hoare Lea last Wednesday at a beautiful office building in Holborn featuring a huge atrium area and I've got another shoot for them tonight in Canada Water at the new library thats just opened there. I'll post some pictures in the blog next week.

2012-01-04T11:37:00.001Z

Happy New Year everyone!.

We're back at work today after a fantastic Christmas break so we're all refreshed and ready to go.

Me with Grumpy Mug

The diary is looking pretty busy already for January with three more night shoots in London with Architainment, two interiors to photograph for Hoare Lea and two jobs in Manchester - one a private house and the other a Herts Rent-a-car office. We've also got a couple of exciting video jobs bubbling away so it should be a good start to 2012. It takes the pressure off knowing that we've got some work in the bank so to speak and we're lucky to be in such a good position.

Philips Lighting Standard

During the office party we had a secret Santa and I was delighted to get a large "grumpy old git" mug with a rant about Reality TV printed on it. I drink loads of Tea and I hate Reality TV with a passion so it was a perfect pressie. Here's a picture of me with it taken by Ani!.

During the past year we worked on the new Philips magazine called The Lighting Standard edited by Jane Hart at Philips HQ in Guildford. Here's a page of the brochure with some of our pictures in place. These were taken at Bemco wholesalers in London last summer. This type of reportage work is great fun and I really enjoyed working on the Lighting Standard. I'm hoping to get involved in any future issues planned for 2012 too.

I'm off now to meet Pete my partner in Inverse Square Media to discuss taking the video company forward this year. There's definitely a growing demand for video content and Inverse Square did really well last year despite being a new start up company with no advertising or promotion other than via word of mouth. We've produced some very neat desk calendars to give away so if you'd like one please drop me a line and we'll post one out to you!.

Happy New Year once again - lets hope 2012 is a good one for us all.

2011-12-21T14:27:00.001Z

Here's a copy of a direct mail campaign which we shot in the summer for one of our best clients, Bupa Care Homes. We had great fun on the day shooting the models who were all actual members of staff who work in the roles they portrayed in the photographs. Ani came along to do the make up and we also arranged for a hairdresser to attend. It made the staff feel special and we really enjoyed the day.

BUPA Mail Out

It's always great to see how our pictures are used by the client and graphic designers.

Philips Corporate Brochure Cover Shot

Another big shoot we had this year was for Philips where we set out to capture a front cover shot showing a happy family out in the open enjoying some fresh air in Battersea Park. We had a fairly big team in attendance on the day with the actual models, an art director and his assistant, two marketing people from Philips and myself. You need to buy a permit to shoot in any of the London parks and we had half a day booked for this shoot. We were all there at 8.30am ready to start but unfortunately the model children didn't arrive until 11.30am as they'd come from Birmingham and had only allowed 2 hours for the trip!.
Anyone that knows London traffic will tell you that it takes over an hour to get across to Battersea from the West End so two hours from Birmingham was a bit of an under estimation to say the least. Apparently their Satnav told them they'd be on time!!. Anyway we pulled it off and here's the front cover of the Philips corporate brochure.

I'll post another entry before Christmas but if you don't get a chance to read it then Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Many thanks for reading the blog this year!.

2011-12-15T12:09:00.002Z

County Hall London

I had a really interesting shoot for Architainment UK last week at County Hall in London. I've photographed and videoed the colour change LED lighting there before a couple of years ago for Philips Lighting but since then more of the facade of the building has been illuminated. Now the entire facade is lit and the LED projectors do a fantastic job of lighting the building in a dramatic fashion. The colour is set to a deep blue until Big Ben strikes (every fifteen minutes) whereby the building goes into a colour change frenzy for one minute then back to the blue. I took some detail shots and wider angle shots as well as a 7 shot panoramic which I shot from the other side of the Thames with my Canon 24-105mm lens zoomed to about 85mm. Architainment supplied and programmed the lighting control system and it works perfectly.
Here's a link to their website http://www.architainment.co.uk/

County Hall London

We traditionally go a bit quiet in December and we're now starting to wind down for Christmas. I've been in the office for most of this week (we had a shoot in the diary for Tuesday but we were rained off) so I'm feeling pretty relaxed and refreshed. It's been a very busy year and I'm ready for a break. Having said that we've still had a reasonably bust month and I've got three jobs pencilled in for next week so we'll be finishing the year on a high.

County Hall London

Last weekend we had a fantastic event in Milton Keynes called the Red Bull Home Run. The Red Bull F1 team are based here in Milton Keynes and as a celebration of their fantastic season in F1 Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel drove their F1 cars up and down Midsummer Boulevard in front of thousands of people. I took my little Olympus EPL1 along with a 17mm pancake lens attached and took some pictures of the cars racing up and down the Boulevard. It was a very overcast day and I didn't expect to get much of a result but I'm really pleased with the way this great little camera worked and the picture attached came out very well.

I could have taken my 5d and 70-200mm lens but I was jammed against a barrier and a small pocket camera was all there was room to manoeuvre so I'm pleased I took the EPL1 along. The more I use this cracking little camera the more I love it.

2011-12-05T13:59:00.000Z

I've been running around like a nutter again over the past couple of weeks since the last blog post with jobs in London, Sheffield, Guildford , Cambridge, Gwent in Mid Wales, Swansea and Ashford in Kent.

Wharf Road Islington

I'd like to think if you put all the jobs on the map and joined the dots that it would spell a rude word but that's probably wishful thinking!!.
The London jobs were for Architainment (a division of Philips Lighting) and I've attached a picture of St Clements Church in Finsbury Park and a canal bridge in Islington with colour change lighting that responds to movement along the tow path in today's blog.

St Clement's Church

I photographed another church in Ashford for Havells Sylvania which has been lit with a combination of compact fluorescent track mounted fittings and LED based spotlights. The lighting looked great and the picture shown here is in fact three shots taken with my 24mm T/S lens stitched together to give a very wide angle view of the church interior. Photoshop has a very useful automatic action for joining pictures together and I like to use this technique with the Tilt Shift lens whenever I can as I prefer the perspective to that gained when using an ultra wide angle lens.
The job in Gwent was actually a combination of shooting video and stills over two days for Kinnarps. We've already visited site once before when the furniture was being delivered and installed by the Kinnarps fitters and this visit was to capture some footage of the building in use. We then headed over to Swansea on the third day to photograph a newly fitted out Virgin Atlantic call centre where the Kinnarps furniture really fitted in beautifully. I'll post the video in the blog once Pete has edited it.

St Mary's Church

I photographed a Tesco Extra store in Sheffield for Riegens Lighting who have supplied long runs of trunking with linear fluorescent lighting fixed to it and the Cambridge shoot was a combination of staff portraits and general shots of Cambridge for a new brochure for Hoare Lea. It was great to walk around Cambridge snapping away at the college buildings etc as the architecture there is beautiful.
I've been using my little Olympus EPL1 camera lots recently and now love it to bits. It's such a great camera to keep handy for grab shots and candid snaps on the go. My next project over the Christmas break is to shoot some medium format film with my Pentax 67 camera which I'm looking forward to. I'm thinking black and white shots in the snow and ice and if I can find a good model some nice location shots on slide film.

Ani with the Dirt Devil!

Great excitement gripped the office last week when our new hoover arrived - delivered swiftly to our door by Amazon!. Here's a picture of Ani in action with our little red Dirt Devil!.
He's so reliable I'm thinking of promoting him to the board - I'll have to ask Kinnarps for another office chair now too in case he needs to use the PC or answer the phone!.

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps

2011-12-01T22:20:00.000Z

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps - Sorry guys this is the link I meant to post - win a trip to Stockholm with Kinnarps!.
Well worth a try and I can vouch for the fact that it's a genuine competition!.

Design Products - Kinnarps

2011-12-01T22:10:00.000Z

Design Products - Kinnarps - Hi everyone - take a look at this link. Kinnarps are a great client of mine and they are such a friendly company to deal with. Great design and quality too with top green credentials!.

2011-11-26T11:30:00.001Z

Just a very quick mini update to say please follow me on Google+ - here's the link :-

https://plus.google.com/i/-4RBs3uIiMs:s2oFkFlH43Q

Thanks!.

Dave

2011-11-18T17:56:00.000Z

My feet are aching after a long week and I'm glad it's Friday although it's been an interesting week.

I had a shoot in London on Monday for BUPA at a care home in Battersea and that went very well. I always catch the train down to London and after the shoot I caught a bus back across town with Amy from BUPA and had a very late lunch (more tea really) at Euston.

Silky Chain - Olympus EPL1

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in the office working on post shoot processing as well as designing the albums for the Philips Chairmans Awards lunch that I photographed at the Ritz a couple of weeks ago. It's the only event that I cover that requires albums (I don't do weddings etc) and it's really good to put the pictures in to the design software and create something that people are going to really enjoy looking at.

I use a really helpful and friendly company called MTA in Haddenham near Thame (http://www.mtauk.co.uk/index.html). They provide a free program called Mosaic that gives you various album templates and you simply drop in the pictures and move them around until your happy.

Cool graffiti on concrete blocks EPL1

Yesterday I was back in London doing a shoot at Smithfield Meat Market where I had to photograph a couple of refurbished office units for a large fitout contractor.I took my little Olympus EPL-1 fitted with a 17mm pancake lens along with me to London and kept it in my pocket. I snapped a few nice detail shots around the outside of Smithfield after my shoot and they're here in the blog. This little camera is perfect for candid street shots especially when fitted with the super slim pancake lens and I'd highly recommend one if you're in the market for a point and shoot camera.

Beautiful glass bricks Olympus EPL1

I was in Ashford today photographing a beautiful church for Havells Sylvania which looked superb. It's a long drive down to Kent so I decided to catch a train from Milton Keynes to London then caught a really cool super fast commuter train to Ashford from St Pancras. I made it home to Milton Keynes in around 2 1/4 hours which is pretty impressive. Next week I'm mainly shooting video rather than stills so I'm looking forward to that and the best thing about shooting video is that I don't have to edit it!.

To celebrate my busy week I've just popped in to the lovely deli across the road from our office in Winslow and bought a nice bottle of red wine which will all go tonight for sure.Cheers!.

PS Just remembered something - you'll know from my blog that my favourite camera shop in the world is Aperture Photographic in Museum Street London (there's a link on the right of my blog but the web address is http://www.apertureuk.com/). I popped in there yesterday for a coffee (it's a cafe as well - perfect!) and the guys told me that they are opening a new shop in January in London where they offer medium format processing a great prices. They are looking at around £15 to process a 120 roll film including a set of prints and a CD of the pictures - great news. I still love shooting medium format but getting prints etc has been tricky until now.

2011-11-15T15:45:00.001Z

Huge panic just broke out in the office (luckily there's only me here today because some bad language followed) as I thought I'd lost some of the RAW files from my shoot in London for BUPA Care homes yesterday. Luckily it was just Lightroom playing a hilarious trick whereby it only loaded in 70% of the pictures for no apparent reason and they were there safe and sound on the desktop.

Radha

My workflow is pretty basic but effective and it works like this :-

Download all the RAW files and back up to DVD and external drive

Convert RAW files to Tiff in either Lightroom or DXO (now Lightroom 99% of the time)

Retouch the Tiffs in Photoshop CS5 (basically straighten up vertical lines etc and remove dusk marks)

Back into Lightroom for final colour tweaking then convert to Jpeg and lastly to 72 dpi for the final CD to the client.

We always issue full size Jpegs and 72 dpi versions to make it easier for people to browse the CD when it arrives.

Callum

I also do a lot of HDR work and I use Photomatix to get a basic HDR image from between 3 and 8 differently exposed pictures and this is then worked on in Photoshop and Lightroom as pictures straight out of HDR software look very odd. I've seen pictures printed in magazines that are straight out of these HDR programs and I always think it's really lazy and bad technique for photographers to do this.

A couple of weeks ago I did a portrait shoot at Philips Electronics where I set up a small portrait kit comprising one Bowens flash head and a brolly with a white backdrop that I left unlit which means it fades to grey. I used my 24-105mm F4 L lens at the 105mm end for the portraits and shot the lens wide open at f4 to give a shallow depth of field and a softer look to the pictures. I've done a few shoots at the Philips Guildford HQ before and it's always great fun to work with the guys there and I've added a couple of the pictures in the blog. Even though digital cameras give us a preview on the LCD screen on the back I always use my Minolta light meter when I'm shooting portraits to make sure I get an accurate exposure first time around and to avoid having to post process the pictures too much afterwards.

2011-11-08T14:06:00.001Z

In September I spent a day at the new crematorium in Milton Keynes shooting some stills and video for Adrian Morrow of AJM Architects who designed the building for Milton Keynes Council. The new crematorium is a beautiful piece of modern architecture and utilises some cutting edge technology such as heat recuperation and natural ventilation among many and I love the natural concrete finishes and flowing shapes of the structure. I posted some of the still images a few weeks ago in the blog and here is the finished video.

All the footage was taken on my EOS 5D MK2 with a 24-105mm F4L lens, 24mm T/S (Tilt and Shift) lens and 17-40mm F4L lens. My partner at Inverse Square Media (our video production company) edited the video footage with a program called Avid and the client was very pleased with the results!.

I'm working at the Lux Live event tomorrow and Thursday at Earls Court as the official photographer which should be fun as the show is going to be really busy and many of my clients will be there. I'm also shooting some video clips for the Lux website so if you're attending the show and want to be in the video give me a shout!. I'm hoping the show will really catch on as this is the first one and the signs are good as there's lots of talk on Twitter etc about it.

Speaking of Twitter you can find me there as redshiftphoto so give me a follow!.

2011-10-28T12:42:00.002+01:00

All Saints Westfield Stratford

This week feels like it's been a bit more gentle although I've still been pretty busy. I did a shoot in Ipswich on Monday at the new Klick Fitness gym, a portrait shoot at Philips Electronics HQ in Guildford on Tuesday morning followed by a video interview with a landscape gardener called Tom Harfleet in the afternoon for a video we're producing for Philips Lighting. Then I headed off to Norwich on Wednesday for two retail photo shoots - one at a Jeweller's shop and another at a ski and surf shop (not what I'd expect to find in Norwich!).

Yesterday was spent in meetings with Pete my video partner at Inverse Square Media and with Jan Baldwin from VPL PR - a top lighting industry PR company (http://www.vastpublicity.com/) followed by an afternoon of post shoot processing mixed in with bouts of PC bashing as the computer is on the blink again!.

Today I'm working a half day as we're moving into our new house this afternoon so it's going to be a busy weekend!.

Gt Pulteney Street Reception

My poor car is suffering with all the travelling and it's currently in the garage being looked at because it keeps spluttering along as every few miles some orange warning light comes on - I hope it's not going to be a big bill!. We've just had to buy one new PC and I'll need one soon too (mine's heading for the window!) so I don't need a big garage bill on top.

I'm going to be the official photographer at the upcoming Lux Awards (http://www.luxawards.co.uk/) covering both days of the show and the evening event. If you're going you'll see me wondering around with my trusty EOS 5D MK2 photographing stands so give us a shout if you want a picture taking of you.

2011-10-23T19:16:00.000+01:00

Following on from my last blog entry last month I nearly made it through a mad period of work unscathed but I ended up getting a bad chest infection which lasted three weeks and is still hanging around now. I've been so busy though that I could only take one night off and missed a job in Covent Garden but then I had to keep on going as I didn't want to let any of our clients down.

Finsbury Park Station

I'm feeling a lot better now but it's been a tough month and I've had both photography and video to shoot as well as writing a brochure for Llumarlite via my other company Inverse Square Media were we offer video and media services as well as blogging and brochure design etc.

I've had some nice work in though including a shoot at River Island HQ, one at All Saints Westfield in Stratford and another really nice shoot at Liberty in London. The video work has been fun too and I had a two day shoot down in Wales were I video'd a furniture installation for Kinnarps and also video'd some interviews with the client. Add to that two office interior shoots, a night shoot in Oxford at Queens College, a really cool shoot at the Tate Gallery and a day and night shoot at Finsbury Park Station and you can see I've been mega busy.

Tate Modern

Whilst I've been in London I've had a chance to pick up a new lens for my little Olympus ELP-1 which I use as my point and shoot camera. I bought the Olympus 20mm pancake lens which means the camera can fit into my pocket and so far it looks like a cracking lens. I'll be taking some candid shots next time I'm in London with it and I'll post some pictures in the blog once I've got some.

One of the big problems with shooting video on the EOS5D MK2 is the crap sound quality that the camera produces. I've tried putting a good microphone on it but it's still very noisy so I've invested in a Zoom H2 stand alone stereo mike and I have to say the sound quality is superb and it's really easy to use. The sound does have to be lip-synched back in to the video but it's worth the effort and I can recommend these little recorders very highly.

Liberty

I'm here working late tonight (Sunday) as I need to get up to date as next week I've got four days booked out with a shoot in Ipswich tomorrow and a portrait shoot in Guildford on Tuesday for Philips Electronics. Then I've got two shops to photograph in Norwich on Wednesday and a photoshoot in London for BUPA on Thursday. That's a lot of post shoot processing to take care of so I don't want to fall behind now!.

Finally I've just bought the latest Photoshop CS5 Extended and it's brilliant!. My previous version was CS3 and things have come on a lot since then. I'm not a fan of spending hundreds of pounds on software and in having the latest version of everything but I'm glad I splashed out on this and I can highly recommend it if you do a lot of retouching.

2011-09-27T10:11:00.001+01:00

Last week was very busy but mainly with client meetings. I did one photo shoot for Willmott Dixon at a newly refurbished Travelodge in St Swithens Lane right in the City of London and also I spent a day in the studio shooting some products for Llumarlite.

Llumarlite LED based AR111

The meetings were all regarding some interesting new projects for both Redshift and my other company Inverse Square Media and this week is the week when everything is going to happen!. I must admit I'm a bit anxious about getting everything finished but a bit of pressure is good I think!.

I had a shoot yesterday at the new cafe in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens which was great fun and the cafe is a beautiful piece of modern architecture. I was commissioned by the company that had supplied the ceiling mounted heating panels and the brief was to capture both the general interior and the panels close up. I also took some shots from the outside to show the modern design.

Today I'm working in the office but tomorrow the mayhem begins!. I've got two jobs in London for different clients - one at a retail company HQ and the other at the new Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford.

Travelodge City of London

Then on Thursday I spending the day in the studio shooting some street lighting products both for still images and also on a rotating turntable to create 360 degree rotating movie clips. Then I'm off to London for another two projects in the evening - one at Selfridges Oxford Street and another at an event. My colleague Chris is taking care of most of the event photography to enable me to focus on the Selfridges shoot.

On Friday I'm spending a day in Oxford photographing three university buildings by day and night for Hoare Lea Lighting and on Saturday I'm shooting the video at the new crematorium in Milton Keynes.

I'm hoping I can get through all that and have a nice peaceful Sunday to recover!.

2011-09-20T15:02:00.000+01:00

I've spent the past couple of days working on some interesting stuff for my other company Inverse Square Media. We've been asked to design a brochure and video presentation for Llumarlite who specialise in the manufacture and installation of lighting products in industrial and commercial buildings. It's great to get involved in something different and I'll post the video clip here and on the Inverse Square Media blog (www.inverse-square-media.blogspot.com) once it's finished.

We've recently employed Ani Lansdown to be our office manager here at Redshift Photography and I have to say it's worked out really well!. Ani is really cheerful and full of energy and she's already an integral part of the team. Having someone come in with fresh ideas was just what we needed and Ani has already come up with some new ways of doing things.

Ani

Our new website is under development and I took a picture of Melanie a while back ready for the new site and posted her picture here in the blog. Yesterday I put a small studio lighting setup together in our office and took Ani's picture ready for the new site and I've posted it here.

