Goodwood Festival of Speed 2022
I adore all things Goodwood and hadn't been to the Festival of Speed since 2008 (ish) and was keen to return. I went on the Sunday, awoke early and arrived for the first 9:30am supercar run. The day was then spent watching, observing and photographing the most incredible motor cars. It really is an amazing event.
Check out the gallery below for some of my highlights:
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Monaco is an incredible place. It has such an intense, somewhat overwhelming atmosphere. It’s also, as they say smaller than you expect... My wife I went as part of our 30th birthday celebrations and I absolutely was going to take the Nikon too.
This was such an opportunity to continue my degree dissertation project I started in 2003 on Formula One circuits (see Spa Francochamps post here). After a day or two of wandering and exploring the city, I had a good idea of where the most iconic sections of the circuit were and where I wanted to photograph them from.
The trip also coincided with the first Royal wedding, while Mrs R was tucked up in the hotel watching the Royal wedding, I went out to walk the circuit and take the photographs that you can see here.
I photographed them all on a Nikon D3X and converted them into black and white in post production. I chose to crop the images to a 11’x14’ crop as a homage to previous images I’ve taken on a medium format Mamiya RX67.
I really pleased with the sequence of images and I hope they convey the ambience and heritage of this fantastic place and motor racing circuit.
Enjoy the imagery:
Finally, I'm able to share the first part of my 2003 University 3rd year project. This has been a long time coming...
A while ago... During my degree course in Editorial and Advertising Photography at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, I spent some of my 3rd photographing historic Formula One circuits. I was interested in capturing the ethereal tranquillity of these tracks when all was silent and the infamous "F1 Circus" had departed either for a season or forever.
The project began at Brooklands, London and then Donington, Derby and then moved into mainland Europe to photograph Zandvoort, Holland, Spa Francorchamps, Belgium and the Nordschleife, Germany. This was all photographed, developed and presented in an end of year gallery show in London.
Later in 2011, I visited Monaco to photograph the road circuit, which added a really interesting dynamic to the portfolio.
All the 2003 images were photographed on film using a beautiful medium format Mamiya camera, recently I've taken delivery of an Epson film scanner and have started the process of scanning these old negatives.
It is now that I'm delighted to share the first images from my time at Spa Francorchamps.
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I am not an Apple fan boy!
I use Dell computers running Windows 10. But I do have a iPhone 6 (which I love) an iPad Mini.
Recently my lovely, generous, beautiful wife (in case she reads this...) bought me the new Apple Airpods for my birthday. I wanted to take a moment to share my opinions of them.
I often photograph long events and it's good to be able to listen to music and podcasts while having camera in hand, I found using the standard wired headphones super frustrating. They were always knotted, would get caught up around the camera and I'd often move quickly to get a shot a only to catch the wire on something and rip the headphones out of my ear... (not ideal!). All of these problems go away with the Airpods.
The sounds quality is excellent, if in all fairness no better than the standard free headphones and they fit my ears well too. I've read that if the standard headphones fit you well, then the Airpods will do too.
The batteries in the Airpods (according to Apple) last for 5 hours and the case will further charge the headphones for 24 hours usage. The case itself doesn't take long to charge when plugged in via the USB to Lighting cable. A small orange/green light in the case lets you know if the Airpods are charging or charged. Open the case next to your iPhone and the power percentage in both the case and headphones is displayed on the iPhone screen.
When listening, Two taps on a Airpod opens Siri and if you take one pod out of your ear the music or podcast will pause. Two taps also answers and hangs up on calls.
Once they are setup there's no need to touch your phone, all everything can be done through Siri - although adjusting the volume with Siri is slow and a little painful.
At the time of writing this post, I've had the only had the Airpods for a couple of weeks, but I'm loving not unknotting and untangling the wire!! I've also enjoyed the flexibility that comes with not being tethered to the phone. When on long calls, I use the headphones now as it enables me to be heads free.
So far, I'm delighted with them and would highly recommend them, Apple fan boy/girl or not!
Currently delivery from Apple is 6 weeks but it's well worth the wait - that said rumours are that the iPhone 8 may ship with them as standard...
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Every May Day Bank Holiday sees the return of the E-Type Register Track Day to Goodwood Motor Circuit. I've enjoyed photographing this event for the past 8 years, but sadly this year I was unable to attend. However, I was lucky enough that friend and fellow photographer Edward, from Sports Action Photo,was available to cover the event.
If you'd like to see Edward's on track action photos, please visit:
http://bit.ly/E-Type-Goodwood-2017
Here are some of my highlights from the 2016 event.
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Photo by Corinne Kutz - from Unsplash
I've applied for many freelancing photography roles over the past 15 years and have received a good number of applications to work with myself and the various company's I've worked with. The quality of the applications, not surprisingly vary considerably! I wanted to suggest some tips that in my opinion would make your application stand out from the rest.
As I write this, I'm expecting that you're a professional or semi-professional photographer who is looking for work from an agency or company that commissions freelance photographers on a regular basis for a fee or day rate.
Here are things I consider that should be included in your application:
- Do your research about the team and company you are applying to, try and address the email by the name of the person who commissions the photography. I hate "To whom it may concern".
- Send a portfolio of your work (make sure it's relevant) with ideally a link to a dedicated page on your website including 20-30 portfolio standard images. Take the time to pull the together images that best showcases your work and is tailored for the role. Don't just send a link to your homepage and expect the viewer to spend time exploring where to find the relevant photos.
- What's your relevant photography experience? Who are your clients?
- Where are you based in the country and realistically how far are you willing to travel?
- What equipment do you own? - I know SO many blogs and articles say the kit doesn't matter, but it really does in certain industries
- Confirmation that you have Public Liability Insurance
- Show an understanding of the practicalities of the work they do. Is it weekend work, early starts and late finishes. Will this work fit in with your families lifestyle?
I hope this helps, good luck and don't forget to manage your expectations about the day rate!!
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but is that a good thing...?
