PERSONAL WORK {CARTERS STEAM FAIR}

 Carter's Steam Fair came to the park at the end of my road, and I took some snaps on film.

Everything here is shot with Fuji 400H, the thing I love most about my film work is how similar it actually ends up looking to my edited digital shots. I can't wait to shoot a whole load more film at Glastonbury.

If you happen to love the fairground, you can buy prints here 

WALKS

I'm dreaming of sunnier days - when the trees have leaves, the flowers are in bloom and summer seems endless.

Happy Friday.

THE WILD ONES

Suede's recent 6Music session at Maida Vale got me thinking...

I grew up on nineties indie, not just the obvious - Oasis, Cast and Blur (in fact not at all, except Blur) but those glamorous fringe-lurkers Suede and Pulp. Their songs spoke of the glamour of a London I had yet to get to know, a thrill in the down at heel and an epic sense of the self. Their romantic escapism was just what a teenage girl growing up in the Norwich suburbs wanted and needed. Suede were my obsession, I had posters of Brett Anderson on my wall and would make a weekly pilgrimage to Sainsburys - the only local outlet big enough to stock NME and the now defunct Melody Maker. 

I became obsessed with the (early) Manics - all blood, glitter and rage. They introduced me to some of my earliest literary loves as well as one of my favourite albums ever in the form of the oft-forgot Gold Against the Soul. Their sense that they'd broken out of Blackwood and into the big time cut through everything they did.

Watching it back now, the videos seems a little dated - all enhanced colour - but there's no way that I can listen to these lyrics with any real purpose and not cry, or even shed a little tear. I want everyone in love to feel a little bit like The Wild Ones. Shut your eyes and just listen.

That floppy haircut slayed a million girls (and boys) in the nineties.

Note - the carpet is the same as in the Overlook Hotel (The Shining - also another one of my favourites)

Me, and my best friend Tilly put together a fanzine (an actual printed fanzine) where we interviewed bands, drew the cover art and self published.

What does this have to do with what I do now? Well, both nothing and everything. Who I am, runs through everything I do. I am who I am, with my vision of the world, because of how I grew up, and I thought I'd like to share a little of that with you.

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: WORKFLOW & KIT PART 2

After any shoot I upload to my computer ASAP - I now use a Sandisk card reader and it takes next to no time and so I do it once I get home, if it's after a wedding I'll pour myself a glass of wine and let it do it's thing in the background.

I'm trying to get my post processing time down but since discovering Lightroom and getting switched on to Photo Mechanic it's significantly faster than it used to be. Using both of these I managed to get images back to clients within 2 weeks despite working full time as well (though I did do some stupid hours and spent many nights in front of the computer screen.)

Firstly I'll use Photo Mechanic to select the images I want in the final edit, it's simple and really fast. Emma Case did a fantastic tutorial about it and that's what convinced me to give it a go. You can get a free trial and I promise you at the end of it you'll be waving your credit card in glee. 

This programme has cut down my culling time form about 3 hours in Lightroom waiting for previews to load etc to about 30 minutes of intense clicking AND my couples get more shots!

I also believe Photo Mechanic has the power to do exposure, white balance adjustments and the like but I feel Lightroom is a much better tool for these.

I create a separate folder for these RAW files and then import that into my Lightroom library. It's here that I do image adjustment and creative editing.

It used to be that I used Lightroom for image adjustment, though as I mentioned, the goal is to get as much right in camera as possible to save time later, there's always something that could benefit with a little tweak. I'd then export everything and open it in batches in Photoshop, running actions over everything and it took forever. Lightroom 4 practically does away with the need for Photoshop at all - it  has a whole new set of sliders vs LR3 and even effectively does Photoshop staples like dodging, burning and even a cheeky bit of teeth whitening. 

I rely heavily on two particular sets of presets that i think have been a wise investment - and I'll come on those and why in a second. Firstly, there is no preset or action in the world which will make a bad photo look good unless it's going to swap it out with something and stamp little pink unicorns all over it. You need to see the light, connect with you subject, channel emotion and then use whichever digital editing tool you have to out your own stamp on things. Over the years I've spent an absolute fortune on Photoshop related bits and bobs like the good hobbyist I was, and always only used them for a short time with the exception of the two below Lightroom Presets. I'm trying to move my work into a slightly more natural image and these two help me do it effortlessly.

