May

Juicing Oranges In The Shade

This wonderful smile belonged to a man I stumbled upon in the intence summer heat of Side (pronounced Ceday) in Turkey.
I was in Side in 2001 for my honeymoon but of course if you are a location photographer then honeymoon or not the camera gear has to come along !
It was mid afternoon and still exremely hot when we went for a walk and I remember seeing a crowd of people ahead on the shaded road.As we approached it soon came apparent that a crowd had gathered to quench their thrist with fresh orange juice this guy was selling from his mobile cart.
I have to say I dont think I have ever seen a man with such striking blue eyes that seemed to compliment his shirt perfectly.Then there was his amazing smile and almost perfect white teeth which in a country where so many men smoke is probably not a common site.
After buying some juice I gestured if I may take his picture and he happily without stopping his work obliged with a smile.

This image would have been a disater if not for the open shade of the trees which although cast a slight green but correctable cast on him softened the harsh summer light enough to avoid distracting contrasy light to take attention away from his wonderful expression.

This was also the days before digital at least for me so there where no checking histograms or image previews I had to rely on knowing my films characteristics (contrast range,latitude etc) and my experience metering and interpreting the readings…phew what a lot we had to contend with !

May

A Lifestyle Portrait, Keeping The Ambience The Dark Art Of Weaving The Withy

While on a shoot capturing some images for my personal project Life In A Somerset Landscape at Withy growers P.H Coates I came across this very dark but atmospheric room.
In it three guys where busy working in the dim light and plenty of banter was being exchanged in their strong Somerset accents especially when I was introduced to them followed by the words photographing you where mentioned!

It wasn’t a Landscape… but the room had a rustic historic charm and bags of atmosphere and I could visualize the final lifestyle portrait image complete with Matthew Godfrey one of the guys who skillfully weaved wicker fences in the room.
The image was going to be a tricky one to attempt to capture in one frame due to the dim light and the fact there were elements I wanted to be visible to help tell the story without over lighting and killing the whole ambience of the place.
It’s one of those moments when seeing the final image and having extensive knowledge of photo retouching techniques allowed me to harvest all the images I would need then combine them in post-production without a huge amount of system time.

Apr

Retouching For A Seamless Hair Transplant “Surveying The Moor”

Photo Retouching For A Seamless Hair Transplant “Surveying The Moor”

This image came out of doing a favour for a friend who was setting up a business for house sitting dogs and needed some promotional images of herself with her dog Barney.

It was while on location shooting the portraits that we passed this huge fallen tree and Barney decided to climb on top and the image simply announced itself in front of me. Unfortunately Barney had a bright red harness on and due to sheep being in the vicinity it could not be taken off so using some careful photo retouching it was removed in Photoshop making sure to add suitable fine hairs for a seamless result.

The background was a landscape captured on Exmoor and proved a perfect fit with the correct colour grading.

Mar

Wallpaper Photo…Art?

I’ve been selling my images as prints via a few small galleries for 20 odd years.In all that time I’ve never had an image reproduced as big as the one shown here. I was asked if I could supply the image titled “Wooden Walkway” by by neice who wanted to decorate her new home with it.

The image has sold many times both here and in the U.S.A and is probably my best selling image and I doubt it will ever be reproduced quite as large anytime soon.

Mar

Parisian Park

Occasionally when time permits I will dig into my archive and look at images that I’ve never used and simply have some creative fun. This is one such image which I captured while visiting an Advertising Agency in Paris about a job I had been shortlisted for. I decided to stay on after my meeting to spend a couple of days simply getting out at dawn with my camera and following my nose shooting whatever took my eye.I came back with several images that I published from the trip and many more that I did not do anything with which is sometimes the case.Like when I captured the images I decided just to enjoy the creative process of retouching and follow my instincts to end up with the image here which sums up the cool November morning in that park in Paris.

Mar

Commercial Photo Shoot, Yeovil Town F.C. Community Sports Trust

Combining two of my passions in Commercial Photography & Football is as my mum would have phrased it “like having your cake and eating it !” My son now 11 and a half has been at Yeovil as a player since he was around 7 years old. As a result of spending a lot of time at the club for training sessions and games, the Yeovil Town Community Trust learnt of my work as a commercial photographer in Somerset and asked if I could help them with their imagery & promotional needs. The Trust is the charity arm of Yeovil Town F.C and also run the Youth teams and training sessions and various other work within the local community.

The latest images they required (show here) were to illustrate the various Development Centres that are located around Somerset and their appropriate kits for a new website launch. Having full creative freedom I decided that the kits and model would look great captured against a white clean background and then to create some impact with the creative use of lighting.

The trust knowing my son had recently modelled in a video for the NSPCC and the fact the budget was tight being a charity asked if he would model the kits for the shoot.

Here are a few of the images with the completed photo retouching.

Feb

Boston Summer

Children playing in water hydron summer 92, Jamaica Plain Boston Massachusetts.

Feb

Turkish Bathers

Turkish Bathers at Side Turkey 2001

Feb

Sacré-Cœur, Paris

Sacré-Cœur Paris 2007

Feb

Prints

I’ve sold my work for a number of years through various galleries but always struggled to find a good way to display and sell online.This week however I discovered Pixels.com which looks like it may be the answer to my problem.Take a sneak at their site here…

europe prints for sale

venice prints for sale

Rowing-To-Market,Paris

‹ Prev 1 2 345 6 7 Next ›Last »