Mirenda Rosenberg

One of the best shoots of 2008, I'm glad it happened on many levels. Mainly that it re-affirmed that it's photography that I love doing. Economic downturns and the rest can be put to one side and I can shoot some pictures.

Mirenda and her band scoured the social networks and looked through about 30 portfolios of photographers... they liked the way I worked and the questions I asked. Within a week were doing the shoot.

One of the most important things to note with singers and musicians in general. They are different characters offstage compared to onstage. The first set of images just didn't work mainly due to the amount of light that I had available. The second set, at the bar, just clicked straight away as Mirenda and I started talking about music. "Do you have a completely different, act/character, on stage as opposed to offstage? You do, can you the onstage character now?". The shoot changed 100% and the list of moves and poses just got bigger and bigger.

Nothing's final in the music game but the mock up of the CD cover I did looks promising. One diffused SB-800 at waist level hence the "Scooby Doo" shadow in the background. The hand gestures were very important, having the hands doing something improves any photo no end.

Office move and Platon audio.

I decided to move the office a few weeks ago but just haven't really had the time to do it. So I've been doing it bit by bit. The photo was taken once I got the office how I wanted it, not pictured is the bomb site of the old office where there's ten tonnes of paperwork I need to go through.

As it stands, it won't look like in a weeks time.

To celebrate actually getting stuff moved I listened to Platon's talk which is on Vincent Laforet's blog. It's excellent, very very very good. You can listen to it too by clicking here (you'll need Quicktime installed).

The most high pressured scariest gig of all my time as a photog....

And it was an absolute hooooooot to do.

Yup, you guessed it. Photographing my daughters nativity play rehearsal for the local school.

This gig is made all the more scary when you daughter's mates are pointing and saying to my little one, "isn't that your daddy?". The cheshire cat's grin was smaller.

So, the best part of 80 kids: shepheards, three kings, snowflakes, sheep, cows, angels, percussionists, Rangifer tarandus :) ,one clumsy angel and a baby Jesus.

I don't think I've laughed so much in ages.

Take 18 Firemen....

Limavady Fire Brigade, they do a brilliant job, end of story. Getting all 18 of them in the same room at the same time takes some organisation.

Only one day in October could we get all of them to sync for a ten minute time frame for a photo. I had a bunch of ideas but with drills and the rest of it, it just never happened.

Watching them stop the traffic in Limavady just to turn two tenders around for a photo, well that was fun.

Lighting wise it wasn't easy, there was a dozen misses and only a few hits. The strip lights causing most of my nightmares (you can see their reflections in the windscreens of the tenders, I would have needed to hang some serious amount of black cloth to kick those out*). If anything more light, much more light, would have done the trick. But we have what we have, and what we do with it is what counts.


So, Fuji S5 with an SB800 running bare.

*Note to self: get thirty foot by ten foot of black cloth.

They joys of manipulation.

When I got back into photography seriously I took one look at Photoshop and started doing mad stuff with it.

Ooooh look we can replace the darkroom. Well not quite, but not far off.

Over time I moved away from the computer stuff and worked hard on getting it right in the camera. Obviously there are times when you just can't do that.

I took a photo of a subway, in the late night, just for something to do. Then I had the idea of using a catwalk image and coming up with some urban catwalk theme.

Photoshop shines! I forgot how much fun it was.

SB-800 R&D with Creative Lighting System

Saturday morning was a bit of an R&D morning. As I still have Ali's SB-800 and a fresh set of AA's I thought I'd rig up a portrait session to work on some light positions.

The background is my 1.5m x 2m foldy-upy thing (it's more like wrestling a wireframe but once you get the technique it's okay), a piece of white card to the "model's" left (camera right) and an SB-800 as a remote flash on 1/64th power (controlled from the camera) camera left pointing 45 degrees. Fire test shots weren't too bad. The S5 was on 80th second @ f4.

Not a bad start but it's a bit dark.

Better. I kept with the flash at 1/32nd power and put a muslin square in front to act as a diffuser. You'll notice the the hair is reflecting back a little, I want to reduce that... so bring on the muslin squares (once used on infant duties a few years ago but duely washed since, it now stays in my case of bits: snoots, clamps, Fong Lightsphere, Lee Filters, notebook and puke cloth).

