Here are a couple of snaps I captured over the weekend while visiting Beer in Devon with friends.
Despite the very bright and quite harsh summer light the location looked too good to not shoot.
As I mentioned last week in a previous post there is never any bad light it just depends what you want to capture.
I’m mildly obsessed with shooting skies as I believe they can often make or break many of the images I create.
So when thunderstorms are forecast you can be sure my camera is not too far from my side much to the despair of my family who get pretty fed up with me constantly pulling over in the car to shoot them !
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I was asked to do some teaching the other day which I rarely do much of these days and I was explaining how important it is to learn the fundamentals of photography.
I also very quickly added that once you have learnt them that really anything goes ..if something works for the intention of the image you are creating then it works end of the story.
This kind of applies to this image as I rarely would ever create any serious imagery in the middle of the day especially in the height of summer.
The sunlight (if we have any) is harsh, contrast and for the most part pretty uninteresting and if shooting landscapes everything tends to be a little too green with little colour contrast between anything.
Having said that I’ve always maintained there is no bad light it just depends on what you are trying to achieve in the image.
I had the idea of creating a cow image for a while and for me they remind me of Summer with yes you guessed its green fields and deep Mediterranean blue skies.
Apart from having to be careful with the vast contrast inherent in the scene it all went together well with an appropriate Somerset landmark of Burrow Hill in the distance.
Towards the end of last year we where commissioned to shoot a job in Rotterdam for Bristol Agency Flourish
The brief was to photograph a chef at a hotel on the outskits of Rotterdam for a campaign for Unilever’s Knorr’s Garde d’Or range of products for adverts around Europe.
Time on set was rather tight but I’m pleased to say everything went very smoothly and hats off to Flourish for a very well organised production allowing us to simply concentrate on capturing the best image possible.
The majority of the work I create these days tends to be pre-planned to a brief or an idea I’m inspired to create usually from several images composited in post.
Now and again though it’s great to just grab the camera and just explore and capture whatever I come across.
This often occurs when travelling to new places and I find inspiration is in overdrive to go and creative images that represent the place I’m experiencing.
While in Holland last week I had a few hours before flying home to go and explore Amsterdam.
There are in my opinion a couple of possible downfalls to arriving at either a well-known location or having limited time somewhere.
Floral Basket
If I’m visiting somewhere like Venice or Rome avoiding the well known often copied postcard locations and coming up with something fresh and in my own style is always one of my main objectives.
If time is limited at a location like in the shots here of Amsterdam then I’ll often find great locations only to feel that there would be an even better shot if only I could be there longer to wait for the light or weather to change, I suppose it’s a case of always wanting that little bit more perfection.
Over the years I have had to accept you are there at that moment and creating something unique from what you have in front of you and the other option is to simply just walk on by.
Here are a couple of images that I captured during my brief time in Amsterdam, the one below is a composite from two separate images captured a short distance from each other and composited together to create the final image.
Summer In Amsterdam
Like many other photographers as well as shooting with more Professional equipment I love the challenge of shooting with my iPhone.
This week after shooting a job in Rotterdam on Monday I had a few hours the following day before flying home to explore Rotterdam & Amsterdam.
Here are a few snaps from my wanderings with some more of the serious stuff to follow.
One of the great things about doing advertising work is you never know what’s going to come in with the next phone call or email.
Last Friday this week looked like being a fairly quiet and relaxed one but it proved far from it.
On Tuesday we found ourselves heading across the bridge to Cardiff for a couple of meetings regarding a potentially very large commission we had put a proposal in for the just the previous week.
Thursday we found ourselves on the road again this time heading for Central London at fairly short notice for a nice little shoot.
Now I love shooting in London but driving through the centre is not for the faint hearted especially when your idea of heavy traffic normally consists of 2 0r 3 horses or a tractor and trailer blocking the narrow country lanes.!
Glad to say I transformed into city driving survival mode and breezed (kind of) in and out without any problems.
As I said love working in London but it’s kind of nice to get home away from the crazy roads !
Have a great Whitsun everyone..
I’ve lived by the coast pretty much all my life and as a result it has featured in much of my work over the years and still inspires me to create new work.
This beach scene was captured during a visit to the Algarve in Portugal last October with the model being captured last week at the beach in the south west.
I was asked recently to help out a neighbour with some images for a new business venture she was setting up.
The main image needed to be a portrait of her with her dog Barney and I had the perfect location in mind that I had found only a week previously.
As with most shoots containing more than one person composition is key especially here where we have a person and a smallish animal that need equal attention in the frame. To do this I used a very large fallen tree that provided a great prop and worked perfectly for the main image required but also provided another unplanned opportunity when Barney decided to climb onto the very top of the trunk.
I very quickly spotted the potential of the scene unfolding and fired off half a dozen frames before he climbed down and the moment was gone.
I knew right there before previewing any images that I had a strong image that could be developed further in post.
I can’t explain what it is that that makes a potential image appear in front of me (when many people do not see it ) except to say it’s an unconscious thing perhaps developed (pardon the pun) over the 26 + years of looking through a camera.
The final photo retouching composite required a lot of retouching to remove the harness that Barney was wearing and to retain all the very fine details I’m obsessed with keeping and seamlessly blending with the background.
Retaining fine details like these takes a lot of work but knowing the image will stand up to the closest of scrutiny is important.
Next, I decided to scan through my archives to find the perfect background to compliment the image.
The image I decided to use is one of Exmoor that I had shot a couple of years ago but had never used and provided a perfect fit for the mood I wanted to create. The final image titled “Surveying The Moor” together with a close up of Barney is shown below.