This could be a controversial post... Let me explain.
A few weeks ago I randomly ended up scrolling through Twitter and ended up on http://www.sansfrancis.co/ which has a "designer toolkit" list of apps and websites. Including a list of photography resources. I'm well aware that creatives and bloggers often struggle to find the right imagery to compliment their work. In the past, this is where image libraries became of use, as did the right click button?
Image libraries have their problems and really, I believe few people actually want to steal copyrighted images. I've written in the past about how successful (or not) my experience with Alamy (a huge stock agency with almost 1million photos) has been... http://bit.ly/Six-Months-with-Alamy
The list of apps and websites, included Death to Stock Photo, these guys are running a new type of image library and each month they email a selection of approximately ten free photos to newsletter subscribers, some of which I've used within this blog previously. They also offer a subscription model, starting at $15 a month to download a certain number of images for free.
Another site recommended was Unsplash.
"Unsplash is a database of beautiful, high-res, free photos for creative use. No awkward office stock photos. Make sure you give credit to the photographer."
The majority of the images on Unsplash were indeed beautiful and of an exceptional quality and all in high resolution for free downloads with a Creative Commons Zero license - https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
I'm not sure how to describe my initial thoughts, perhaps slightly frustrated that photographers were giving away such good images for free, I wanted to know what did the photographers got out of the arrangement? Thinking it was a shame that the industry wasn't able to financially reward the photographers for their work.... I spent a little time thinking about this and after a while my initail thoughts seemed quite simplistic, and I wanted to learn more... Perhaps it would be enough for photographers to want to give back to the creative industries. I spoke to a couple of the team at Unsplash and a contributor via Twitter, they all said they loved the community, wanted to give back to the creative industry and that in giving back, they had their work was used increasing their exposure.
That made me think about how many YouTube videos, blogs, vlogs and podcasts I enjoy and have rarely made a financial contribution to the creators...
So, the long and the short of it, I now have a Unsplash account. You can check out my profile and download my images at high resolution here - http://bit.ly/Tony-Rogers-On-Unsplash. I've only spent a short amount of time uploading and tagging a few images, but perhaps more will follow over time. So far, in a week of sharing, my images have been viewed by 150 people, that's 145 more than six months on Alamy...
In a few months, I'll write another post with how things are going... There are always images that will be paid for (thankfully or I wouldn't have a job), but are websites like Unsplash helping the creative and photographic industires or causing them harm? Are they enhancing the value of great imagery, or reducing it as free images are so readily availble?
I'm only going to be posting personal images that have little or no commercial value, Unsplash could be new a home for my images rather than simply sitting on my computer hard drive...
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Sleeklens Actions
Following my recent Landscape Photography blog post a few weeks ago, a company called Sleeklens reached out to me and asked if I would spend a little time using one of their Photoshop Action products, in particular the Landscape Adventure Collection. I thought this was a perfect fit for my Skye images that I had shared in this post – plus gave me the excuse to go through and process some new images.
I’m a creative cloud subscriber and use Photoshop, but beyond downloading and using the Google Nik software, I’ve never used professionally created actions. I was very interested to see how this would fit in with my workflow and change the overall aesthetic of my images.
Within this post I’ve included several before and after images. The majority, are images I’d already spent time processing and just used the Sleeklens actions to enhance the final photograph. But, the header image was entirely processed using the actions. The difference is huge between the orginal file (quickly processed in Camera Raw) and the file processed with the Sleeklens actions (just below). It was incredibly quick and I’m delighted with the final results.
The actions were super simple to install into Photoshop, with a great YouTube video guide and a longer more detailed guide about how to use some of the individual actions.
The actions are divided into eight groups and I found it was easy to work down through the list of Exposure, Base, Tone, All In One, Enhance, Specialty, Temperature and finally (if required) Web File Preparation when making adjustments to the image. The actions would run and create a new layer, it is then possible to adjust the Opacity to achieve the desired effect. This all proved to be very straight forward and quickly created some dramatic images. These recipes could be reused to create a specific “look” across a range of images.
I highly recommend spending a little time exploring the Sleeklens YouTube channel and Facebook page for inspiration and to learn more about their products.
Sleeklens also have launched a Pro Photo Editing Service, you can learn more about this service in this short YouTube video.
It leaves me simply to say, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed using this product and will continue to spend time learning in detail how it works and integrating it further into my image workflow. Thank you to the team at Sleeklens for giving me the opportunity to use the Landscape Adventure Collection.
RAW processing only
Sleeklens Actions
Orginal processing
Sleeklens Actions
Orginal processing
Sleeklens Actions
Orignal processing
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In Tunbridge Wells last week, we had our first proper snow of this winter, be it only 3cm, but still, definitely snow! This was the first time my 23 month old daughter had even seen snow and I wanted to photograph her reaction and enjoyment as she discovered this strange looking, chilly white stuff.
We spent 45 minutes walking nearby our house, through the woods and across the cricket pitch - the roped off area was no hindrance to her as she walked right underneath it to completely fresh, untouched powder. I took a series of images and shared them to Facebook. During the day I was aware that I wasn't the only parent to have gone out and photographed their child that day...
I wanted to share a few tips on how images of toddlers can simply be improved. I'm going to work on the basis that you've chosen an outfit that you like and chosen a good time of day to go out, I.e when they're not hungry or sleepy.
This first one is really obvious, but catches me out all the time:
- Give their face a wipe to remove any muck, it's just annoying to retouch out later!
- Choose a location that has plenty of available light, this will help the camera focus and have a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action
- Choose to shoot at an angle that gives a good interesting background with no large or colourful distractions
- Crouch down to shoot images from the child's perspective, this gives a contextual background and is more flattering of the child. I did take the first image in this post standing as I intentionally wanted to eliminate any background...
- Set the camera to a small aperture (F4-F5.6) to blur the background and give definition between the subject and the background. On many cameras there is a Portrait Mode which will do this automatically
- Don't hide behind the camera for too long, just lift the camera up, take a number of shots and drop it down again. This eye contact will help keep the child's attention
- Work fast, as we all know children get bored quickly.
