Apparently stock shot websites are always short of “business” shots, that is, people in meetings, shaking hands, etc.  So a friend and I are thinking we might set up a little shoot specifically to do get some, getting the models to sign releases so we can see if this is a little sideline worth exploring.  We’ve  kind loan of an office and we’re using the standard model release from Shutterpoint.

Has anyone else done this before?  Any tips?

Went to a shoot event today billed as a Wild West theme.  Not entirely sure about that.  There were a few cowboy hats floating round, and a suitable checked shirt on one model, but Hampstead Heath isn’t entirely comparable to the outlaw vision!

Never-the-less we got some good shots.  But I had a bit of a dilemma.  All the models for these shoots are amateurs, and one does wonder if we should be advising some of the “models” who, when you ask, want to work catwalks or even just catalogues that, you know, they don’t have a hope in hell.  Here are the three models we shot today… I’m sure you can see which one I was wondering whether to tell.  But who am I to stamp on someone’s dream, and what do I know anyway?!

Pops on Route 66… 1000 flavours of soda including Mint Chocolate, Celsius cola calorie-burning soda and Vanilla Egg Cream.  And the hot dog was pretty good too.  Only in America!

Sometimes you’re just walking down the street and there’s the shot, right there in front of you , and you happen to have the camera, and the photo happens to look like you thought it would look before you picked up said camera.  Then five minutes later you spot a kooky looking house.

And if you’re really lucky, it also happens to be July 4….

Allen Family Shoot

Originally uploaded by Shoot Charley

My lovely friends were briliantly game for volunteering themselves for a family shoot so that I could test out the smaller studio at the camera club.

We arrived early and made use of the club room, and watched the minutes ticked by as the previous occupants ran a few minutes over time. I have no idea what they were doing in there, but the room was very hot and stuffy when we took over, promptly opening all the windows.

Tony from the Camden shoot came along too and I was glad in a way that he did, because he was very good with the lighting. The only downside was that, had he not been there, I would have had to concentrate on the lighting a lot more. He did a lot of the work for me and that was great, though I learned less as a result.

Anyway, I haven’t time to edit all the photos until the end of the week (arrgghhh!) but here is a taster: possibly my favourite shot of the day though, typically, Mummy doesn’t like it!

What do you think?

Comic Relief night rolled around again and, at the last minute, I said I’d take the camera to an event at London Bridge.

The photo above is of one of a series from that evening of a flashmob of swing dancers. The music was good and the dancing was great. It was just a shame about the light! But that made it an interesting challenge for us to shoot.

At the beginning of the evening I declared I was going to use auto settings and just get over trying anything else given the dimming light as the sun rapidly set. However, after a while you get bored of the onboard flash making every picture the same – well lit people in front of a dark background just isn’t that interesting. As you will see from some of the other shots from the evening for a limited time (i.e. for a week or so until I cull them on my Flickr).

So I fiddled with the settings, focusing on time priority.  I basically had a choice.  I could go for a longer time and know that I was going to have to hold the camera steady (didn’t take the tripod) and accept the dancers would move in the frame, or a shorter time where it was either dark or the dancers were bathed in on board flash (because I didn’t have any lights or even a speedlight).  Given that I’d already experienced the latter with the auto settings, I decided I could live with the dancers moving, and hopefully make a feature of it.  

By the time I got to this photo, it was late enough that I was shooting frames at half a second.  And so you will have to forgive the slight camera shake!  I was on tv priority so the camera set the aperture at f3.5.  I’d set the ISO at 200 and, now I’ve noticed that – having gone into the EXIF details on Flickr to get the timing to write it down here – I am kicking myself because I should have knocked it up and that would have helped a lot!  And I also should have cropped it to get rid of that meal deal sign.  The crop will actually happen – but I’m on the laptop right now and the original photo is on the PC so it won’t be done today!

After the dancing the event moved to the pub next door for comedy and jazz. But that time I’d already had too much of the Comic Relief cocktails they’d been serving outside in plastic cups…

Anyway… if you found this post even vaguely interesting, do feel free to click on the link to Comic Relief and give them some money.  A pound or two goes a lot further than you might think.

Tonight was my last night of my course at St Martins, and we took a light onto the roof and shot up there.

I’m going to tell you what I thought of the course, but not tonight, because I want to consider what I am going to say a little bit more before I say it!  There are a couple of pros but a lot of cons so I don’t want to jump in without thinking it through, and tonight I just wanted to get these photos up!

Anyway, this small section of roof worked for us, though limited by only one light. However, I got more shots tonight that I flickr’d than any previous evening so either I am being overly generous on what I am posting there today or it was a better night that most which, considering only went to the last hour, isn’t bad at all.

 

Met up with the group today to shoot at Camden. The brief was to take portraits that would explain what Camden was about to a martian.  

Well… Camden ain’t what it used to be! The punks are all but gone; there were apparently three or four standing together holding signs up for a shop but they were demanding a pound a photo or something! There *are* tonnes of tourists, all with huge cameras around their necks, and lots of stall holders yelling at said tourists that photos aren’t allowed. One could argue with them, but why bother.

Luckily it was surprisingly sunny over lunchtime and the three people I was most interested in didn’t seem to mind when I asked if I could take their photo and they came out pretty well. (Click on the pic here to go to the others).

And, as always, really nice bunch of people to go picture hunting with.  

But does anyone know what happened to Mike?

It’s nearly the last week of my portrait photography course at St Martins.  It’s a 10 week course but I can’t go to the last one so just one to go.  

Here is the best of the results tonight: 

Most of the others were shooting on the roof tonight.  I would have loved to have joined them but I have a dodgy cold so I didn’t think it was the wisest thing ever and stayed in the studio. They’d taken most of the lights and stuff up with them so that was a pain, and we still don’t have enough infrared triggers (as Tony pointed out, a bit odd considering it’s supposed to be the best art school in the country!).  

So… that’s nearly it on the formal education front (for now)… I will evaluate at the end of the course but I’m thinking it was good and I’ve learned a bit, but mostly from Tony, Jenny, books, and from playing with the lights.  I’d still be hard pushed to talk to you hugely sensibly about f stops and shutter speeds, and that’s not so good!

I am doing my first studio based family shoot a week on Saturday and I’m really looking forward to it.  I have booked 2 hours in the studio so the shoot will be about 90 minutes and involves Dad, Mum and 6 month old baby, all gloriously photogenic.

For a while now I’ve been tearing pictures out of magazines whenever I spot something that might be useful inspiration for various shoots.  I’ve got a few of those cheap (70p actually!) plastic display books where the ‘pages’ are thin plastic wallets: at the moment I’ve got one for families, one for individuals and one for hair shoots.

But with the family one looming I thought I’d do a quick browse of websites that offer family shoots to get some inspiration.   As well as giving me ideas before the day, it will be useful on the day if I’m trying to explain what we can do if I can point and show.  Not as impressive as having a portfolio of my own to use but, hey, gotta start somewhere!

Anyway, I hit the Venture site as their simple – and rather expensive to the end user – white backgrounds are popular and they get good results.  But I was quite surprised on the lack of variety for families, if I’m honest.   Though I guess the simple white background is very limiting in that way.

So I shall keep looking..!  If you have any sites to recommend I look at – specifically for family groups now – do please post them for me! 

Thanks in advance for your help!