Father and son... head swap!

A bit of an odd request, as you can see.... Last night we went into the studio for a rather quick and rather improptu family portrait with father and son, Paul and Theo. Paul has talked about doing this head swap thing for some time and I'm so glad we finally got round to it... because it's hilarious.
Still a few bugs to fix with it yet but I just had to get this shoot up as a test to how quickly a shoot like this can be done (I was up rather late last night).
Below are a few of the original pics from the shoot :P

Sam and Libby - Family portrait photography

Sisters, Sam and Libby met with me in Telford for a little portrait session. We wanted to get a few shots of them together and a few of Libby on her own as a gift to their parents. As luck would have it, it snowed again yesterday, in the middle of March! What is happening with the weather?? Still we went out and pick up some beautiful pictures of them both. Take a look!

Steal The Stars

Steal the stars are a young folk duo from Stafford out doing doing the festival circuit at the moment and will be at a festival near you soon!
I wanted to approach this shoot a little different to the usual, a challenge, using only one lens and no lights or reflections and see what can be done straight from the camera. The photographs needed to be quite folky and hipster, containing a little meaning but also not be completely depressing.
Have a look at their facebook page and twitter. They've recently released their EP "Little Hands" and it's really good, I think you can get a peak of it on the page too.
Have a look at the rest of the shoot below! 

Amanda and Richard, wedding photography, Three Horse shoes, Leek

This pretty couple are Amanda and Richard who got hitched at The Three Horseshoes Inn, Leek.

The Three Horseshoes is a wonderful venue resting in front of the staffordshire moorlands. The lovely gardens at the rear show off a spectacular view and inside the staff prepare a beautifully cosy wedding service turning around the same room into a large, lavish wedding reception area afterwards with nice big windows to bathe the room in light :)

Oscar and George - Family portraits, Staffordshire

I've been sitting on these for a while now, I didn't want to post them until all the surprise gifts had been given out at Christmas. It must have been November when I went to the park with Oscar and George to get some pics of them for Nan and Grandad. I really enjoy this type of child portrait. It's much better than sitting in a studio, much more fun for the kids and the pics have more to say than my usual studio family portraits. It was very cold so we didn't have a lot of time before everyone started to get cold but here's a few of the highlights :D

Fun with make up too.

I can't believe I forgot to blog these. Earlier this year I had a day with a few make up artists and models for their portfolio. It was fun but very challenging. These pics were all created up against the kitchen door with various backgrounds hung over the door and a few different light modifiers. I've had a quick look through the NEFs and couldn't find any set up shots which, is a little annoying. I left the make up and styling completely up to the pros :)

Which brings me up to now :)
With wedding season slowing down it's time to start updating my own 2013 portfolio, changes will be happening on the site in the next few weeks but I'd also like to hear from any models, stylists, muas and designers who might like to collaborate on something a little larger scale in the last few weeks of November and January/February 2013. 

Hope you like :D



 


Models: Kavan Sokhi, Laurie Austin
Make up Artists: Sanj Sandhu, Harminder Kaur

Liz and Chris Wroxall Abbey, warwickshire wedding photography

You may have noticed I posted the slideshow video from this wedding above ^. I've finally worked out how to post HD(ish) videos of the day up here. It's a shame they're not 1080 but 720 will do I guess. View full screen and HD for best results :)

Once again - it rained. Most of my weddings this year have been in the rain - it makes things more difficult from a photography point of view but we still got some great stuff. We were lucky enough to be in and out of the venue in between bursts until right at the evening when it poured down.

It didn't stop us having an amazing day. Wroxall Abbey in Warwickshire is an AMAZING wedding venue. The rooms contained ridiculous amounts of window light and the building contained lots of character it made the photography indoor so much easier. Liz and Chris seemed to have a great time with a brilliant vicar, amazing guests and hilarious speeches. Definitely a wedding I'll remember for a long time :)

The video doesn't contain all of the wedding images from the day. I could only fit a few into the songs but it gives you a good taster of everything that happened. If you can't sit through all 16 minutes of it I've posted a few highlights below :)

Untitled states

Wedding and events band Untitled states got in contact with me a few weeks ago.From what I gathered they've been around for a while but are now taking it to the next level with a new website and images. I had a quick listen to one of their recordings after the shoot  and it was really, really good.I've only posted two on here because I want you to go to their website. They've put a few more up there so have a look :)www.untitledstates.co.ukwww.facebook.com/Untitledstates

John and Veronica, Sheerness, Kent

Just a quick one tonight!
I've got a lot on and I'm trying to update this as much as possible.
A few weeks ago I traveled to Sheerness in Kent for Veronica and Johns wedding. A lovely, sunny day, one of the few I've had this year - we soaked up all of that sun and blue sky.
The church was amazing. A cozy, traditional church with hundreds of years of history.

