Image is everything….  We can be many things but our face is who we are; it sells us to people who have not yet got to know us.  No matter what it is that we do we are increasingly being asked to provide photographs for company profiles, social networking sites and all too many of us are failing to use our image properly.

The image you use to sell you, especially in a corporate context, should show something of your character and personality.  It should show you as relaxed, comfortable in what you are wearing and the body language should help you engage with the viewer.

People do business with people they know, trust and like; your image, the one you use as an avatar on a social network site of company profile, may be the first real impression someone has of you.

For the sake of a few minutes with a professional photographerl; it has to worth it!

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Some years ago I had a job photographing the Royal Marines, Brigade Patrol Troop during winter training in Norway. These guy’s don’t mess around, they train in the most extreme conditions in order to prepare themselves for all eventualities.  Not only are the men tested but also the equipment and on this job my equipment was tested also!  Batteries that would normal last days only last minutes when the temperature plummets to -30° and skin sticks to bare metal when the temperature reaches -15°; I’ve had cameras stuck to my cheeks on more than one occassion.  Royal Marines have a history of heroic raides and no obsticle is too big for these highly trained, steely eyed Commandos as can be seen in the following picture.

Working in such conditions requires a great deal of preperation of both equipment and ones self.   As a much younger photographer I had been attached to the Royal Marines for a number of years and underwent, what they called at the time, Artic Warfare Training.  Because of this I knew pretty much what to expect but with such good training you learn, above all, to expect the unexpected…

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Fire has a hypnotic quality and its easy to lost in its beauty.  Smoke has a similar effect and it wasn’t until quite recenty that I found that its become a form of art.  As I had nothing else on today, my office admin is up to date, I thought that I would have a go myself.  I enjoy working in the studio but it isn’t as much fun as playing in the studio…

The technique is quite simple, black background, one flash unit, a tripod and a digital camera.  Oh you might want a few incense sticks to provide the smoke…  I know that the background here is white but it did start out black, honest.  The black background just provides a contrast to the smoke.  The flash is placed to the side of the incense stick at 90° to the camera.  I used a makeshift snoot to contain the light and stop it from hitting either the background or entering the camera lens.  The exposure was 1/160th sec @ f8.  The lens was manualy focused and left on manual throughout the shoot. Light the incense stick and take lots of exposures. The image was inverted in P’shop (Ctrl + I) to give the white background.  The image was retouched to get rid of dust spots and the colour adjusted to give the pink/purple hue you see on the end result.

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Anyone that visited New York will tell you that it is a city that never sleeps.  The fast pace of daily life is evident and everyone seems to walk with purpose.  I wanted to capture an iconic image that depicted pace, movement and what could be more iconic that a  ‘Yellow Cab’… not that taxi’s in New York race around the streets.

The technique used above realy is quite simple thouigh it did take a few exposures to get the image that I wanted.  This shot was taken in the late afternoon in November and there wasn’t a great deal of light.  For what I wanted, a slow shutter speed, there was more than enough light to make the shot work.  This was a simple panning technique; face the direction I wanted as a background, twist right to pick up the taxi’s as they crossed the intersection, track the taxi by moving the camera at the same speed that the taxi is moving. At the choosen point take the exposure but keep tracking the taxi and importantly follow through after the exposure has finished.  The shutter speed selection was a bit of trial and error but for this shot it was somewhere in the region of 1/30 sec.

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I have been involved in doing interior and exterior photography for about eigtht years working with a number of building companies.  I really enjoy this kind of job because, more often than note, the home has been professionally styled; although not always to suite my personal taste.  The skill is in making the property appeal to prospective buyers… light and bright, spacious and relaxing.

Without doubt architectural photography is one of my favorite subjects.  I don’t spend as much time doing architecture as I would like but maybe that is one of those things that I will rectify this year, 2010.

