What's in the back of the van.......................

This was shot way back in 2006, the client wanted images to go on the back of their fleet vehicles. Alex the Marketing Manager came up with the idea of looking into the back of the vehicles showing what equipment they carried along with an engineer. The shots were taken in the company vehicle maintenance bays using a Mercedes Vito and Sprinter van, the Vito was first up, with shelving and multicoloured boxes and parts it really lended itself well to being photographed. Rather than lining the camera up centrally we set up slightly to our left looking along the shelving and giving me the opportunity to open the vehicles side door and set up a light to illuminate the interior, something I would have struggled to do with just the two softbox fitted Bowens heads that were aimed at the back of the vehicle. Having set up the lighting (as shown in the diagram above) and filling the shelving with the right equipment e.g. anything that looked good, we got our model to start posing, even during the shoot I had a feeling this was the image the client would choose, it just works.

Next up was the shot in the Sprinter van, this involved a ramp and a very large wheeled equipment trolley, we got Carl one of the van crews to stand at the back of the van as if he was helping push the trolley out, getting light on him was a bit of a problem but I popped a beauty dish with barn doors on and aimed it into the dark recesses of the vehicle. I still needed a little work in Photoshop to even out the fore and background lighting.

It's all change now with the vehicles after four years, the fleet is turning silver and the back doors are now being graced with just the company logo, I'm going to miss seeing these pictures of mine whilst driving up and down the motorway, I seemed to see at least one of the vans out on the road every time I was on the motorway.

Police image..................... Lighting diagram

I was shooting a head/helmet camera designed for police use last week, this is one of the shots I took just of the guy, Tim, who had been roped in to do the modelling. The lighting remained the same for the head camera shot, I just got Tim to step forward so that the left side of his face would go darker, the side light to the left was then just lighting the white background, though there is a slight spill of light creeping onto the left side of the helmets band. The main light was to my right, a Bowens 750watt Gemini Pro head with a Redwing 70 x 120 cm softbox, the centre of which was just inline with the police helmet, giving me the shadow I wanted to the left side of the face along the side of the nose and a hint of darkness under the chin.

The shot below illustrates how I used the side light to put a catch light on the small camera on Tim's shoulder, it also puts enough light into the side of his head and clothes to improve the look of the image.

It's Christmas......... So here's the Santa shot

I had a shoot for a client last Friday, they were putting on a Santa's Grotto for a local disabled school. All the kids got teddy bears with their names on them, bit of a logistical nightmare but very touching. There wasn't a great deal of room in the Grotto area for me to set up so I just stuck a 750watt Bowens Gemini Pro head on a stand just to the right of my shooting position. Popped a white shoot through brolly on the flash, now there was a large glass brick wall behind the flash head, this definitely put a bit more reflected light back into the room. I was getting f11 at half power and was good to go, 80 kids later and Santa had probably lost a few pounds in weight, but to see the smiles on the kids faces it was so worth it.

Rejigged the office today..............................

My office has always been dominated by a big old Apple 21 inch Studio screen, sometimes two 21 inch studio screens, but not anymore, they've been consigned to the garage (doesn't my back know it). This has left space for my Mac Pro to move up off the floor and onto the desk, which is useful as I don't have to rummage around under the desk every time I want to put a disk in the machine. As you can see next to the Mac are a stack of iomega minimax external hard drives, there are three 1TB and two 2TB drives, these mirror the drives in the Mac, though now the 2TB drives are being used as a mirrored pair for back up as the Mac drives are pretty much full (though new internal drives are next on the order list). I like the iomega drives, as well as having multiple ports on the back for chaining them together they've always worked very well and look great next to the Mac. The new 2TB drives only come with Firewire 800 and USB2 ports, I use the Firewire as I've never been enamored with USB, finding it to slow.

The MacPro, as well as having all four drive bays full, has 8GB of memory to help keep the programs zipping along nicely. That's it as far as up-grades to how the machine came as standard. The Apple screen is an old 17 inch LCD display, not exactly cutting edge I know but such an improvement on the flickering CRT, I'm looking at up-grading to a bigger screen but will be waiting till the start of the next financial year before parting with any money.

My trusty Wacom pad, I really can't understand anyone who still uses a mouse for re-touching in Photoshop, it's become a real asset to my workflow I'd be lost without it. The new Magic Trackpad from Apple looks and feels great, I've played with them in store but haven't yet shelled out for one, maybe soon. The Mac clock on the wall of the office I made from parts of an old G4, the clock mechanism was bought on e-bay, different and fun.

New Lens................................... Coffee Cup

Drinking coffee from a 24-105mm f4 L IS USM lens is such a laugh. When my wife saw me she got quiet a shock. This quickly turned to 'So where did you get that from?' the answer Hong Kong, the link is at the bottom of the post, they also sell the 70-200mm Canon lens/coffee cup that Canon gave out to snappers at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. It's on my wish list, roll on Christmas. You'll have to excuse the image quality, iPhone 3G camera is nothing if not a little rubbish......

http://100milligrams.com/canon-24105mm-lens-coffee-p-262.html

You know things are slow when..................

