skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Scary, but pretty. Reminds me too much of the Triffids.
- Shooting a Metropolitan Police Special Constable up in Islington for Men's Health Bespoke. It's just like Men's Health, only it fits you better.
- Driving up to Stoke to the Wedgewood museum and factory, to photograph the work in progress on a the Trophy for the National Golf Club Challenge and portraits of the organiser for Golf Monthly. If it comes off it should be a huge event.
- Bit of dancing, bit of running, friend's birthday party, usual social stuff.
- Big Pancake party at mine, slightly late due to being abroad on the day itself.
- Took a trip down to Kew with my young lady to check out the last day of the Tropical Extravaganza. Awesome, frankly.
- After being in denial for a very long time, finally admitting that I've got a problem with my back/shoulders/neck etc, almost certainly caused by heaving heavy gear in and out of the car, up and down stairs and so on for so many years. Am off to see the osteopath this afternoon, and whilst I don't expect an instant cure he will at least set me on the right track, and tell me what I shouldn't be doing!
Approaching the Thames Barrier - just after they'd opened it.- Driving up to Durham to photograph Daniel Singh and "Brutus Magnus" for Men's Fitness. A great couple of guys, and I was very impressed with their professionalism and their performances. Mind you, I still think wrestling is a little silly, but I doubt I'd say it to their faces!
- Bit of dancing, bit of squash, the usual, really.
- Snapping lots of runners in training for the London Marathon down at St Mary's for Runner's World. All good fun, though slightly spoiled by England getting beaten by Ireland in the Rugby straight afterwards.
- Going on another RIB Voyage, this time down to, and through, the Thames barrier. Absolutely fantastic fun - I swear we jumped clear of the water a couple of times. I'm pretty sure my Aunt and Uncle (both in the 70's) enjoyed it too, although they seemed a little more nervous than my girlfriend and I!
- Taking the portfolio out again. This is almost becoming a habit.
- Shooting a year's worth of Golf instruction stuff for Golf Monthly over in Gran Canaria, from very early Monday morning until very early Saturday morning. All good fun, thanks to a very professional and entertaining crew, but very hard work thanks to foul weather (torrential rain and hurricane force winds) and grumpy German Golfers. If you'd paid 75 euros to play a round of golf, as well as lord knows how much to travel to the Island and stay in a nice hotel, you could at least pretend to be enjoying yourself!
- Spending most of this morning wandering the very pretty hills of Surrey to shoot a race report for Men's Fitness. Quite hard work since the event involved orienteering, rather than a fixed route. No great challenge for me to find my way about, as I'm pretty handy with an OS map, but a bit difficult when you've been told the best place to get shots, yomp over there, hang about, and then find that 95% of people have picked a different route. Harrumph. And to the charming local resident who pulled up in his Range Rover as we were leaving, yes I'm sure we did have permission to be there, and it happens to be a public bridleway, but by all means tell the Parish Council about us. And whilst you're doing it would you mind sticking your head up your arse and then setting fire to it? Thank you so much. Apologies if I sound a little grumpy, I'm very, very tired, and people with more money than sense would be better served staying at home, reading the Daily Mail and adding to their collection of Nazi memorabilia. I was so tempted to let his tyres down when he went off to walk his dog, but feared the wrath of the parish council if I did so.
- Shooting the wise, venerable and generous editor of Golf Monthly, down in the basement of the IPC building, which meant putting the car in a lift - very exciting indeed, even though I've done it before.
- Photographing Bill Morgan at a hotel in Cambridge. No, I didn't know who he was either, but he's the fella who invented the Titleist Pro V1 Golf ball, which since it's invention has become the most popular ball in the history of Golf. And he was a lovely chap too.
- Going dancing a couple of times.
- Going to see Avatar at the Imax. In case you're one of the few people who hasn't seen it yet, don't bother. It's an hour and half too long, and the script gets steadily worse throughout the film. Liked the references to Aliens though, reminded me of when James Cameron could direct!
- Photographing 5 guys from the European Long Drive Tour on the Runway at London City Airport, to promote the launch of the 2010 Muscular Dystrophy 4 course challenge. I photographed the 2009 event with Golf Monthly and Rob Bonnet, and was very happy to help out again. Besides which, I got to drive my car down the runway, and watch balls being belted towards Canary Wharf.
There they go, carelessly belting balls at incoming planes. It's a miracle no one was hurt!- Heading back to my folks, so that my girlfriend and I could cook them a meal to say thanks for feeding us all Christmas long. Emma makes a mean Mango Yoghurt Lassi, and we were rewarded with a roast dinner at the local farm.
- Photographing an extremely impressive bloke who's paralysed in his right leg, but is still attempting a Double Ironman this summer. That's a 5 mile swim, 250 Mile Bike ride, and a 52 mile run. I feel humbled.
