Pictures, Videos and other meanderings…

I said yeh yeh!, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

It’s May Day – and that means that the summer starts here. got a busy few months ahead with weddings and portraits and this week I am going to be covering Oxford Fashion Week 2010, this kicks off today at Oxford Town hall, Oxford Union on Monday, Randolph Hotel Tuesday, Malmaison Wednesday and Cherwell boathouse on Thursday.

Should be an interesting week, and I’ll post some photo’s on my Flickr page – click on the picture above to access that if you like.

Summer time people! Enjoy!

Shocking, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Went out to the beautiful village of Horley near Banbury on Sunday for a succession of portraits, this is one of my favourites from the day. I love the way her blond hair is captured by the lights and the effect that it has.

I’m currently working on putting a package together through my main site http://www.tonyculshaw.co.uk to focus on these lovely portraits which are timeless in style.

To kick it off I’ll be offering some freebies via my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Tony-Culshaw-Photography/253998465625 so if you want to be in with a chance of winning, become a fan!

Please let me watch TV, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Playing with a low key setup and distracted my son from the TV for long enough to get a nice photograph.

I have always been a fan of classic portraits, especially in black and white as I think theybring out the character in the person having their picture taken, in fact I think I might start offering this as a product in the near future – need to get something better than a door to hold the background up though, so might invest in a lastolite backdrop – easy to hang off a stand.

If you would like this type of photograph for you or your family, let me know and we’ll make it happen!

Happy days…

Racer, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

This afternoon, I challenged my son to a race – after all he does have a racer. Trouble is, he was racing against the car – and after getting my wife Sandie to do the driving, he knew he was up against it.

So there we were, Sandie driving, me hanging out of the rear tailgate of the car and my son desperately trying to keep up with us, whilst getting zapped by a touch of flash every so often.

Lesson learned from this escapade, is find a smooth road – I banged my head a few times as we hit bumps, and lots of the photos were quite blurry as I was using a slow shutter speed to get the motion effect.

Still, a bit of fun on an otherwise grey Sunday afternoon )

Angel, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Spent a couple of hours yesterday with Holly, who is getting married in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, checking out the layout of the place and looking where the light falls.

It’s going to be a themed wedding with a big old Cadillac which I sadly won’t get to ride in, but it should be a blast.

Really looking forward to photographing the wedding in August and I expect the sun to shine! Thats official!

The Hat, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Recently bought some gels for the flash units from ebay, and have been trying them out, they can give quite interesting effects.

This picture was taken with a flash on camera right with an orange coloured gel on it and a shoot through umbrella on it, the other flash was simply left bare behind her.

I set the white balance on the camera to tungsten, as that matches the flash with the gel on it, and also why the un-gelled flash came out blue.

I kinda like the effect, and i have a whole bagfull of gels and wireless triggers, just need another couple of flash units for use outside and anywhere, as the one at the back has no manual controls on it, so it was getting a bit flashy for the model as both flashes were firing on full power – you could feel them go off!

Watching TV, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

First step in using artificial light is to get a balance – unless you’re using only one light source of course.

In this photograph, my son is lying on the sofa watching TV, and behind him is the window, so I had nice window light which was fairly diffused as it’s overcast and with around a foot of snow outside, that gives the hair and backlight.

On the right of the frame, I had a 580ex flash on a stand fired through a white translucent umbrella at 1/4 power.

This gives light without it looking like flash and good detail in the image with the contours and textures of his jumper.

Increasing the strength of the flash caused it to overpower the window light too much and resulted in a much flatter image.

Balance!

Spent some time thinking about this, I have lost a lot of inspiration over the past few months, and it’s time to stop the rot.

I plan to get my flashes out and take them back to basics, I haven’t had any truly inspiring shots that I’m happy with so it’s time to make time to do this.

Understanding flash is not an easy concept to get your head around as I remember well from when I first started using it and now is the time to revisit all those lessons that I learned to ensure that I’m getting what I want from it and producing good quality, well lit and interesting photographs.

One of things that you need to do when you want to be great at doing something, is to constantly practice, and that practice should include the things that you are good at and the things that you are not good at – as that way you can get good at them – all takes practice, so for that, it’s back to basics with light and lighting – kinda looking forward to it, and it starts today.

Hopefully I’ll keep the blog updated with my trials and tribulations as then I will have a reference to look back upon if anything becomes a bit grey in my mind and if anyone else finds things that they can use, feel free to ask any questions as one of the best ways of learning something is answering questions that you don’t know the answer to – go and find out!

Happy 2010!

Had a really busy summer, and looking back through all of the photographs that I have made this year (I can tell they are this years as they are in the 09 folder) it’s apparent that the majority of the work is for other people.

Now this isn’t a bad thing in a way, but I do like taking photos for myself as well, as deliberate practice helps you to improve and then you can use that when customers come along.

I have a wedding to photograph tomorrow, then a couple of weeks with no bookings, so i plan to use that time to do some of my own stuff – plus it’s a good excuse to get out of the house and get some exercise which always helps with the waistline.

I did go out last week in Oxford with my old pentax film camera, and that was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and really relaxing, good company as well as my wife Sandie was with me – haven’t got a clue what the pictures look like, as I haven’t had them developed yet, but when I do, Ill put some up here and write a little about them – that way I won’t forget what I was thinking when I took them.

Looking forward to me time

Had a fantastic couple of weekends, photographing the Grays - six kids running about the place tests your reactions with a camera I can tell you! It was good laugh, and we got some great photographs that I’m sure they’ll enjoy for years to come!

Giggles

Also been practising with different ways of using the light, I really like the effect of photographing into the light, it gives the pictures an ethereal quality that you can’t replicate with studio flash – well, you judge for yourselves, comments are more than welcome.

extreme contre jour

Later this week I’m going to be at the Oxford Folk Festival with the Afropean Choir, which is quite exciting – I’ll post some photos after the weekend!