And finally
- Take lots and lots of images, digital photos don't cost a thing! You can delete the bad ones later after all and camera/computer memory is really cheap (unless you're battling with insufficient memory on an iPhone?)
I hope that helps, happy shooting.
When this happens, it's time to go home.
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Inspired by some of the landscape photography Thomas Heaton has been recently sharing on his YouTube channel. I thought I'd share some images taken from a landscape photography trip I and a friend James Lindsay took to the Isle of Skye in Scotland, back in January 2009.
We flew to from London to Inverness, hired a car (where I found my love of heated seats) and drove cross country, on to the Isle of Skye. I remember from the moment we got off the plane the light was different to that in Kent. It seemed, warmer and more intense! We rented a beautiful Cottage that was just North of Portree - http://bit.ly/SkyehavenCottage with an amazing glass wall along one side looking over fields with mountains in the background. This cottage made for a luxurious and base for the trip and its central location perfect for travelling around the Island.
Our days were spent heading out and being on location and setup long before sunrise (going in January meant sunrise often wasn't until 7:30am so not too early). This meant we enjoyed the beautiful Scottish early morning light. We'd then return to the car and head for breakfast. The rest of the day was spent photographing the weather, detailed shots of nature and scouting locations for the following days.
On the last day we enjoyed snow in the afternoon, although not really enough to make good images, but just enough to make driving interesting... We almost got stuck in a deep valley waiting for the rain to stop not realising that at the top of the valley the rain was falling as snow and was already a few inches deep.
I learnt a few photography lessons in that week - always clean your sensor before going on a long trip to the middle of nowhere - with most of my images taken at F16 dust was an issue and I spent a ridiculous amount of time cloning the images after every day. In my normal work at the time - motorsport taken at F5.6 dust was never an issue! Next was to replace filters on a regular basis, I used a Cokin Graduated Grey 0.6 soft edged filter to help darken skies in many of my photos, it had a huge scratch right in the centre...! Finally, to be patient (not a talent I have). Often we'd arrive at a location and the weather didn't make for a good shot, but it never took long for it to change!
It was a good, fun week away and James and I both left with some fond memories and some good images. I'd highly recommend a trip to Skye, it really is Scotland at its finest, just make sure you take a camera with you!
Both these images were taken from outside the cottage.
Right, quick update as I've now been a contributor to Alamy now for 6 months.
Put simply, it's been a little disappointing. Now, I will add here I've not been 100% focused on this project (work, a 22 month old daughter and another one arriving in a few weeks) but I hoped to have at least one image sale by now... But alas, as it stands I've zero sales! I've carefully captioned and uploaded 569 images, these are mostly images from my archive with one "news" sports shoot. You can take a look at my images online here - http://bit.ly/Tony-Rogers-on-Alamy
I had hoped that some of my snowy images would sell in the winter (of course there's still time) or maybe some of the Autumnal Tunbridge Wells landscapes. These are the type of shots that are often found when searching on Alamy. Since July I've only had 5 "zooms" where someone actually clicks on an image to enlarge it, all of those "zooms" have been of the "Ice Pack Physio" images I've included in this post. These are the most traditionally "Stock" images I've uploaded so perhaps this isn't surprising. Perhaps it will be one of these images that sell first??
Alamy also gives quite detailed analytics on what users are searching for and it suggests that users are buying pictures of people rather than places. As you'd expect a certain US President-Elect has been popular as has the German Prime Minster.
My target in the next few months is to increase the images online to around 1000 and hope the extra volume gives some returns. We'll see what happens and I'll update in a few months or sooner if I make a sale.
Today (19th August 2016), 177 years ago the first photograph was created. This is being celebrated with World Photo Day.
In late 2013 I worked at Jessops and worked at Thruxton, Brands Hatch and Silverstone as an event photographer shooting track and experience days. It wasn't until mid 2004 I shot my first event under my own brand. It was for a company called MG Extreme Rally. They were offering experience rides in the Co-driver seat of their MG ZR rally cars on the Silverstone Rally Stage. I was invited Silverstone to cover the action and sell my images to the guests.
This was early days of digital, I had a Nikon D2H with a 4.0mp sensor, and a basic wireless connection to send the images from the rally stage to my sales staff. Back then I charged £15 for one printed photograph and both digital files on a floppy disk (2006 ish I went to CDs, that seems insane now). I continue to shoot motorsport events now.
So what is it like to photograph a football match...?
A few of my friends shoot football and have made careers doing so. I asked Paul Terry with his 10 years of experience and connections if he would take me along to a game. We chose the pre season friendly between Brighton Hove Albion and Lazio at Brighton's home ground the AMEX.
This was a perfect choice as Paul knows the Press Office guys there very well and was able to secure two photographers passes. I found out that "out of season" games don't need a Dataco license for a pass. A Dataco license is difficult to get as a new or even existing sports photographer, due to the volume of published work photographers are required to submit. Generally an agency would have the pass rather than the individual photographer.
Paul and I arrived at the Stadium at 1pm giving us plenty of time to prepare ahead of Kick off at 3pm. We made our way into the Media Room, signed in with the Press Officer and were handed a bib and stool. I had expected a bib but not a stool, I had even borrowed a stool but was advised to use the clubs as it was the correct height above the digital sponsorship boards but not high enough to block the view of the fans. We found two workspaces next to each other and setup our laptops.
Paul whilst enjoying a filling roast chicken lunch (free food and free drinks for press - who knew?!) created the IPTC file to allow for quick captioning of the images during and post match. With this file it's possible to type "\b3\" in Photo Mechanic and this would then auto fill the player name wearing the #3 top.
