Just popped into...

... Chester for a meeting, police everywhere, didn't pay it to much attention really, went to meeting. After a very successful meeting, picked up a days work, I was feeling a bit peckish so wondered off in the direction of a sandwich shop, stone me, there's the Princes Royal (Ann) in front of a regiment of Marines being presented with their colours right outside the town hall. Still with all the crowds watching the spectacle the sandwich shop was virtually empty, so I got a very nice Italian chicken and sun-dried tomato baguette in double quick time. I've seen countless Royal parades in my time living in London, a good sandwich has more draw to me, when I'm hungry. Now must stop waffling and get on with some invoicing and quotes.

Finally changed the hard drives...

... over on the MacPro, I had to delay the change over because I had a lot of work come in, so can't complain about that. It's really easy to replace a hard drive, the time consuming bit is loading up all the software. I can recommend doing a swap during the day, starting it late evening turned the whole process into a very late night/early morning chore.

My Mac Pro has...

... reached the tender age of 3, the Applecare has now expired (which has been well worth the money as my graphics card took a nose dive 18 months ago) and so I was thinking, replace or keep. Does it still speed along helping me get my work out on time, yes. Has it reached the end of it useful life, no, no it has not. So it's a keeper, though it needs opening up again and treating to a good dusting with some canned air, it's amazing just how much dust they will collect if you let them. I'm also going to replace the main hard drive, in fact I'll be doing two drives, keeping one as a spare, just in case. So that will mean a little down time this week,

Oh, so you want me to waiver my copyright...

I got this e-mail yesterday afternoon, I started to read it and thought yeah okay that sounds okay. Until I got to the last request... e-mail below...

Hi. I was just writing to enquire about a shoot for my 15 year old daughter. I was just wondering how much a   portfolio shoot, with the following requirements would cost?

Image Criteria:

Each image must be in portrait, JPEG format, a minimum of 2.5MB and have dimensions of

no less than 2000 x 3000px.

Images must be less than three months old and be a true, current likeness.

Images must be to a professional standard, taken in studio using appropriate equipment and

lighting facilities including soft box, gels and reflectors.

A minimum of 50 images must be provided

Images must include a range of headshots, ¾ shots, and full-length shots.

Images must be taken in a range of colour, monochrome and sepia tones.

Images must feature a minimum of three outfit changes and utilise a range of accessories

and/or props.

Images must be in original format – no air brushed images will be considered.

Images must be accompanied with a signed and dated letter from the original Photographer,

or Photographic Studio where they were taken, wavering copyright in regard to all media in

perpetuity.

Many Thanks. T C.

The e-mail I sent back was short, concise and to the point "I don't 'Waiver' copyright. Ever!" I did suggest that she could do a copyright buyout, expensive. The image criteria that TC lists is obviously copy and pasted from whatever competition she is entering her daughter into, you'd have thought that if this competition wants professionals to produce the images they'd have had a bit more sense than to demand giving up copyright. Right I can now get back to enjoying the wet Bank Holiday Monday.

Toy Bike...

I promised my eldest boy I'd photograph his toy chopper motorcycle, when you make a promise to your kid or kids you've got to come through with the goods. What kind of a Dad would you be if you didn't? I really shouldn't have used a purple gel, should of just had a little bit of white light creeping in, but someone wanted purple... It was shot with two lights, one for the background and one overhead with a medium softbox. the rest of the lighting is done using silver-foil cards, you can get them at most craft stores and they're great for popping a bit of fill into small products, or toys.

Tweet... Tweet...

I suppose it had to happen eventually, I'm on Twitter now, you can follow me by pressing the convenient button on the right of the blog, above the e-mail link and that Facebook widget. I'm on Google+ now so if you want an invite just drop me an e-mail.

Cha..cha..cha..cha..changes...

Just fiddling with the home page and portfolio page 6 on the website, must keep updating images, more to follow.

Went racing this weekend...

... to the British National Championships, a Downhill Mountain Bike event held this year just outside Llangollen, North Wales. I've not been to a Nationals event for about 8 or 9 years, I use to cover the events for either Dirt or MBUK magazines, or both. I have to thank Dave Franciosy and Si Paton, the organisers, for letting me have media accreditation for the event.

Had to put this up... It's like a Honda ad...

This is so funny, saw it on Strobist and just had to share. And yes this how we all take portrait images. Not! Now was it Honda or Audi that made ads like this?

Here is the how they did it video.

Why didn't I take my flashguns...

I spent a long weekend in Wiltshire, though on Sunday I went west to Bath to see an old friend and skateboarding buddy, Howard. I took my Canon 1Ds MkII with me, not sure why, though I didn't take my flashguns. Kicking myself, after a few good cups of coffee (there were biscuits), a lot of reminiscing about the good old days (when our knees and ankles could still take the pounding of a full day of skateboarding), a trip into Bath for lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant, Howard suggested checking out the local skatepark. There was a session going down with three guys, whose names I will find out, I took a few pictures but had to push the ASA up to 400 in order to get 1/1000s shutter speed to freeze the action. I'm a bit old school when it come to using higher ASA/ISO, most of my action photography was always shot on 100ASA film stock, I see no reason to change, though to be honest the slight increase in noise on these digital shots doesn't detract one bit.

Today was going to be a film day...

... but the weather so far today has been shocking, torrential rain for nearly an hour, it's only just starting to brighten up now. So instead of going out to play with my Rolleicord and Nikon FM I'm sat in front of the computer working on the images I took during Whit week. We went down to Norfolk, we spent most of our time on the beach or bizarrely riding on miniature railways, we did the Dinosaur Adventure too, which was fun, my youngest lad roared at all the inanimate dinosaurs, we were in stitches. The image below is from Dinosaur Adventure, my son is stood next to me roaring his head off, he wouldn't go any closer, brave enough to roar but wisely at two years old, keeping far enough away in case it is real.

He didn't stand up to the T-Rex though, he's smart for two.

Bang! Slap! Something dropped through...

... the letterbox. The Fine Art issue of pdn, packed with some nice articles on what fine art photography collectors are buying and what Fine Art photographers are doing to attract buyers. The issue is packed with the usual high standard of images and 'End Frame' this month is a small piece in memoriam to Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros.

Still loving these Hipstamatic images...

My son won a small inflatable globe the other day at his school summer fate, having busted a lung inflating the damned thing it then got the Hipstamatic treatment. I'm enjoying playing with this app more than any other I've had on my iPhone, I'm also using Photogene just to do a few tweeks on sharpness, saturation etc, I like that to, it's pretty easy to use, though you can put it a bit to far if you have big fingers, but as it will save a new copy each time you can play to your hearts content with plenty of variations.