Quality wise a much better result, if I were truely not bothered I'd take the CF card and bring the image up in Photoshop/Lightroom and dial another stop of light in there. Personally I like o get things right in camera to reduce post production.

As I was expecting the muslin ate about a stop of light, no problems, just dial in some more flash power from the camera. To compensate I dialled the flash to 1/16th power and put the diffuser up again (via a knitting needle and two plastic A clamps).

To get a starting point this took all of five minutes to sort out. Now I can concentrate on the session of while the model didn't utter a word all day.....

Opportunities come and go, don't miss them!

I don't carry my camera around with me enough at the moment. And when driving I'm usually saying to myself, "I could have got that one", "Oh that looks cool" or "Look at the colours!.....".

These times very rarely repeat themselves, be prepared and these images will come to you, have a camera with you and you'll be able to record them for all to see.

Once in a moment shots never come back. I was in a press conference with His Holiness the Dalai Lama last year, he was a keynote speaker at the Children In Crossfire conference in Londonderry. All us press photogs were crammed at the front, the odd flash would go off and it never once phased him or his flow where the answers were concerned. At the end His Holiness stood up, posed for the press. Everyone wanted to touch him, shake his hand.

Then there was this little lad. He had a present, the photogs were all piling out of the building to get to the front door where an amassed throng had gathered. The young chap presented it to His Holiness, who duely opened it to see the contents, gave the lad a huge hug and then span him around to find the first photographer.... Which happened to be me, His Holiness didn't say a word just raised his eyebrows at me directly, which is the international call sign for, "can you take this photograph please". I rattled off a couple of frames and then they left.

The moment that presented itself, a split second that was giving to me, they don't happen often. You need to know your camera well (Nikon D50 at the time, AP, at f5.6 and let the flash and the Fong Lightsphere do the work).

The sign of the times

It looks like freelance photographers are finding it tough. My bookings for local press basically fell through the floor during October. The reason was quite simple, advertising revenue is well down on this time last year and in order to cut back the papers are literally culling any lose expenditure.

The staff photogs are now basically expected to reschedule any events that come up on their days off. If you have a cheque presentation and it's on the photographer's day off then you'll be expected to rearrange it. Not so easy when you have the Mayor/dignatory/celebrity turning up, but some things can't be avioded.

Talking to other freelance professionals (and not just in photography) the same thing is happening all over the place. Freelancers are being squeezed out. It's time to find those niche markets where staffers can't tread.

Handy portrait background when you don't really have one...

...especially if you are doing a portrait shoot in an office.

Had the camera, flashes, bounce cards and the rest but I didn't have my sheet to hand. No matter. I found the perfect background, pure white and untouched. A flipchart holder, perfect it was and as the client didn't use the white dry marker board it was unmarked.

The portrait didn't need anything doing to it just a touch of curves to take the ever-so-slight-but-I'm-a-pedant-pink cast on the skin.

Job done.

The Writers Group

During the NWLLA shoot last week I popped in to photograph the writing group. Time wasn't on my side so I kept it short. The group shot didn't take long to put together but I had another idea in my head as well.

A couple of more flashes and I could have done things differently. As my portable backdrop system (or a large sheet as it's more commonly known) was already in use there was little I could do to the background. Lightroom toned the whole thing down so it's not so noticable.

Jude Nabney and the Magic Party

Should be the name of a band...

For those of you who have seen my website the model from the fashion section is Jude Nabney, she's been called Northern Ireland's version of Agyness and very good on the catwalk. I photographed her at Belfast Fashion Week in March this year and turned out some of the best pictures in my portfolio.

On BBC2 last night, in Northern Ireland, was a programme call "The Magic Party" where someone is given a party with a DJ and magician. First in the series and the recipient of the party was Jude. Intermingled with shots of the same catwalk I was photographing.

I ended up on "NI Wags" a few months back through no fault of my own, just a snapshot of me photographing the catwalk at the 2007 Foyleside Fashion Show. It was a bad edit at that as I didn't photograph that section that they were showing, I was edited in! Everyone in the area thought I had the life of lucky man. I had to tell them different.

The programme was okay, not my cup of coffee, but I do have to say that the magician on it, Dynamo, was brilliant.

NWLLA - The community commercial shoot.