It was about 2:30pm before we made it out to the pitch to find our shooting locations. The club and club photographer limit where the guest photographers can sit during the match. At Brighton the photographers can sit along the North long side of the pitch and to the North of the goals on both sides - pretty much all looking into the sun! The Southern side of the pitch during the match is reserved for the club photographer. It's also the done thing that once you're in location, you don't move during the match. We chose to sit approximately 10 meters along from the North East corner of the Stadium on the long side of the pitch. To begin, Brighton would be attacking towards us. This location gave us a good opportunity to shoot "stock images" as well as capture in game action shots, but is less ideal for "goal shots". For the second half we moved to the Eastern short side of the field between the goal and the corner flag. For this half, Lazio would be attacking us with their fans right behind us. I will add here I was surprised how close we were to the pitch and to the fans. The fans were only a couple of meters behind us.
The game itself was pretty boring - to be fair I'm not a football fan anyway, but everyone we spoke to agreed - the game finished Brighton 0 - Lazio 1.
I've photographed charity football matches on 5-a-side pitches, here it's possible to photograph the players wherever they are on the pitch, unlike the AMEX where it is considerable larger! If the players were down the far end of the pitch I felt they were too small in the frame to capture an image, they really had to be our side of the halfway line to create a good photograph. It felt like, for much of the game, in both halves, that the play was "at the wrong end" so our opportunities for images felt reduced, plus the only goal of the game was at that end too!
I was shooting on a full frame Canon D1X with a Sigma 120-300mm F2.8 lens. I had another two bodies nearby with the standard sports go to lens a 70-200mm and wide lens, but these didn't really get used. The 300mm end of the long lens was almost close enough, but Paul's 400mm F2.8 with the extra 100mm reach made all the difference. The only downside with the 400mm is the cost of the lens and its weight, it's huge and pretty tricky to move into position and keep up with the action - this was my experience during the ten minutes when Paul entrusted me with it.
The game flew by, the 45 minute halves went very quickly and I, unlike Paul wasn't uploading live images throughout the game. We both are Stock Photographers from Alamy, so as this was a friendly with little news interest we uploaded the images to Paul's account with Alamy. Here is a link to all the images Paul and I uploaded:
Post game, it was back to the Media Room to edit, process, caption and upload any further images, grab a drink then head home. around 6pm.
I had a hugely enjoyable afternoon, learnt plenty and had a good laugh too. Football is tough to photograph, the play is quick and the ball moves swiftly and is tricky to keep in frame, my respect of football photographers grown substantially.
Below are a selection of my images that went to Alamy. To check out my stock work please have a look at: http://bit.ly/Tony-Rogers-on-Alamy
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I'm sure no one has used that oh so "witty" title...
Poor title aside, I've good news! It's still early days but after twelve years I've finally signed up to Alamy a large Stock Agency to sell some of my back catalog of work. Sports photographer and friend Paul Terry has been a member for 18 months and highly recommended the Agency. So, early this week I submitted an initial selection of images for quality control and am now officially a contributing photographer.
I've only a handful of shots for sale at the moment, but 40 uploaded awaiting for approval. I've just finished a shoot with some new images to process, caption and upload. The next few months will be spent looking though my archives at what would be suitable for stock sales.
You can view my images by following this link:
http://bit.ly/Tony-Rogers-on-Alamy
I've still plenty to learn about the stock industry, but I'll share my thoughts and discoveries as I learn.
Have you ever bought Stock images, if so, I'd be interested to know what the image was of and what it was used for?
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Many Happy Returns to the team at the Kentish Hare!! Two Years today - 10th May 2016.
In 2014 I was commissioned by Maxim PR to photograph the "Test Evenings" and Launch Party of The Kentish Hare in Bidbough, Kent. Since then, my family and I have enjoyed many great evenings eating and drinking in the bar, restaurant and beautiful garden.
I'll thoroughly recommend a visit.
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This is Laminaria. Designed by Marc Fish.
I wanted to share with you my images of this incredible piece. Check out the links above to learn more about Marc Fish and Laminaria.
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I'm just recovering from a busy, chilly, wet day at Goodwood on Bank Holiday Monday and finishing up filing all the driving images from the day.
If you were on track and would like to see your images, please email me on [email protected] and I'll be in touch with details.
In the coming days I'll post a larger selection of images from the day.
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May Day Bank Holiday once again is the date for the annual Jaguar E-Type Register Track Day. I'll be shooting the 50+ drivers navigating and experiencing the infamous Goodwood Motor Circuit. The drivers go out on track in small groups (6-8) cars for sessions of 15 minutes. Just enough time to warm up themselves and their cars but generally not long enough to get too excited and start departing the black stuff!
This will be the sixth time I've photographed this event and my goal is to capture the cars on track from numerous locations around the circuit. I know the circuit well but it is always a challenge to shoot from a new perspective. The image above was taken in 2015 from a "new" position, this image works well as it has an interesting, contextual background - I try and avoid taking images with only grass in the background - I like images where it is apparent to the viewer where the image was taken.
The first cars are on track at 9am and I have until 3pm shooting before I need to be at my sales desk ready to show the drivers their images. This gives me time to shoot 4 locations, staying at each for an hour - this hour normally allows me to see every car out on track at each location. During lunch (when the circuit historically shuts for an hour) I start the process of sorting the images into "number plate" folders. Doing this is invaluable to speed up the process when the drivers come along to see their photos, if the images are pre-sorted into relevant folders it makes life easy.
On the day this year, I'll be selling hand finished printed photographs plus digital collections of all the images taken. The digital option is by far the most popular as it gives the owners the most flexibility. New for 2016 is that I'll take along my archives from previous years and make those available to purchase.
In my archive from previous Jaguar E-Type Register events are:
Goodwood - 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015
Prescott Hill Climb - 2008, 2009 and 2011.
In preparation for this years events I've still to curate the Archives to enable them to be accessible quickly from Goodwood, print some new marketing material and posters, plus spend a little time deciding which positions to shoot from on the day. I'll post a selection of images from the day in the coming weeks.
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I maybe a few weeks behind the curve on this news, but it's good (I think) that the Nik Collection software bundle is now FREE!