- Nearly winning the pub quiz. Joint first, got the same answer in the first tie break question as the other team, but then lost out on the 2nd tie breaker. Gutted.
- Having a very pleasant roast venison dinner with all my siblings up in North London, followed by some cheese and booze in Islington for Cassie's birthday.
- Managing to go dancing twice, once to lessons, and once to a band night at Jitterbugs.
- Taking the portfolio out. Quite proud of myself for that actually, as I never get round to it!
- Having a very enjoyable day yesterday doing a roadshow day for the London Strobist Group at Calumet Drummond Street. It made a nice change to be doing it for a group other than students, and they were a very keen, proficient, friendly and animated group. We raised over £300 for the Street Football League, which is cool. And then England beat Wales in the Rugby and my day was complete! You can read a bit more about the day here and here.
Kettering, February 1993. The floppy hair, the youthful skin, the charity shop clothes, ah, it's all just a distant memory. Apart from the charity shop clothes...
Break out the cake and the candles, I'm 17 today. Sort of.
On the 1st of February 1993 a very fresh faced and keen 15 year old went along to the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph on Northfield Avenue in Kettering to start 2 weeks of work experience in the photographic department. With the exception of a couple of very bleak moments during my assisting years, I've never looked back since!
Besides treating myself to a small tipple this evening in celebration, I thought I'd share the love a bit with a little photographic cheat I've just discovered. I know how no matter how much I go on about professionalism, business and creativity, all anyone really wants to hear about is technical stuff, so here you are. You soulless, nerdy lot!
A while back I spotted these rather natty straps from America, and thought, like a lot of people "what a good idea". I seem to go through straps fairly regularly shooting as much and in the manner that I do. Plus I've never found one that's really comfortable and doesn't result in getting 3kg of camera in the guts if I ever run anywhere. I initially thought of buying one of these straps, but at the time they weren't shipping to Europe, and ordering things from the states is just too much hassle for me.
There it is, a very natty, and considerably more comfortable new strap. Cost to me - effectively £0.
Then a few months ago I was in Calumet, as I often am, and spotted one of these. Very tempted was I, all that put me off was the £50 price tag. I mean, it's a nylon strap and a clip for crying out loud! I'm on a mission to cut back on buying that sort of thing, as I've a nasty habit of putting a few "bits and pieces" on my account, then wondering why my monthly bill is so hefty!
In a manner very similar to putting together the Credit Crunch Softbox, I had a sudden flash of inspiration yesterday afternoon. I realised I'd got a few old straps lying around in bags (several as it turned out) and at least one spare manfrotto quick release plate. 10 minutes later I had a very comfortable camera strap that will undoubtedly be more useful when I'm shooting action stuff.
Where do they all come from? I haven't even taken any off my camera bags, just rummaged through my gear cases!
Now don't get me wrong, I realise mine's not as good as either of the 2 proper ones, but it's easily 75% as good, and just like the softbox, it's effectively free, as I already own all the bits. I'd wager that most people will have a couple of the straps knocking around from an old camera bag or two, and a quick release plate costs all of £13. That means more money to spare to spend on my Birthday Celebrations!
When I'm travelling round the country and lecturing at colleges, there are many little gems of information that I try and pass on to the students. I always try and work from either my own experience or that of those close to me, rather than just passing on rumours I've heard. Call me old-fashioned, but I just feel it's a bit more valid if I've actually got something to back it up with!
One little detail that I often mention is email addresses, and how important they can be. I'm not a big name photographer, and yet I still get half a dozen emails a week from people wanting assisting work and/or work experience. Besides the sometimes impenetrable spelling and grammar of some of these requests there's occasionally something else that relegates certain emails to the recycle bin before I respond to them, and that's the email address itself!
When you're 12 years old or so, and get an email address, signing up for "lovebunny35@hotmail.com" is quite amusing. Likewise, if you're 18, "spunkylovebucket69@yahoo.com" brings quite a chuckle to your mate's face when it lands in their inbox. However, to those of us in the professional world, it doesn't create quite the right impression! A colleague of mine at Calumet always refers at this point to an email he once received from a photography student who was enquiring after some work. Her email address was, and I quote:
"youngblackgirltakesitfrombehind@...com"
Which almost brings a tear to the eye!
I came across a blog post just recently which reminded me of this, as I've been meaning to mention it for ages. It's such a simple thing, yet it can be so enormously off putting that it's very careless not to take care of it.
Don't think that the only solution is to pay for your own domain name and email server, just get an email address that's not embarrassing! The signup for Yahoo and Googlemail are very quick and straightforward (I've been with googlemail for 5 years, and can very highly recommend them), and even if you end up with "your name/photo 365" it'll be better than "jizzmonkey".
Rant over, return to your work.
Posts