There's lots of debate about whether with a bit of skill and ingenuity you could create these yourself but  I firmly believe that life's too short to mess around when someone has already done that for you.

VSCO film - I've talked about this before, it's ace and Andria Lindquist does a much better job than I at talking through in this walkthrough.

Red Leaf Film Emulsion presets - Simple, natural and a light touch and especially good for natural light.

I try to work through everything in one sitting for consistency, give it a day and do whatever the photo version of proof reading is by creating a gallery I can scroll through to check that I'm happy with everything before exporting a high res and a low res version from Photoshop into destination files which will eventually be copied to USB for my clients.

The final stage is upload - as I use Showit for my main website, each client also get's their own online gallery and an online proofing gallery which houses the high res photos and also doubles up as external storage. Both of these have their own upload servers so I set and leave it to do it's thing.


All of this means I can do everything I need to do in a day and a half's work maximum provided I don't get too distracted by cat stroking or chocolate eating, both of which are major time sucks for me!

Next time - blogging, reading and training.

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: WORKFLOW AND KIT

A while back I did a 'For Photographers' post reviewing VSCO Film 01 (or just VSCO film as it was back then) and talking about how it had taken hours off my workflow and had really opened up Lightroom to me. It got some really good feedback about that, so here, finally, is a proper sequence of posts for photographers.

Realistically, those who are just starting out or serious hobbyists will probably find this the most useful, but I guess it's always handy to peek into the ways of working of someone else.

Shooting

let's start with the most important first. I try and get as much as I can right in camera, exposing for shadow and I have almost always shot manually after I found Aperture priority on my first DSLR wasn't getting me the look I wanted.

I only like to work with what I can carry, especially as I get to most weddings on the train.

I work with Nikon and my camera is a D700 and I carry a back up with me to each and every event I shoot.

I love to work with fast primes and have the 35mm 1.4 and the 50mm 1.4 (Canon offer a 1.2 for both of these which is the spec equivalent and same price bracket as the 35mm 1.4 - I don't know why Nikon don't do it but heyho) but there's times in which having a fast zoom is necessary - there's been so many times when I've been stuck in one spot during a ceremony and want a range of frames. My weapon of choice is the 24-70 2.8. It's fantastic for a primary shooter, but when I have assisted others I've often wished I had the 70-200 as it's a bit too wide for shooting from the back of a ceremony.

I believe in keeping it simple - the more time you spend playing with things the less time you spend looking at the world around you and waiting for the perfect moment to capture.

My wishlist includes the 85mm 1.4 and I'm toying with the idea of investing in the above mentioned 70-200 2.8 but I do think I'd only use it in big venues, and I do like a nice wide frame.

It's worth mentioning a little about film at this point too. I absolutely adore shooting with film, love that soft pretty look and could go on and on about how much I adore the work of the likes of Feather and Stone, Elizabeth Messina etc but for me, right now, digital is my work horse. Chiefly because of cost - if I was to shoot most of my work on film I'd have to charge around 50% more to cover the cost of buying the film and the post processing but it is something I'd like to seriously consider in the future.

When I do shoot film I use a medium format Pentax and my film of choice is Kodak Portra. I also have a number of toy cameras that I bring out at will.

Next time  - my digital workflow

M A T T H E W // N A O M I

Both friends of mine, on a cold day in November we headed up to Hampstead Heath and made these... One camera body, a 50mm lens, keeping things simple.

++++++

M A T T H E W

N A O M I

Some personal work from November - more later...

B A R B A D O S

Back in October we headed to Barbados for a little RnR. For me nothing beats putting a geographical distance between yourself and worries to give you a fresh perspective. Barbados is tiny, it's about a third of the size of London and there isn't a hell of a lot to do which is probably who it's stupidly chilled but we did drink lots of Rum, lots of Banks, sail on a catamaran, see wild monkeys, swim with sea turtles, spend a lot of time on public buses and explore caves.
We had an amazing time, most of the pictures of us, we look rather big faced and sweaty - it was so humid - so you'll have to forgive us that!
I wanted to leave the big digital kit behind, so I took just my Pentax 645, one lens and lots of rolls of Portra. These images were shot on Portra 400, 800 and Ektar 100.