Archive for the ‘General’ Category:
My two favourite pastimes…
I raced at the Marin Dusk till Dawn mountain bike race at the weekend. Some may say I’m crazy as I opted to compete as a solo rider – 12 hours riding as many laps as I can around a 10 mile course. After all the riding I’ve done this year I was surprised at the physical toughness of the course and how much I fell apart after the laps mounted up. I was wrecked at the finish, but I did manage 9 laps and a reasonable 50th place. I’m happy; and I’m recovering!!
The photographers on site had a real challenge – night time racing – really really bright lights and moving subjects. Not easy. Joolze Dymond was shooting on behalf of the organisers and the BCF and she had some creative approaches to her shots. I approve.
Subscribe to the comments for this postBerlin Street Art
I follow a lot of photographers and photography resources on the web. Boston’s Big Picture often comes up with unusual and visually stunning pieces. Today’s offering features street art celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall (20 Years!! Jeez, how old do I feel!?) I like it enough to share it here; have a click though, it really is worth a look just for the sheer scale of it. Clicky.
Have a browse through or bookmark the site for future reference, it’s worth a few minutes of your time.
Not just people and places…
Something a little bit different for today, food. My friend Paul runs a business that sells puddings to pubs, bars, restaurants and other food outlets and he was complaining to me about the costs of studio time to get photos of his wares. I said I’d willingly have a go on a ‘no-win, no-fee’ basis. Time passed and Paul gave me a shout to say he needed some pictures doing and so, shortly afterwards, I found myself at Paul’s place up to my elbows in puddings!
Once we built and lit the set it was a relatively simple process to prepare the next pudding, position it and shoot it. The setup process cost us two or three puddings to get get right. After that, we romped through them. A bit of post-processing and these are the finished articles:
A side-benefit was that there were a lot of puddings left over – Paul brought bulk packs to the shoot just in case! – he doesn’t eat them, which is pretty understandable when he ships millions every year! I took them all home and filled the freezer! Anyway, it was all worthwhile, Paul emailed me today to organise another shoot!
Wanted: Models
I’m on the lookout for models in the Norwich area. I have a monthly shoot with group of local amateur photographers and we always need people to sit for us – nothing seedy, just all good clean fun. I can do TfP or TfCD if you’re an aspiring model too. Drop me a line through the contact page if you’re interested.
Oh, make-up artists, we need you too!
Musical friends
Dan and Jez came around last week to try out some lighting setups and have a general evening of camera play, it’s something we started last year as a way of learning and sharing ideas – we even have a Flickr group dedicated to it! Anyway, Dan had just bought himself a new guitar so brought it along too – it’s metallic black so a real pig to light properly! We ran out of time before we got that far but I did manage to grab this set of Dan with his new toy. They’re lit with a single overhead umbrella and the black and white conversion has been done in Lightroom.
Nearly a month into 2009 already and I’m still behind! I’m finishing up my tax return tomorrow and then catching up on all the left-overs from the Christmas rush. That should allow me to start planning ahead for the first weddings of the season in April.
On a personal note, when I’m not taking photos I’m a cyclist and this year I’ve signed up to ride in the blue ribband mass-participation event in the world – L’Etape du Tour. It’s basically a mountain stage of this years Tour de France and is attended by 8 or 9000 like-minded crazy bikers! The stage itself is from Montelimar to the summit of Mont Ventoux in Provence, 108 Miles and over 3000 metres of climbing thrown in. The Ventoux itself comes at the very end after 92 miles and is basically 16 miles at an average of 7% uphill! Next weekend my preparation begins in earnest when I’m off down to Ashdown in Kent to ride ‘The Hell of Ashdown‘; a 67 mile sportive with 2000 metres climing (with some gradients of 25%!!). Next week I’ll really know if I’ve got the form and the legs to tackle L’Etape or if I need to rethink my training! Sponsorship details to follow…