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I have been carrying out Photo Restoration work off and on for some years.   Some jobs are more dificult than others and occassionaly my retouching skills are tested to the limit.  The satisfaction comes from the looks on the clients faces when you present them with the reults of your hard work…

The photo above was in a pretty sorry state and the work involved was quite painstaking but the results were very good.   I do try, where possible, to keep the aged look of the origonal photo. When I removed the staining that is eveident even on the retouched version the image just didn’t look right.  This restoration involved rebuilding quite a large area on the botton of the photo but fortunately I could use some of the opposite side of the photo to make good.

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PR and Press photography demand a little more of the photographer in terms of the picture content; the picture should tell the story or at least be interesting enough to entice the viewer to read the article.  The photograph below was taken on behalf of an opticians who give free eye tests and glasses, if needed, to children from Chernobyl.

Arriving on site early paid dividends, these lenses provided an ideal opportunity to get a totally new perspective. This shot did take a little time to position the people the lenses and get the lighting right.

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I have had the blog for quite some time but have not, until now, put enough effort into putting the content in.  So here goes.  Please enjoy the content, hopefully as time goes by you will see a wide range of images, different styles and some great images…

First job of the month – photographing Rob Douglas CBE, Chairman SEEDA working alongside Tom Noble an apprentice at Solent Refit, Hythe.

Whilst searching for an image I can across this photo of Sir Chris Hoy, Olympian extraordinaire…  The bike was securly bolted to the floor of the wind tunnel and I wanted to introduce a sense of movement, speed and hopefully give some idea of the effort Chris was putting into testing. He makes it all look so easy…

This is quite a simple technique; long exposure and zoom either in or out depending on how you want the end result to look. A small amount of flash freezes the movement just enough to isolate Chris from the blur.  The conditions within the wind tunnel were less than ideal and I only had a few minutes to set up and get a number of shots.  As you can imagin wind tunnel time costs money and the tests were quite extensive so photography is an ‘as and when’ we can fit it in…  Many thanks to all the guys though, they pulled out all the stops to help. 

Archive Photo – 02

I really enjoy working in the studio and despite its modest size we are able to cram quite a lot in. The following image was required for a trade show where the image would be covering a 4m x 3m display.

The client ‘Martins Rubber’ turned up with a box full of bit’s and pretty much left me to it. I much prefer to work on my own but as we all know sometimes the clients needs are quite specific and in those circumstance it does help to have their input.  The gardest part of this job was laying out all the items, both the rubber mats that make up the flooring and all the individual items were moved and repositioned a number of times in order to get the desired look.

Archive Photo – 03

Street Art

I have started to get into projects. A couple I have on the go at the moment are ‘Street Art – decay’ and ‘Abstract – environmental images’. Two examples follow; I hope to have a set of images from both projects ready for a proper showing by the end of this year – as you can tell they are both long term projects…

There is a foot bridge very close to my studio where there are some superb examples of ‘Street Art’ in a state of decay. The fottbridge show no signs of being maintained by the local council so the ‘Grafitti’ that adorns it is slowly going the same way as things created by man!  I often see ‘Street Art’ and have to decide whether it is art or just a bad example of grafitti – may be I am jsut not qualified to say.

Archive Photo – 04

‘Abstract’

I am always struck by the ‘Abstract’ images that I see within our built environment.  Sometimes it’s the juxtaposition of two differing building the way that architecture and design from different time periods either compliment or collide with each other.  The following image is striking on the basis of the vibrant colour alone but concider the hardness of the railings, the imposing  jagged spikes and their reaching high into the sky and it’s even more striking (INHO)…

This was quite an easy subject, again close to my studio so getting the right colour sky behind was just a matter of waiting for the appropriate time.  This one trip provided me a number of images, all on the same theme but different enough to be wothy of display.

Archive Photo – 05

My wife and 2 girls all ride horses so over the last few years I have started to take an interest in equine photography. We were all at Badminton for the three day eventing and I managed to capture this photo, amongst a great number of others, it depicts the athleticism of both horse and rider along with the trust both parties must have in each other.

