I don't want to be a scene of crime...

... photographer, but I've taken on that mantle this week when a school kid threw a handful of stones down our road to try and hit another boy and managed to put stones through my neighbours and my car windows. I'm hoping that it'll all be resolved without resorting to the Police, though they've been informed (another statistic). The photographs are really for my insurance company, if I need them, as well as evidence for the police to use if the case goes further. I'm off to the school later today as the head teacher is very interested in the incident. I'm just relieved that my young boys weren't out in the garden playing when the stones cascaded down, the thought makes me cringe.

Anyone got a dust pan and brush?

It's alive...

Finally got the new site up and running, though I've just noticed that the about page just has a picture of me on it and nothing else, whoops! I'll have to put that right tonight as I've now got to head out into the lovely sunshine and take some photographs, it's a hard life...

Update: 05/05/2011
All sorted, about page has been populated, I do hope that's the right word!

Some new bits and pieces on the desk...

There have been a few resent changes to the equipment on my desk, a 20 inch Apple Cinema Display has replaced the old 17 inch screen and I've installed an Icy Box IB-111StUS2-Wh Docking Station. This is for the updating of the off site hard drives, which are usually stored at a top secret location (my Dad's house) for the reassurance of extra back up of all my data. The unit comes with USB 2.0 or eSATA connection, the eSATA being far faster and my obvious choice.

The Icy Box unit has quite a small footprint and is extremely easy to use during my weekly Monday back up of all data to a eSATA 1.5 TB drive, that my Dad drops off in the morning and takes away later the same day. The drives travel in these Icy Box plastic cases (below) which keep them safe from dust and moisture.

The iPhone 4 , pictured below, has a pair of external batteries, I got these just incase the phone battery died out on location, one travels in my camera bag, the other usually accompanies my iPad.

The film cameras on the windowsill are all still in use, the Rolleicord and Canon EOS 1N more than the Nikon FM, which has gathered a bit of dust and needs a damned good clean, on well out with the canned air.

05/2012: A quick update on the Icy Box Docking Station... Never! Never! Ever! Let a three year old into your office, he will fill the Icy Box Docking Station with whatever is to hand, compact flash cards, money, blu-tac, a Polo mint, and a pencil sharpener. Suffice to say the Icy Box docking Station has not taken well to these non hard drive intruders and has given up the ghost. My three year old son still finds it funny, but he doesn't understand the meaning of 'I've spent your college money' yet.

New website tantalisingly close...

So after a lot of time spent relearning Dreamweaver I've finally got the new website working, at least it works fine in dreamweaver and reviewing it in Safari. So soon it'll go live, with it yet another marketing push to attract attention to the site.

There are a lot of similarities with the old site, but this one now centres properly when you open the page, I'm still using a slightly panoramic image, though I'm working on a different portfolio using small image buttons to lead to larger images, when I've got that working how I'd like it to that will go live, though that might be a while yet.

I'm hoping to go live with the new site next week, the marketing should be printed by then to, so I imagine I'll be buying a big block of postage stamps real soon. I've still got the keywording to finish, a very important part of the whole project and I'm waiting for a few testimonials to turn up.

And I'd just like to say...

... hello to everyone out there in blogging land, I've got really interested in audience stats recently. I'm not sure exactly why as I don't seem to be getting any work through the ramblings I write on this blog, but it's interesting to see where the readers are coming from, I'd especially like to say hello to the guys or girls in Iran who seem to like what I'm blabbering on about, and are moving their country up the audience location tables and are neck and neck with the USA this week. I find that rather amusing.

Oh and Brazil, you're trailing this week, as my old teacher use to say 'You could do better!'

Upgraded the iPhone...

Finally got my upgrade to the Apple iPhone4, I got my old 3G about two months before the iPhone4 came out, the 3GS was available, but I didn't need video, I just needed a phone. So just how wrong can you be? This little piece of technology is going to be invaluable, I've just down loaded a time lapse video app and I'm already thinking of ideas to use it on. I've already played with the Facetime feature, but I think looking up the nose of a client whilst in conversation might not be such a good idea. So now it's time to play with the phone and figure out just what a difference it's going to make to my working day, if it's anything like the difference the iPhone3G made it's going to be great. Oh you can guarantee now I've got the iPhone4 the iPhone5 will hit the streets in a month or two!

Always find someone to hold the QP card...