8:45am - I arrive at Northwest Lifelong Learning Association. Home to good training (I did all my bookkeeping stuff there), good coffee and excellent people. They've become firm friends over the years. Today though, it's a lot of photography in a short space of time.

• Head shots of each trainer.
• A full group shot
• A group shot of technical staff
• A group shot of office staff
• A group shot of volunteers

All this in an hour.

NWLLA is always a buzz of activity and getting the right person at the right place at the right time is difficult, nigh on impossible.

So, one training room has a sheet as a background. I kept the flash on camera with a bounce card and basically got the trainers to line up. Once a group was available I'd take them out to the front and get the group shot done.

A quick head and a notebook. Post production in lightroom to blow out the background on the portraits and the job's done. The actual shooting time was less than 45 minutes.

Jason Bell Photography Youtube Channel

Oh I finally caved in.....

http://uk.youtube.com/user/jasonbellphotography

I experimented with putting a small slideshow together of the Foyle Fashion Week images and narrowing down from 400+ final images to 23 for a slideshow was hard work. My only gripe now is the quality of the images coming out, something about video resolution when I upload the video I think.

Happy enough for a first attempt but if anyone has a clues on making those video images SHARP then I'd love to hear from you.

The Lawyers of Limavady

My final photocall of Friday night was with the gathering of the Limavady legal community, it was a retirement dinner and it was a dickie bow do.

So 19 lawyers, one large table in a smallish room. Oh you have to laugh. One of the hotel staff passed and I went up to him, "is there anyway we can move this table?". He just looked and laughed, "I'm afraid not". That was the end of that. I did a quick check in the viewfinder, it looked okay with the table cloth in so I went for it.

Arranging two groups of nine, putting the retiree in the middle, wasn't such a bad move on my part. And considering that I had less than five minutes to get the shot done, I was happy with it. The table cloth ended up being a useful reflector from the underside just lifting the shadows out of all those chins.

Thank goodness for tables cloths.

The eye test

I had my 18 month eye test today, not too sure what to expect but I was getting some odd results from one of my cameras and I didn't know if it was me or not. So I thought I better get it checked out.

Instead of my right focusing eye getting worse from over use, it's actually getting better and the new lens is not as strong. Surprised me for sure. I'm definately happy about it.

Current reading: Richard Branson - Business Stripped Bare

My daughter was desperate to get something for my birthday. The Doug Wimbish CD's had arrived from my parents, my sis sent the guitar clock so all in all I was already happy.

Little one and my beloved had been plotting which involves whispering and giggling. At 3:30am (see that, AM, the morning) Little one was so excited she woke up and wanted to give me my first present, a pair of Sharpie pens, with the extra fine nibs that I haven't been able to find. The other present (which came at a more manageable 7:30am) was the new book by Richard Branson. I've got three books by Branson and they are all brilliant.

A good day.

You've seen one side of the catwalk, now see the other.

Robin Karnstaedt was photographing with Converse Communications who organised Foyle Fashion Week. The life of the photographer is oft lonely when waiting around and trying to get light balances right. So Robin and I traded. In order for him to test out his new flash bounce card he took some photographs of me. No problem.

Later he took one of me at my office (the hotel's stepladder).


And then I noticed what he was doing.....

No doubt they'll find their way on to Facebook, Bebo and the like.

Foyle Fashion Week - Thursday

A much better evening catwalk. A break in the middle just broke the evening up nicely and gave the audience a bit of time to run to the bar and back again. Perfect.





The catwalks were much more fluid tonight, a couple of them really shone. Highlights in terms of collections were the finalists of the Fashion Academy and Jarayd F's new season of stuff. The Fashion Academy designs were brilliant, my fave still being the paper creation that took the poor lass SIX MONTHS to make and took me 1/125th of second to photograph.



The aftershow party at the Red Rooms was good, I did feel a little old but nothing to worry about. People who want their photo taken jump in front of the camera and when they get bored you can usually get the feel that the end of the night is nigh.

Foyle Fashion Week - Wednesday

Ahoy there, perched from my high step ladder.....

When are press guys going to realise that using flash ain't gonna cut? :)

I had an enjoyable time during the first catwalk last night. But with no break it was a long night aloft the steps (kindly blagged from the hotel by Rosemary Wright, make up artist and step blagger).

