George and Becky - My First Engagement Shoot

Like many people who get an opportunity to do something they love, I feel very lucky. But today I'm feeling exceptionally fortunate.

When I decided that I wanted to take on photography professionally, it didn't fully occur to me that I'd get the opportunity to photograph people I know and like (and get to call it work!).

I've known George for several years through a mutual friend and was delighted to hear not only was he engaged, but he'd like me to photograph his wedding in May.

This will be my first wedding that doesn't see me as second shooter and I honestly can't wait. I'd long decided that one of the things I want to do with my wedding bookings is a pre-wedding/engagement shoot. It seems a great way to relax the couple for the big day (and myself) and talk over some of the details. Above all that though, the pictures are always full of love and smiles.

Yesterday, on a warm sunny spring(!?!) day, I took some pictures of George and his beautiful bride-to-be Becky. I think from the photographs you can see how happy these two are and a joy to spend time with. I'm very grateful for them asking me to be a part of their special day.

Below are some photographs of the lovely couple and one of their special wedding gift - Molly :-)

Saol-ing Away

So the last week or so has seen me spend more time behind a desk than a viewfinder unfortunately :-( On the plus side though, I have managed a few strides in my 'behind the scenes' work and am getting very close to launching my photgraphy website.

One of the things I've been working on is my processing workflow. This is mainly for two reasons (three if you count also being a bit of a geek!). Firstly, everybody wants nice pictures but nobody wants their photographer to take forever working on their photographs (and as they say time is money). Secondly I want to create a recognisable style for my pictures and some consistency in colour, so when I do a series of images they look like they belong together.

I'm a fan of yellow filtered images, they give a nice skin-tone and warmth to an image. I've tried a few plug-ins for photoshop like Alien Skin Exposure 3, and while they offer a lot of options I couldn't really get the effect I wanted.

So with some freely available actions and a lot of DIY I've finally managed to create a custom action I'm happy with. I won't bore you with the details of it, but at least show you what I'm talking about. The image below gives a side-by-side comparison of two pictures of my little monster. The image on the left is the original and the one on the right has my custom action applied.

As you can see the photograph is now warmer with whites appearing a cream colour. The change to the colours brings out a lot of definition (like the blades of grass) and while it loses some of the lighter blues it makes the darker more defined (so the jeans look a lot more detailed and textured).

Here's a short series of my favourite monster at our local park. After running around like a lunatic for several minutes he went from chewing/hiding my lens cap to picking flowers for his mum... and then forgetting what he was doing and crushing them in his huge baby hands :-)

The image at the start of this post is of my brother Paul back in Dublin, with the deceptively calm looking family dog Daggit. I've applied the same processing to his picture but have really put it in for a bit of home-sickness therapy :-) Hope the sunny weekend is treating you all well!

Studio Shoot

This is probably the most excited I've been about one of my posts. Obviously nothing is going to compare to unashamedly showing off my beautiful son, but in regards to my photography work I do harbor the ambition to also do commercial work. How happy was I when Helen Howard, whom I had met on a training course run by the very talented Mr. Steve Gerrard (see previous non-football explanation), sent a shout-out on Twitter to let people know she was a holding a model event at her studio.

As well as being a wedding and portrait photographer (have a look at Helen's work at www.helenhowardphotography.co.uk), Helen is also a partner in Image Red Studios in Tamworth. The studio is really nice and though I began quite nervous at the prospect of my first studio shoot, I was very quickly relaxed and very happy with the results. I can't say enough good things about everyone there, really helpful and supportive. I would definitely recommend to snappers at any level wanting to do it out of interest, experience or for a portfolio. Booking and information about events can be found on www.photographer-in-birmingham.co.uk.

The shoot itself was fashion-focused which I found really interesting despite being stylishy-challenged myself :-) My research is why you might have seen me walking out of Tesco recently with a bunch of Vogue, Tatler and GQ mags (not that it's having any positive influence on my dress sense!). To get some practice for future ventures I tried to capture jewellery as a focus in some of the images.

The models were as patient as they are beautiful and also very professional. An unexpected treat for the evening was provided by Keshia, the model pictured above. To give some variety in poses Keshia sang a cappella during one of her sessions, her voice was amazing enough but even more impressive to find it was one she had written herself. Have a listen for yourself at www.keshia.co.uk, I'm looking forward to the bragging rights to have photographed a multi-platinum artist before she went off to take over the world!

I'm embarrassed to say I didn't get everyone's name from the night but will get them and put in a follow-up post.

Rock and Roll :-) Happy Saturday!