Pictures, Videos and other meanderings…

In the diner, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Last weekend my wife Sandie and I headed off to Southend on Sea in Essex to celebrate our wedding anniversary. It was good to have a break however the cameras came with us.

The thing about breaks like this is that it allows you to experiment without the worry of getting things wrong, and this then allows you to learn things that you can then use in the future to create great photographs for customers.

What I really liked about this weekend is seeing how Sandie has developed over the past year in her ability to see photographs and capture them – makes me really excited for the future!

This shot was in a fifties diner – very authentic – on the Saturday night. Food was great, the owners are simply living in the fifties, working hard and enjoying it and the surroundings are fantastic – it’s like eating your dinner on the front seat of an old Cadillac – if you’re ever down that way, look out for Bobby Jo’s Diner – on the main seafront opposite the sea life center – highly recommended!

Wishing for summer, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

On the beach with the kids, the wind was blowing hard and cold and it didn’t feel that seasidey – still we jumped into the car and headed off in search of hot chocolate and marshmallows which made us feel a bit better.

hopefully the warm weather will last and we’ll have a cracking summer – I think we deserve one after the past three summers.

OFW Lingerie Show, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

We have been really busy this week covering Oxford Fashion Week, had some long days and nights, and got some great photos. Really enjoyed it.

For the main part – well in fact all of it, I stayed away from the pack of other photographers there as I wanted to get something different, quite pleased with this shot (and a couple of hundred others) as I think I achieved what I set out to do.

Click through on the photo for a large view on Flickr.

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!

Low Key smile, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

I managed to acheve a couple of things today, one was downloading and installing the new firmware for my camera, so now I can shoot video at the same framerate as the camcorder which makes it easier to mix and match them (although the camcorder has nowhere near the quality of the 5dmk2) this was an achievement as it took me around 14 hours to finally get the download due to Canon only putting it on one server and a few million people trying to download it! Still it’s in there now.

The other thing I achieved was getting some more space for the lights and backdrop to enable me to get some classic portraits of my kids – this is my daughter, who decided that it was a better deal to have her photograph taken than go shower and go to bed – although it only delayed the inevitable.

I’m starting to liken how these are turning out, and I think I’m getting closer in the post processing to what I want out of it – must invite my mini nieces around for a day of mayhem and photographing, there are around a dozen of them all below 3 foot tall (there are actually less than that, but faced with so many mini women, it feels like it!)

Once I do that, I’ll post some of the results up here.

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 )

It’s the end of half term for the kids, and naturally after a few days of not going to school they get a bit bored, so I made a video about them.

Really, I was trying out the 5Dmk2 video, and still have some practice to do with it before I nail it, but I think I like the function – judge for yourself!

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!