With no break I ended up using both the S5 and D50 so there wasn't any downtime. Tonight I've asked for a ten minute break to give my feet time to recover.

The event was well received and I'm hoping it will become a regular thing. Converse did a good job on putting all this together.

Well done guys!

So, the preparation: camera's, clients and the rest.

Okay, here's the basic run down before any large catwalk shoot I do.

The Camera

I take two cameras, the main camera is my Fuji S5 Pro and the backup is a Nikon D50. Everything is zeroed-out and ready to go (memory cards formatted, White Balance set to cloudy (but more on that in a minute) ISO set to ISO100 for the S5 and ISO200 for the D50 and the mode is put to AP (Aperture Priority).

Make sure:

• Memory cards are formatted


• Lenses are clean


• White Balance is usable (we don't want 300 pics in lovely blue cast, do we!)


• Batteries are fully charged and bring the fully charge spares (if you have them)

Catwalks vary from place to place. Some have no platform, some do. Lighting varies immensely as well and I try to make a few phone calls and get some information a few weeks before the show happens. With Foyle Fashion Week for example we met in the location and ran through setups, where the runway was and access etc. Whatever the weather, no flash on catwalk please. Get the fastest lens you can afford. I carry a 50mm f1.8 prime lens religiously in my bag. I borrowed a 50mm 1.4 for the very first catwalk I did, the press guys thought I was mad until they saw the pics. No platform, have steps from the local DIY store.

The Client

Got a pass? All depends on the event. Some events just love photographers kicking about. I'm booked as the client's sole photographer so I get free dibs where I'm going to stand (the press will have work around me). On this one it's head on at the end of the runway and at eye level with the models who are walking down it. The best catwalk shots have protocal behind them. Personally I don't like the looking up the nostril of the model shot, I know I've done it myself a few times but I didn't have the choice or the reputation at the time (no one had seen my stuff or heard of me). Now it's a little different.

Keeping FFW as an example, I caught noise of the fashion week in June. I was on the phone the next day, already sorting out press photos for the local paper and booking myself in with the directors of the company putting it together.

I attended the launch party (I don't really do parties that well, not good with the noise anymore, rather be in reading a book with a cuppa). Did loads of shots there, did some others as well. Put a gallery of stuff up. Next thing the phone is ringing the next morning asking to meet and quote.

Sometimes it's not that easy. The quotes get passed back and forth and things have to be reshaped but as long as we get a win-win then I'm happy.

On the day

Be early. The first Belfast Fashion Week I did was all over the place. The car wasn't acting right, I got lost, the police followed me, I needed to park, I needed the toilet, I went to the front instead of the stage door and I looked like a nutter when I arrived backstage clutching to myself.

Be as early as you can. Bring water, don't assume that the client will pay for everything. I'm not pally pally with the models either, they are doing their job and I am doing mine. I didn't get into catwalk photography to look at models. During BFW I didn't speak to anyone apart from the organiser, Cathy Martin (and that was for literally 30 seconds to say hello), and a few other photogs during the break.

Most of all, enjoy yourself, it will show in the pictures.

Eglinton is now the centre of the universe (or Jason Smyth comes home)

The usually quiet village of Eglinton in Northern Ireland is currently a buzz with paralympic double gold medalist Jason Smyth returning home. I have now gained the press photographers knack of walking backwards between a marching band and a big four x four vehicle, whilst not being run over by a throng of kids, atheletes and adults.

I carried two cameras with me, my old Nikon D50 with a 55-200mm telezoom and the S5 with my 18-55mm. Now there's only so many ways you can photograph a nice bloke on the back of a truck. All cameras point skyward.

For me the better shots came at the end, then I went for the small details. The kids were desperate to touch the medal (I was wondering what it felt like myself but didn't want to try).

On camera flash modifications and their effects.

It was one of those late nights where I walked into the office to do one thing and ended up doing three other things as well.

On camera flash is pretty bad for most things but as a press shooter you usually have very little choice but to slap the thing on the camera and fire away. I then bought a Lightsphere and that helped a whole lot, the other photogs would poke fun at me but no matter my pictured looked better.

Wanting to get a real good grip on the whole light thing I purchased a copy of "Light: Science and Magic" from Amazon, a wonderful book. The last chapter was going on about bounce cards, so I thought I'd give that a try.