Like all sports photography timing makes the photo.  A split second earlier or later for that matter and this image may well have been relegated to the cutting room flow (thats old speak for thrown away).  As photographers we quite often find ourselves working to incredibly tight deadlines and we don’t always have the time to look at the merits of each individual image we have taken.  Maybe we should all take time out to look back through our archived images to see if we have missed something special in our haste to meet a deadline or desire to get to the next paid job!

Archive Photo – 06

Glass is a real nightmare to photograph, as anyone that has done it will testify to.  The following photo was a personal project; firstly I liked the item and secondly I realised that I had not photographed clear glass for some years and I wanted to make sure that I could if required!  Having my own studio is a real bonus and it means I can play to my hearts content when I have nothing better to do.  Photographing glass requires a lot of playing around as a lighting setup that works for one item may not necessarily work for another.

What made this an interesting project was the need to get the swan within the glass bottle (it’s a perfume bottle I believe) as well lit and clearly defined as the bottle itself.  Reflectors and black board help achieve the desired effect. At the end of the day I was really happy with this shot.  The bottle itself is roughly 2.25 inch in height and the end result prints huge…

Archive Photo – 07

Having served in the Royal Navy for 24 Years, 20 of which were as a professional photographer I have an affinity with the sea.  I have my own boat, though I don’t get to go sailing as much as I would like.  Nevertheless I take any chance I can to get out on the water and living so close to the Solent, a mecca for the boating fraternity, there are always great photo opportunities.

A good friend of mine has a 9m RIB and he wanted to go out and get up close to some of the races during Cowes Week.  When I was invited along I jumped at the chance and even though we could only get out on the water for a couple of hours I managed to get some really great shots.  You only really get a sense for the drama and action of yacht racing when you are in amongst it…

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So what will 2010 hold for Southampton Photographic?  Well, the year has got off to a slow start; not helped by the recent spell of exceptional bad weather.  January has been quiet in past years so no drama and it has enabled me to get on with those things that I just don’t get round to throughout the year… Marketing is one of those necessary tasks that always seems to get put on the back burner until ‘January’ and I can now report that that’s another task crossed of my list

Reports in the media this week that the UK is now out of recession, just, should encourage some business growth in the first half of 2010 but I doubt we will see much improvement until midway through the year maybe towards the end of the third quarter. The timing in general couldn’t be worse; the prospect of a general election only weeks away and the uncertainty of who our next government will be will do little to stimulate the economy. As a small business owner I need confidence to return to the market, clients to see light at the end of the tunnel and in turn start spending on services such as photography.

Bookings are coming in for February so I will report on things again at the end of the month.

To me photography is about passion and the need to capture images that exist for only brief moment; then bringing these images to the attention of people who didn’t see what was right front of their very own eyes.

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Thank you for checking in to my blog page.  Here you will be able to find out more about me, my photography and more…

Brief Biography…

I have been a photographer since 1984.  I first started using a camera at school, probably because I couldn’t draw and to be honest I still can’t!  Before becoming a professional photographer I had a brief period, six years, as an air engineering mechanic. I realised that I was never going to be a very good engineer and when working on aircraft, being a good engineer is a must.

As is the way sometimes, an opportunity came along that allowed me to make a career change and I have never looked back.  In my twenty five years as a pro photographer I have been lucky enough to have travel the world and have worked in a  wide range of photographic fields from hydrographic survey, Press and PR and even as a news camera operator and digital video editor.

In 2002, my travels came to an end and I established myself as a commercial photographer in Southampton. I had to decide whether I wanted to do both video and stills photography as I enjoy both mediums.  Cost pushed me towards the stills side and although I miss working in video I have found a new passion for stills (digital) photography.  I have a small office and modest studio in the commercial heart of the city.  I work for local clients and nationally based agencies, SME’s and blue chip companies alike.   Although I work mainly on my own I do have a network of very competent photographers and other creatives who I can call on to support me as and when required.  It’s a reciprocal arrangement and one that works very well. In the current economic climate it is, I am sure, the key to survival.

These are difficult times for all small business owners, hopefully we will start to see some confidence coming back into the market place soon and we can then start to build new business relationships as well renewing old ones.

Cowes Week 2008 – ‘Xara’

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