I'm about to update our Flickr site with some new photographs which I've been meaning to do for ages so please click on the link to the right and take a look. Flickr is a great way to display photographs and I prefer it to our website as it's so easy to upload and delete pictures etc. Also by tagging the pictures Google Images can pick them up and we've had people contacting us over the past few months asking about purchasing pictures that they've found in this way so it obviously works.

Being a photographer I guess it's natural that I love cameras and I've just fallen in love with a big heavy old Pentax 67 camera that my camera repair tech has for sale in his workshop. Melanie isn't happy but I guess there's worse things in life than buying cameras so I'm off to pick it up tomorrow and I can't wait to shoot some medium format slide film through it. Once I've got to grips with it I'll post a couple of pictures up in the blog.

2011-09-13T15:32:00.006+01:00

My PC has just flipped out again and spent the last 30 minutes trying to repair itself which is a pain. Last time this happened it took me all afternoon to get it working again. It might be wishful thinking but I'm sure if I could afford to upgrade to Mac's they'd be more reliable. Typically these things always seem to happen at the worst possible time and right now a new PC or Mac for that matter is out of the question as we've just had a £4.5K VAT bill and the Corporation Tax which is due at Christmas has just been calculated and we've got to find the money to pay that too!. On the plus side I've never been as busy as I have in the past 6 months and the diary is looking pretty full from now until mid October so I can't complain to be honest.

BUPA Chef

Here's a picture from the BUPA's Best shoot which I did last month. It's one of my favourite pictures from the day and I really hope the guys at BUPA put this one in the campaign. The shoot was great fun and the models were all real BUPA employees who had won an internal competition to appear in the ad's. I had to work fast on the day and be very flexible so I decided to shoot with 2-3 Canon Speedlite battery powered flashguns rather than my Bowens studio heads. I used a set of Calumet wireless pocket wizards to fire the flashguns which worked perfectly all day and they enabled me to set the flash power manually and use my hand held meter to get the right amount of light for each picture. I used a brolly, softbox and in some cases an opal flash diffuser with the lights bounced off the ceiling or walls for a soft and even light. To make sure the white balance was correct I used my Expodisc to get a neutral grey target and set the camera to custom white balance.

I've had a few fun photoshoots since I last blogged and another one was the Philips Employee Day last week at their HQ in Guildford. I photographed the events during the day and finished off with a portrait shoot where the guys from Philips could have their picture taken with Roger Black the famous 400m athlete. Once again the pocket wizards were fantastic and I used a simple stand mounted flashgun bounced off the ceiling to capture Roger and the Philips Employees in front of a Philips backdrop without any noticeable shadowing on the backdrop. We used a Canon Selphy 6x4 instant printer to run off prints as we went along and I was really impressed with the speed and quality of the prints. I had Canon 6x4 printer a few years ago and the print quality has really improved since then so my initial scepticism was proved to be wrong.

Onitsuka Tiger

Another shoot that I really enjoyed was for Illuma Lighting who commissioned me to photograph the Onitsuka Tiger store in Westfield Shopping Centre in West London. The store was quite small but very colourful and the merchandise looked very well lit under the Illuma spotlights. The spotlights themselves were black against a dark ceiling so I had to overexpose slightly and pull the main picture back a little to ensure the spotlights were visible in the pictures.

2011-08-28T23:50:00.000+01:00

I tried to upload a picture from my Flickr account directly to the blog earlier today and it worked perfectly but I couldn't add any text!.The picture shows a superb new bollard that I photographed for Holophane last year and I can now show the pictures as the product has been released to the market.
I've linked all my online bits and pieces together so my blog,Linked In, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr are all in some way linked together.Now I can add pictures directly to the blog from Flickr I can update the blog a bit more regularly. This is great as I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to really do justice to the blog which is a shame as I really love updating it and keeping an online diary to look back on.
I've done some interesting commissions since the last entry including a day shooting the BUPA's Best campaign (more info in the next entry), the new crematorium in Milton Keynes for AJM Architects, a week in Scotland for Zumtobel lighting, the new LED test lab at Holophane in Milton Keynes and the new Severn Trent Water HQ in Coventry.I've also photographed another couple of BUPA care homes so I've been really busy and covering some miles in my trusty Ford Modeo (or my Capri Gear as I like to call it!).
The new office in Winslow is working out really well and most evenings after a shoot I head back there and do the post shoot processing meaning that I keep up to date with that part of the job which really relieves the pressure. Having the business outside of our home is the best thing we've done in the 9 years that we've been operating and I've found that I can really focus on work whilst I'm there and switch off more easily when I'm at home.

Taken with an Olympus ELP-1 and old Nikon 28mm MF lens

I like to review kit on the blog whenever I can and I recently decided to buy a new small SLR camera for my non work photography. I've always been a strong advocate of second hand kit but this time I picked up a bargain in PC World and bought new. The camera I bought is an Olympus EPL-1 which has now been replaced by the EPL-2 and EPL-3. They were over £600 a couple of years ago but PC World were selling off the old stock for £279 including a kit lens!. This deal is still available online and I can recommend this great little camera 100%. I've bought an adaptor to allow me to use my old Canon FD lenses and another to allow me to fit Nikon lenses to it.Today I took some pictures with an old manual focus Nikon 28mm lens mounted to the camera and the results were really good!.I've posted a picture in the blog that I took at the Bucks Railway Centre at Quainton today with the Olympus and Nikon 28mm lens.Because the Olympus has a small micro 4/3rds sensor the 28mm lens is effectively cropped in half and becomes a 56mm lens which is a great focal length for everyday photography.

We've just had a scarily large VAT bill and we should know the final Corporation Tax bill soon which we'll need to pay in December so I really hope the current busy workload carries on for a while yet although the economists seem intent on talking us into another recession!. Lets try and keep positive and hopefully we'll all be OK!.

Denver Elite

2011-08-28T19:45:00.001+01:00

Denver Elite , a photo by David at Redshift Photography on Flickr.

2011-08-12T15:35:00.000+01:00

Here's another quick video update. This time it's another Kinnarps job - this one filmed at two schools in Manchester.As always the video is filmed on my Canon EOS 5D MK2.

2011-08-04T22:03:00.000+01:00

I've just had my annual week off and we headed off for a few days camping in the Cotswolds where we camped at The Cotswold Farm Park owned by the bloke off Countryfile. We did the same last year and although it's not exactly a glamorous break we did have a good time. I took my old Canon FD cameras along and shots a few rolls of colour film which I picked up from Morrisons in Bletchley for £1.99 per roll as it was a year out of date!!.

Club Helsinki

Now it's back to work and I did a BUPA shoot on Monday in Enfield, a shoot for Collingwood Lighting at Club Helsinki in Leicester where there was some cool blue LED products installed (see picture) and a shoot at the new Museum of Liverpool yesterday. This is a really stunning new building and I've attached a picture of the exterior in the blog. The spotlights were supplied by a very innovative British lighting company called Precision Lighting. Their products are made to a very high quality and the design of the fittings is superb.I met Andy Molyneux (Precision Lighting Design Manager) up on site and we spent a very enjoyable day photographing the building. The museum has just opened and in the first couple of weeks they've had 120,000 visitors!. The exhibits are all things made in Liverpool (including a Ford Anglia!) or things to do with Liverpool. The sheer number of visitors made it very hard to photograph the interior and I was only allowed a short time to use a tripod, the rest of the shoot was taken hand held. Luckily the Canon EOS 5D MK2 is superb at high ISO settings so grain wasn't an issue in the final shots. I used Lightroom and Neat Image to reduce any grain that was visible but it wasn't a problem. After the shoot we took a walk around the Tate Liverpool and the waterfront. The waterfront area and docks are just superb and I'd recommend a visit if you ever get the chance.

I was supposed to be on a shoot for BUPA today up in Derby but the rain has beaten us so we've had to re arrange but that has given me a chance to catch up with myself and tomorrow I'm shooting some portraits at DW Windsor lighting over in Ware.

Museum of Liverpool

Inverse Square Media has really taken off and here's a link to a lamp demo which Pete has created from a series of 16 product shots http://www.inversesquaremedia.com/lampdemo/ . To make it spin around just hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse left or right. We're looking to enhance this idea further with a moving background image too and maybe the option of changing the product colour etc at the click of a button as it spins around.We think these VR product video clips are a great way to show off products on a website and because they count as video content they're great for optimising a website too.

2011-07-23T18:59:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I popped down to Alexandra Bastido's animal sanctuary (Alexandra starred in The Champions back in the 1970's and has been in lots of other production too) in West Sussex and took some still photographs and a few video clips as a favour as the BBC where going to show a few seconds of the video I took on the local news to promote the annual open day at the sanctuary. Pete my partner at Inverse Square Media has edited the clips into a short video that the guys at the sanctuary can upload to their website. It's only 30 seconds long and very basic and here it is:-

2011-07-19T12:15:00.000+01:00

Here's the teeth whitening video that I mentioned in the previous blog entry. This was shot entirely on my Canon EOS 5D MK2 and was directed by my colleague Pete Rimington with sound recorded by a specialist sound guy!. This was produced by my new company Inverse Square Media which is a joint venture between Redshift Photography and Goldmoor TV. Our new blog for Inverse Square is www.inverse-square-media.blogspot.com so please take a look if you get a chance!.

2011-07-13T16:18:00.003+01:00

Without wishing to tempt fate I'm still mega busy and this summer could well be my best yet since I set up Redshift Photography 9 years ago!.The past two weeks since the last blog post have been flat out although last week I had a touch of man flu again so I did struggle to keep going but I got through it thanks to Lemsip Max!.

Philips Bright Idea Garden Hampton Court Flower Show

I've been photographing more care homes for BUPA, photographed (and video'd) a very cool concept garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show which was sponsored by Philips Lighting and also photographed a newly refurbished building in Henrietta Street (Covent Garden - London) for Zumtobel Lighting.

Philips Bright Idea Garden Hampton Court Flower Show

The diary is looking pretty full for the next couple of months too so at the moment it's a case of making hay while the sun shines.
I'm still doing the odd show on BBC Three Counties Radio too and last Saturday I did a two hour phone in on photography on BBC 3CR which went really well.It's great fun taking calls and emails from the listeners on all aspects of photography and it really keeps you on your toes as you never know what you're likely to be asked. It's usually questions about red eye and flash as flash photography is pretty tricky until you get used to it and every month I give the same advice so it would be good to get some new questions next time around. The best call I've had so far was from a guy wanting advice on how to photograph his wife in the nude!.
I have to prepare a fact sheet for each show now which is pretty time consuming but I still like doing it as I'm hoping that one day I'll get snapped up by a TV company to produce a TV show on photography but it hasn't happened yet after 5 years on the radio!.

Alexandra Bastido

I mentioned a shoot that I did in the last blog entry with an actress called Alexandra Bastido who owns and runs a lovely animal shelter down in West Sussex. She used to be in a 1970's TV series called The Champions and has made various film and TV appearances since then.I took some pictures of her for the sanctuary website and as promised here's a picture of her from the shoot. We're also producing a short video for YouTube for the sanctuary and I'll post a link here once it's uploaded.
Our new venture Inverse Square Media is going very well too with a couple of video commissions coming up soon. Last month we finished the Teeth Whitening video for Dioxiwhite that I've mentioned before and here's a link to the video on our ISM website http://inversesquaremedia.com/mainmenu.html

I've got another two weeks to go until our annual family camping holiday to the Cotswolds and although I'm loving the workload and I'm chuffed to be so busy I am really looking forward to taking a break.
When I do go on holiday I always take my old Canon T90 and A1 and take loads of pictures on black and white film. It's great to take pictures and not have to sit here at the computer working with Photoshop etc. Much as I love digital SLR's I do miss shooting film and working away in a darkroom and it's great to load up the old Canon FD kit with film.

2011-06-22T20:35:00.000+01:00

The past two weeks have been both very busy and very exciting as we've moved into our new office in Winslow and launched a new company called Inverse Square Media which is a company aimed at producing high quality video content for lighting companies and architects. I've been shooting video for a couple of years now and it seemed like the right time to finally launch this new venture. Inverse Square Media is now fully operating and registered and I'm now about to start a new blog and Twitter feed etc so watch this space.
Speaking of video Pete (my partner in the video company) and I shot the teeth whitening advert last week at a salon in Milton Keynes. It was tough but great fun and we shot 25Gb of video footage on the 5D MK2 in a 6 hour shoot. Pete is now editing it all together and I'll post the video here in the blog when it's done.
I've also been very busy with stills photography too and I've been to North Wales, Newbury, London, Leeds and Manchester in the past week or so. The guys at BUPA are keeping me busy (they are a great client and fabulous to work for!) and I've also been doing quite a few location shoots for Holophane Lighting including one late last night in Stratford (East London) at the Orient Way railway sidings which was good fun as I love trains!. I also have a big soft spot for Holophane products as I worked for them for 9 years after I left school.
I know I've mentioned this before and nothing happened but I have decided to buy an iMac and this time I'm definitely going to take the plunge as my fast Photoshop PC has crashed. The main hard drive with all the programs on has corrupted and it's going to be a real hassle to re-install everything so now is my chance to make the change. I've been getting more and more frustrated with the office PC's as one of them always seems to have an issue be it a virus or something else. I guess iMacs go wrong too but I've heard great things about them from other photographers and video editors so my mind is made up. I'll have to lease one as cash flow is a bit tight (as usual!) and I'll post my progress with it once it arrives.
I've posted a video clip in today's blog that I shot last year for Kinnarps which is basically a user guide for operating their superb range of office chairs. It's all made from still pictures that I took in the studio and Pete edited them into this short movie clip.

2011-06-05T18:21:00.000+01:00

Another two crazy weeks have passed by since the last blog entry and work is getting busier by the day which is just fabulous!. Since I last blogged I've photographed a railway depot in London, four BUPA care homes around the country, an art gallery in Newcastle, Bemco Wholesalers in Wandsworth (London) and I did a free shoot at an animal sanctuary in West Sussex so all in all pretty busy!.

The animal sanctuary is a lovely peaceful place near Horsham and it's owned and run by a lady called Alexandra Bastido who was in a 1970's TV series called The Champions among lots of other things. I was asked to pop along to shoot some video by Maureen my PR lady who also does PR for the sanctuary. They had an open weekend this weekend and BBC South needed some video footage to show on Friday night's local news bulletin. It was great fun filming Alexandra with the animals and they do a great job there taking in all manner or unwanted pets from pigs and horses to cats and dogs. The footage was shown on the bulletin and it was good to see that the EOS 5D MK2 picture quality was more than good enough for broadcasting on TV. I also took a couple of portraits of Alexandra and I'll post one in the blog once their finished. Here's a link to the sanctuary website - please take a look if you get a minute http://www.abcanimalsanctuary.co.uk/

The railway depot at Bounds Green was great fun to photograph because I have to admit that I love trains (although I'm not a proper trainspotter! - honest!). I photographed the workshop during the day and again at night to show the effect of the new industrial lighting which has recently been installed. I'm doing a lot of night photography at the moment and it doesn't get properly dark until around 10pm so it means long hours but it's all good fun.

I'm still very busy with BUPA too and they are a fabulous client to have as they keep me busy but more importantly they're so nice to work for and they pay their invoices on time!. This is a real problem for us at the moment as some companies are taking 90 days to pay and that creates havoc with the cash flow. It's no surprise that small businesses are going under!.

I was commissioned by Havells Concord to photograph the Laing Gallery in Newcastle which has recently been re-lit with energy efficient LED spotlights. The Concord Stadium fits onto the existing track system and provides a really clean and precise beam of light that can be focused on site. The other benefits of LED lighting is that the UV content is low so there's no damage to the artwork on display and heat output is kept to a minimum. This makes LED fittings ideal for art galleries and I think Tungsten display lighting is really on it's last legs due to the new LED technology.

Due to the extreme workload and the need for more space we've just hired a new office in Winslow which is really exciting. It's a second floor office in a 1700's building just off the Market Square so the location is perfect. I'm looking forward to moving in next week and I'll post a picture in the next blog entry.

We've also just finalised a partnership with Goldmoor TV to create a new company called Inverse Square Media which will be a specialist architectural and lighting installation video production company. I've already worked with Pete at Goldmoor TV on several videos over the past year so I know we can work well together and I'll post a link to our new blog once I've got it ready.

Speaking of video I've got the teeth whitening advert to shoot next week and tomorrow I'm doing a final recce of the salon I've chosen to film the ad in. We're shooting it next Friday and I'm looking forward to the day very much as video is great fun. I'm shooting some of the video on my EOS5D MK2 and some on Pete's DV Cam which is a top piece of kit and I'm looking forward to using it.

I'm also shooting some more work for BUPA next week along with a night club interior and a railway siding in East London so I'll be having a few more late nights this week.

2011-05-22T23:07:00.000+01:00

I'm working 16 hours a day at the moment (during the week at least) to try to keep up with my workload. Over the past couple of weeks since my last blog entry I've had 9 commissions including a night shoot at Selfridges in Oxford Street where the store was floodlit with beautiful colour change LED's, an event at The Ritz hotel in London (I had to wear a suit and tie - not cool!) two days working with models on a photo shoot for the NHBC and a night shoot at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.I've also photographed another couple of care homes for BUPA which is great work for me as everyone there is so nice to work with and the homes are always friendly and well run and I've also photographed a dual carriageway at night in Bristol!.

Sheldonian Theatre Oxford

The post shoot processing for all this takes me ages and when I finally manage to lease an office (hopefully within the next two months) I'll find someone to take over the post shoot processing which will mean I can have less stress and a bit of free time!.

I've just been commissioned to work on two new video productions too - one for a lighting project and another for a company that supply a teeth whitening kit to beauty salons. I did some stills photography for these guys a while ago and they've asked me to film and produce a short video clip for YouTube to promote their products further.Video is a great way to promote products and raise awareness of a brand etc and with iPads and iPhones being used so widely now it makes sense to have video content on your website as well as still pictures.

Selfridges Oxford Street

I'm very conscious of the fact that I've spent the past 8 years or so building up Redshift Photography as a company and hopefully as a brand but I've never had time to sit back and try to look at the way that we do things from an outsiders perspective. To remedy this I've asked a management consultant called David Tighe to take a look at the way my business is working and he's been with me for the past few days both out on photo shoots and visiting some of our best clients. It's been a real eye opener to get some feedback from someone neutral and it was great to introduce David to some of our top customers. We had some great feedback and identified some areas where we can offer extra services which can only be a good thing. If you need any business coaching or advice please let me know and I'll put you in touch with David.

The next couple of months are looking very busy and it's great to know that I've got lots of work already in the diary - that takes the pressure off no end and and means I can relax a bit and just focus on producing good work.The one thing I've learned above all else is that you're only as good as your last job and that standards have to be high at all times.

NHBC Lifestyle Shoot

2011-05-04T22:20:00.001+01:00

I'm still feeling in Bank Holiday mode after the lovely long weekend we've just had. For anyone reading this from overseas British Bank Holiday's in April and May are traditionally wet and cold but at the moment we're having lovely sunny weather.

I missed the Royal Wedding as I had a shoot up in Sheffield at a new Marks and Spencer Simply Food store last Friday. The store is very green and utilises lots of sustainable wood panelling and features lots of glazing to increase the amount of natural light hence reducing the need to use high levels of artificial lighting. My client (LAPD Lighting Design - http://www.lapdconsultants.com/) have designed a highly efficient lighting scheme for both the store and back of house areas and every light fitting through-out uses LED's instead of traditional lamps. LED's are the future and they now provide a viable alternative to fluorescent lamps and low voltage spotlights etc. The store felt very well lit and the luminaires looked very cool and well designed. I'll post a couple of pictures in the next blog entry once I've processed them.