So I created an experiment with the help of the above (belongs to my daughter and the hairdressing head/shoulders has no name). It did provide though a good gauge on how bounce flash, bounce card and the Lightsphere would produce images.

You can see the full set of images here.

Irish Dancing with attitude

No shoot is ever the same. Recently I've taken to doing some daft stuff at the end of shoot and it's usually those shots that the publications go, "hey wait a minute, let's use that one".

Irish Dancing has some protocols when it comes to photographs, I call it the "pointy toe theory" because when anyone is in Irish Dancing attire and has their photo taken the pose is practically automatic.

The Allen School of Dancing win awards left, right and centre and they are a good bunch to photograph. Once I'd got the main stuff out of the way I heard a under breath comment of, "wish we could do one posey". I just looked at the lass and said "yeah, let's do a big posey group shot".

Easy, totally relaxed and I was loosing light rapidly (as you can tell from the light falloff from the flash).

Chic Fashion Show

This was arranged weeks ago and my brain was positive it was on a Thursday, so when I look in the diary and I see Tuesday.... plans go to pot for everyone involved. I saw this catwalk as a good run through for two Foyle Fashion Week catwalks I'm doing next week.

The Chic Chairty Fashion show is held in store, over two floors, so the five models have to plan some form of route downstairs then upstairs without bumping into each other. Best position for me was on my knees for a full 90 minutes.

The odd thing I found is it became a homely touchy feely type of do. The audience want to know more and the oddities also fly out (one audient was more bothered about the ring the model was wearing that any of the outfits).

It also gave rise to some great under the breath comments, "it looks like she's wearing marigolds!", as the model walked down with mustard leather gloves on.



So it's not strictly a catwalk, more a soiree of customers willing to give to charity and have a look at the autumn/winter collections. A great evening.

Football Photography

"Go shoot the football and the odd picture of the manager....", came the shout from the desk (well not so much a shout, more a polite request).

After the usual dealing with the sponsor shots (and cheque presentations) it was out on to the pitch. Obviously when a photographer enters the pitch the rain is to start on cue. It did and then continued for the next 25 minutes. I was drenched, the camera was wet but fine.

I got some good shots, but actually enjoyed photographing the managers hollering at their teams much more. Much much more :)

Rosemary Wright - Make Up Artist

It's always interesting to see what perceptions the subject has when it comes to a photograph. I was booked to get an image of Rosemary Wright for the paper. I was after a visual hook, Rosemary has a nice portrait image that she gives to PR companies but I was looking for that extra something.

The first pic was more a portrait than anything else, a little play it safe in case my editor didn't like what I had in mind. In fact I gave the editor the choice to choose between the two photos. She instantly went for the mirror shot as it was interesting and not a normal portrait.

The second shot was with the mirror, we tried without the brushes first and it didn't look right. Second attempt was much better. The above is the uncropped version, the final version made the paper.

So, how am I going to approach the story telling group tonight......

Don & Natassia Engagement Shoot

I did a great engagement shoot on Thursday night for Don and Natassia. It was relax, informal and we got a great set of pictures. I was concerned about the weather more than anything, driving over the mountain and the rain poured. Once I arrived at the location it was wonderful, the sun was out and the light was good. Just as we declared the shoot as finished the rain was on again.

Looking back at the archive: Maranna McCloskey

Well I just let Lightroom 2 import everything on my hard drive. In Northern Ireland I've photographed a lot of musicians, local ones, visiting ones, festivals and gigs where no one has turned up.

In October 2007 I did a session for singer, Maranna McCloskey. I first met Maranna when she supported Altan at the Danny Boy Festival in 2007. Later on in the year I got a call to do a promo shoot. Now it wasn't the best of October days (it was cold basically and the sky was just a monotone off white colour). We ploughed on non the less and ended up with a good selection of work. Meetings were arranged and proofs deliberated over. Maranna went away happy.

There's always been the niggling thing in the back of my head that the images would have looked better in black and white, but as they were promo purposes they were better off in colour for the client. This afternoon I was tinkering in Lightroom and came up with something a little to a Bob Carlos Clarke-esque tone to it. My little nod to the photographic genious that he was.


The location for these was Downhill Castle in Co. Londonderry. The stone is quite light and when you blast it with white light again it starts to wash out.





