Just a quick update today to showcase some of the photographs I took at the fashion show held at Clothes Show Live. A little bit of a break from the norm but surprisingly good fun! On the technical side, these were all shot with a 70-200mm f/4 lens so I had to take the ISO up to around 2500 to avoid camera shake. The combination of the 5DMkII’s high ISO performance and the noise reduction in Lightroom 3 is outstanding. {lang:...

I’ve had a few questions on Twitter about just what I mean when I say I use my 70cm Elinchrom Deep Octa in “beauty dish mode”, so this quick post is to show what I mean. This is the way you’d typically use a soft box with both layers of diffusion material in place for maximum softness. However you can remove the outer baffle and let the light be a little harder and more specular. But the way I have been using it for...

Ash Manton’s Type R Civic has been part of the UK modified car scene for several seasons and keeps coming back with a fresh look each year. It’s current stripped out, carbon clad, airbrushed look has just won it the cover feature in Max Power. As it’s had the Max photo shoot treatment, I wanted to try something different. Enter Georgia Graham, Ash’s girlfriend, showing that hell really does hath no fury like a woman...

In a bit of a break from the norm, I was contracted to produce some images of a house recently. The owners wanted a package of photographs to hand to their estate agent to help with the sale. So out came the 17-40 f/4 lens and tripod. All the images in the slideshow below (except the garden panorama) were shot in HDR (+/- 2 stops) as the sun was shining brightly causing quite a wide contrast range in most of the rooms. {lang:...

When you are at the World famous Silverstone circuit and you’ve got access to the pit lane, it’s just plain rude not to use it as a location. Especially when you’ve got the lovely Sarah and her equally lovely VW Polo as your subject. The plan here was twofold – firstly I wanted to get some good shots in the can for Sarah and secondly I wanted to find out just how well my new lighting rig coped in a typical car show...

Last week I finally pulled the trigger on some more powerful lighting. Originally I was drawn to the Elinchrom Quadra’s but the price and the reported issues (poor battery clips and no protective caps for the heads while in transit) put me off. So I looked into alternatives like the Bowens TravelPak system and the Lencarta Safari but held off from making a purchase because both were far bulkier. Then Elinchrom released the Quadra RX...

Another weekend, another car show and this time it was USC (Ultimate Street Car) at Santa Pod. I wasn’t lucky enough to have any secluded barns to shoot in this time so it was a case of making the best of a bad lot. And at car shows, it’s a very bad lot – even when your subjects are the Sextons Direct / Ripraw girls! You’ve got cluttered backgrounds, harsh mid afternoon light and crowds. First of all, I toured Santa...