I started my photography career around 25 years ago when I began working for a good family friend called Roger Parker who is a top sports photographer and owner of an agency called Fotosports International (http://www.fotosports.com/). Being an Arsenal fan it was a great honour to be able to work on the touchline at Highbury and I learned a tremendous amount about photography at that time. In those days it was all black and white film and manual focus cameras and we'd develop the film in the darkroom after the game. Now pictures are sent from the touchline as the game is in progress so technology has changed sports photography more than most other types of work.

Roger called me on Friday and asked me if I'd cover the Northampton Saints v Perpignan Heineken Cup Semi Final at the MK Dons stadium which was played on Sunday. I'm not a huge rugby fan but I have to say I really enjoyed the game and the atmosphere was brilliant. I used my Canon EOS 5D MK2 with my 70-200L 2.8 IS lens for the action close in front of me and I used one of Fotosport's Nikon D2X's with a 300mm 2.8 lens for the action further down the field. I took far too many pictures and was way too snap happy but I did end up with some decent shots which you can see on the Fotospots site in the rugby section. I've posted a few action shots in the blog today along with a picture of a very cheeky cheerleader!(tough work but someone has to do it). I haven't photographed anything that moves quickly for years and it was good to try something different. I can confirm that even though autofocus lenses and digital cameras have made things a bit easier there is still a tremendous amount of skill involved in sports photography and I take my hat off to the guys at Fotosports who are very good at it.

2011-04-28T21:33:00.000+01:00

Had a long day today post shoot processing pictures from this past week and I'll be working late into the night tonight before I'm anywhere near to catching up on myself. For every four hours of shooting time on location there's at least that again (usually more) in post production and for the HDR shoots that I do often three times as much time spent in post production. Unfortunately the client doesn't see this and it's important to let people know how much time is spent behind the scene's. I'd love to take someone on to do this work but every time I work out the costs involved it just doesn't add up. I do use freelance Photoshop people to help me sometimes but what I do is very specialised (when it comes to shooting interior lighting installations) and by the time I've explained how to do the various stages of processing I could have done it myself. It's a real dilemma as I'm finding that I get bogged down with the post shoot work more and more so I will have to sort it out soon!.
Shooting video is more demanding at the time of the shoot but once it's in the can I pass all the editing over to Pete (my freelance video editor) and that is quite a relief to be honest.
It's a bit like in the old days of shooting on transparency (slide film) which was more difficult at the time of taking the photographs but once the pictures were taken it was over to the lab to sort out the processing and scanning. Many people say that digital photography is way easier than traditional photography BUT if you want to get the best results from digital cameras there is a lot of work to be done on the RAW files and in Photoshop so I don't agree that digital photography is quick and easy!.

Victoria Station

I'm sure this is a dilemma that faces many interior and commercial photographers in terms of time spent in post production. With fashion photography I think it's much more accepted by the client that a great deal of retouching is needed and the extra cost is more readily accepted.

Right no more moaning for today - I'd still rather be a photographer than anything else so I guess the retouching is the rough side of the deal.The smooth side is getting out nearly every day and going somewhere different to take pictures for a living and also working for some really nice people (you know who you are!).

I had a great shoot last Friday (yes I know it was a bank holiday!) where I photographed Victoria Station and Kings Cross Station for an industrial lighting company. I spent the afternoon at Victoria and captured some nice shots of the busy station thoroughfare and then photographed the platforms at Kings Cross at night. I've posted a picture from Victoria Station in today's blog (see above) - I love the feeling of hustle and bustle when I'm working in these environments and I tried to capture that in the pictures. I've also posted a night shot from Kings Cross Station where I used a 2 second exposure to show some blur on the train leaving the station.

I had a photo shoot for BUPA carehomes on Tuesday at a lovely retirement home in Battersea, one of the largest BUPA carehomes in the country. Their garden was transported from the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago - that's pretty cool!.

Yesterday I had a shoot at the University of West England in Bristol where I shot lots of refurbished interior areas for another large lighting company and tomorrow I'm heading up to Sheffield to photograph a Marks and Spencer store which means that I'll happily miss the Royal Wedding!.

Kings Cross Station

2011-04-21T23:17:00.000+01:00

Wow another two weeks has flown past since my last blog entry - so much for updating the blog twice a week!.
It's a very busy time for me right now and since my last entry I've been to Southern Ireland, Belfast, Bristol, Glasgow and....Letchworth.
Back on the 6th April I did a few extra shots for Perry Scott Nash (a training and CDM consultancy) who I've been working with on the concept and photography for a new brochure.This shoot was basically to tie up a few loose ends and included a couple of portraits and a couple of people shots that will be cut out and pasted into a shot of a building site to simulate the handing over of a CDM manual to a client.
Then we had a long weekend break in Ireland which came as a welcome break for us all as we have had very little time off as a family over the past few years. Being a self employed photographer is a great life but it does mean that I have to be available to work at all times.If I take a few days off and miss a couple of commissioned jobs that really hurts and I'm always worried that another photographer will step in and I'll lose a client. I know this is a little paranoid and in fact we don't lose clients as we put customer service at the very top of our list of priorities but I guess it's human nature to be protective of our source of income!.
The day after flying home from Ireland I flew back out to Belfast and spent three days working out there for Zumtobel Staff Lighting taking photographs of some very cool projects. The picture below was taken at the Northern Bank in Belfast and shows some beautiful colour changing light panels supplied by Zumtobel that utilise the latest LED colour change technology. The people in Northern Ireland are very warm and friendly and although the trip was hard work it was also great fun.

I spent the following Friday and Monday on post shoot processing and then headed down to Bristol for a shoot at the Airbus factory at Filton for Philips Lighting last Tuesday. Philips have supplied some street lighting around the site and the product utilises LED technology instead of a traditional discharge lamp and the lit effect was really impressive.

Yesterday I caught the train to Glasgow for a shoot at the House of Fraser store on Buchanan street. I was lucky to get a cheap upgrade to first class on the Virgin trian and the whole experience was very pleasant. Usually I travel standard class and often end up standing for much of the journey but first class on Virgin is fab and I was given lovely food and a few glasses of red wine on the way home!.

Today I photographed a recently re-lit factory in Letchworth (I did the "before" shots a couple of months ago) where Llumarlite (my client) has gone in and supplied and installed highly energy efficient lighting fittings that work with daylight sensors and movement detectors to save energy and at the same time provide better lighting levels.

I'm very busy right now and May and June are filling up fast so at the moment I'm working my socks off to keep up with everything whilst making sure that my post shoot processing work is still of the highest standard. It's tempting to cut corners with the post shoot processing but it really doesn't pay as the quality of a shoot can be lost in the post production stage very easily.

Perry Scott Nash brochure image - Stand Out from the Crowd!

2011-04-05T10:43:00.001+01:00

Here's a short video clip that we put together for Kinnarps based on a very quick shoot that we did at One Central Park in Manchester a few weeks ago. We had a couple of hours left at the end of a two day shoot so we arranged to call in at One Central Park where Kinnarps had provided some furniture for the reception area to create a kind of informal meeting space. I took a few still pictures of the reception area and then we set up a video interview with Marj the CEO (all shot with the Canon EOS 5D MK2) to give a brief voiceover to the clip. These little video clips are great for posting to YouTube etc and if you can embed the video into your site it will help to boost your ranking with Google. One of the main ways to optimise any website is to make it media rich and video is a great way to achieve that.

The great thing about the Canon EOS 5D MK2 is that it's ready to shoot HD video with the flick of a switch and it means that I can offer both stills and video on the same shoot without bringing loads of kit!.

2011-04-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

There's been another big gap in the blog (about two weeks since the last entry!) because I've been so busy and I've literally been working all hours just to keep up with the workload - great!. It's finally back to being mega busy as we were a couple of years ago before the big R took hold and long may it continue.
Since my last posting I've been away in Holland for a three day shoot for Megaman lamps, I've done a House of Fraser "before the re-light" shoot in Newcastle for Philips, a beautiful private house for DPA Lighting Consultants and photographed two campuses of the London Met University that have been recently refurbished.I've therefore spent the past three working days solidly post shoot processing loads of pictures and I'm now finally up to date (almost!).
Added to this I've had a couple of client meetings to discuss some video production work and also a day of script writing and pre production meetings for a couple of videos for Kinnarps (a top office furniture manufacturer and all round great client!).
I must admit the trip to Holland was intense (we squeezed in lots of different locations) but great fun and I went with Louise Ball the European Marketing Manager for Neonlight the owner of Megaman. Louise is great company and the time flew past and I've posted a night shot in today's blog of a superb house that we photographed which is lit entirely with Megaman LED lamps.

The best time to capture shots like this is between dusk and dark and there's usually about 30-40 minutes of deep blue sky before the light fades totally and the sky goes inky black (or in fact orange if you're near a big city).

The London Met University shoots were great fun too and I wanted to include blurred figures to give the space a sense of energy and liveliness that you'd expect to find in a college full of bright young people.

Here's a couple of shots - the one to the right from the Whitechapel

campus and the one to the left from

Holloway Road campus.

I've got a shoot with a local indie

band tomorrow where we're hoping to shoot something cool for a promotional poster and I'm doing some more pictures on Wednesday for Perry Scott Nash (a training and CDM consultancy) in Stevenage for their new corporate brochure.

Next week I've got some work in Northern Ireland (not a great time to go unfortunately due to the sad news about the young policeman who was killed) and the next few weeks are beginning to fill up with jobs in Glasgow, Newcastle, The Olympic Site in London and some work at Victoria and Kings Cross stations to name but a few!.

2011-03-24T13:20:00.000Z

After years of great service my EOS 5D MK2 has started to do some really odd things. Twice this week the LCD screen has gone mad basically turning itself into a flashing mess of lines and colour!. After a quick off and on manouvre it's reset itself but I think it might be time to send her back to Canon for a service.
My camera kit is used pretty much every day and although I'm careful with it all there are the unavoidable bumps and dings but I have to say that the Canon kit seems to be unbelievably reliable. My L series lenses are now about 8 years old and they have never missed a beat and my original EOS5D body (that I use as a backup or for jobs when I don't need really high res files) has taken hundreds of thousands of pictures.
My biggest advice for anyone buying camera kit is to get the best you can afford even if it means buying fewer lenses etc. Often people buy several cheap lenses when in reality one or two top quality ones would be a far better bet. Also buy second hand - my Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS lens was bought used from Aperture Photographic (http://apertureuk.com/) in London and I saved around £600 on a new lens!.
I still use my 1976 Canon F1N too when I need to shoot black and white film and it still works perfectly to this day.

I started to write this entry last Sunday so my timeline has gone a bit mad but to bring my diary up to date on line I had a shoot on Tuesday 15th at the National Physical Laboratory in Shepperton.This is a very cool place and I took a few shots of the newly refurbished offices where Philips Lighting have supplied some very state of the art LED recessed office lights. I was very impressed to find out that they have a mini Hadron Collider at the NPL although unfortunatley I didn't get to see it!.

On Wednesday 16th I had the "after" shoot at a warehouse in Birmingham where Dialight (http://www.dialight.com/) have supplied LED highbay luminaires to replace the existing SON lowbay fittings. Not only has the lighting level improved dramatically but the colour is also far better. I was very impressed with the result and I've posted a before and after picture in today's blog to show the effect. They've even managed to reduce the quantity of fittings substantially too so it's a great lighting solution all round. I was commissioned by Christine Gupta of The Gupta Partnership (http://http://www.guptapartnership.co.uk/) who specialise in high impact marketing and PR to take the pictures.

2011-03-13T17:51:00.001Z

I've been working flat out since my last blog entry on some varied and interesting commissions and it's been the busiest time that I can remember. I keep meaning to write at least one blog entry per week but I just haven't had the time to sit down and do it.

The week beginning 1st March was pretty full on with a shoot at the new Environment Agency building in Bristol (I've photographed it before but this time for a lighting company) followed by a shoot in Oxford at the Earth Science building. Hopefully these are the students that are going on to save the planet from global warming etc!. Then I had three shoots in London over two days - one at the International Students House near Portland Place, a shoot at the Marni fashion concession area in Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge and a big shoot in Battersea Park where we hired in a model family for a lifestyle shoot for the front cover of a brochure. That one was great fun although we had to work under a lot of pressure as we only had the models for a couple of hours and the budget for the shoot was pretty high so I had to get the right shots quickly. The design agency attended the shoot to art direct things which helped a great deal and I also roped in my client to help hold the large 6ft x 4ft reflector panel in place which was providing some much needed fill light onto the models.

Last week was even busier as I had a product shoot in the studio on Monday, a video and stills shoot in Manchester on Tuesday (followed by a very entertaining evening with my clients involving lots of red wine) and a shoot at the Arndale Centre in Manchester on Wednesday. Then it was back down to St Albans for a shoot on Thursday afternoon and finally I had a shoot in North London on Friday.

On top of all the actual photo shoots I also have to do all the post shoot processing in DXO, Lightroom and Photoshop so I'm really working hard to keep up with everything.

I've found a really useful company based in India that I now use when I need products etc cut out onto a white background. I upload the product shots and the guys at Clipping Path India (http://www.clippingpathindia.com/) then cut them out and send them back the next day. The service is exceptional and they charge around £2 per picture so the price is really competitive too. If you ever need this service I'd highly recommend them.

2011-03-01T09:49:00.000Z

Well it's still full on at the moment in terms of workload and the time is flying by.
Last week I had a shoot down in Worthing, one in Christchurch and a shoot inside Tower 42 (previously called the Natwest Tower). I also did a portrait shoot in the studio last weekend so quite a varied week!.

Tower 42 is one of my favourite London landmarks and I love working in such iconic buildings. The shoot was for Philips Lighting who have supplied some LED office modules and downlights into one of the floors.

The fittings look great and the lighting is very uniform and the space feels very well lit. The colour from the LED's is also very good and I noticed that the skin tones of the models looked great and I shot most of the pictures without any fill flash at all. Once the designers have chosen the pictures they want from the contact sheets I'll process them and post a couple to the blog.

The week before last I did a portrait shoot at Philips HQ with a very basic setup of one flash head and a white backdrop that I left unlit so that it faded to grey in the shots. The pictures were really well received by the guys at Philips and I've posted a couple in today's blog.

I've started working with a new client called Perry Scott Nash who provide CDM and health and safety training and yesterday we spent the day at The Holiday Inn Shepperton shooting pictures for a new brochure. This was an exciting day for me as we were looking to capture very subtle and suggestive pictures about training and working in partnership rather than more obvious shots of people in a room being lectured. I was involved in creating the ideas at a meeting back in January and I was relieved that on the day everything fell into place. I've attached a couple of my favourite shots in today's blog.

Later today I'm off to Bristol for another shoot at the new Environment Agency building for a different client and then tomorrow I'm in Oxford - one of my favourite cities in the world!.

I'm photographing a party in London on Wednesday night (a quick dash up the M40 from Oxford) then I've got a day photographing products in Milton Keynes of Thursday. To finish off a busy week we're scheduled for a shoot in Battersea Park on Friday but that one is weather permitting and looking out of the window right now I'm not too hopeful of getting a nice sunny day!.

2011-02-21T20:05:00.000Z

I'm sitting here in my office with a big mug of tea reflecting on the past week and I'm not sure how I managed to fit everything in as it was so busy.
On Monday I had a portrait shoot at the HQ of Philips in Guildford and the day was so busy that the time flew by. I took around 20 head shots using one Bowens flash head and a white backdrop and also took some candid portraits around the building as well as some shots of the very impressive Lighting Academy room.
The portrait shoot had been in the diary for a few weeks so when I got an emergency call from another of our top clients on the previous Friday asking me to photograph the newly refurbished London Palladium Theatre on Monday I had to call in my colleague Roger Parker to help out. He did the Palladium shoot for me and the pictures came out really well. I asked Roger to shoot all the pictures in RAW so that I could do the post shoot processing myself as I run DXO on my system and that program removes all the barrel distortion from wide angle lenses automatically. Roger shoots with Nikon cameras (I only use Canon) and the files were very impressive so I can now recommend the Nikon D3X fully having looked at the quality of the pictures one produces.
On Tuesday I had a shoot at a warehouse in Letchworth for Llumarlite who specialise in removing old inefficient lighting and replacing it with the latest high tech fluorescent lighting fittings running off individual movement sensors. I went to site with Tim Barber the Llumarlite Director (and an old mate of mine) and we photographed all the old lighting and shot the factory in general to show the poor illumination levels there at present. We'll be going back after the refurb to show how much brighter the space will be with the new lighting. We needed to get a very wide angle shot of the interior from a high viewpoint so I took three pictures with my 24mm tilt and shift lens (landscape shots) with increasing amounts of vertical shift and stitched them together in Photoshop one above the other to create a square format super wide photograph and I've attached the resulting picture in today's blog.
I had a shoot at Fitness First in St Albans on Wednesday where I took general shots of the interior as well as some reportage shots of a survey being carried out by a lighting specialist from Philips. The pictures are going to appear in a new trade magazine being launched by Philips sometime in the next month or so.
I headed up to Nottingham on Thursday for a shoot at a BUPA care home where the staff had arranged a party to celebrate the completion of a big refurb. The party was themed as a post war street party and I really enjoyed myself. The room was decorated with Union Flags and a really superb singer went through a routine of 1940's music. I ended up staying on longer than I needed to as the music was really good!.
Lastly I had another shoot for Philips at CP Lighting in Surbiton (a wholesaler that supplies lots of Philips kit) and I took general shots of the building and some portraits of the MD. The pictures will be in the new trade paper along with the shots from St Albans.
Next week is fully booked too and we've got some dates in the diary for March already so a busy few weeks to come!.
Here's the picture from Letchworth that was made from three landscape shots taken with different amounts of vertical shift on the lens.

2011-02-12T18:25:00.001Z

Just a quick update re my little test of the £39 video camera I mentioned in the blog a couple of weeks ago. I bought this neat little Kodak mini video camera from Jessops and promised to put up a sample of the video from it but didn't get around to it. Well I tried it out last week on the London Underground and I've uploaded the output into this entry. Bearing in mind the fact that it only cost £39 and has a very small fixed focus lens with no white balance settings etc I think it's done a pretty good job. The output is only VGA quality but it's fine for uploading to YouTube etc.
Here's a link to the camera on the Jessops site - typically enough they've just put the price up to £45 but it's still a good fun product at a good price - http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/78704/show.html

I know the clips I've uploaded are pretty basic but I guess that's the point with these mini cameras - it's good fun and easy to use!.

2011-02-11T18:24:00.016Z

Had a pretty quiet week with just two jobs so not great for the cash flow situation!. On the plus side I've had time to get right up to date and next week is mega busy anyway so it will balance out in the end.

I had a meeting with my colleague Pete at Goldmoor Television (the guy that edits my video work) http://www.goldmoor.co.uk/mainmenu.html and we're setting up a new company together focusing on creating video content for lighting manufacturers and lighting designers. The trend for colour change lighting really lends itself to video and although I've done a few videos so far I think a new website and brand aimed squarely at that market is the way to go. Now it's a case of thinking of a new name for the company and creating a logo and website.

Learning to shoot video to proper broadcast standard is a skill that I'm learning and it's great to expand my skill set. Editing the footage is a whole new ballgame though and the software is so complex. That's why Pete is such a great asset and he really knows his stuff. It's not just the technical side of editing either, there's the creative element too and he's great at both those two parts.

The two jobs I had this week were both on the same day - one for BUPA in Peterborough then an event in London at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel near Oxford Circus. It was a mad day but I pulled it off and thankfully the week wasn't a financial disaster!. I drove over to Peterborough and did the shoot then zoomed back to Milton Keynes and caught the Virgin express train to Euston and got to the Hilton right on time. Those Virgin Pendelino trains are really good and you get from Milton Keynes to London Euston in around 40 minutes.

Next week I've got a portrait shoot at Philips Electronics in Guildford on Monday and my colleague Roger Parker is shooting a theatre for me on Monday too for another client so a good day for Redshift Photography!.