Client perception is the name of the game here and these images won't have cut the mustard in terms of a traditional Irish singer. On the other hand, as a set of portraits I love them in the B+W.

Rain, rain, rain, ooooh a bit of sun, rain and really bad rain.

Northern Ireland has been prone to a sprinkle of the wet stuff. This last week though has been more monsoon that summer shower. It's affected the pictures quite badly, events called off and people not really in the mood to go out.

Spare a thought for 12 folk from Limavady Tesco's who are being bussed 19 miles up to the Lisnagelvin Tesco's and then WALKING back to Limavady. It's all for Marie Curie Cancer Care so it's not all bad, but I'm glad I'm not walking with them. No offence.

(Just as well Stendhal backed off for 2008 as it would have been a mud bath, or perhaps that was the whole plan....)

So you wanna be a model?

There are two pages of tips on how to look good in photos in Septembers British Vogue. Some handy things in that article.

The Castlerock Beach stitch up....

When a client requests a picture of Castlerock beach, in the middle of summer you'd think you'd be in with a fighting chance of getting something.

Monday: rain, Tuesday: rain, Wednesday: really bad rain, Thursday: rain, Friday: a window of opportunity.

So off we trott to the location, which is basically free reign to me. As long as it's Castlerock beach. At 6pm and the sun is still way up high and bleaching out colour like no one's business. Plus the other issue with Castlerock beach is that there is no real landmark, nothing to give a sense of location. It could be any beach in Northern Ireland.

So I decided to do a panoramic shot instead, start from the sea and work my way around. It's the one time in Photoshop when the photomerge tool performed perfectly. Only a small retouch on an overlapped cliff and a cloud movement.

I can't show you the picture yet :)

Onwards to the shops for supplies and then onwards to White Rocks. I was hoping that by 8:30pm it would be pretty deserted. No way.


Oh the manual white balance on the Fuji S5 means that you can push to 10,000K giving all these wonderful warm tones in the sunset that you'd need a miriacle for normally. You have an idea in your head and the S5 gives you all the options to do it, the days of near fighting with the light and the Nikon D50 are clearly over.

I'm off to do another Castlerock shot from the other end of the beach this time. The weather forecast for the next few days is rain :)

Stendhal Cancelled

So we went from having a festival....

To not having a festival...


In the blink of an eye. Stendhal Festival officially got cancelled yesterday. A real blow to Tim, Ross and John, more to the point a big blow to the Limavady area as it would have been a great festival.

There's a bunch of reasons why this could have possibly happened which I'm not going to disect here. From a photog point of view this does re-enforce the point of "do your reshoot now". When the call came in to do the pic I thought it wise to photograph both outcomes while I was there. It meant sacrificing a poster but hey, that night was the council meeting where everything hung in the balance. At the time no one knew which way it was going to go.

Once the shoot was in the bag I sent both images across.... who knew what would happen. The outcome was good, the festival was to happen. Only with a week to go the decision was made to cancel.

Shame. No work is lost as it all counts for 2009.

Fuji S5 Pro

I took delivery of my new camera on Friday. My Nikon has done me great service over the last 2 1/2 years but I've been looking at the S5 since February.

After talking to at least 20 photographers about the D200/S5 debate I went for the S5. I'm glad I did, it's a lovely camera. The first major test will be the Stendhal Festival just outside Limavady.

That was the week that was....

A quiet week, though I have to add, quite thankful for it. Lots of catching up to do, press passes to get hold. Stendhal Festival seems to be gathering pace, hopefully ticket sales are going well.

Still no response regarding CountryFest so I'm considering that one gone.

This months Professional Photographer is the best I've seen in ages. I was starting to get a little despondant with the publications. A round table discussion about Bob Carlos Clarke was well worth the wait. I was a little dissappointed that they didn't use some new images though, it seems to be the same set of pictures that gets featured in every magazine. Regardless, it was still excellent.

Wedding Photography by Jason Bell

It has to be the single most popular question that I am asked, "do you do weddings?".

Well the simple answer is yes.

Red Sails Festival - Portstewart

The final day of the Red Sails Festival in Portstewart was busy, really busy. I didn't actually arrive there until 7pm.