QP cards are great, simple to use and always give you a good head start for working on raw images in photoshop, the only thing you have to do is find someone to hold them for your initial shot.

I got mine from Colour Confidence, link below, other purveyors of quality grey and colour charts are available.

https://shop.colourconfidence.com/product.php/1822/qp-card-101/31981539ed87c3d176ed0620084f94b4

A working weekend...

This weekend hasn't been the greatest I can remember, Saturday was lovely, the sun was shining, it was warm, and I was stuck in a room shooting paper, plastic and hesian bags for a catalogue. Okay I shouldn't moan it's work and that isn't so easy to come by these days. So whilst I filled, arranged and shot the bags, my wife kept my two boys entertained, gardening and playing football.

Sunday, Mothering Sunday no less, a time of cards, flowers and chocolates, started well, my wife was really happy with her hand made cards off the boys, her eyes lit up when they presented her with a big box of Maltesers too. I still had a few shots to do so whilst my wife took the boys to see her mum I continued shooting. This took longer than I'd anticipated and before I knew it the wife was home and wanting to go out for the family walk we'd discussed before she'd left.

I finally got the job wrapped and packed, we got our walk, down to the park so the kids could have a good play on the swings, slides and roundabouts, and on the way back the heavens opened and we got a good soaking.

Sometimes being self-employed ain't so good, you have to balance work and home life, but it's difficult when you have a deadline for a job, even if it mean working on Mothers Day.

Some days it pays to...

...get on the phone and call your existing clients, just on the off chance that they have some work waiting in the wings. Today is just such a day, as well as calling I've been sending out an e-mail mailer to clients that have been inactive for over 6 months. The result, two jobs for next week, another for the week after and a few jobs coming in over the next two months. If you don't try you don't get!

The blog traffic is on the up.......................

Well whoever you are, thank you, the traffic to the blog is steadily climbing, so I must be doing something right. I'm hoping to keep up a more steady posting regime with more titbits from my weekly activity. Unless I'm to busy, or I forget!

Happy British Summer Time......................

Finally British Summer Time heralds the arrival of longer days, brighter skies, warmer weather. Though not today, it's very grey, cool and misty. Oh well fingers crossed that's not going to last to long, I hope to really get started on my personal projects now. Happy picture taking people.

Happy Belated 10th Birthday................OSX

Ten years ago Apple changed the look and way that their operating system worked, OS 9 development stopped and OS-X was the new kid on the block. The first incarnation wasn't that great, it was buggy and it required a quick update that arrived six months later. Since then it's got better and better with every major update. I've been using it ever since I bought my first iMac (I've still got that lovely Blue 450 GHz iMac in the loft- it still works) and if Apple keep making software that works so well and makes my working life easier I'll continue to use it.

Happy Birthday OS-X, if I'd have remembered I'd have baked a cake!

Today I've been shooting Vans.....................

I've had these Vans shoes in the wardrobe for a couple of months, bought them in a sale at the local Vans shoes shop. I didn't buy them to photograph them but I was looking at them the other day with just a desk lamp lighting them from behind and I felt I had to replicate what I was seeing using flash heads, or as it turned out flash head.

I set up a grey background and used a Bowens 500 Pro head with a 7" reflector and a 30º grid with a red gel gaffer taped to it to light it. The shoe was placed on a stand with a Manfrotto studio clamp attached so the shoe had a stable platform to sit on. The shoe is filled with socks to bulk it out a bit otherwise it could have looked a bit flat.

The main light came from six feet away, six feet up and at an angle of about 30º to 40º from the front of camera. This was another Bowens 500 Pro head mounted on a Manfrotto Aluminium Senior Stand with casters, the head had a beauty dish with barn doors to control any spill. For many of the images I had the lights at almost their lowest settings as I wanted a very shallow depth of field, about f5.6, except for the shot at the top of the whole shoe which was shot at f18. Only one light was used to illuminate the shoe, a piece of silver card was used to reflect light back into certain parts of the shoe.

Sometimes it pays to play with lighting set ups and make a note of how you've achieved certain images, you never know when you'll get a product in that would look good using a particular set up. Just remember to make a note of everything, distances from lights to object, to camera distance, what grids or light modifiers you've used, f-stops, etc. I've got a heap of note books that I've filled with lighting set ups, even of ideas that haven't worked to well, you can always come back to the ideas and refine them.