I've been using the Nik Collection for a long time now, long before Google purchased Nik (known for the mobile photo editing software Snapseed) and have been very impressed with this software. The download from Google comes with 7 different programs, but my favourite is Silver Efex Pro 2. I used this to create the above image, taken on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The most recently released program is Analog Efex Pro 2 and this too is excellent, in my opinion, any wedding or portrait photographers could construct their own recipe using various filters and create some very striking looks.
It's great that now more photographers will now have the opportunity to use the software, but now it's free, does this mean they'll be no more updates? Is this the end to the Nik Collection? I hope not, it will be interesting to see what Google does in the coming months.
You can download the software here: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
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Image thanks to - Death To Stock Photo
As a photographer, I'm of course asked about photography, but also about business. I want to make some changes in the way I blog and the topics I blog about, growing my posts from simply about photography to include business, marketing, technology and productivity. In this first of the new blog topics I want to tell a story involving my experience with a company generally not know for having good customer service, Eurostar.
I've just been dealing with them regarding a delayed journey (by eight hours) last year and their excellent customer service made me think about how we as small business owners could improve our customer service.
Here's how - throughout the delay, we were keep informed of the situation, what was happening, given a rough timescale and told what the onward journey plan was. The following day, we had an email apologising for the delay and refunding the ticket cost for our outgoing journey. We were also offered complimentary return tickets to be booked within the next 12 months. As a passenger on the train I was happy that they were doing all they could in the situation.
As small business owners, we deal with our customers on a daily basis, here are my four quick takeaways that I feel we should be constantly reviewing and working to improve.
1 - Our customer communication
(Ensuring that customer always feels they know what's going on)
2- Are we being insightful? - thinking ahead of our customers
(Answering their questions before they have thought to ask them)
3 - What is our offering? - Are we delivering the best product/service
(not just refunding the ticket, but offering a complimentary ticket allowing a good amount to time re-book and travel)
4- Making sure we are taking the time to care
(a follow up email/phone call to see if the customer had any questions and were happy with the service)
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Enjoy the festive break, and have a very Merry Christmas and a fabulous New Year.
(the image is of my daughter Charlotte playing with a Lightsaber!)
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On a very regular basis I’m asked by a publication, magazine or website if they can use one of my images to illustrate a story. Sometimes there is a budget, other times not. If there isn’t a budget the answer isn’t always no. There are definitely times when a credit in a leading publication or website with a large volume of readers or viewers has the perception of being valuable.
Last week, in Tunbridge Wells we saw the first snow of the winter, it was forecast but it was heavier than expected and started to settle. I was sat on my sofa and took a quick iPhone shot out of the window and posted to Twitter.
Approximately 30 minutes later a journalist working with ITV tweeted me asking if they could use my image.
I was slightly surprised as it wasn’t a great shot, but wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to have an image published on the ITV website! There of course wasn’t a budget and I knew if I declined the journalist would simply move on to the next snowy image on Twitter. So I said yes, but only if they credited my photo with my business name: Grey2Black Photography. They agreed.
Ten minutes later I was forwarded a link to the story, leading with my photograph and a credit!
I don’t know how many people read this story or visited the webpage, I’m guessing a rather large number. How many of them paid attention to the photograph or the fact it was taken by Grey2Black Photography is impossible to tell. The metric that could perhaps answer this was by the volume of hits on my website, people that were interested and had wanted to see more or find out more about the photographer behind the image! (perhaps unlikely given the quality of the image but...)
That evening, some ten hours after publication I logged in and checked my Google Analytics account. I was interested to see if there had been an extra traffic to my site, the answer, no!
The image is not my best work, it was literally a snap, I even used the digital zoom on my iPhone 6 to crop into the window, so it is understandable that people didn’t want to see more images or have any interested in the photographer, the image merely supported the story.
So what was the value, to ITV a free photograph, to me, the fun of having an image published on a leading news site and a chance to Tweet/Facebook a link to my image... But really, very little in tangible value!
This piece isn’t written suggesting photographers, artists, illustrators should always say no to image use with only a credit, but before saying yes, it is worth taking the time to think what the actual value is of saying yes.
This is an awesome piece of hand crafted furniture!
Designed by Richard Warmisham, the details within the furniture make it a pleasure to look at and to use. The ethos behind the recently opened design studio www.madeby68.com is:
"Our passion is to design and make truly considered, beautifully crafted contemporary products and furniture. We combine a love of the mid-century modern design aesthetic and an understanding of elegant simplicity. Using traditional techniques combined with innovative technology and materials we create exciting limited run pieces."
It was a pleasure to photograph this and I look forward to shooting more of Richard's work in the future.
Here are the results of Marc Fish's new furniture from his One Piece Series.
Marc says "This piece is the first in the 'one piece series' where Marc explores the positive and negative space a single piece of wood can occupy. In reality the table is made from nearly 100 pieces of timber."
See more of Marc's work at www.marcfish.co.uk.
I knew that this was going to be a good shoot when I asked for a Hot Chocolate.
Normally, that question is met with a "sorry we don't have any". But at Provision Studios in Hoxton, the answer was "let me check, if not we'll go and buy you one". Five minutes later I was holding a perfectly prepared Green & Black's Hot Chocolate.
The service and attention to detail here are excellent!
My client wanted to shoot some of his new furniture (will post images soon) against brickwork as well as traditional studio images. Marc put the time and effort into find Provision Studios and made all the booking arrangements. This was both Marc's and my first time at this studio.
Tucked just off the main road, a moments walk from Hoxton Station or 15 minutes walk from Old Street Station is a hidden gem. The two near identical shooting spaces are tucked underneath a railway bridge within its arches, a third arch contains the office space and studio reception. Full, floor to ceiling windows let daylight in at one end of the studio with a white painted cove with infinity edge at the other. The massive window, has a rolling shutter door which can be rolled down to black out the daylight. Included in the space are two large old, worn, characterful and super comfortable sofas, large make up station, iMac workstation and a fridge with drinks facilities plus the free WiFi details. What more could you need... Parking. Yes, plenty of that too, with excellent access to move products and people in.