You know things are slow when the model agencies start ringing touting for work. I've not had a job that has required models since February, okay that's not true, I've had jobs that required models but I've been forced to use employees at companies I've been working at instead. This always means more work for me, using an agency model is so much easier, they take direction well and they want to be there being photographed, that cannot be said for company employees who tend to want to be anywhere but in front of a camera. The final shot is always going to be affected and all for the sake of saving money.

Calumet................................. Downsizing!

So I got a letter from Calumet Photographic late last week, attached was a £10 voucher to spend at the Manchester branch and only the Manchester branch. So I then read the letter, discovering that the Liverpool branch is to close at the end of the year, literally the end of the year 31st December. I think it's sad that they're closing the Brunswick Business Park store, for me it's far easier to get to than taking a trip down the M56 to Manchester, a trip that has taken me anything up to 3 hours to get there and back. Okay I can bitch and moan about it but that's not going to change anything. Everyone is downsizing in one way or another these days, governments, companies, households, everybody is changing the way they spend money so I guess I've got to go with the flow. Now what can I get for £10 at Calumet?

Photokina........................... No Pro Models!

Just been reading some of the blogs from Photokina, it's very interesting, everyone is picking up on the fact that Canon haven't announced the new incarnation of the 1Ds, there's no 5D MkIII and Nikon haven't up-graded the D3X. So what's going on? The compact market is going off, everybody's aim seems to be to flood this lucrative market with new models, it's like the pro market has lost it's lustre, have we already got enough toys to buy, well yes, yes we have. The rumour mongers are pre-empting the camera manufacturers and suggesting what they want next, maybe the manufacturers want to sell a few more of their existing high end cameras before retooling for the next megapixel monsters to hit the market. I think the attention now will be for the missing new pro models to appear for PMA in the spring but you never know. Maybe, just maybe this new love affair with compacts will continue for a bit longer.

Fuji FinePix X100.............................. Nice

Talk about retro styling, if this new model from Fuji works as good as it looks then I think they're on to a winner. 12megapixel APS-C chip a 23mm lens (equivalent to 35mm lens on a full frame chip) and it shoots 720p HD video. With a few manufacturers now sticking bigger DSLR chips into there top end compacts can a full frame 35mm chip compact be that far off, who's going to be brave enough to bring that out. It's got to happen at some point.

Extra: So Photokina has finally got underway and the X100 is causing quite a stir, I'm not surprised with those looks and the speck of this little compact I think Fuji are onto a winner. It's going to be down to price point as to what sort of volume they shift these little beauties in, I know I'd like to be snapping my incidental location shots, video clips and family shots with this cute camera. Mr Fuji how much?

New iPhone software..... Will the joy return

The new iPhone 4.1 software has finally appeared for download. I've been waiting for this with baited breath, will my iPhone 3G finally start to work brilliantly again, like it did before loading 4.0. I hope so, the last few month have been blighted by the poor performance of the internet and many of the apps on my phone, apps crashing before they even finish loading and trying to load a page from the web was so painfully slow that I usually gave up and switched off. Steve Jobs has promised this will sort all the bugs out, strange that nobody at Apple noticed the problems the 3G and 3GS were having during testing before the release of iOS4. Though I have to admit the software glitches only really started to make their presents felt after a few weeks.

Well fingers crossed I've finished downloading and installing the software, I'm off to test my phone, I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.


Extra, extra, read all about it! Just been putting the iPhone through it's paces and I can report it's all good, the joy returns.

Rolleicord...................................................

I'd cleaned it, got rid of the dust, polished the lenses, loaded some Fuji Neopan 400CN and I didn't stop shooting till two rolls had wound through my old Rolleicord. It was great to be shooting with this vintage camera again, I don't think my light meter has had as much use in years as the sun was popping in and out like a fiddlers elbow. I was a little worried that the shutter might have given up the ghost, as the camera has really just been gathering dust on a shelf for about 18 years, but happy to say it seems to be working fine and was easily able to capture my two boys in their excitement to be out playing on their bike, while Dad ran around like an idiot with a strange looking box around his neck.

I got the film processed and scanned to 65MB files at C-41's, a lab that use to be situated in Chester but has moved out to bigger and far better premises in Ellesmere Port. Now I must get some prints done for the Grand Parents.....

More from the Rolleicord very soon I hope, as another two rolls of Neopan await exposure....

Angry Clouds.............................................

The other week we had a short sharp electric storm pass over the house, I grabbed my camera and opened a window and started shooting. The cloud was moving quickly and I had to move from a window at the back of the house to one at the front to get the area of cloud I was interested in. It was just alive with movement moving in on itself like something out of a sci-fi movie. I've really only just taken a look at the images today, but I think they're going to come in handy for a comp shot I have in mind.

Bowens gear and radio slaves from e-bay.....

I've been using the Bowens Pro heads for a while now and have been very impressed with their performance as well as the new design. Have they made my life easier, oh yes, with the clear side panel information I always know what the settings are, the tenth of stop adjustment is great for tweaking light output.


My old radio slave system finally gave up the ghost recently, so I had a look on e-bay to see what's available, I thought I'd give a Chinese system a go, the cost was so cheap, I got 2 transmitters and 5 receivers for under £45, these have worked brilliantly for a few months now in a variety of situations, they've not let me down once.