I've got a "before the refurb" shoot in Letchworth on Tuesday and a shoot in Kent on Wednesday where I'm photographing a new care home.

I'm working for BUPA again on Thursday in Nottingham covering an event and finally I'm down in Dorset on Friday photographing a trade stand for a company newspaper.

It will be a tiring week but just what I need to get things back on track after a fairly quiet start to February.

I've just added a Twitter feed to the blog which can be found right at the bottom of the page. I'm now an avid Tweeter and really enjoy following people and getting tweets from around the world. If you follow Twitter you can find me on there as redshiftphoto and I'd welcome any new followers. It's so cool to be able to take a photo on my phone and upload it to Twitter within a few seconds for everyone worldwide to see. I guess it's easy to see how these pro footballers and cricketers get into trouble so easily these days.

I've uploaded a couple of product shots to the blog today of some really beautiful spotlights made by Precision Lighting - a UK lighting manufacturer. Here's a link to their website - http://www.precisionlighting.co.uk/index.php. I took these ages ago but I found the archive disc of the RAW images last week and ran these two shots off to add to my Flickr page.

The pictures were taken using three 1000W Tungsten lights and the spotlights were placed inside a light tent to reduce the reflections in the aluminium finish.

2011-02-01T17:53:00.014Z

I can't believe I've come down with Man Flu again!. That's twice in two months and joking apart I've felt pretty rough. Luckily it didn't come on until Saturday night as I had a busy end to the week last week.

On Thursday I photographed a forum for Lux magazine at a superb shopping centre next to St Paul's Cathedral called One New Change -http://www.onenewchange.com/ . The forum was a round the table discussion about retail lighting featuring some leading figures from the lighting design community. My brief was to capture the attendees in full flow using a very shallow depth of field to give a blurred background to the shots. I used my Canon EF 70-200 F2.8 L IS lens wide open at f2.8 for the entire shoot. I also shot some video during the forum so it was a busy couple of hours. That lens is really superb and even wide open the quality is very good indeed. I've posted one of the shots in today's blog to illustrate the shallow depth of field effect.
On Friday I post processed the Lux magazine still photo's and compressed the video down as the original HD files are huge. The quality of the 5D MK2 video is incredible but even short clips of say 10 seconds are around 50 megs or so hence the need to compress the video output to a more usable size.

I was in London at 8am on Saturday to photograph the set of a fashion show called Disruption which was held at the Barbican in London on Saturday night. I was commissioned by Overbury the main contractor who had built the stage and surrounding set overnight on Friday which was designed by TP Bennett architects. The set looked great as did the pieces of art (clouds on sticks) which were placed around the Barbican in the public spaces to promote the show. I tried to show the public interacting with the clouds and I enjoyed the challenge as it took me a while to work out how to approach the shoot.

Here's a couple of the shots from the Barbican that show the public area and the stage. Do they look like clouds?. I think the design of the clouds above the stage is very clever as they each contain an LED light source and integral battery. The health and safety restrictions meant that live electrics being fed the illuminated clouds would be out of the question so a battery was the answer.

2011-01-25T14:32:00.009Z

In the last blog entry I mentioned a website of a really good photographer called Eliot Siegel, I guy that I've been lucky to work with a couple of times. Today I'd like to give a shout out to a really superb young fashion photographer called Emily Soto. She's based in LA and has already done some great work in the fashion industry and has been commissioned by some top clients in both the USA and Europe. Her web site address is http://www.emilysoto.com/ and her excellent blog is http://www.emilysotoblog.com/. Both are well worth a look and there are some great tips on the blog which I always think is a really unselfish thing to do as some photographer's are very guarded about their techniques to the point of being ultra secretive!.

Since my last posting I've done another shoot for BUPA, a shoot at the Manchester Arndale Centre and also a corporate portrait of a guy called Andy Gallacher from Whitecroft Lighting who has been appointed to write a new paper for CIBSE (Institute of Building Services Engineers) and he needed a cool picture for press releases etc. Yesterday I photographed a large warehouse in Birmingham for a lighting manufacturer so it's been a good few days.

February was shaping up to be very busy and some bookings have been firmed up but we're still waiting for final conformation on a few jobs so at the moment it's still pretty fluid!. A good February would really help the cash flow so I'm hoping all the work I've been promised does come in. At least we've paid the tax bill for this year so I guess we're already better off than we were this time last year when the Corporation Tax bill was pretty big and we had to pay it off in chunks throughout the year.

Anyone who reads the blog will know that I do a lot of commissioned work and keep really busy but I never pretend that I earn a fortune because I don't!. Photography in the UK has really taken a hit over the past three years and there are ever more photographers appearing all the time so it's a labour of love in some respects. Having said that I wouldn't change jobs with anyone and I wouldn't work in an office for £500K per year!. OK maybe that's not quite true but I love my job and if I could just smooth out the work load across the year without the peaks and troughs I guess life would be perfect.

I've got a quick gadget tip today too - I popped in to Jessops in Milton Keynes yesterday and they currently have an offer on a really neat little Kodak video recorder. It only shoots at VGA quality and has a tiny fixed focus lens but for taking footage for YouTube etc it's perfect. I'm going to shoot some clips tomorrow while I'm out on another shoot for BUPA and will post the results in the blog. Here's the best bit - it's reduced from £99 to £39 so it's a bit of a bargain!. Here's a link to their website in case you're interested - http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/78706/show.html

I've posted a picture from the Angel Building shoot from December. A series of my pictures from the Angel Building has just appeared in the latest issue of Lux magazine - as per usual I didn't get a photo credit!.

2011-01-14T14:40:00.007Z

Last night I had the biggest challenge of the new year thrown at me - my wife wanted me to take portrait of her!. Now that might not sound too daunting because I take a lot of portraits and have been taking pictures for years but when it's your own wife that's in front of the lens that does add to the pressure somewhat!!. I remember being on a photography work shop with a top photographer called Eliot Siegel (http://www.eliotsiegel.com/) and at the end of the two day workshop I asked him to take my picture for my website. He did a great job but I remember him telling me that taking a portrait of another photographer is a tricky assignment. Well this was a similar case with my good lady and thankfully I took a picture of her that she liked and I've posted it in today's blog. I took the shot with one 1000W Tungsten light with silver umbrella and a reflector held under her chin to bounce some light back into her face so it's a very simple setup and a good way to learn about portrait photography.

Earler in the week I had a shoot with BUPA at a care home in Birmingham for younger people who have severe disabilities. The home itself was really well run and the staff were clearly very dedicated to their work but it was quite a hard job to do as I feel so sorry for people that have such difficult illnesses to cope with. I found it very hard to stop thinking about the people I met there and it reminded again just how fragile we all are.

The annual Arc show was held this week at the Building Design Centre in Islington and this is a showcase for commercial lighting manufacturers to display their new products to architects and lighting designers etc. The show was very busy and I was there to photography an exhibition stand for a company called Occhio. Their products are beautiful and very high end and the stand looked great. I spent most of the day photographing both the stand and the reaction of their visitors and I also took some HD video clips for the guys at Occhio to put onto youtube. Their website is http://www.occhio.de/en/ and if you like beautiful lighting products it's well worth a look.

Yesterday I had a meeting with Philips Lighting to discuss their new photography guidelines and I hope to be getting some new work from them again soon. Last year I produced a couple of videos for them and I'll try to include a link to the latest one featuring the Natural History Museum in the blog sometime next week. They make some superb colour change LED floodlights that are seriously powerful and the Natural History Museum facade has been re lit with these LED projectors and the video shows the lighting changing colour.

Today I've been catching up on some post production and processing work and making a few calls to customers. The diary is filling up pretty quickly and I have a really positive feeling about the year ahead!.

2011-01-07T20:18:00.004Z

Next week is now fully booked except Friday so January is off to a good start. I love being a photographer and I will hopefully never have to be anything else but it's always a real worry when the diary is full of holes as it was during a couple of months last year. Two or three bad months a year causes a real cash flow problem so my aim this year is to be more consistent and have good months every month rather than spectacular turnover one month and nothing the next. All I need to do is work out how to achieve this!. If anyone has the answer out there please let me know.

My other goals for this year are to take on an assistant, lease a small office, gain some more architects as clients and do some more fashion and portrait work. These goals are now set in stone and I'll keep you all up to date with my progress. The fashion industry is a very tough nut to crack but I will give it a real go and hopefully I'll make some progress.

I checked out the Apple ipad prices today and I must admit they are more expensive than I thought. It looks like an investment of around £700 to get a good spec one with wifi so that will have to wait until next month at the earliest. It's a shame as I can see the great potential in having one to use as a portfolio but as usual cash flow dictates that I need to wait. As I've become totally disillusioned with banks (greedy gits in my opinion) I don't intend to borrow money ever again unless I really have to so until I get the funds in the bank no ipad!.

I'm working at the Arc show next week photographing a stand for a company called Occhio so if anyone is reading this and will be at Arc on Wednesday let me know and I'll buy you a coffee. That might not sound very generous but coffee at the Building Design Centre in Islington is mega expensive so feel free to take me up on my offer.

I was looking through my Flickr gallery today and noticed that a couple of my favourite shots were missing so I went through the archive and dug them out. I've posted them in today's blog and you might think I've gone mad but I love industrial minimalist architecture and the staircase in the pictures is one of my favourites. I took the pictures for Whitecroft Lighting a couple of years ago at Lincoln University and I love the concrete and steel finishes.

2011-01-05T18:13:00.007Z

It's been a lovely Christmas and New Year break but I'm glad to be back at work!. It was my first day back today and spent my time catching up on little jobs that I kept avoiding last year. I uploaded the latest firmware to the 5D MK2 and put up a new wall planner and prepared the new diary so I'm off to a good organised start to 2011.

I spent Christmas day snapping the family with my old Canon F1 and 35mm FD lens and I'm looking forward to getting the pictures processed and looking through the prints. As much as I love digital photography and understand the benefits of it, I still get excited about picking up my prints from the lab after shooting a few rolls of film.

We headed out to Ireland for the new year and spent six lovely days with my brother in law and his family in Ballina at the bottom of Loch Derg. The scenery there is stunning and I took along the trusty F1 and some lenses as well as my Panasonic G1. I took loads of pictures on both cameras and had a lovely time photographing everything from kids to horses!.

Now though I'm back in the office and planning for the year ahead. I intend to do more marketing this year and to get out and see more prospective clients with my portfolio. At the moment I've got an A3 printed portfolio in a large clip binder but I am going to invest in an iPad to give my presentation a more high tech look. Also I'll be able to show clients my video work too which is an added bonus. I'm not a technology freak by any standards but I think it pays to keep up with the latest trends and iPad portfolios are becoming the norm. I've found a company that produce custom made leather covers for the iPad that make it look like a bound portfolio book and I'll get one of those on order too (as soon as we've paid the Corporation Tax bill that is!).

I'm also going to go on a course to learn how to maximise Twitter and Facebook etc as the social media thing is really starting to pay off for me. I love Twitter (find me on there as redshiftphoto) and I can see that these networks really do provide a great way to remind clients that you're still around. It's been a real learning curve over the past year or so with the blog and Twitter etc but I'm really glad I made the time to get stuck in and now I'm determined to maximise everything to the full.

January is looking pretty busy now too which is great. I've got a couple of jobs for BUPA which is great as they are lovely guys to work for and I've got three days booked with a new client called Perry Scott Nash who are also really fun to work with and I'll be working on some pictures for their new corporate brochure. I've got another radio show on BBC Three Counties in the diary for late Jan and a client meeting with Philips to discuss this years photography. There are a few other jobs pencilled in awaiting the final go ahead so it's a pretty good start to the year which is always a good thing!.

I'd like to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year and please keep reading the blog!!.

Here's a couple of pictures from the Angel Building in London - one of my favourite shoots from 2010.

2010-12-21T13:06:00.012Z

I'm well and truly winding down for Christmas now which is just as well really because I haven't got any more work in the diary until the second week of January!. December is always quiet so it doesn't come as any surprise.

Last week was busy though with the shoot at the Thompson Holidays superstore in Greenford on Monday, the Environment Agency Bristol shoot on Tuesday and a shoot at a primary school in Leicester on Wednesday. I had a meeting in Leeds on Thursday and a day out in London on Friday so all in all quite a busy week.

The Thompson Holiday superstore job went really well and it was interesting as the entire store was lit with LED spotlights made by JCC Lighting http://www.jcc-lighting.co.uk/ . These LED spots are great for retail as they produce very little heat and last for years unlike their old Tungsten Halogen predecessors. They also use less energy so it's a win win situation. Retail lighting is generally on for long periods - sometimes 24 hours - so LED technology really comes into own!. I've included a shot of the store in today's blog.

The Environment Agency shoot went well too and there were two other photographers at work whilst I was there so it's obviously a popular building. The interior was very clean and modern and the Kinnarps furniture (my client) looked fabulous. I'll post a picture in the blog as soon as I've processed them.

The primary school was a tough shoot as the rooms were very small with high ceilings. I was commissioned by the lighting manufacturer but the lights were hard to capture and even with a 24mm Tilt and Shift lens getting a decent composition was difficult. Also there were loads of Christmas decorations everywhere which made things even more difficult. I took a few shots but didn't feel it was worth spending a day there so I'll talk to the client and offer them a reduced rate in return for fewer finished pictures. It's not ideal but I always put my client's first and I'm interested in building long term relationships rather then one off jobs.

I did my final radio show of the year yesterday on BBC Three Counties Radio which I always enjoy and I'm hoping to keep that going into next year. I've been doing the show now for the past 5 years on and off and it's something that I really look forward to!. Radio is really great fun because you can relax in the knowledge that no one can actually see you!. It builds a bit of mystique and I think it's more interesting than TV (although I've never been on TV for very long - just one appearance on a late night debate show many years ago).

I've been out in the snow with my old Canon A1 camera and 35mm lens over the past few days shooting some black and white film which has been great fun and I've stocked up on film for Christmas as I'll be avoiding digital cameras now for a couple of weeks!. I still love working with film and any chance to load up with black and white is eagerly taken. I always recommend that people try the chromagenic films like Kodak BW400N or Ilford XP2 which are black and white films with loads of exposure latitude that are developed in standard colour process machines. That means you can get the films dev'd and printed at Tesco or Asda while you do your shopping.

Lastly I took a picture of a friend and model Annalie a couple of weeks ago next to the London Eye. We wanted to include the Houses of Parliament in the background and I took the shot with my trusty EOS 5D MK2 and 24-105mm L series lens. I used a simple hot shoe mounted Canon EX 550 flashgun with an opal plastic diffuser fitted to soften the light and set the ISO to 1600. I used a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/20th of a second to let some ambient light bleed through and I was really pleased with the results. I've posted one of the pictures in today's blog.

2010-12-15T19:56:00.010Z

Good news on the broken L series lens (see last post) as my camera repair guy Dave at the Camera Repair Workshop at Wharfside in Fenny Stratford repaired my lens for £25. He's a really good repair man and his prices are very fair indeed. I was fearing a large repair bill or an insurance claim with a big excess so to pay £25 was a real relief.

December is a very quiet month for me and usually results in me feeling pretty down at Christmas as I love to be busy and I need to keep lots of work coming in as my daily rate is very competitive compared to some commercial photographers. I've had a good week so far though with the shoot at the Thompson Holiday superstore in Greenford on Monday, a shoot at the Environment Agency building in Bristol yesterday and today's shoot at a school in Leicester.

Tomorrow I have a client meeting in Leeds and on Friday I'm out with some clients for a Christmas booze up in London starting at All Star Lanes in Bayswater.

Next week is pretty empty though except for my monthly radio show on BBC Three Counties Radio on Monday and a client meeting in Stevenage later the same day.

The show on Monday is about getting good pictures of family and friends at parties etc so if anyone out there has any tips you want me to pass on please let me know!.

I'm really hooked on Twitter at the moment which I find surprising as I never thought it would be my kind of thing but if you'd like to follow me I'm on Twitter as @redshiftphoto.

I've posted a couple of my favourite portraits that I've taken this year on today's blog - please let me know what you think.

Lastly I'd like to say "Come on England" for the third test that starts in Perth later tonight!.

2010-12-09T11:19:00.006Z

The teeth whitening product photography went well (I mentioned this in the last blog entry) and I ended up shooting individual products and pack shots (a shot that shows both the box and the product next to the box) as well as a montage of all the products in the range. I've attached the montage shot in today's blog entry so if you want to get hold of some teeth whitening stuff cheap just let me know!!.

I had an interesting shoot last Friday night at Coutts Bank in London where I photographed some of the back of house areas such as offices etc and also some of the beautiful client meeting rooms and conference rooms. The building is a 1970's designed concrete structure with a very interesting central atrium with concrete beams reaching up into the ceiling. I will post some of the pictures here in the blog as soon as the bank have approved the shots.

I was lucky to photograph my friend and model Annalie in London yesterday where I took a series of shots of her with the London Eye and The Houses of Parliament in the background. After that shoot I went onto the Zumtobel Christmas party where I was invited along as a guest - thanks guys! - and also took some party shots whilst I was there. As the night went on everyone got pretty tipsy (me included as I was officially a guest!) and I got some pretty lively shots right up until my 24-105mm L series lens fell off of my 5d MK2 camera body for no apparent reason and smashed on the floor. Unfortunately the £900 lens didn't bounce this time (I have dropped it before) and the front element broke off!. What do they always say about mixing business with pleasure?.

So today is all about post shoot processing from yesterday's work and also trying to get my insurance company to stump up the money for a new lens - I wonder which job will prove to be the most difficult!.

2010-12-02T13:56:00.005Z

It's great to be back blogging again a bit more regularly after a manic few weeks including a bought of the Flu and I'm back up to date with a whole backlog of post shoot processing thanks to a postponed job in London. The snow seems to cause such mayhem in the UK (actually more specifically in England as the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish seem to cope pretty well with it) and the few millimetres we've had around London have caused lots of people to stay at home!.

At least the snow didn't come last week when I was up in Liverpool and Sheffield as that would have been a real problem.

Today I've got some product photography to do which I'm doing here in the office as it's a collection of small items (teeth whitening products!) so I don't need to use the studio. I'll be using two or three Canon Speedlite flashguns fired via the Canon ST-E2 remote flash controller. This is a useful setup for small product photography and the flashguns can be controlled in manual mode which gives me more control of the lighting. I'll post one of the product shots from this setup in the next blog entry.

I finished off the post shoot processing last night for the Unite HQ building in Liverpool that I photographed for the lighting manufacturer DW Windsor http://www.dwwindsor.com/. The building is beautifully lit with subtle LED colour change lighting. I photographed it at dusk to try to keep some blue in the sky and I captured the red green and blue colour change for each angle. The car headlight trails are a result of the long exposure (10 seconds or so) needed to work in the low light of dusk and the camera was of course fixed on a heavy tripod to prevent any motion blur due to the camera moving. I've attached a couple of pictures of the building in today's blog.

LED lighting is without doubt the future of all lighting and within 5 years I would guess that every home in the UK will be using some kind of LED lighting fixture.

Now I'm off to walk my dogs in the snow before it gets dark!.