Whilst Provision don't have they're own lighting equipment hire onsite, they do have digital equipment hire including Hassleblad and Canon camera equipment, they asked me to provide them with a list of lighting kit I needed and then quoted us the rental fee. For this shoot I needed 4 Profoto D1 heads, plus modifiers, stands and triggers, which was very well priced. It was actually cheaper, not to mention far easier to book the equipment through ProVision than through another supplier. The equipment was onsite in the studio when I arrived very early in the morning. This saved the hassle of me having to pay deposits, and make my own equipment delivery and collection plans.
As for shooting in the studio, it was very good, there are plenty of power outlets, plus room to work efficiently, help from the team was never far away. After 30 minutes in the studio we'd juggled all the furniture around with the help of the studio assistant to allow us to shoot the furniture against the best bit of brickwork. The cove had been freshly painted, but did have some marks on the background that took some retouching to remove, and whilst a perfect width for fashion shoots, in a perfect world the background would have been extended around the corners into more of a full infinity cove to allow more shooting flexibility. With large pieces of furniture it is far easily to move the camera than the product, having the cove walls come around the corner would have enable more shooting angles, but this is being critical, the space worked very well for what we needed.
In conclusion, ProVision is a very cool, fabulously designed shooting environment, somewhere with a wow factor that all clients will appreciate. I very much look forward to shooting there in the future.
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Aviation regulations which are enforced by the CAA
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Data protection regulations which apply where the drone is used for capturing personal data and which are enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
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fly a drone on a commercial basis (this is known as conducting ‘aerial work’)
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fly a drone over or within 150m (492 ft) of a congested area
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fly a drone over or within 150m (492 ft) of an organised open-air assembly of more than 1,000 persons (such as a sporting event or concert)
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fly a drone within 50m (164 ft) of any vessel, vehicle or structure which is not under your control
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fly a drone within 50m (164 ft) of any person
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Where possible let people know before you start recording.
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Consider your surroundings. Do not use your drone to capture images of people where to do so may intrude on their privacy.
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Get to know your camera first to enable you to understand what images it is likely to capture and whether it will be possible to identify individuals from those images.
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Think before sharing your images and avoid sharing images that could have unfair or harmful consequences. Apply the same common sense approach that you would with images or video recorded by a smartphone or digital camera.
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Keep the images safe. The images you have taken may be saved on an SD card or USB drive attached to the drone or the camera. If they are not necessary, then don’t keep them. If you do want to keep them, then make sure they are kept in a safe place and only retained for as long as they are needed.
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Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) website – www.caa.co.uk
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Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website – www.ico.org.uk
Cheeseworks are a wholesale cheese supplier delivering cheese, meats, deli products and much more throughout the UK. In the South East deliveries are made with a fleet of three long wheelbase vans and two fabulous Mini Vans.
Winterdale Cheesemakers produce a "great cheddar style cheese" from their Friesian dairy cows. Winterdale Shaw is a cloth bound, cellar matured hard cheese. It along with its smoked relative are some of my favorite cheeses.
I photographed the Sprinter with the Winterdale Barn (where the cheese is made and under which is matured) in the background along with their fully electric Nissan Leaf. Here are some of the highlights from the shoot:
I've been fortunate throughout my career to photograph many different sporting events and a few weekends ago I had my first shoot at a Point to Point. I went to the Penshurst Point to Point in Kent, firstly as it had a great reputation but also as is very near my home.
It was a grey, murky day, but that did mean that I didn't have to worry about the Sun's direction. This was great as it allowed me almost total flexibility on my shooting location and direction. The course was generally marked out with white plastic fencing but in places just rope, this allowed the public and photographer's to get very close. By the main straight this proved to be a problem as everyone was so close it was difficult for a clear view, but around the back of the course, I had huge sections of fence to myself and with a great view of a jump.
I always feel the closer to the action a photographer can get then the better the resulting photographs, at this Point to Point the access was fantastic so it could produce some very exciting and dramatic sporting images. Here are a selection of my highlights.
Every year on May Day, the Jaguar E-Type Register hosts a track day for its member's at Goodwood Motor Circuit, I was on hand photographing the event.
If you were driving at Goodwood, or a passenger and would like to view your photographs, please email me at [email protected] and I'll send you a PDF of your shots. Images are available to purchase on CD for only £20 per car, this includes all photographs of that car taken during the day.
I will write a full blog post about the day very soon...
Photographer: Tessa Bunney - Overall Winner
On Wednesday evening last week I was invited to the Mall Galleries by Pink Lady Apples to the awards of the 2014 Food Photographer of the year competition.
The competition, still fairly new attracts entrants for across the globe all hoping to win the £5000 prize, this year the competition received over 6000 images and video pieces. The evening hosted by Jay Rayner, restaurant and food critic for The Observer guided us through the winning images from the numerous categories. Photographer's have a choice of over 15 categories to enter their images into including, Food Portraiture, Food in the Field, Food in the Street and An Apple a Day.
The competition is open to photographers of all standards and is very affordable to enter with the 2014 fees only £20 per adult allowing up to five entries, extra entries are charged at £3. In my opinion, compared to other competitions, this fee is very reasonable. It is certainly my intention to enter next years competition.
The images below are some of my favourite that were on display at the exhibition. More images can be viewed here.
Photographer: Anna Wloch
Photographer: Louise Lister
Photographer: William Hondokusumo
Photographer: Suzanne Kantak
Although this is the first blog post I've written with "studio type" shots, I've had a huge amount of experience in studio photography. I've photographed vehicles, furniture, sporting equipment and of course models, but never before cardboard boxes...
With the wonders of Photoshop, unfortunately for many studios, there are times when I now don't need to hire a studio for these type of product shoots. All of these shots were photographed in the clients warehouse with just a couple of studio flash heads to provide the lighting. When back in the office, I removed the background and inserted a clean, white background.