Anyway, enough from me, here's a few :)

Ian and Juliette - St Marys Guildhall, Coventry

Whew! Things are starting to settle down a bit after what has been the hardest 4 months of my life. It means I've a few minutes to update the blog and show you what I've been up to. I'll Start with Ian and Juliette. Once again, a slightly different style. A lot more natural light, free lensing, a bit more raw and less gimmicks and a more natural post production. We're getting a little closer to the style I want to be using in 2013.

As with most of my weddings this year... it rained. It can be quite tricky getting sharp, well exposed images when everywhere touched by daylight is completely out of bounds. You have to change up your game a little.

I was lucky to be blessed with the beautiful St Mary's Guildhall in Coventry. It's a stunning venue with so much character and history. Loving how the place photographs and with the rain it meant we were able to explore some of the more intimate part of the guildhall and picking up some images that might never have been taken there before :)

Here's some more, leave some comments and likes and the bottom if you want to :)

Schneekeh Peekeh

Quick sneak peek from Andria and Ryan's big day at Consall Hall and Gardens.

It's a Brenizer method. I think it's about 17 shots but the final image is 12,000 pixels high :)

Look out for the rest of pics in the coming weeks, I haven't had a chance to have a proper look at them yet but I can't wait to see the final result. I really, really I enjoyed my day with these two.

Ryan and Michelle - Upper House - Barlaston

It's been a while now since I posted anything with any substance. I'm right in the thick of wedding season at the moment and for the next three months it seems my personal life is on hold :)
It means there's a huge back log of weddings and pictures to show and today I'm getting to the first of them. I've no idea when I'll get to show the next one but the last three or four weddings, particularly the editing, have all been about developing my 2013 style. Wedding photography styles have shifted in the past year and while I do want to keep up and create pictures that follow the trend I also can't completely ignore my own style. So the latest weddings have all been about the post processing styles. First of all is Ryan and Michelle's wedding at the Upper house in Barlaston. It feels like ages ago I shot for these guys, but it was probably only a month or two ago. I love this family. Loads of characters and a lot of banter made a wonderful day and a lively party.
I decided to play with the blacks for this set. As usual, I do my best to find inspiration from overseas and this style is often used in the cities in America and a little bit of Australia. It's about adding a little bit of grey to the neutrals and the blacks creating this really cool, hazy detail in the shadows. I really like the effect and it may take a more prominent role in some of my weddings in the future :)
Anyway, here's a few:

Paul and Alison - The Upper House, Barlaston

Paul and Alisons wedding at The Upper House in Barlaston was wonderful. I met these two on a number of occasions before their wedding and I've loved popping over for chats :)

I've enjoyed being in their company as much as I did editing their photographs - so much so that I want to share a few more than normal with you. I've shared a lot of my wedding portrait photography in previous posts so I thought I'd show a bit more of my candid, reportage or documentary photography - it has so many names I don't know what to call it.

To make it a little more fun, I haven't storyboarded them, it's purely a random pull from Paul and Alison's pool of photographs.

Anyway... here's 40 :)

Elizabeth and Chris - Wroxall Abbey

Yesterday I met up with Elizabeth and Chris at Wroxall Abbey in Warwickshire to have a chat about their day. After a natter we decided to have the quickest engagement shoot. After chatting so long we had only 5 mins left so I quickly grabbed these including my first ever fully working Ryan Brenizer method pic :)

   

I've got a D800 (nur nur)

This is a completely camera related blog post. I apologise to anyone wanting to see some work.

Steve and Jayne

So it's here! First official wedding of the season!
Last weekend was Steve and Jaynes turn to tie the knot. 
It was a great day, the weather held off to help make a brilliant day even better!


So here we go, the start of another busy, busy summer with more weddings being added to my list every day. I can't wait for it all to happen, this year my dream of becoming a full time photographer has really come true with more exciting things happening in the near future.



Here's a sneak peek from last week:





















Paul
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Kan Kar Gal Sun

Two brilliant lads at Cloud 9 music made it to number 1 in the world charts today. It took only a single day for their song Kan Kar Gal Sun to get to the top.

 

We had some great fun in the studio making their cover and a few other promo images. Here's a few from the session.

Here's the trailer for their latest video!

If you like it, click HERE for itunes link where you can download it. 

Great lads, good luck!

Action Man

Aspiring model Steven came to me for a the regular portfolio boost but when I saw the kit he'd bought I realised the shoot was going to be a little different to the usual. So we went with it and this is what we came up with:







AAfter we managed to get him some more classic images :)

 
and something a bit sillier :P