2010-11-29T20:55:00.002Z

Hi Everyone
Just a quick note to say I stupidly signed up for Google Adwords which places ad's onto a blog to see if it worked. It placed ad's for other photographers and a male dating agency on my blog so I've rapidly turned it off!.
Just to let you know I won't be monetising my blog again any time soon.
Thanks
Dave

2010-11-29T11:45:00.021Z

Last week flew by helped along by the number of shoots I managed to squeeze in.
On Monday I was lucky to photograph the beautiful Angel Building in Islington (London) which was a really enjoyable shoot. I knew as soon as I saw the interior that I was going to enjoy the afternoon as I love modern minimalist architecture (sorry Prince Charles!). The interior had lots of bare unpainted concrete surfaces which I just love and the marketing suite on the top floor was fitted out with beautiful furniture and was totally clutter free. I could quite easily live on that top floor - it would make a superb super apartment and the views over London from the outside paved area were just stunning. I've attached a couple of shots to today's blog.
On Tuesday I photographed the launch of a very clever new lighting system that has been fitted into the science labs at Epsom and Ewell school by Philips Lighting. I have been back to the school a number of times during the year to photograph "before and after" shots and now the classrooms are in full use. The lighting has four settings which change the colour temperature and brightness of the lighting to keep the pupils alert through-out the day. The lighting can be set to a bright cool light for high energy through to dimmed down warm light for relaxation and wind down. Philips fitted the lighting system free of charge as part of their School Vision lighting program!.
Wednesday saw me lifted up in a hoist outside a company HQ in Aylesbury to enable me to get a shot of the front of the building including the solar panels on the roof. I hand-held my 24mm Tilt and Shift lens to get a nice perspective on the picture without getting the converging vertical lines caused by tilting the camera downwards. I then headed off to Oxford for another meeting about a new project so a busy day once again.
I drove up to Liverpool on Thursday for a dusk and night shoot of the new Unison HQ building which has been beautifully lit with some colour change LED lighting. It was bloody freezing but well worth it as I got some lovely shots with car headlight trails in the foreground as per the client's brief. Dusk shoots are always manic as you have to hang around for ages for the light level to drop and the lovely deep blue sky to appear (some photographers call this the golden hour - half an hour either side of dusk) but I always find that you actually get around 45 minutes of perfect light so it becomes a mad dash around the building in order to get in all the angles needed to give a rounded set of pictures.
I had a night in a Travel Lodge in Sheffield that evening (basic but very clean and the bar stocked good red wine!) then I had a shoot at Marks and Spencer Sheffield on Friday.
All in all a good week - I just need to post shoot process all the pictures now - probably another three days work(unfortunately we don't invoice for this!!).
This week is a bit quieter with a shoot in London tomorrow and a meeting with my PR lady Maureen. Then some product photography on Wednesday and so far that's it. At least I'll have a chance to catch up with the post shoot work.

2010-11-23T11:29:00.005Z

Hi Everyone - sorry about the long delay again in posting but Manflu turned out to be a full on proper Flu bug and I've been layed up for a few days. I tried to work through it but the tiredness got the better or me so I ended up on the sofa watching daytime TV - a good incentive to get better if ever there was one!.

The last job I did before succumbing to the bug was a large shoot up in Manchester where I spent three days working with my mate Katie (marketing exec) from Kinnarps - one of my best clients!. We were shooting both stills and video of new furniture being installed in a large new primary school and then moved across the road to a recently completed school with kids in situ. This is becoming an increasingly common way of working for me where we shoot both still and video although it does add to the stress level as I find it hard to change from video mode to stills mode (in terms of the technique). I've also got the added challenge of recording sound when we do interviews etc which is far more difficult than you'd imagine. I'm getting the hang of working in this way and my EOS 5DMK2 camera shoots beautiful video as well as stills so the kit is working perfectly. I think I'm going to invest in a purpose made HD video camera though for the interviews as I think the sound would be easier to set up and record. The 5D MK2 camera only has a mini jack input for a microphone as I think sound recording is an afterthought - maybe Canon will improve this on the Mk3!.

This week I've been back with a bang - I feel better than I have for months and I think the rest has done me good. Yesterday I did a quick shoot in Stevenage for BUPA then had a meeting with a new client to discuss some ideas for their new company brochure. After that I caught the train to London and photographed the new Angel building in Islington. This is a stunning piece of architecture and I will post some pictures in the next blog entry.

Tonight I'm photographing an event in Epsom and tomorrow I've got a small shoot in Ayelsbury followed by a meeting in Oxford. Then to complete a busy week I have an external night shoot in Liverpool on Thursday and a shoot at Marks and Spencer in Sheffield on Friday - so all in all a pretty good week.

Next week is shaping up to be busy too so November will have been a good month - now I just need to worry about getting some work for December and making sure we can pay the VAT bill that's about to arrive.

I've attached a picture from a shoot in Derby early last week which was a commission for a lighting manufacturer. I love the linear recessed strip lighting in the walls and ceiling.

2010-11-10T17:11:00.004Z

Another big gap in the blog (12 days since the last entry!) as I've been really busy and I've been doing a lot of travelling. Add to that an ongoing bout of "Man Flu" and you can see why I've been a bit light on blog entries.

Last week I was lucky to be commissioned once again by the guys at All Star Lanes who own the trendy boutique bowling alleys in London. I photographed the Brick Lane venue when it opened but they've had a refurb and I was called in last week to photograph the updated interior. I've attached a picture below from the American style diner. The food is fab and after the shoot Adam (the owner) fixed me up with an 8oz cheeseburger and chips - totally fab!.

That evening I also photographed a Go Karting event for a good mate at the Go Kart centre in Tottenham so that was a pretty busy day.

Last Friday I did my monthly radio phone in show on BBC Three Counties Radio with Lorna Milton. We had loads of texts and messages asking questions and the hour flew by.

This week I had a shoot in Aylesbury on Monday where I took a mixture of product and other PR shots for a new website for a lighting company. Then I was up in Leeds yesterday for a shoot and a client meeting and today I had some more product photography at a company HQ in Welwyn Garden City. I've got another product shoot tomorrow in Milton Keynes and I'm doing three small jobs in the Midlands on Friday.

The next couple of weeks are flat out too with a mixture of video and stills work so long may it continue!!!.

Although everything has been so tight this year financially I had to order a new car a couple of months ago as we lease our cars through the company and change them every couple of years. The one I've got now was delivered 3 months late and the same thing has happened again now!. I ordered a VW Passat (because it was a good deal) around two months ago and was assured that it would arrive in time as my Volvo goes back at the end of November. I popped in to see if it had arrived at the dealer earlier this week and was told it hasn't even been made yet!. Thanks for letting me know (not) and it's going to be at least another three months before it shows up. VW don't care that I've now got to borrow a car until they decide to deliver my new one - they even tried to charge me more for a lower spec one they had in stock!. Why are car manufacturers such twats?. In a deep recession where we are all having to fight so hard to survive you would expect all companies to be keen to keep customers happy. If I treated my clients like this I'd go bust.

I've got another truly great photographer to recommend to you - this time a lady photographer called Sheila Metzner. She shoots beautiful fashion and portraiture with a very cinematic lighting style and many of her shots are very grainy because they were taken with fast film. Here's the link to her website - http://www.sheilametzner.com/

Here's another shot from All Star Lanes :-

2010-10-29T18:18:00.005+01:00

It's been a difficult few weeks on a personal level as my Father In Law has been very ill and sadly passed away last week. The cremation took place on Wednesday so I took Monday Tuesday and Wednesday off to help out with everything. I know some people take photographs at funerals as a way of recording the day and I can see how this might be seen as a way of documenting the last phase of a friend or relatives life but I think I would find it impossible to do as I would feel that every shot taken was imposing on someones grief.

I know that the famous portrait and celebrity photographer Anni Leibovitz photographed her own Fathers illness and death as a documentary type project and maybe that helped her to come to terms with it but I still think this is a strange thing to do.

On the work front I had a long day yesterday shooting both stills and video at a garden centre in Sevenoaks for a case study and Internet based film clip to show the delivery and installation of some high class Swedish furniture. My client is a leading furniture manufacturer and they offer a complete service for companies from space planning and design through to delivery and installation of the goods. I shot hours of footage and hundreds of stills although the final video will only be around two minutes long. Here's a link to the last video I did for them along the same lines as this one will be - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmZyvxeSu j0

This time I used three cameras - the 5D MK2 on a tripod for video, my Panasonic G1 for hand held stills and my 5D on a tripod with an intervalometer fitted to enable the camera to take a picture every thirty seconds automatically.I'll use the pictures (600 plus of them!) from the 5D to create a time lapse video showing the empty office right through to the completion of the furniture installation.

Next week I'm pretty busy with meeting on Monday with two clients, a shoot in Cheshire on Tuesday and another shoot at All Star Lanes in Brick Lane on Wednesday (I photographed the venue a couple of years ago but they've recently completed a refurb!). Also on Wednesday night I've got an event in London to photograph so a pretty busy day all round.

I'm back on the radio again on Friday for my monthly photography "expert hour" (OK it's not that funny) and I'm sad to say that after 4 years on BBC Three Counties Radio I think my expert hour slot might be coming to an end but that's not been confirmed yet - I hope it doesn't happen but I'll know more in a few weeks time.

I've attached a picture in today's blog of Ray my Father In Law - I took this last year in my studio and I'll miss him dearly - he was a really really good bloke!.

2010-10-21T20:06:00.006+01:00

Another week has flown past and there's only 65 days to go until Christmas (I've just counted them on my wall planner but I've had a glass of red wine or two so I could be out by the odd day!). To really bring this home I popped in to Dobbies garden centre in Fenny Stratford last week and they had the full Christmas display up already including motorised Polar Bears - madness!.

In just doesn't feel like a year (almost) since I put up the new Sasco wall planner for 2010 - time has certainly flown past. I guess this is a good thing as it's been the hardest year I've had since I first started Redshift Photography back in 2003. Our turnover has been pretty good all things considered but it's been really hard work keeping the jobs coming in and I'm ready for a Christmas break!.

I'm hoping and praying that the severe cuts the ConDem alliance announced yesterday don't wipe out all the recovery we've felt these past few months. I'm still photographing new schools and MOD buildings but these are obviously a thing of the past now so I'm hoping we'll get some new office fit outs to photograph and new products to shoot in the studio but I guess I'm not going to hold my breath. I know we needed to tighten up on public spending but so many of my clients (big manufacturing companies) rely on supplying products to new build schools and hospitals etc that I'm really concerned that we're about to dip back into the R word - lets hope I'm wrong!.

On a positive note I'm still busy and in the past week since the last blog entry I've photographed another BUPA care home - this one a lovely home in East London with some really friendly staff, some high tech lighting control gear (product shots) and four projects up in Leeds. We've had a few jobs in for November already which is great news and I've got a few more jobs promised for November that will hopefully come off.

I've seen some of the pictures I took at the Havells Sylvania showroom launch event last week in the lighting press already - in particular in the edition of Light magazine that arrived today - so that was a boost as I really worked hard to get those out in double quick time. It's always great to see your work in print in a magazine.

I took some simple pack shot pictures for Venture Lamps last week as mentioned above and I've posted one of the shots in today's blog. It's a simple studio pack shot but I tried to choose a backdrop that showed the product clearly but that also had a similar colour to the control gear in the shot and that had a feeling of lighting and light about it. I lit the product with one flash head bounced off the ceiling for flat even lighting and I think it looks OK when put onto the cool blue backdrop.

2010-10-14T09:33:00.006+01:00

On Monday I was commissioned to cover the launch of a new European HQ and showroom for a large electrical and lighting manufacturer in London just down the road from the Barbican. I spent the day taking a mix of candid and formal portraits of key members of staff, snapping the customers and press people that attended and also taking some interior shots of the new showroom. It was a great job for me because I love photographing people and the day had a real buzz about it. The showroom photography was a bit more complex because of the many lighting products on display (all lit up of course) so I had to take several exposures for each finished shot and blend them together subtly using HDR software (Photomatix in this case). I always get a buzz from working in London too so I really enjoyed the whole day - I even like travelling on the tube!.

I spent Tuesday in the office editing down the 500 or so pictures that I took at the launch and managed to process and retouch around 50 finished pictures and send them off to the client. I normally use Yousendit.com to send batches of pictures but they seem to be having loads of problems as the pictures almost go then fail at the lat moment. My PC nearly flew out of the window a number of times over the weekend due to this and if they don't get things sorted out I'll cancel my account and set up my own FTP site.

Yesterday I had a meeting with a PR client and collected a couple of electrical components that I need to photograph for one of their clients which I'm hoping to shoot later today. These are small blue boxes which power up industrial lamps so they're not the most photogenic things around and I'm determined to make them look interesting and artistic.

To round off a pretty good week I'm hoping to photograph another BUPA care home - this one in East London. I'm sure this will be the last one of the year and I'm looking forward to working with the BUPA guys again next year as they've been a superb client in every way.

As any regular readers of my blog will know I've been doing a lot of video work too shooting with my 5D MK2. This has opened up a lot of new opportunites for me and also given me loads of new things to learn - from video lighting and sound to editing. Here's a link to the king of video production using DSLR cameras like the 5D MK2. His name is Vincent Laforet and the link is to his blog which has loads of useful tips and facts on film making with these really useful cameras - http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/ The tip on how to re-create a dolly or crane shot halfway down the page (it's a video link) is really cool!.

I've attached a picture of Mark the MD of Wieland Electronics that I took last week at their offices. Although it's only a very basic portrait I've posted it because it was taken with a very simple lighting technique. I just bounced one flash head off of a white wall to the right of the camera to create a daylight feel to the lighting but at the same time giving some gentle shadow across Mark's face. I used a very wide aperture of f5.6 to throw the picture behind Mark out of focus and it made a nice backdrop with electrical components setting the portrait into context.

2010-10-08T19:16:00.008+01:00

The end of another week and I must admit it's great to sit here with a glass of red wine and write up my blog entry with that great feeling you get after a busy and productive few days.

The week began with a big MOD building in Corsham near Bath. I was commissioned by the light fitting manufacturer who supplied all of the lights into the building and it turned out to be a really interesting shoot. The building is still unfinished so we had to work around the contractors completing their fit out but we still managed to get some good usable shots for a press release and new catalogue.

I had a portrait shoot in Guildford on Tuesday and the brief was to photograph a group of 26 people then smaller groups and finally a portrait of the MD. The building was quite small and I was a bit worried about where to take the big group shot but I emptied the reception area of all the furniture and managed to fit everyone in (just). I used a Bowens flash head bounced off the wall behind me to give a nice soft diffused light and the picture came out really well.

Wednesday was a catch up day in the office before a shoot for BUPA on Thursday and finally a portrait shoot in Bletchley today - all in all a pretty good week.

The BUPA work has been brilliant and they've been a fantastic client. The ladies that run the marketing team are all lovely and the care homes have all been really pleasant places to photograph with very friendly and helpful staff and happy residents. Unfortunately I think the shoot this week was probably the last one for the year as they are only really scheduled in for the summer months. I hope that I'm going to get a chance to work with the guys there again next year.

Next week is looking busy with a shoot in London on Monday and a possible two day video and stills shoot in Leeds on Thursday and Friday. Also there's a possible video interview for me to shoot on Wednesday for a TV company in Melton Mowbray (pork pie country!) so fingers crossed everything comes off as planned.

I've attached another picture of the lovely Maya in today's blog.

2010-10-02T21:42:00.006+01:00

I can't believe another week has gone since my last posting - that's crazy!.
Last week was a real tough one as I had a very busy schedule and ended up working long hours to keep up - but I'm not complaining as it is great to be busy!.
Monday's job was to photograph the Moto services at Wooley Edge on the M1 just north of Sheffield. My client is basically stripping out every light fitting and replacing them with new up to date energy efficient luminaires and they want before and after pictures. I spent the day photographing every room both front and back of house (so to speak) on both sides of the motorway capturing the old lighting. I'm back there again in a few weeks to photograph the new lighting installation and it should look a lot brighter!.
On Tuesday I had a BUPA care home to photograph but the weather beat us and we had to postpone until next week so I spent the day post shoot processing.
I did the last day of photography at Epsom and Ewell School on Wednesday where Philips Lighting my client have installed (free of charge!) a state of the art new lighting system whereby the light changes colour and intensity during the day to help to stimulate the kids and encourage them to be more alert. I have been a few times to photograph the various stages of the refurb and I've now finished as the new lighting is in place and working. The kids have responded very well to the new lighting and it looks like Philips were right when they said that the pupils would work harder under these clever new lights!.
I spent a very pleasant day at the LAPD (lighting designers) office near Welwyn on Thursday photographing informal portraits of their staff for their website. I did the existing headshots on their site a few years ago but they were a bit formal and these will look much more natural - hopefully!. We're converting them to black and white for a more artistic effect.
Friday was a very long day indeed - a 15 hour photoshop session post processing all the weeks work and getting the pictures issued out on CD.
A few weeks ago I was very luck to photograph two beautiful ladies in one session - Annalie and Maya. In today's blog I've posted a picture of Maya who is a full time actress and very natural model.

2010-09-24T22:39:00.004+01:00

It's been a really busy week with some early starts and late nights so I'm pretty worn out right now!. The week began with a night shoot up in Chester at a new Comet store - I left home around 2pm after a busy morning in the office and got back home at around 1.30am. The following day was spent post processing the Comet pictures and catching up on some other bits of post shoot processing. Then I was up at 5.30am on Wednesday for an 8am start on a shoot in Epsom where I've been photographing the ongoing refurbishment of some classrooms with new state of the art lighting. To celebrate the opening of the new classrooms Philips Lighting organised a special activity day at the school in conjunction with Esher Rugby Club and John Inverdale came along to host the morning assembly. I took pictures through out the day and finished at around 4pm. I also videoed some interviews with some of the kids and their teachers.

I had another long day on Thursday as I was up in Sheffield to photograph the Marks and Spencer store in the city centre and today I had two jobs in London - one a new school near Kennington and the other a dealer room in an investment bank over in Upper Thames Street.

I've been home since 8pm and have been post shoot processing pictures since I got in and will probably finish at midnight so another long day.

It's always been really hard to balance my workload because working freelance you have to take the work when it comes in. I never let my customers down and work long hours to keep them happy and hit my deadlines. Last week I had no work and this week it's been bonkers - that's just the way it is!.

I've attached a picture from the shoot at Comet Chester - I used the 24mm Tilt and Shift lens to keep the vertical lines straight in the shot.

2010-09-15T18:56:00.007+01:00

There's loads of great things about having your own business - especially being a photographer. Things like doing a job you love, seeing new places, every day being different etc etc. The only downside is the fact that if you're not working you're not earning!. This week was supposed to be pretty busy but the two day event photography booking for Monday and Tuesday was cancelled (the Chairman of the company wanted to fly his own photographer to London!) and the hospital shoot has been put back to next week. That means that this week is now pretty quiet (OK very quiet!) but it has given me a chance to get right up to date with the usual load of post shoot processing and also given me time to call a few clients to chase up some outstanding work.

I spent Monday in the office all day working in DXO and Lightroom running through RAW files and yesterday I went over to see Pete at Goldmoor TV to work on the final edit of a video I've filmed for one of my clients so that was time well spent.

Today I've post processed all the BUPA work from last week and updated my Flickr page with the shots I took of Kimberley the weekend before last.

The radio show is still on for Friday though so please tune in if you can - I'm on at 2.40pm on BBC Radio Three Counties which is broadcast across Herts Beds and Bucks on FM 103.8 and 104.5 and also on the Internet all over the world. It wo

uld be great to get a call from a blog reader!.

Once again thanks to everyone who's made comments in the blog. I try to post comments back but I'm not too sure if any sees the replies as I don't actually know how the blog works in that respect but please keep them coming. You can find me on Twitter too as redshiftphoto.

Here's another picture of Kimberley - this time one from the short studio session we did before we headed out on location.

2010-09-10T15:40:00.007+01:00

It's been almost two weeks since my last post which is unusual for me as I love blogging but I have been really busy and the time has slipped past really quickly.

Since the last entry I've taken pictures at a large staff interaction day at Philips Electronics down in Guildford, photographed two more BUPA homes, taken some shots in the new extension at the NHBC building in Milton Keynes, photographed a model called Kimberley for her portfolio and finished off shooting a video for a manufacturing company here in Milton Keynes. In fact It's been really good to work locally for a change as I spend hours driving up and down the country between jobs (although I catch the train whenever possible) and I must admit I don't feel as tired at the end of the week as I usually do.