George Jones and Clubsound were onstage when I arrived. Crowd shots were easy to do as the auditorium curves round in front of the stage, so it's quite easy to get a live stage shot with a good selection of audience in the image as well. I wanted a shot of the band post gig, had a quick chat with George to arrange it, we walked over to the town hall and within thirty seconds had my shot.


I walked up and down Portstewart with just a 50mm 1.8 lens on the camera. I tend to have a selection on me but decided to leave the bag and work with one lens. The promonade is split on two levels, the road and the sea. So it's quite easy to get good candids.



After a chicken burger, numerous coffee's and the piercing screams of a child or two the fireworks kicked off at 10.30pm. I have to admit I wasn't too bothered about photographing fireworks as I've done stacks of times before, this display was good but finding a way to capture anything to possibly sell afterwards is a fun one to sort out. I'm there though and happy.

From 10.50pm to 11.30pm was just solid traffic out of Portstewart

Foyle Fashion Week Launch Party (Part II)

Sugar in Derry has the most varied set of light sources known to man. All very well in a disco setting but nigh on useless when it's fashion.

So every shooter resorts to the last resort, on camera flash. No matter where you point it, it's harsh white light. I got all the shots I needed from the social point of view but to get flatting catwalky type shots... hmm a little harder to do.

A good nights work, and the photoshop mods I made to the web layouts are working a treat.

Foyle Fashion Week Launch Night

A frantic day of marketing and running around today. Looking forward to tonights launch do, not that I'm the party type.

All the same I trust the event will go well. Proof galleries are going up tonight for publications to see.

It's all happening this week.

A light weekend, I tend not to do too much on the 12th of July. There are others who are far more interested in getting into the thick of flutes and lambegs. Sadly, I am not one of them.

This week coming brings up a whole bag of problems. The fashionistas will piling down to the Foyle Fashion Week launch, then the Shackleton Charity Festival runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In the middle of those things there are two charity gigs on at the same time. Add to that that there's a strike which will bring Derry City Airport to a standstill. It could actually be quite a good news week.

Purchasing newspaper prints.

I get a lot requests about obtaining prints from pictures that appeared in the newspaper. You can purchase these online. Each week I will put up the available pictures on my website.

This week's Constitution pictures are available now.

Stendhal gets its licence.

The organisers of the Stendhal Festival got their entertainment licence tonight.

For the eagle eyed among you, this appeared front page of the Coleraine Chronicle this week. I actually covered both bases and got the "not so happy" image with Ross tearing up the poster.

So I wasted a poster....

Outside the meeting tonight, no plackards! Though I did get one, "no photos please", from one resident. This time I actually took a step back and granted her request. Normally on a public highway the request would usually get ignored.

A nice ending to the story but I don't feel it's the complete ending.

Shackleton Charity Festival sneaky peak.

This evening was spent down at Shackleton photographing the press launch and demos. It was noisy, then it started to pour it down. Ah but it was fun.

More pics will be up on the Shackleton Charity Festival website tomorrow.

Linedancers, ladies golf, a minibus ride, three rock bands and an iron.

Just a normal week then. I don't have a natural dislike to line dancing, it's just not my bag but the linedancers I had to photograph were just a joy.

One golf tournament award presentation later on. A quick sleep and the next day I was tootled around Limavady in a minibus for elderly shoppers. By Friday night it was a couple of July 4th celebrations (more line dancers) and a table quiz.

Come deadline day and the phone call arrives from PJ, "I need a photograph of an iron."

Who am I to let this man down? I was later told it was all in context. I haven't seen the copy yet but I will in the morning. The actual shot was very quick and easy, one of those cheapy light tents off ebay and a couple of homebase work lights (the 150w Tungsten jobs, very hot and will melt most items within a two foot radius). The iron was sitting in a cupboard (we are a two iron household) and the black tile kicked the iron back a bit so it wasn't floating on air.

Now I've told you all this there's now a good chance PJ will now take photographs of his own iron for publication use :)

The busy weekend....

Driving around in a ping-pong sort of way on Friday night. All the job times didn't work in my favour so it was a seven mile drive, followed by a fifteen mile drive, followed by another fifteen mile drive back and then finally back home.

Sunday night rocked at there were three Steve Martin films on TV. Time to kick back and leave it at that.