The brief for this shoot commissioned by SL Packaging, a chilled packaging suppliers based in Cranbrook, Kent was fairly straight forward, they required photographs of their products showing suggested uses and their size. SL Packaging offer three size boxes. It was important that the photographs illustrate the size differences. The last shot in this series shows the bundle packs including several boxes, foam insulation, ice packs and tape.
To view all the images used on the live product page, please follow this link.
In January, alongside the Sussex Sport Photography team I spent the day photographing the SEAA XC at Parliament Hill in London. It truly was a day featuring all seasons. I arrived onsite early to an amazing view over the city shrouded in fog. Before long this had burnt off revealing warm, bright sunshine, by the last race of the day rain so heavy it hurt.
Here are a few muddy highlights from the day, the final shot in this series was taken on the Nikon D3 at a astonishing 12,800 ISO at F.2.8 1/250s. The technology on this camera still astounds me, it was finding light that my eyes couldn't see...
Drama always creates interest.
There of course are scales to the level of a dramatic event, but the more serious, generally the more dramatic the photography.
The South East of England has suffered twice in the last month with a huge amount of rainful over a very short period of time. The River Medway in Kent flooded its banks on both occasions causing damage to homes, shops, offices and a supermarket whilst causing travel chaos. During the second flooding I had a free weekend and was able to get out and shoot the drama.
Here are a selection of my images from Penshurst, Leigh and Tonbridge which are all within a ten minute drive from my home in Tunbridge Wells.
Christmas maybe done and dusted, but on the Friday before Christmas I was invited to photograph the SCOR Christmas party at the most wonderful of venues. SCOR is a French based, global reinsurance company with offices across the world. The venue of choice for the 2013 Christmas Party was the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, on the banks of the River Thames in London.
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, was founded by American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, he has created a "unique international resource dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare's work and the playhouse for which he wrote, through the connected means of performance and education". The Underglobe is a large, versatile space underneath the main theatre and is available to hire for a variety of meetings and events, SCOR and Swan put together a fabulous evening around the theme of Shakespeare's Nutcracker.
The space as you can see from the photographs was exquisitely decorated and furnished, guests were welcomed with champagne and canapes, before dining then music from a live band.
My brief was simply to capture the atmosphere of the event and provide imagery that could be used in-house by SCOR and given to their staff as a reminder of their evening. I utilised the low light capabilities of my Nikon D3 with on-camera flash for many of the shots, allowing lit faces but still colour and atmosphere in the background. For many of the shots I've posted here, I wanted to capture the interior finish and the ambience of the space. As much as it was very well lit, from a photography point of view it was still very dark. To keep image noise to a minimum I used a very low ISO which required the need for a tripod to keep the camera steady for the long exposures, this also allowed me to have a excellent depth of field.
I'm delighted with the results, as is the client, so all round, it was an exceptional fun and festive winter shoot.
Since graduating from my photography degree at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Rochester (now called The University of Creative Arts) I've thoroughly enjoyed photographing sporting events. Throughout 2013 I've been very fortunate to work with Sussex Sport Photography and have been invited to photograph many events with them, some of these have been running races with distances of 10k, half and full marathons to triathlons, aquathons and brutal adventure races. One of the reasons I enjoy this type of photography is the atmosphere at the events. Before the race starts there is a hush of nervous excitement and at the finish line sounds of joy, relief mixed in with a general sense of achievement.
It can often be somewhat of an endurance event for us photographers. Using a large, heavy DSLR with 70-200mm lenses, even monopod mounted, it can take it's toll on our shoulders. On some events it would be normal to be continuously shooting non stop for 2-3 hours for a half marathon and 5-6 hours for a full marathon. But somehow it never feels anywhere near as tough as it would be to participate.
In April 2013 I photographed the Sevenoaks triathlon, it was a hugely fun event to photograph with a great atmosphere in a beautiful location. In 2014 I've decided to take part myself. I'm certainly not unfit at the moment, but a huge amount of training will be required before April. I'll enjoy a feast at Christmas, then the training will commence in earnest.
As I wind down towards Christmas, I'm reviewing this year and the commissions undertaken and photographs I've produced. Here is a very small selection of my favourite shots from the 2013 running season.
12th September 2012
As I've said before on this site I enjoy shooting my regular commercial commissions but, I feel it is important to be creative and shoot personal projects. This is one such project. Home for me is in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, every morning my wife and I walk our two Greyhounds over Southborough Common past St Peter's Church. I decided that during each morning walk I'd photograph the same shot over a period of time to show the changing seasons.
The images were all taken on a compact Canon S95, this way the camera could fit in my pocket for the duration of the walk but would still give me excellent quality images. I experimented with a few locations but settled on this camera position for a couple of reasons. From an artistic point of view, I liked the curve of the road and stones leading the eye towards the church, plus the line of trees created an upturned V shape which is visually pleasing to the eye. I wanted to include the large tree on the left of the frame as knew this would be a key element in seeing the change in seasons.
I stood roughly in the same position each morning, using the same camera and focal length then composed the shot using the white stones in the foreground, the tree trunk on the left and the church brick wall on the right of the shot. This gave me continuity throughout the images.
These are only a small selection of the 122 images I photographed over the 10 months. I finished the project in June 2013 as the major seasonal changes had occurred. I'm looking at further promoting the project and would like to see it published in one way or another. One thought I'm considering is to self publish a short book, but that is a way down the line. If you would like to know more about the images or to feature them in anyway please be in touch.
10th October 2012
23rd October 2012
19th November 2012
30th November 2012
5th December 2012
11th December 2012
1st January 2013
10th January 2013
22nd January 2013
6th February 2013
11th February 2013
1st March 2013
12th March 2013
15th April 2013
23rd April 2013
30th April 2013
13th May 2013
15th May 2013
29th May 2013
6th June 2013
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We flew British Airways from Heathrow (after sampling some wine and cocktails at the fabulous Plane Food, Gordan Ramsey's place at Terminal 5) to Boston, Massachusetts. We spent three nights at The Langham in the city centre before collecting our Fiat 500 and heading North into Maine.