Next week I'm doing a shoot in Manchester at a newly refurbished hospital ward (that's probably going to be a thing of the past under the new Government!) and I'm back on the Beeb for my monthly radio slot on BBC Three Counties Radio.

I've had some new enquiries in this week too so we're still doing well at the moment although you never know how long that's going to last!.

I'm judging the annual photography competition at Mursley Show again this year (surprisingly they keep asking me back!) and although I actually hate passing any kind of judgement on peoples' photographs I do enjoy the day and there are usually a few really good entries. My opinion on photography is that a good picture is one that you like - or even better that other people like - so the old camera club competitions really don't appeal to me. All the traditional rules regarding composition and such do have a place but the bottom line for me is that pictures should make you feel good when you look at them!. I don't get this compulsive urge that many photographers have to photograph people looking miserable or folks living in terrible places looking down and out. Real life is bad enough without continually taking pictures of the crappy bits of our world.

I love recommending other photographers in the blog and today I want to give a big up to a photographer called Edward Burtynsky who takes photographs of industrial landscapes but makes them look beautiful - a very real art form in my opinion.This guy is one of my all time favourite photographers and I draw a lot of inspiration from looking at his work - here's the link to his site http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html

I've attached a picture from the model portfolio shoot I did with Kimberley last weekend.

2010-08-31T22:15:00.009+01:00

I've just finished post shoot processing the three Bristol jobs and the Carnegie Library Harrogate job from last week - I started at 9.30am and it's now 10.15pm and I've only had a couple of short breaks. I really needed to get up to date as a big back log of post shoot processing really gets to me and I start to get pretty stressed about catching up.

Tomorrow I've got a couple of small BUPA shoots to process and a bit of work to do on the chair video demo that I've been working on with my colleague Pete at Goldmoor TV and then in the afternoon I need to pop back to one of my clients premises to shoot some extra video footage for a short clip I'm working on (again with Pete at Goldmoor) to demonstrate a state of the art lighting control system. Another busy day in store then but at least I'll get out in the afternoon rather than being tied to a computer all day.

I've just been reading online about a photographer called John Stoddart - one of my all time favourite photographers and a big inspiration to me. I interviewed him a couple of years ago at his house in Chelsea for my radio show on BBC Three Counties and he was such a cool guy and very good company indeed. Ever since I met him I keep an eye out for any exhibitions he's doing and I'm sad to see that I've just missed one in London!. If you get a few minutes to spare Google John and take a look at his amazing celebrity portraits and very sexy lingerie shots - they are truly superb.

I've attached a picture from the Bristol Skills Academy which I took on Friday showing the main atrium which I think is pretty impressive for a college - my college didn't look anything like that!. I used my trusty Canon 24mm tilt and shift lens and 5D MK2 to capture this image.

2010-08-30T18:23:00.011+01:00

Hey where's the weekend gone!.

After a busy week last week I was looking forward to the Bank Holiday but as usual I ended up working to keep up with the post processing workload. I had four shoots in two days on Thursday and Friday which was a very busy end to the week. I left home at 7.00am on Thursday morning and drove to Heathrow where I photographed an office chair for one of my best clients at their HQ. This was some extra shots for a video production I've been working on for them and it made sense to shoot the additional few shots at their showroom rather than bringing the chair down to the studio in Milton Keynes again. Then I drove to Yate in South Gloucestershire where I photographed the new council offices. I stayed overnight in a Travel Lodge in Cribbs Causeway (not exactly the Ritz but the room was fine) and then had two photo shoots in Bristol on Friday - one at the new Bristol Skills Academy and the other Colston Hall.

After all that I had to zoom along to Clevedon to take a few exterior shots for BUPA as the weather was terrible when I photographed their care home a few weeks ago and at the time I had to abandon the exterior photography. As you can imagine by the time I got home to Milton Keynes I was shattered.

I've made a dent in the mountain of post shoot processing today but tomorrow and Wednesday will be spent in the office working through everything in Photoshop.

I've got a shoot on Thursday in Guildford and one in Milton Keynes on Friday so this week is full, and next week is looking busy too which is great news.

It's always great to get comments posted here in the blog and Andrew of Andrew Fowler Photography made an interesting point under last week's entry which is now shown in the blog (they have to be moderated first and that takes a day or two) so keep them coming!.

I've attached a shot I took last month for a BUPA care homes brochure. They have a lovely care home in Market Lavington and the brief is to photograph the home itself and the surrounding area. Here's a shot I took of Market Lavington church - nothing flash but I just like the picture.

2010-08-24T19:55:00.006+01:00

I'm just back in the office after a trip up to Harrogate in North Yorkshire where I photographed the recently refurbished Carnegie Library. The building was unfurnished but still looked beautiful inside and I'll post a couple of pictures up as soon as I've processed them.

The drive up yesterday took about 5 hours but I enjoyed the trip as the scenery north of Sheffield is superb. I did the shoot yesterday afternoon then stayed in a lovely B and B last night in Harrogate which is a very pretty town and well worth a visit. The first leg of the drive home today was a nightmare though as the rain was so heavy I could hardly see the cars in front or behind me. As soon as I got south of Watford Gap the sun came out!.

On the way home I popped back to the BUPA care home in Milton Keynes to photograph the gardens for their new brochure then I popped in to PC World to get the latest prices on the iMacs - I'm now buying one for sure and will hopefully have time to get this all sorted by the end of the week. I did some training on Final Cut Pro last week which is a Mac only video editing program and I loved it so that really made my mind up about jumping over to a Mac system.

I've got a day in the office tomorrow to catch up on post shoot processing then I'm down in Bristol on Thursday and Friday where I'm doing three jobs for one of our major clients.

I was very lucky to photograph two beautiful ladies in the studio on Saturday - Annalie and Maya. They are both very photogenic and extremely fun to work with and we took some really cool shots over the course of the day. The problem is I took over 1000 pictures in four hours so now I've got the monumental task of editing the shoot. This was never a problem back in the days of film and is one of the reasons why I want to shoot more film in the studio - it's just too easy to snap away for hours with digital and without the constraints of a budget in terms of rolls of film one gets far to carried away and trigger happy.

I've attached a shot of Annalie from the last shoot and will post some of the new pictures once they're ready.

2010-08-17T14:26:00.008+01:00

The rain beat me today as I was supposed to be photographing a BUPA care home in Sandy (Bedfordshire) but as part of the brief was to photograph the exterior and also any interesting places to visit locally we had to postpone until tomorrow. I can cut in blue skies easily enough with Photoshop but to be honest I don't like to do that unless it's really needed because I never really think the pictures look natural - even if it's done really well.

Although it's a shame to postpone a job it has given me a chance to catch up on some post shoot processing and this morning I've finished both BUPA shoots from last week and I'm just about to start the post shoot processing from the two museums I photographed in Norwich and Gt Yarmouth last Thursday and Friday.

Yesterday I had phase two of a three part photo shoot at Epsom and Ewell High School where I've been commissioned to photograph the refurbishment of a couple of classrooms. The first shoot (last month) was to capture the awful old lighting and run down interior of the classrooms, then yesterday was all about capturing the work in progress with a new ceiling being installed and the old kit being ripped out. Then next month I'm back to photograph the completed refurb in all it's glory - it will definitely look so much better with a brand new state of the art lighting system and and full re-decoration.

The picture in today's blog entry is from Norwich Museum where one art gallery has been re-fitted with brand new LED spotlights which give a very natural colour rendering, use less energy than the original Tungsten spotlights, kick out much less heat and best of all last for years. Sounds like a win win situation for the museum to me!.

2010-08-13T23:10:00.004+01:00

I had a shoot in Great Yarmouth yesterday at the Time and Tide museum which turned out to be a very interesting place and I'd recommend a visit if you're ever in the Great Yarmouth area. The museum has been lit with new LED spotlights which are very efficient and also last for years and the lighting was very good and the exhibits looked great. I then stayed over in a hotel in Great Yarmouth as I had another museum to shoot today in Norwich (I was commissioned by the same client - the guys who supplied the LED spotlights) and this was an interesting job too. The castle at Norwich is very impressive and stands high up on a hill overlooking the town and the museum is located inside the castle. There were some beautiful paintings on display and the cafe was good too so again well worth a visit.

I'm in for a busy weekend as I've got a whole stack of post shoot processing to do from this week and I've also got some lamps to photograph for a catalogue for Venture Lamps - a major lamp manufacturer. Lamps (light bulbs to most of us!) are a real challenge to photograph and I need to photograph these on a blue background so I'll make up a blue curve from some card and mount the lamps on some wire about 3 feet in front of the card to ensure the lamps stand out from the backdrop. Lighting will be tricky as the client doesn't like to see softboxes etc reflected in the glass so I will probably use my ringflash or some flash bounced off the back wall of the studio.

Next week is pretty full too so I need to keep up to date otherwise I start to feel under too much pressure - I hate getting too far behind and I always aim to issue pictures to my clients within 5 days max from the date of the shoot. As I started shooting video too I've had to get used to that particular process taking longer as I have to outsource the editing at the moment and I do find that loss of control to be very frustrating.

I've posted a shot from the model room at Land Securities new HQ just opposite Trafalgar Square. This shoot was also for a lighting manufacturer and the downlights in the room are 23W LED fittings with adjustable reflectors for added control of the light output. The lighting is very crisp and clean and the colour rendering is excellent. Within the next few years all lighting is going to be provided by LED's - the future is here!.

2010-08-11T23:00:00.002+01:00

After a quiet day in the office on Monday post processing last week's work it was great to have a really busy day yesterday. Firstly I photographed another BUPA care home - this one in Clevedon which is a lovely town in Somerset, then I drove into London for a night shoot at Land Securities new HQ where I photographed their model room which has been lit with the latest high tech LED downlights. Then today I photographed a BUPA care home in Newbury before meeting one of my PR clients to collect some lamps which I need to photograph for a press release so all in all a pretty busy couple of days.

BUPA are a fantastic client to work for and the ladies that commission me at their head office are so pleasant and easy to get along with. This makes the job so much easier and I always find that if the client is easy going and happy then the photography reflects this and the pictures are more relaxed and therefore more creative. I love photographing the care homes as I always get a nice cup of tea when I arrive and quite often a piece of cake or biscuits too!.

The model room at Land Securities was a challenge as it was quite small and an odd shape but the lighting looked terrific and the models are very good. They cost a fortune to make and I was very careful not to bang into any of them with the tripod as any breakages would have been disastrous but luckily the job went very well and I have posted a picture of the room in today's blog.

Tomorrow I'm off to Great Yarmouth to photograph a museum and on Friday I'm photographing another museum in Norwich so hopefully I'll come home a more cultured and intellectual person!.

2010-08-06T20:13:00.003+01:00

This week went pretty much to plan with the added bonus of a very beautiful shoot in London last night of a staircase illuminated by small LED light fittings recessed into the handrail on the stairs. I had the shoot down in Salisbury in Wiltshire during the day then drove into the West End (of London) in the evening for the night shoot. It made for a long day but the staircase looked superb I and really enjoyed photographing it. I've attached two pictures in today's blog and I'll be uploading some more pictures of the staircase onto my Flickr page over the weekend.

London is such an exciting place to work and when I finished the shoot at around 10.30pm I had a drink with my client then walked up Charing Cross Road from Leicester Square and the place was just buzzing. Soho was packed although I could only see a bit of it from my route back to the car and I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

The attached pictures were taken on the 5D MK2 with my 24mm tilt and shift lens for the medium range shot and my 17-40mm lens for the wide angle shot looking upwards. I usually correct for perspective whenever possible and this shot has converging vertical lines caused by tilting the camera back but I think it works well in this instance.

These LED lights are the future as the entire staircase was lit with 600W of energy (each LED light is only 2.2W) and in the event of a power failure the entire system runs at full brightness from a battery system!.

2010-08-02T22:53:00.006+01:00

My Volvo V50 has gone wrong again - the clutch master cylinder has broken for the second time in 6 months and I had to drive the last few miles home with the car stuck in 3rd gear!. Apart from that it was a pretty good day and it's great to be back at work.

My job today was a BUPA care home in Ipswich where I photographed the interior for a new brochure. As usual for interior photography I used the 24mm tilt and shift lens for 80% of the shots and the 24-105mm for the detail shots. The 24mm T/S lens is a real gem and I would recommend it to anyone who shoots interiors or architecture. The ability to shift the front of the lens up and down (a bit like the old view cameras with the bellows between the back and lens) means that I don't have to tilt the camera up or down at all hence removing the converging vertical lines one gets when a camera is tilted up or down from the horizontal. Canon have now added a 17mm T/S lens to their range but at £2000 plus it's a bit too dear and I'll wait until the price drops a bit once the novelty of the new lens wears off a bit.

Tomorrow I've got another interior shoot for BUPA in Gloucestershire followed by a night shoot in London so it's going to be a long and busy day. On top of that I've got to arrange a hire car while the increasingly unreliable Volvo heads back to the dealership in Milton Keynes for more repairs.

I'm hoping to do some video editing training on Wednesday with Final Cut Pro then on Thursday I've another interior shoot this time in Salisbury in Wiltshire which is cool as I love driving across to that part of the country.

I've attached a picture in today's blog from the IUCN shoot in Switzerland back in May which illustrates the use of the tilt and shift lens. Here I took a picture looking down the staircase but because I've shifted the lens down rather than tilting the camera the vertical lines still look straight and natural. I really dislike architectural pictures that have walls sloping in and although this is sometimes done for effect I'm always careful to avoid this if at all possible.

2010-08-01T08:42:00.004+01:00

I've just spent the week camping in the Cotswolds with the family and feel really refreshed and ready to go again. It was our first camping trip together and after a couple of wet days and some teething problems it all went very well. We camped at the Cotswold Farm Park near Stow on the Wold and I decided to take the Panasonic G1 camera along with us as it's small and compact but also has a good resolution and a great zoom lens. I also took along an old Canon FD lens that I use with the G1 with an adaptor and this gives top quality results too. I took a few shots of some animals around the farm with the old Canon lens and G1 and I've posted a couple to today's blog.

Next week is full which is great news. I'm looking forward to getting back to work and I'm glad I'm coming back to a really busy week.

2010-07-23T17:38:00.006+01:00

It's been a really busy week and I love that feeling you get on a Friday when you get home and feel like you've earned a good rest because you've put in a good solid week's work.

This was the busiest week I've had for a while and I spent Monday in the office doing a solid day's post shoot processing followed by a shoot at a lovely care home in Wimbledon on Tuesday. Wednesday's shoot was at another beautiful care home - this one near Devizies in Wiltshire. The drive there and back was stunning as the sun was out and I took a back road route both ways. Then yesterday I spent the day shooting some video to show the operation of a high tech lighting control system for a lighting manufacturer which was great fun and got the old brain cells working flat out as we had a storyboard to follow

Today I left home at 6am for a shoot at a large distribution warehouse in West Thurrock where we had a 7.30am start. The shoot went well and I left Thurrock at 12.30pm and headed off to Luton for my monthly radio show on BBC Three Counties radio where I do an expert hour on the Lorna Milton show. I had to be there at 2.30pm for a 2.45pm start so basically I had 2 hours to do about 30 miles. I made it into the studio with literally 30 seconds to spare before I went on thanks to a massive jam on the M25.

I've had some very kind comments on the blog from some of the readers (thanks for the feedback - it's always good to get comments on the blog) about the high dynamic range (HDR) pictures that I sometimes post. I do use HDR techniques and mainly use Photomatix to layer the various images to together but I always then open them in Photoshop and work on the pictures extensively to ensure they don't look too artificial. I've attached an example of an HDR picture to today's blog which was taken at the Wyndhams Theatre. A standard picture showing this scene would have the highlights blown out and the light fittings and chandelier would not be clearly visible.

2010-07-20T17:23:00.008+01:00

I've just got back home from a shoot in Wimbledon where I photographed a very smart retirement home for a brochure. It was an interesting old building right on the edge of the Common and apparently a lady once lived there who had an affair with King Edward 3rd so it's a very old and grand place as you can imagine. The drive home was pretty hot and stuffy though as the aircon on my Volvo V50 has broken again!.

Tomorrow I've got a shoot down in Devizies in Wiltshire which is a lovely part of the world and I always love driving in that direction (even without aircon) then I'm shooting a video in Milton Keynes on Thursday and on Friday I've got a warehouse and supermarket interior to shoot in Thurrock starting at 7.30am and then I'm on BBC Three Counties Radio in the afternoon from 2.30pm so all in all a very busy week.

I was thinking today that I haven't bought any camera kit for a couple of years now and I'm still blown away by the quality of image I'm getting from the EOS 5D MK2 and the original 5D too. I've got four L series lenses too which I've owned for a few years and I think we're arriving at a point right now where the need to continually upgrade to the latest camera is now over. I can't see me buying the next generation Canon Pro DSLR now unless something goes wrong with my existing kit or something groundbreaking comes out with say high dynamic range imaging built in but I can't see this happening for a few years yet. I think the resolution of the 5D MK2 (22MP) is enough for anyone unless you're routinely shooting full size billboard images, and for that reason I'm happy to stay with the kit I've got.

I get asked a lot by enthusiasts as to which camera to buy and my advice is always the same - buy a used DLSR body from a camera dealer with a guarantee and spend the bulk of the money on top quality second hand lenses as these really make the difference. A great lens on an 8MP camera will give a better picture than a cheap lens on a 20MP camera!.

I've attached a picture from a shoot I did at the excellent All Star Lanes boutique bowling alley in London - I'm lucky to have been commissioned by the owners to photograph all three of their venues in London and they are well worth a visit if you fancy a great night out in stylish surroundings. Here's a link to their website - http://www.allstarlanes.co.uk/
I took the pictures without people in on their site (the pictures with people aren't mine!!)

2010-07-14T22:12:00.007+01:00

OK so another good day today as I finished off all the outstanding post shoot processing including yesterday's shoot in Milton Keynes which was an interior shoot for a large private healthcare client. Then I had a meeting with a new client in Aylesbury who have now commissioned me to shoot three locations for them over the next few weeks and they are also interested in my new Redshift Media company through which I'm offering video production and also Internet marketing via Twitter, Blogger and Flickr etc.

Tomorrow I'm off to Newbury for another healthcare shoot then on Friday I'm down in Bristol photographing a new academy school so all in all a really good week.

I get the feeling that our economy is very delicately balanced at the moment and I really fear for the next couple of years and beyond because of all the cuts the government are making. I only hope I'm being paranoid and that I'm proven to be wrong but so many of my clients - both architects and manufacturers - rely on education and healthcare projects to keep going.

That's why I think we as photographers need to offer more services and therefore more value to our clients to help keep busy.

Having said that I'm very pleased that the next two months look very busy so I'm going to focus on that and keep as optimistic as possible!.

I've attached a picture to today's blog from a shoot a while back where I took a series of 6 shots from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to show a motorway section lit with street lights made by my client. I stitched the pictures together in Photoshop to create a panoramic image.

2010-07-12T21:05:00.008+01:00

Post shoot processing was the order of the day today (after a visit to the dentist!) and I finished processing all the pictures from the Talk Talk shoot and made a start on the Homebase shoot from Friday. The Talk Talk pictures look good and I'm pleased with them so hopefully the client will be pleased too. I need to keep up to date now as I'm out every day this week and next week is full too so I don't want to fall behind with the post processing. I always get a bit stressed when I know I've got a big backlog of work to catch up on so I'll be working late tonight and tomorrow to keep on schedule.

I've attached another two pictures from the Talk Talk shoot to the blog today. I noticed the reflection of the light fittings in the glass cabinet and used that to create a more interesting shot that a straight forward picture of the open plan office. I always like to use reflections when possible to add a bit of extra visual interest to the shots. I also love to use blurred people in the pictures to add a sense of scale as in the shot of the reception -to achieve this effect you need to have the camera fixed onto a sturdy tripod and use a shutter speed of around half a second. I like the blurred effect from an artistic point of view but it also means that people in the pictures aren't recognisable and therefore there isn't any hassle in terms of getting permission from them to take their photograph!.