Monday I spent the morning on a minibus with the elderly, the Mayor of Limavady and a couple of project coordinators. Then a new addition to the Eyes/Window/Soul thing.

The doctor, the solicitor and the photographer (Part 2)

Okay, so Peter Jack's opinion piece went to press today, due to space they cropped the main picture so the final cut didn't really show what was going on. I suppose you had to be there.....

So here's the pic in it's whole glory.

Northern Constitution finally makes it online.

Perhaps all my wittering finally paid off, or it was something they've been planning for years and just not let on. The Northern Newspaper Group have put their titles online at http://www.ulsternet.co.uk/

Well done, I've just not see any of my pics on there yet :)

And to celebrate the face even more, two of my pics made front page of the Coleraine Chronicle. Happy days.

The doctor, the solicitor and the photographer....

Just a normal Monday then. So this solicitor phones up the paper, "I need a picture of a doctor, in a white coat, holding a stethescope". The request then comes to me, the easy route out would to declare defeat and just nab a pic of flickr, but I'm not like that. I already know that the solicitor in question is not sane, I just need to find a GP who's just as loopy.

First call is to my GP. He's up for the idea but busy. So the next call is to the health centre to see if any doctors have a sense of humour. One does. The bail out plan was to hire the white coat and scope and get the solicitor to examine himself on his office desk.

Three men in a room and the GP is so up for this gig that he starts getting out all sorts of heck knows what. The next thing I know is the defibrillator is out and switched on, the electronic voice starts commanding people who are not listening... "check airways.....". Well no one was listening apart from the solicitor who was now starting to look a little freaked. He was still happy that all this sillyness was happening around him.

"Give me a blank look...., no more blank than that.... blanker! Put the stethescope on his forehead doctor...". Shot is in the bag, then another close up shot with the GP making insanity gestures with his hands.

Who said press editorial work isn't fun?

"What is that thing on top of your camera?"

It's the single most asked question I get. For starters I don't keep my sandwiches in it.

I stumbled on the Fong Lightsphere a year or so ago. At the time it was expensive but to honest it was worth every penny. I got some severe stick from the press guys until they saw the shots. I've never been a great fan of direct flash but when you have less than five minutes to get the shot then you just get on with it.

Over the last few months I've got peeved with the amount of light it was chucking out, yeah it's diffused and yeah it's everywhere.... but for the music stuff I've resorted to a home made snoot out of black card.

Don't get me wrong, for 97% of all my flash shots the Lightsphere is on the camera.

Want an example? Just look below.....

The best shots happen by accident...

How long did this shot take to put together? About three minutes. Totally unrehearsed, no-booking-required-portrait. My good mate Ali Moore was in need of background material, all I had was a large sheet which I had not unwrapped since buying in the charity shop.

When I rolled it out it was four foot wide and twenty foot long.... no good to anyone but we gave it shot anyway. Ali held up a pole and I "A" clamped the material to the background. Quickly asked Laura to stand in front of said human standed background and there you are.

I find that the pre processing stuff in RAW is much better than hanging on what Photoshop will do to it. I've pretty much moved over to Lightroom for most things now, just PS for the odd clean up healing brush type malarky.

The office move

Been a long time coming, perhaps it's fresh starts with the website. I'm moving my office from one room to another. Computer first, that took all of twenty minutes, clear the debris from my desk took another hour then I could move the table.

It's going to take another two days to get through the remaining pictures, paperwork, invoices, CD's and a stack of magazines including Professional Photographer, Digital Photo Pro, umpteen bridal magazines, Vogue, North West Woman... it all mounts up.

I also found my flash gun stand that I've been hunting for the last two years. Happy Days!

New website launch.

It was a long time coming but I finally put some time aside to redo the website. So, nice sleek navigation to each portfolio, easy to find information. The client list has been updated, I forgot how many people I've worked with. It took a little time to wrangle with the iPodesque coverflow thing. Finally big thanks to TDR Networks who looked after me with new hosting and lightening email support when I needed it.

Constitution - 18th June 2008

So not a bad catch all in all. Two pages of Limavady Jazz and Blues live pics and Anita Flavin for two, shame they were black and white as they were really strong images. (And for anyone wondering I did not shoot Anita low as there was a shed in the background).

Tomorrow is back to the photographic land of school awards and cheque presentations.