During a very wet drive towards our nights accommodation in Freeport, the Fall colour become increasingly more prominent. We enjoyed some retail therapy in the towns outlet, which is in essence the town itself. Check out the towns website for details. After a night here we headed into the White Mountains to stay for three nights at the Merrill Farm Inn. The White Mountains were beautiful, and as you can see from the photographs, the Fall foliage was fantastic. This was a true landscape photographers paradise.
For our penultimate evening, we traveled south to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, staying at the Inn at Mill Falls. The next morning we drove three hours back into the city for the final evening staying at The Loews before flying home. If you are planning a similar trip and would like some recommendations please drop me a note.
Here are a selection of my favourite images from our adventure...
Greg Du Toit - Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013
This week the winners of the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 were announced. I thought I would share with you the overall winning image of the competition taken by South African Photographer Greg Du Toit.
I'm a great fan of the competition and every November I make sure to visit the Natural History Museum to see the stunning exhibition. I am proud that in 2009 one of my images made it into the semi-finals, but alas no further. The exhibition has already opened and runs until the 23rd March before going on tour, tickets can and should be booked online as can get super busy at weekends. It is certainly worth the trip.
I have just returned from a fabulous week photographing the fall foliage in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts in the U.S.A. The trip was foremost a holiday with my wife, but of course the pro' Nikon came along as well. I wanted to share this lakeside reflection photograph, but I will upload a full selection of images soon once I've finished the edit and retouch.
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I just thought I'd take a quick moment to share this recent shot taken whilst on a shoot with Sportivephoto this weekend. I was covering the Tour of Kent cycle event with three other photographers. This image was taken from my first location near Hadlow midway up a long climb using my Nikon D2x with Nikon 20-35mm F2.8 lens.
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Photograph courtesy of Kata-Bags
This weekend I have been out shooting another sporting event and thanks to the wet weather I used my Kata Elements Cover, so I thought now would be a good time to write a product review. I cover a large number of sporting events every year and many of my commercial commissions are shot on location. As home is in England, I'm used to the British weather and therefore, shooting in the rain. I've tried a few techniques over the past ten years, some with more success the others. I've just let the camera get wet, sometimes this works with a light shower, but anything heavier I've found that often buttons will fail and I've had the screens stop working. These faults soon generally soon go away once the camera has dried out, but I have had longer term, expensive repair issues due to kit just getting too wet. So this I wouldn't recommend. A large car leather is great for keeping light rain off kit, and to dry the kit off, but, if the rain is very heavy, then the leather will just become soaking wet and do more damage than good. I've tried Sainsbury plastic bags, M&S 10p "bag for life" bags too, whilst these sort of keep the rain away, they look daft and unprofessional plus are a nightmare to fit, use and remove.
So, fairly recently I bought the Kata E-702 PL raincover, this fits perfectly on my Pro Nikon bodies with the Nikon 70-200mm F2.8 lens fitted. This model won't accept an on camera flash/speedlight. Kata do make a larger cover that accepts a full size flash though, I just didn't think I could justify the extra cost, and the extra plastic, I thought the size of the cover could be a frustration rather than a positive.
Photograph courtesy of Kata-Bags
So, what do I think... It is fairly expensive at around £70, so you need to shoot outside a lot to justify the cost. The camera fits well, and it doesn't take long to place the camera inside the cover. There is a long Velcro opening along the bottom which opens allowing the camera to be fitted inside, body first. There is a thick heavyweight velcro strap that wraps around the the lens hood, once this is tight, the bottom velcro opening can be sealed. With two large arm openings, once the camera is fitted, the only exposed part of the camera is the front glass element. It helps if you have a strap that can be disconnected quickly, then it can be reattached through the arm holes.
Photograph courtesy of Kata-Bags
The Elements Cover works very well, the camera in my experience stays totally dry, as do your hands, so achieves its purpose excellently. Using the camera on the other hand is a different matter... To look through the viewfinder, you are looking through the clear plastic, if this is flush with the viewfiner, then there is no problem, but if not, you just see a blurry image, this is similar when viewing the rear LCD screen. Of course, when the Elements Cover is being used, it's likely to be raining, so there will be drops of rain on the plastic, adding to the difficulty of seeing the information screens and buttons. I would say, that I don't think this is something that Kata could improve, it is just the difficulty of shooting in wet weather condiditions.
To conclude, I would recommend the cover if you shoot outside on a regular basis and shoot with a 70-200mm lens. I would suggest some practice using it before an important shoot though. If you are like me, then you will find it frustrating at first.
Photographer: Daniel Vojtech - Athlete: Tomas Slavik - Location: Prague, Czech Republic
On Sunday I had a rather lovely day hanging out in the beautiful Ashdown Forest near Tunbridge Wells in East Sussex. I enjoyed the warm sunshine and endured some very heavy rain showers over the course of the day. I was out with Sportive Photo shooting the Haywards Heath Howler Sportive which is organised by UK Cycling Events. The event featured three routes, 40, 65 and 98 miles long and I was on hand at two different locations to capture the riders.
The Nikon's take a pounding on events such as this, over the course of the day, I shot nearly 8000 shots, which roughly works out at about 10 shots per person, these shots are thought-out and considered and not "spray and pray". The idea is the individual riders after the event have a good choice of different images to purchase. Using a Pro body and the Nikon 70-200mm lens I supported the camera on my Manfrotto monopod, which is a must to save aching shoulders. My new Kata waterproof cover was required once again, I think I'll do a full post on this product soon... Watch this space for more details and a full review.
The cyclists may have looked shattered towards the end of the route, but it was smiles all round as the event finished in sunshine. A quick download (if using USB 2.0 to download 26gb is quick?!) then home and a pint in the pub.