2010-07-08T21:42:00.007+01:00

It's been a really quiet week since my last blog entry but things have just picked up again big time!. I had a shoot today in London at the new HQ of Talk Talk (broadband suppliers) who are based in Notting Hill. I made the mistake of trusting Google Maps on my Blackberry and ended up walking bloody miles around West London before realising that the stupid phone didn't have a clue as to where I was supposed to be going. Having wasted an hour walking around London W11 I gave up and got in a cab and the cabbie then got lost too and had to resort to his A-Z!.

Once I got there the shoot went really well and I took some good shots of the interior of the building for my client who supplied all the interior lighting to the building.

Tomorrow I've got two jobs - one in Esher and another in Crawley. It's going to be a long day and I've got to leave home at 6.45am but it's great to be so busy again after a quiet couple of weeks. Then for the next two weeks the diary is pretty full so happy days!.

I had another two video commissions in today which is very exciting. The video clip work seems to be really taking off and I think this will soon account for 25% of my turnover. I saw this coming with the advent of search engine optimisation whereby Google promotes web sites further up the rankings if the site contains video content. I've just finished a video for one of my best clients and I'll post it in the blog as soon as they sign it off.

Next week I'm hoping to do some more training on the video editing software called Final Cut Pro which is the hottest editing program around. At the moment I pay to have all my footage edited and I will probably carry on doing this as my workload is high enough as it is but I am keen to learn the basics in case I need to edit something quickly for a client. The files from the Canon EOS 5D MK2 that I use are very big as it records in full 1080p HD so I'd need a powerful Mac system to be able to edit these but I think it would be a worthwhile investment.

I've attached a picture from today's shoot at Talk Talk showing the linear fluorescent lighting system in the canteen - the food was great by the way!.

2010-07-02T08:08:00.006+01:00

We've had quite a few new jobs in this week for July and August which is great news as July can be a quiet month for us. Looking back over the past few years June and July have always been quiet so it would be good to buck the trend and keep really busy.

This week has been pretty quiet in terms of getting out and about although I did the shoot on Monday in Peterborough and also did a small local shoot on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the week post shoot processing a lot of pictures and I'm now up to date which always feels good.

Does anyone remember the Canon FD series?. I've still got a Canon F1, A1 and T90 with a few really nice lenses but these can't be used on the newer Canon EOS cameras including the digital bodies. They can however be fitted to the Panasonic G1, GH1 and G2 cameras via a cheap adaptor and I've been using my 30+ year old lenses with my new G1 body and they are fantastic. If anyone is looking to get a small digital camera with the ability to change lenses then the G1 is a great piece of kit and it's now down to around £400 including the kit lens.

Here's the good bit - the old Canon FD lenses are dirt cheap on ebay right now and offer serious quality when compared to brand new lenses so I would recommend anyone to buy a couple of old FD lenses and put them onto one of these G1 cameras. A really clean 50mm standard lens can be found for around £20-£30 on ebay and this would work beautifully on the G1.

I'm going to shoot some pictures over the weekend on my old A1 with black and white film as I always find it liberating to shoot film and not rely too heavily on LCD screens and auto focus / auto everything digital cameras.

I've attached a picture in today's blog that I took last month at a gig in Wolverton where my nephew played drums in a band called Lower than Atlantis. I took this shot on my G1 with a lens made in 1976 (Canon FD 35mm F2) with the lens wide open at F2 and the camera ISO set at 1600. OK there is some grain but the picture is pretty sharp considering how poor the lighting was so I reckon these old Canon lenses are well worth buying while they're still cheap!.

2010-06-29T22:31:00.007+01:00

Last week was back to being full on and ultra busy again which is great news and I therefore spent most of the weekend post processing pictures in an attempt to get up to date. I'm pretty much there now although I did have a small shoot near Peterborough this morning which I'll need to work through later tonight.

I had some good feedback today from one of my new clients (the guys who commissioned me to photograph the two large construction sites last week) and it's always great to hear that any client is happy - especially a new one. I've posted a picture from the Bromley By Bow site photography in today's blog.

Work is still hard to find at the moment and I feel lucky that I've managed to keep so busy. Many photographers seem to be very light on work and I'm very grateful to all our regular clients for the continued flow of commissions. Hopefully though the economy will start to really pick up again within the next few months making life a bit easier for every one!.

I like to recommend websites in the blog and today I'm going to give a big thumbs up for photo.net. I love this website and it's free to join which is an added incentive to try it out. You can post questions about all aspects of photography into the forum and also post up your work for critique - here's the link - http://photo.net/

As mentioned above here's a picture from the construction site last week. The brief was to capture all aspects of the building process from foundations to finished flats as the site is huge and has each stage of development going on right now. The shot I've posted is illustrating the health and safety aspect of the site and shows an inspector and the site manager looking over the builders working up on the top of the block of flats. I took the picture with my original EOS5D (not the MK2) and used a lot of fill flash to try to even out the harsh full sunlight.

2010-06-24T23:27:00.008+01:00

Another early start today as I headed up to London for a couple of jobs with my super duper assistant Kirsty. The first job was a corporate headshot which the client wanted on a bright white backdrop. As we were travelling by train I tried to keep all the kit to a minimum but I still needed two camera bags, a tripod bag, a large softbox bag and a very heavy case containing two Bowens flash heads. For the first job I set up the large 6ft x 4ft softbox to act as an illuminated background and used the second flash head as the main light with a silver brolly. I haven't used a brolly for years but it fitted into the tripod bag along with the two lighting stands very well and in fact the lighting looked really crisp so I was very pleased with the setup. I metered the main light source to F8 and metered the large softbox (illuminated background) to F13 giving me a two stop difference between the subject and backdrop which made the rear softbox appear to be perfect white behind the guy I was photographing.

The second job was in the Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell and the client wanted candid action shots of a meeting of architects and designers discussing lighting design in buildings. The pictures will appear in Lighting magazine alongside some transcripts of the discussion that took place.

The meeting was in the basement and the lighting was very dim and dark (rather unfortunate considering the topic of discussion!) in the room so we needed to use some fill flash (via a Speedlight mounted on the camera hotshoe) which we fitted with diffusers and bounced off the ceiling to minimise shadows. The ISO still needed to be set to 800 and the shutter dragged a bit at 1/30th sec to allow enough of the room behind the subjects to read through which avoids that horrible look you sometimes see in Hello magazine etc where the subject is lit with harsh flash and the background is pure black!.

The third job that was pencilled in for tonight has been postponed until next week which was probably a good thing considering how much gear we had to carry around in all that heat.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a start on the mountain of post shoot processing that I have to do and I'm really keen to get at least two jobs out before the close of play.

I've attached a picture of me from the shoot in East London yesterday in an inspection cage hanging below a crane 80m above a building site - I'm not great at heights but I actually enjoyed this strangely enough!.

2010-06-22T19:07:00.009+01:00

Today's shoot in Milton Keynes began at 8am and I didn't finish shooting until 6pm. I was photographing the new housing development at Campbell Square in Central Milton Keynes and my client (who attended the shoot) had a concise brief which meant photographing the various stages of construction on the site. We had some professional models booked to play the part of happy flat owners etc for the shots of the completed flats and the day went really well despite the heat!. The Bowens Travel Pak came to the rescue again today as I needed some powerful flash inside some of the unfinished apartments and the 240V supply wasn't in use so I ran the flash off the battery pack. I also used it outside to provide some fill for the shots in direct sunlight to help reduce the harsh shadows caused by shooting beneath a harsh sun.

Tomorrow I've got a similar shoot in Bromley By Bow (East London) for the same client where we're photographing a building site with various levels of completion. We're starting at 8am again but this time the early start is due to the England match as we think the site will be empty come 3pm.

Thursday is also really busy as I have two small jobs in the morning and an evening shoot - all in Central London. The first job is a basic head shot (portrait) for a website which I'm taking on location in the City, then I'm photographing a small debate from late morning until just after lunch for Lighting magazine. The evening job is a mix of both stills and video and it's of the BT Tower where I need to capture the new LED TV screens right at the top of the tower.

I'm due to be editing some video on Friday too so that makes for a busy week.

Today's picture was taken for the company that made the new street lighting in Central Milton Keynes - War of the Worlds anyone?.

2010-06-17T17:23:00.010+01:00

What a beautiful day we've had today - bright sunshine and a cool breeze..perfect unless your outside taking location shots of some lighting bollards!. It just goes to prove that photographers are a bit like gardeners when it comes to the weather - we're never satisfied!.

I spent the day at Horwood House shooting some brand new lighting bollards which we placed in situ around the gardens and pathways for a catalogue. The direct sunlight was very harsh so I used a 6ft x 4ft diffusing panel which I bought from Calumet a few weeks ago. The panel worked very well in softening the light especially with the chrome finish bollards.

Tomorrow I've got an interior shoot in Peterborough for a new client so I'll take two diffusing panels just in case I need to calm down any daylight spilling in through the windows. I'll also take a flash head or two in case I need to add some fill as I'm photographing hotel bedrooms and they can be very difficult to photograph with dark finishes and bright windows creating a really high contrast range of tones.

I've had a steady stream of new work coming in and we've taken on a few new clients in the past month which is really great news, but I get the feeling companies are still watching their pennies and the economy still has a long way to go before we get clear of this terrible recession. There is still work out there to be had but it's getting harder to find and anyone that sits back on their laurels and doesn't really push to get new clients will find the going very tough. I'm using things like Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, Flickr and this blog to keep my profile as high as possible just to keep things moving along. The radio show I do once a month on BBC Radio Three Counties should be helping too although I never get any work directly from it.

I've found an interesting site called Stumble which is free to join and it basically allows you to type in a topic - say photography - then stumble on new sites with a click of the mouse button. The more sites you rate and stumble upon the more powerful the site becomes - check it out and see for yourself - it's pretty cool. Here's the link http://www.stumbleupon.com/home/

Today's picture is from the shoot with Annalie that I did a couple of weeks ago.

2010-06-14T10:51:00.011+01:00

I'm still wondering how Rob Green let that goal in on Saturday night against the USA!. I started off as a sports photographer back in the late eighties and I've witnessed some big howlers in my time but that one really tops it all. I hope that both England and the USA can get through the group but it looks like Slovenia have stolen a march on us with their win over Algeria.I'm just hoping we don't slip up on Friday again the Algerians - to be honest nothing would surprise me!.

Anyway today I'm currently post processing around 90 product photographs that I took of an office chair for one of my best clients. We're going to use them to create a flickbook style movie showing all the operations of the chair. We recorded the voice over a few days ago and now I need to clean up all the shots and get them over to my editor to finalise the clip. As soon as it's finished I'll upload it to the blog.

I've had another new job in this morning which is a shoot of the BT Tower at night as the top of the tower features some state of the art colour changing LED projectors. I'll be shooting both video and stills and I'm hoping to get access to a couple of roof tops for a better angle on the tower itself. I'll also look to get some street scenes with the tower featuring in the background and I think a video should work very well as I'll be able to capture a flavour of London life at night.

I'm now 99% sure that I'm going to invest in a Mac as I'm doing more video than ever and Final Cut Pro seems to be the program of choice for editing the 5D MK2 footage and it's only available on the Mac. I'm doing some Final Cut Pro training tomorrow to see if I can understand the way the software work - if it feels good and intuitive I'll bite the bullet and go for it.

I'm using Flickr more and more to promote my work these days as it is faster and easier to access than our website. If anyone gets a minute please take a look and let me know what you think - here's the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/redshiftphoto/

Here's link to the final video of the IUCN HQ in Gland Switzerland using my stills and video footage that I took over two visits to site. The editing is superb and was done by Future Labs in Sweden - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAAy5ksS8No

I've posted a picture in today's blog from a shoot at 5 Aldermansbury Square in London - a dusk shot to show the effect of the accent lighting in the reception area.

2010-06-10T14:44:00.003+01:00

The drive up to Leeds and back yesterday was pretty tiring due to some really bad weather but the meeting went really well and I've got a new client with a lot of upcoming work!. The first job for them is next week over in Peterborough. Although work ahas slowed down in the past three months I am getting a lot of enquiries from new clients so I'm sure things are on the up.

I've been post processing the shoot from S Lucas group's new HQ this morning and I'm about to head over to my video editing guy to get the clips that I took there edited into a movie along with some still images and interviews. Video is the way forward I think as more clients want clips on their websites and to post onto You Tube.

I cleaned the sensor on my 5D MK2 yesterday before the video shoot as I've noticed a few nasty marks appearing on the video footage recently. That's easy to cure with still photographs by using the clone tool in Photoshop but with video it is a real problem and takes hours to remove. I need to make sure I clean the sensor regularly to avoid this hassle in the future. It's a bit daunting at first swabbing a sensor in a £2,000 camera but after a while you get quite bold and just go for it.

I've posted a picture in today's blog from the IUCN HQ shoot in Switzerland that I took last month. This is the most environmentally friendly and sustainable building in the world and the video footage and stills I took over two visits have now been edited into a 9 minute video (superbly edited by Future Labs in Sweden!). The video is now finished and on Youtube - here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAAy5ksS8No

The picture I've posted is a portrait of the Architect Hanspeter Oester of AGPS Architects in Zurich.

2010-06-08T22:12:00.004+01:00

I spent the morning shooting some video interviews and some footage of an office interior for a short film I'm making for an office furniture company along with some stills for their website. OK so it's not Avatar but it's been great fun and I'm looking forward to editing the footage on Thursday and Friday!. Some of the footage is a little over exposed - the 5D MK2 is a fantastic camera for stills and video but the LCD screen can be a little misleading when it comes to reviewing footage - I should have put a test clip onto the laptop to check for brightness etc but never mind, I can pull it back slightly in post production.

Then I drove over to my client's showroom near Heathrow and photographed a new office desk (it was too big to take to the studio) and I'll need to cut the desk out and drop it onto a plain background in Photoshop to make it look like a proper studio shot. Sometimes this needs to be done but it's much easier to shoot things in the studio and capture the whole image in one go.

Tomorrow I'm driving up to Leeds for a meeting with another potential new client and there's the chance of a lot of work from them so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes to plan.

I've attached a shot from the shoot at Ropemaker Street from a few weeks ago because I've just included the shot in a PDF portfolio and I really like the feel of the picture with the blurred figure adding some dimension.

2010-06-07T18:44:00.003+01:00

Hi Everyone - Has anyone had a problem accessing the blog lately?. If so please drop me a note via email or via the comments box. I've had some odd emails in today saying my blog is sending out spam but I can't see a problem anywhere here so it's probably yet another scam!.

The internet is so full of people trying to scam you or wreck your website and blog - you'd think they'd have other things to worry about!.

Anyway today was a great day as I had a meeting with a potential new client and came away with two jobs and the promise of more to come if everything goes well. Work is harder to find right now so that's great news.

Tomorrow I've got a video and stills shoot in London followed by a product shoot in the afternoon at one of my customer's showroom near Heathrow.

Then on Wednesday I've got another meeting with a potential new client so I'm hoping this week is going to be a good indicator of things to come!.

I've attached a picture from the shoot at Ozwald Boateng last week. This was on yesterday's entry but I deleted the entire entry after these emails arrived this morning re the spam.

2010-06-01T22:34:00.003+01:00

I post processed a few more of the shots of Annalie from the shoot on Friday this morning as well as some extra shots from a shoot a couple of weeks ago with a model called Jade, then worked through some video clips I shot at an exhibition last week for a short demo movie.

The phone was busy too and we had two new enquiries in which was great news as June and July are often quiet months for me and I really need to keep busy!.

We had some good news on Sunday night too as this years International Masters Cup held the online nomination and winners ceremony. For the second year running I've had a picture nominated in the architectural section which I'm really chuffed about as the competition is intense and there are entries from photographers all around the globe. Here's a link to the nominees page - http://www.thecolorawards.com/presentation1/nominations.php?x=p&cid=72

Tomorrow I'm doing my monthly photography phone in hour on BBC Three Counties Radio with Lorna Milton. I'm on a 2.30pm so give me a call on air if you get the time!.

I've attached a picture from Friday's shoot with Annalie in today's blog. This was taken with my EOS 5D MK2 and 24-105mm F4L lens with a Bowens 500W/s flash head fitted with a small softbox. This was powered by a Bowens Travel Pak battry unit - a really useful piece of kit.

2010-05-29T23:08:00.007+01:00

As a professional photographer I feel a real duty to give my clients the very best pictures that I can from every job I'm commissioned to work on from large commercial buildings to portrait shoots through to pack shots and product photography. The deal is that a true pro should deliver consistent results every time that meet the clients brief and uphold the reputation of the photographer at the same time. I always aspire to this theory and always put my heart and soul into every single job every time. But as any photographer will tell you (those that are honest with you anyway!) you only really capture a small number of really stunning pictures each year - ones where everything comes together and everything just works really well.

I had one of those special days on Friday (yesterday) when I was lucky to spend the day with a very beautiful and energetic model called Annalie. We spent a couple of hours in the studio then headed out onto location and took some shots at one of my favourite haunts on the old railway line at Swanbourne Station. I used the Bowens Travel Pak for the location work - basically a portable battery that lets one use a studio flash head out in the open air.

I've attached a picture from the shoot which I took under the old railway bridge on the Little Horwood to Mursley road (for those of you who are geographically minded) and I converted the colour in Adobe Lightroom to resemble good old fashioned slide film (for those of you who are photographically minded!!).

Tomorrow I'll post one of the studio shots that I took with the Bowens ringflash adaptor.

2010-05-27T21:49:00.003+01:00

I spent most of today sending out a marketing email to each of our clients individually (each one was personalised - I hate those bog standard emails you get that feel so impersonal) detailing a special offer I'm running throughout June and July. These are always quiet months for me so I'm offering a discount if any client books two days photography or more any time in June or July. I haven't tried this before but I want to keep busy through out the summer so I figured I'd give it a try. I've already got several days in the diary for June but any extra work is always a good thing.

I'm also shooting my first viral video in June which will take up a few days and I'm very excited about this. The Canon EOS 5D MK2 (my camera) is being used to create some stunning movies at the moment - if you're interested in DSLR movies check out a guy called Vincent Laforet who's made a film called Reverie which is very arty and romantic (no shooting or bombs going off unfortunately!) but beautifully filmed with a great sound track. You'll find it on Google easily enough and I highly recommend it.......... OK I give up - here's the link :-http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2326

Tomorrow I'm photographing a beautiful lady called Annalie and I'm really looking forward to it - I'll post a picture from the shoot tomorrow night if I get the chance.

In today's blog I've posted another picture of Amy - she looks stunning in this shot.

2010-05-26T12:59:00.006+01:00

It was video time yesterday as I spent the day at the NEC shooting video and stills for a short movie featuring George Clooney......only joking featuring some switch gear components. OK so not the most exciting content but I'm filming it as artistically as possible and hopefully we can edit it creatively and add some exciting effects to improve things even more.

Today I'm post processing the Oswald Boateng shoot from Monday where I photographed their superb designer suit store on Savile Row in London. The interior is very dark and minimalist and I'll need to dodge and burn bits of the interior to really make it look as the eye sees it when you walk in.

Tomorrow is video editing day and then I'm shooting a great looking lady on Friday called Annalie so I'm looking forward to that - we'll do some shots in the studio and out on location too.

I've attached another of the products that I photographed last month as they are now launched and no longer under wraps. As with the product in Monday's blog we wanted a dark and moody look so I used a large softbox very close to the product with a silver reflector on the opposite side to give some fill. The background is a piece of black velvet which is great as it sucks up the light and gives a pure black background as opposed to black Colorama paper rolls that still manage to reflect light!.

