Wedding photography at Orocco Pier Hotel, South Queensferry
I had the pleasure of shooting the wedding reception of an old school friend at Orocco Pier, South Queensferry a couple of weeks ago. Hadn’t seen him for years. The stakes were high as the bridegroom, Nick Callaghan, is an established commercial photographer based in East Lothian, so I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes! [...]
Celia Hammond Trust Animal Shelter
At the weekend I had the pleasure of shooting some more cat portraits at the Celia Hammond Trust Animal Sanctuary near Brede, East Sussex. I had already photographed many of the cats at the Celia Hammond Trust Animal Sanctuary in Lewisham and I’d promised to go to Brede as they were in need of fresh [...]
Wedding Photographer London – Discount for late bookings in 2010
Late bookings I am currently available to take last minute bookings for the following dates in 2010: 11 September 18 September 25 September 9 October 23 October 6 November 20 November 27 November If you are still looking for a London wedding photographer or have been let down by your wedding photographer at the last [...]
Wedding Photography at Oaks Farm near Croydon
I had a great time shooting the wedding of Nicky and Kyle at Oaks Farm near Croydon. Fantastic venue for a photographer – apart from the easy-on-the-eye scenery outside, you don’t have the white-knuckle-drive between where the bride is getting ready and the ceremony as at Oaks Farm, it’s all done “under one roof. The [...]
Professional Wedding Portfolio
I am tweaking my web site on an almost daily basis at the moment – hopefully you will find it is improving all the time. I have just added a Flash-based Wedding Photography Portfolio page, which displays a collection my favourite images from recent weddings. The great thing about the Flash version is that it [...]
Baby portraits
Harvey is growing up fast and what with shooting weddings and cats, I haven’t had much of a chance to shoot the bonny lad these last few weeks. Tried a couple of different quick set-ups this weekend. A bare 580EXII on a Gorillapod to the left, gelled with a half cut of CTO, about eye [...]
Water droplet photography
A quick attempt at photographing droplets of water using a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens. Now you know you have dust on your sensor!
Lewisham to Central London by bike
Here’s a speeded up video of my journey into work, from Lewisham to Westminster, filmed with an non-HD Flip Video taped to the handlebars of my bike.
Making your business plan work for you
Anyone who has got anywhere near setting up their own business has probably read a tonne of advice about writing a business plan. I wrote one a few months ago and took it to a meeting with my accountant, during which she asked, “Did you write this for me or for your own benefit?” It [...]
Wedding Photography Workflow – Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS5
Here’s how I manage my wedding workflow, from shoot to final product. 1. Shoot I currently use a Canon 5D MkII and a Canon 40D to shoot the wedding. The 40D is my backup, but I have it over my shoulder most of the time with the EF-S 10-22mm lens attached to get my ultra-wide [...]
Wedding Photography at Seton Collegiate Church
Jenny and Jonathan got married on 26 June at Seton Collegiate Church near Longniddy in East Lothian, and celebrated afterwards at Craigielaw Golf Club, Aberlady. Absolutely stunning venues, I could not have asked for better for this wedding shoot. I still can’t believe that although I’m an East Lothian native, I’d never actually been to [...]
Celia Hammond Trust Animal Shelter
Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing a number of cats at the Celia Hammond Trust shelter in Lewisham. These fellas are superbly looked after by dedicated staff and volunteers at the shelter, but they desperately need a good home. It’s sad to see so many wonderful animals abandoned or unwanted and I would have [...]
More Harvey portraits
Harvey is getting bigger and stronger. I’ve seen a few pictures of three, four and five month old babies recently and none look significantly bigger or older than Harvey. Is he an amazingly quick developer or do babies plateau at this age? Anyway, he can look incredibly bonny in front of the camera lens. Here [...]
Preparing for first wedding shoot
What have I been doing recently? Getting ready for my first ever wedding shoot, that’s what. “Getting ready” in this context means doing an audit of my brain to make sure I still know everything that I think I know about taking photographs in a high pressured environment, on demand, in bright sunlight or heavy [...]
Harvey William Lemon
Things have been quiet around here recently thanks to the arrival of our son, Harvey William Lemon, who was born on 20 May. After a wonderful (and tiring!) period of paternity leave, it’s back to the grindstone for me and now looking I’m forward to pressing on with my business and to shooting my first [...]
Impromptu portrait shoot
The post-election clamour is still going on in London, so yesterday I took a walk around the Westminster village to see if there was anything worth shooting. I was hoping to spot some political personalities walking the streets or loitering at the media village opposite the Houses of Parliament. Instead I saw Michael Howard and [...]
Free wedding offer ends
I’m pleased to be able to report that my offer to shoot weddings between January and October this year, has now closed. Pleased, because this means that I am on track to shoot four weddings in 2010, my target for the year, allowing me to build enough of a portfolio to market for fully-paid bookings [...]
Aperture vs Lightroom
This debate goes on and it is contributed to by people many times more qualified than I am, but I’ve used both products and am still looking for my ideal workflow/photoprocessing solution, like every other serious photographer out there, so I thought it worth me pitching in. Lightroom I have used Lightroom since it was [...]
Progress Update
I am 82 days into business now, having registered as self-employed as of 1 January 2010. I’ve not jumped ship completely, I’m still a full time, overpaid, faceless bureaucrat from nine to five. But signing those forms is a big step along the road to 2012 when I fully intend to walk away from Westminster, [...]
Shooting the Barwicks
Joanna and I had the pleasure of meeting our friends Dan and Bekah and their son, Jeb, for lunch today at The Plough on Lordship Lane. I don’t know how many nut roasts that place sells on a Sunday but it’s a lot. Nice grub, and the nuts didn’t bring me out in a rash.From [...]
Shooting for free
On working for free to build my business I’m really happy that my offer to shoot weddings free of charge for most of 2010 is paying off. So far I have three confirmed bookings (two in Scotland, one in Croydon) and one tentative booking (in Rome). I have also had to turn down three wedding [...]
Winter shooting
The snowy weather in Scotland at Christmas provided some great photo opportunities – I’m sure Flickr is bursting with newly-uploaded images of us Brits dealing with “The Big Freeze”. The bird table in my parents’ garden was abuzz with starving robins, chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, sparrows and even two pheasants (one of which was [...]
Guinea pigs
I need to make something clear: I worship our two pet guinea pigs, Jeanie and Carmela, and love taking photographs of them, to the point where they just have to be the most photographed rodents in South London. I’ve shot these pigs in a similar way before but over the weekend I decided to go [...]
New Canon 24-70mm lens
I took delivery of a Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8 USM lens yesterday, from the increasingly market-friendly Ian Kerr on eBay (username: kerso). It was dark last night and I was shuffling about in the 1600-2000 ISO range, but I did take a nice couple of shots with the 430EX II on top, pointing at the [...]