2010-05-24T22:40:00.008+01:00

I post processed the pictures from Thursday's shoot at the Army HQ in Andover this morning and I'm really pleased with the results. The building has been refurbished and looks immaculate and on every glass wall and on most of the painted walls there are beautiful graphics and pictures showing scenes from the Battle of the Somme right up to Afghanistan. The new furniture looks great too and I tried to include the wall graphics into the shots to illustrate the fact that the project is for the MOD.

When I walked around the site with the Major and the Brigadier I did mention the fact that I played in a Territorial Army band for a couple of years but I don't think they were terribly impressed!!. Hopefully though they'll be impressed with the pictures.

This afternoon I travelled up to London on the train from Leighton Buzzard station and photographed the interior of Ozwald Boateng the menswear shop on Savile Row. The interior was dark and very minimal but also very stylish and I think the pictures should look good - I'll post one tomorrow if I get them done in time.

Tomorrow I'm working in Birmingham at the NEC where I'm making a short video for an electrical component manufacturer and as I'm now really into video I'm looking forward to filming and editing it.

I've attached a picture from one of last month's product shoots in the studio. At the time the product had not been released and so I couldn't post any of the pictures but now it's launched here it is!. It's called Ratio and is a beautiful street and car park light that has LED's instead of a lamp. The lighting is very moody and I used one main light to camera left with a large softbox, a reflector on the right of the product for fill and a second light bounced off the ceiling to light the fins on top of the product with barn doors attached to stop any light spilling directly onto the product.

2010-05-22T11:33:00.008+01:00

Thursday's job at the new HQ of the British Army at Andover was a really interesting shoot and turned out to be great fun. The brief was to photograph all the new furniture that has been supplied and my client and I were shown around by a Major and a Brigadier!. Both the officers were really helpful and made us very welcome - mainly I think because the furniture looked so good and my client had not only supplied the kit but also built all the tables etc on site and the install went very smoothly.

It was a lovely sunny day too and the drive across to Andover on the A34 from Bicester was really enjoyable so happy days all round!.

On Friday I photographed some LED lighting products in the studio and attended a business lunch in Milton Keynes - one of those networking events. I don't usually like these kind of do's but the Business Live one in MK is pretty laid back and the food is always good so I go when I can.

Last night I photographed a band called Lower Than Atlantis at a gig in Wolverton and although I'm not a heavy metal fan I have to say they were superb and I'm looking forward to processing the pictures.

I've attached another shot of Amy from our shoot last week.

2010-05-19T23:48:00.005+01:00

Yesterday's shoot in Gland (Switzerland) at the new IUCN HQ went very well even though the day began at 4am!. I flew out on the 8.00am flight to Geneva then caught a train from Geneva to Gland. The shoot went really well and my clients Marc and Katie came along to help out. We began by shooting some video interviews with the lead architect on the project, then we shot some stills and video of the building to add to the shots we took last time we visited site back in February. The final video is going to be a 15 minute movie and I saw a rough cut of the film so far yesterday and it looks good. The editing is being done in Sweden and they've made my video work look good so I'm very happy about that!.

I got back home at 11.15pm so it was a long old day but it felt good as I think we did a good job.

This morning I post processed the stills pictures and sent them off to the client (although Yousendit managed to loose the files twice!) then in the afternoon I did a shoot with Amy who is a top video editor, radio program producer with the BBC and very cool model all in one!. We headed down to the disused railway line at Swanboune Station and also the old railway bridge in Winslow and then ended up in a spooky old disused cow shed which has been heavily graffiti ed and left to fall down.

I used my Bowens Travel Pak and 500 W/s flash head to overpower the daylight and to make the afternoon light look like dusk.

Tomorrow I've got a shoot in Andover at the MOD so that should be exciting. I always like driving out in that direction and I hope the sun shines as the scenery out near Oxford is beautiful.

I've attached a picture from today's shoot of Amy in the old cow shed.

2010-05-17T10:46:00.007+01:00

Last week was a bit quieter than normal and I'm hoping that things are going to get back to being crazy again pretty soon.

I spent Friday over at a client's office in Essex shooting a few portraits of a couple of members of staff, then we ran through a video concept I've come up with for a viral video campaign which the client liked and has now signed off. We will start filming in a couple of weeks once I've finalised the script and cast the actors.

Today I'm getting everything ready for another visit to the IUCN HQ in Gland Switzerland tomorrow where I'll be shooting both stills and video for my client. I need to double check everything as it's a there and back in a day job and that means I can't afford for anything to go wrong.

I'm spending Wednesday in the studio working with Amy (a video producer and model) on some video editing then we're heading out for a shoot on location at the disused railway station near Swanbourne.

I've posted a picture of Jade from the shoot on Friday.

2010-05-12T22:39:00.004+01:00

I spent the first part of the day working through some studio shots I took of a lady called Emma who came in for a portfolio shoot a few weeks ago and she's just chosen the pictures for the final edit. I'll post one of the retouched pictures in tomorrow's blog (if I get them finished!).

Then I headed over to the studio where I spent an hour trying to fix the focusing gear mechanism on my 5x4 view camera which involved replacing a couple of tiny screws - simple enough you'd think but it was so fiddly and it took me ages.

My next move was over to Calumet (the camera dealer in Milton Keynes) to return my tripod and shiny new tilt and pan Manfrotto head. I bought the new head a couple of weeks ago to use when I need to shoot video but the bloody thing just wouldn't come off after I used it on a job a few days ago. I've tried loads of times to get it off to no avail and got to the point where I lobbed the whole thing across the floor and called up Dan at Calumet to arrange to return it for some expert help. It was still jammed on yesterday when I last tried so today I finally had a chance to get back to the shop and get it sorted. I walked in, took the tripod out of the bag and said something like "It's well and truly stuck -there's no way it's coming off.." then turned the head to illustrate the point and it unscrewed perfectly!!. I can't explain how that happened but I'm just glad it did.

I've attached a picture in today's blog that I took at the Liverpool One shopping development a couple of years ago. The scheme has been shortlisted for a major award and the picture featured in the Guardian but they cleverly credited my shot to a different photographer!.

2010-05-10T20:36:00.005+01:00

I had a shoot at the National Anti Doping Agency building near Trafalgar Square today which went well and although the interior was quite small I took some good shots for my client who has supplied the furniture through out the building. The Anti Doping Agency are the guys that ban athletes and footballers etc who get caught taking drugs so some areas were sensitive and we weren't allowed to photograph a couple of the offices due to the sensitive nature of their work.

It was great to be back in London again and the UKDA offices are right next to Trafalgar Square. I walked through the Square in the bright sunlight and I realised just how smart London is.

After the shoot I popped in to The Camera Cafe (Aperture) on Museum Street and looked at all the beautiful second hand Leica and Hassleblad kit they have. If I was a millionaire I be buying stuff in there every week. They do have a few famous customers I believe including the great photographer David Bailey and Eric Clapton.

I've attached a picture from the shoot to the blog.

PS Please look me up on Twitter at Redshiftphoto.

2010-05-06T22:01:00.006+01:00

Tonight I photographed a charity fashion show for a small charity called Mercy in Action who raise money for children living in terrible conditions in the Philippines. They have three charity shops near to where I live and I've got to know them as I often buy clothes from them for the studio and location shoots that I do with models when we want to ruin the dresses or distress them a bit!. I also donated a studio shoot to the auction and that raised another £50 which was great.

Yesterday I spent the day with a client planning a viral video and advertising campaign which I'm very excited about. I've got some ideas for a 30 second advert which I will film and direct and we're hoping to start filming within the next month. It's going to be a bit risque so should be fun to make!.

Tomorrow I'm back in the studio again photographing some more still life shots for Arcangel - a European agency that sell pictures to paperback book publishers. They like shots of rusty padlocks and blood stained knives etc as their main market is the novel and fiction sector.

I've posted a picture from tonight's event -the lighting was very poor but some fill flash helped to save the day. The models were all volunteers and had never walked the catwalk before so I think they all did really well.

2010-05-03T09:00:00.005+01:00

I had a late night in the studio on Saturday as I did a shoot for a young lady's birthday and she came along with three of her mates and her Mum and Dad for a studio session. We started at 8.30pm and went through until around 11pm. The great thing about working at the weekend is that I can run the stereo up to full tilt so the place rocked and we got some really good shots of the girls which were full of energy.

I used a basic three flash setup with two heads fitted with long strip softboxes lighting the white backdrop and one flash mounted on a boom above the girls fitted with a large softbox for the key light. We also used two 6ft x 4ft silver panels to add some extra softness for some of the shots.

Yesterday I took my old but much loved Canon F1 out for a shoot loaded with black and white film. I took lots of portraits of Harry my son which I will get developed today and I'll post one in the blog tomorrow. It's always great to load up a roll of film and the old Canon FD cameras feel so chunky and solid and the lenses are lovely and smooth to focus.

I'm heading back into the studio tomorrow to shoot some product photography on the 5x4 view camera so I'll be using film again.

I've attached a picture from the Shoot on Saturday night taken with my Canon EOS 5D MK2 and 24-105mm F4 L Lens.

2010-04-29T23:24:00.008+01:00

I finally caught up with all the post processing today - hooray!.

The Compton Street Sports Centre project (Little Venice Sports Centre) took longer than I thought and many of the final pictures were blended together to capture the full range of brightness (HDR imaging) which always takes a lot longer than processing standard pictures.

The Canon 5D MK2 does hold a lot of detail in the shadow areas so in some cases I can underexpose the overall picture and then pull out extra detail in the darker areas during post processing but in extreme cases I still use HDR or layer blending to put back any lost highlights. In the case of the Compton Street project the ceiling in the gym was very bright in the correctly exposed picture so I took a much darker shot and put that detail back to make the photograph look as the eye would see the scene. I've attached one of the gym shots to today's blog to show the effect I'm talking about.

I've been looking through the raw video footage I shot last week at the furniture installation job in Wrotham and the 5D MK2 produces stunning video output when shot in full HD mode. The picture is so sharp and clear and this opens up so many opportunities for photographers and videographers alike. If anyone is reading this and is thinking of buying the 5D MK2 or 7D with a view to video production I would recommend it without any hesitation.

After finishing my post production work I spent the rest of the day researching some potential new clients that I want to approach - mainly architectural practices in and around London. The competition is pretty intense when you start to approach the big practices like Richard Rogers (now Rogers Stirk Harbour) but you just have to keep chipping away. I'm lucky in that I've worked with Richard Rogers Architects before so that does help but it's still hard work to gain new clients. Marketing is the downfall of many photographers and it's hard to find time to really sit down and focus on new potential clients but I do try whenever I get a spare afternoon to come up with new companies to approach.

On the topic of new customers I'm looking to get a new printed book portfolio sorted out but in the meantime I'm looking to buy a new A3 printer so I can update my current portfolio. My Canon i9100 seems to be working OK but it's a few years old and the new Epson A3 printers are supposed to be very sharp and able to produce exhibition quality prints. I just need to get Melanie to sign off the £650 I need to buy one!.

I've attached an HDR shot of the gym as mentioned earlier in the blog.

2010-04-28T23:51:00.007+01:00

I've almost finished the post processing on the Little Venice Sports Centre project from last week - it's taken me a while because there's quite a few HDR (high dynamic range) pictures involved and those take a long time to process and tweak properly.

A couple of interesting enquiries came in today - one for a commercial property agency and one from a cake making company looking for shots of their cakes for their website. I don't specialise in food photography but I have done some before so was happy to quote for the job.

I've learned over the years to stick to what I'm good at and sometimes I will turn down a job if I think it's something I can't do really well.

I'm on the lookout for a ladies clothing boutique to work with at the moment as I've got a lot of ideas for fashion pictures but need someone to supply the clothing. Getting models and make up artists is pretty straightforward but I need someone with a flair for clothing to help me out with the wardrobe side of things. If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

I've attached a simple shot from the studio shoot on Monday - it's a montage of colour swatches for the chair that I photographed and was a grab shot right at the end of the session. Katie my client loved the shot and it's going to be used in their catalogues and in their furniture showrooms around the country.

2010-04-26T21:01:00.005+01:00

One of my best clients is a manufacturer of high quality furniture and today Katie and Tom came along to my studio with one of their high tech office chairs. We photographed the chair from every angle with a view to putting together a video clip made up of stills (a bit like the old fashioned flick books) to show all the movements and functions available. These chairs can be altered a lot via several different movements and the video is a trial run which will be rolled out across the range and used worldwide if we get the nod from the HQ in Sweden. We did think about shooting full HD movie footage but this doesn't allow for any error and the chair would need to be operated very smoothly and in a slick way (difficult when you're being filmed) so we decided a series of stills would be the way to go. It was a challenge but I'm pleased with the stills we got so the video should come together well. I bounced a flash head off the back wall and used a large softbox to camera right as fill for the wide shots (as per the one attached to today's blog) and I used a ringflash with a second flash bounced off the rear wall for the close up detail shots to provide a flat shadow free illumination.

I did have two of my other clients coming in for a portrait session later today but one of the guys has come down with this nasty sickness bug so that's been postponed.

I'm finishing off the mountain of post processing work tomorrow then I'm scheduled to have a shoot in London on Wednesday at a community centre but we're still waiting for the final permission from the council to go ahead.

We had a new commission in today to photograph a store called Ozwald on Saville Row in London in mid May and I'm looking forward to that already.

I also offered to photograph a charity fashion show in Newport Pagnell on May 6th in aid of a charity shop in Winslow and I'm also giving away a free studio shoot with prints (ie no hidden costs unlike some so called freebies!) as a prize in the auction.

I've attached a shot of the office chair from the shoot today and will post a link the the video when it's done.

2010-04-23T07:46:00.012+01:00

It's been a mega busy week and as a result I've missed a few blog entries - apologies to anyone out there who likes to keep up to date with the world of Redshift!!. Joking apart I like to keep the blog well up to date so I don't like missing too many entries.

I had a full day in the studio on Tuesday with two very contrasting jobs. Firstly an artist came in with a series of paintings she's done of teddy bears which I photographed for her for use on her website and in a brochure. We photographed them in their frames and the only problem I had to overcome was reflections in the glass. I bounced a single flash head off the rear wall of the studio and had a large black screen resting on my back which effectively reflected back in the glass removing any bright unwanted reflections. The results were very good and Louise the artist went home happy!.

Then in the afternoon I photographed some very high tech lighting bollards (the type of thing you see around footpaths and car parks). I had to photograph these with the light on and off which complicated things a bit. I lit these very differently to the paintings and used a large softbox mounted very close to the bollard with a black velvet backdrop and a large silver panel on the opposite side to the softbox. I then used a second reflector above the bollard to light the detail on the top. The pictures looked good and gave the impression the client wanted when we met to discuss the brief.

On Wednesday I was back in London again - this time photographing the new Little Venice Sports Centre. This is a beautiful modern building designed with very environmentally friendly materials and my brief was to photograph the interior through-out the building. I really love this kind of building with lots of unfinished concrete surfaces, natural pine cladding and loads of daylight. I enjoyed the shoot very much and I did try to upload a blog entry from site but my laptop wasn't having any of it.

Thursday began with an early morning shoot in Wrotham near Maidstone (7.30am early!) and I was back working for one of my regular clients who manufacture beautiful office furniture. We photographed and video'd the installation of their furniture in a small office which will be used as an online case study. We're going back again in a few weeks to photograph the finished office interior with people working in the space and to complete a couple of video interviews. That took us all morning then we drove into London to photograph a showroom very close to Oxford Street. The drive from Maidstone to Oxford Street took nearly two hours and it's only 20 miles...

I've been working from 7.00am this morning as I'm well behind with my post processing work and I needed to start early as I've got a St George's Day lunch in Milton Keynes which is part of a local business networking event.

I've posted a picture from a product shoot in the studio last week.

2010-04-19T18:46:00.005+01:00

I caught the train down to London today for a shoot at Vauxhall Primary School near the Oval cricket ground in London. It was a big Victorian school that has been recently refurbished with some very modern and clean suspended fluorescent lighting fittings manufactured by one of my clients. The kids were away today so I had a free reign to snap away and I spent around 4 hours capturing the best classrooms and corridor areas. It was a challenge as I had to move lots of books and posters etc around to make sure each shot looked tidy but I'm pleased with the pictures and I'll post one later in the week.

London looked great today in the sunshine and everyone seemed pretty happy - people even smiled at each other on the tube!.

I popped in to Calumet (a large camera dealer in Drummond Street next to Euston station) and I bought a new fluid head for my tripod which is designed to make panning very smooth when shooting video. I also bought a proper microphone for my 5D MK2 as I'm shooting a big office on Thursday and we'll be doing some movie clips and interviews as well as the stills. I made the mistake of using the in-camera microphone last time and the sound was pretty poor so this time around things will be much better!.

It's all expense but video is really becoming important to my clients so I need to have the best kit I can get.

Tomorrow I'm shooting some products in the studio which will be fun - I'm really into product photography and I'm using a black velvet backdrop tomorrow and lighting the products like I would a glamour model to give a really moody feel to the pictures. I've already shot some for the same client in this way and I'll post some of the pictures up once the products are released and on sale - at the moment they are still under wraps.

I've attached one of my favourite pictures from last week's shoot at Middleton Circle Library.

2010-04-16T22:56:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I had a shoot at a government building in Westminster for a commercial lighting company who had supplied new ultra efficient recessed office lights as part of an initiative to save energy. We did before and after shots on different floors of the building and the new lighting was not only more efficient but also far more attractive to look at. The only problem was that the new lights had a high surface brightness as they were basically opaque plastic diffusers and therefore the only way to show any detail in the fittings themselves was to shoot a range of exposures for each final picture and blend the lights back in to the shot in Photoshop. This is a long winded and tricky method but it works very well for pictures with a high contrast range.

Today I photographed a huge new comprehensive school in Cheshunt (just off J25 of the M25) and it took me nearly 5 hours to photograph. The job went well though and it was good to finish off the week with a busy couple of days.

Next week is very busy too with three shoots in London and a day in the studio. I've now gone from being pretty quiet (last week) to being mad busy again - if only I could spread jobs out a bit more!.

I shot a load of Chromogenic film (black and white film that is developed in the standard colour process) last week and picked up the results today from Costco. They are only family snaps but the results were good and it's reminded me to shoot more film. I used my old Canon FD kit and the quality is really nice plus they put the pictures onto CD as well as developing and printing them so that means I don't have to spend ages fiddling around in Photoshop to get the best out of the pictures. If I'm taking pictures to print for albums etc I still prefer film as digital capture always needs to be tweaked in Photoshop to get the best results for printing and for me that's time and hassle I don't need.

I've attached another picture of Emma from last Saturday's session in the studio.

2010-04-13T22:38:00.004+01:00

It's 10.40pm and nearly finished for the day. I managed to complete all the remaining post processing on the library job and sent the pictures over to the architect via Yousendit.com a really useful FTP site. Then I arranged Thursday's shoot in London and I'm really pleased that my mate and assistant Kirsty is coming along to help. She's very organised and gets me to places in one piece and she's a very good photographer in her own right too so she's a handy kind of person all round!!.

Tonight I've edited down the studio shoot from Saturday from 500+ pictures to around 130 or so. That's still way too many but not bad for a first and second edit. I'll look again in the morning with fresh eyes and will narrow it down to 50 or so to send to Emma to choose from.

Tomorrow I'm back in the studio again working on some more product photography and then I need to practice lighting an office chair for a demo video clip I'm starting work on next week. I want to make sure I know how to light a sample chair properly before my client comes in next week with the real thing.

I've uploaded a picture today that I've entered in to this year's Masters Cup. The nominees and winners are being announced live online this Sunday and after being nominated last year I'm really hoping for the same again or maybe even a win but the competition is fierce and a lot of very good photographers from around the world enter. I don't go in for competitions much because I don't get time to enter them but I do like the format for the Masters Cup. Check out the website at http://www.thecolorawards.com/