New Website and Blog

Hi Everyone

We've moved again - please check our new website out at www.redshift-creative.com

Thanks

David

Hi everyone

Sorry I meant to leave this note ages ago - the blog has now moved to www.redshift-photography.co.uk

You'll see the blog section at the top of the page.

Please keep following us!!!!

Thanks

Dave

Pictures!

Well it's the busiest I've ever been and taking a few days off to go to Euro Disney last week has proven to be a bad idea!.

NHBC Model Shoot

NHBC Inspection Shoot

We had four nights over there and came on on Sunday then on Monday I had a shoot down in Exeter followed by a shoot in Evesham yesterday. Today it's been meetings, office work and some studio work too!. Tomorrow I'm working in Clacton and Ipswich and have a meeting in the morning too!.
We had to pass up a lovely job to shoot a designer shop in London this week too which was painful as I'd love to have done it but we just couldn't fit it in and we never let our clients down by delivering late on a deadline. It really hurts to lose out on a well paid job like this but it's better to be honest with clients than promise what you can't deliver!.

Aston Martin Showroom

Holophane Lighting

We are now booking into October which is a real bonus as it means we don't have to worry about paying the bills for a while and I can concentrate on the work we have in now rather than worry about filling the diary!. I've uploaded a few pictures from some recent jobs which I haven't had time to do for a while. I must update our Flickr and website too but there aren't enough hours in the day right now.

Working like a mad man!

Apologies to our followers for the long delay between posts but we've been busier than ever and for the past few weeks I've been doing two jobs a day at times to keep up.
Luckily our fantastic team at Redshift who work so hard behind the scenes have kept things going like clockwork in the office. Melanie Ani and Toni are true stars and keep me organised and focused even when things are manic. Having some help with the post shoot processing has been a massive help and has taken the pressure off me big time.
I'm writing this entry on my iPad at home so can't attach any pictures at the moment but I'll add some recent work to the blog entry tomorrow.
Many thanks to all our clients for keeping us so busy!.

Olympic Torch Relay

The Olympic Torch came through Winslow today (the small town in Buckinghamshire where we are based) and it was a really exciting event to be a part of. The High Street was packed with people and I had some fun taking some pictures as the morning unfolded. I didn’t expect so many people to turn up so the crowds were a surprise but the rain held off and everyone seemed to have a great time!.

It was nice to have a morning in the office as I have been working really long hours lately and even spent Sunday morning in the little studio upstairs as I had some product photography to do that was needed urgently. I’ll post some pictures in the next blog entry as they aren’t processed yet.

Over the past three weeks or so since the last entry I’ve photographed quite a few products in our new studio so that’s proven to be a good investment and long may that continue. I’ve also had the great pleasure of photographing the new Aston Martin showroom at Newport Pagnell and a lovely restaurant in Covent Garden called Hawksmoor. I haven’t had any of the pictures from these projects approved by the clients yet so I can’t blog them but I will as soon as I can as both jobs look great.

I’ve had some event photography to do which is always fun especially as this event was on a boat at the Henley Regatta!. That was a great day and Melanie came along too as the client was Chameleon Events who we are very close to and it was part work and part day out. I also photographed the launch party for the new HQ of Zumtobel Lighting in Chalfont St Peter which was also a great job as the Zumtobel guys are great to work for and their new lighting showroom is superb.

Fingers crossed for some nice weather now as I’ve got quite a few outdoor commissions coming up and we’re supposed to be going camping for a few days at the end of July. At this rate we’ll need a hovercraft to get there!.

The Ritz and Cardiff Castle

Me Julia and Roy (of Philips) having lunch at The Ritz

I can’t believe it’s the middle of May already!. This year has flown past and we’ve been lucky to have stayed really busy throughout. All this talk of a double dip recession has been unhelpful to say the least but fingers crossed things are still going well. Speaking of politics I was supposed to photograph David Cameron last week at Milton Keynes where he was due to visit an innovation centre but unfortunately he didn’t show because of problems at the House of Commons!. All the press photographers, security guards, PR people and even a sniffer dog showed up but unfortunately Dave had to pull out at the last minute!. It’s a shame as I was looking forward to photographing him and I’d love to have posted one of the pictures in the blog.

Cardiff Castle

The new website and blog has been really well received and I can fully recommend David Beach of Daxic for web design (http://www.daxic.com/web_development/) as they were very competitive on the price and gave us a great service. The site is based on a Wordpress blog and once you get used to updating it the interface is pretty easy to use. The image gallery is much nicer than the previous one in Blogger and I’ve just started using the featured image option to show a larger picture above the blog text. Let me know if you think this works or not!.

Over the past three weeks since the last blog entry I’ve been really busy with a local shoot in Milton Keynes at the Bensons for Beds store, I’ve photographed two Asda stores one in Sheffield and one in Birkenhead, a shoot for BUPA in Alderley Edge, a health club in Chichester, Cardiff Castle, an office in Guildford, an evening shoot at a wind turbine factory in Wales and an event at The Ritz in London!. I also photographed the final of the Zumtobel Night Geist lighting design competition at The Royal Albert Hall.

Velo Sports Putney

Add to that all the social media that I try to keep up with as well as various meetings with clients and you can see I’ve been running around like a madman. Thankfully we’ve now taken on someone to help with my post shoot processing workload which is just fantastic as that can become a real job in itself and causes me a lot of worry as I really hate getting behind with my work. Toni (Antonia is her real name but I can’t say that very well!) has a degree in photography and is really keen to learn about the business side of photography. Also she’s a very good photo retoucher and a really good assistant too so happy days all round!. 

Zumtobel Night Geist

I’ve recently been buying up more classic lenses to try on my Canon EOS 5D MK2 and in previous posts I’ve recommended the Pentax 67 lenses which can be used via an adaptor. My most recent purchase is a beautiful Rollei 85mm f2.8 lens made by Carl Zeiss. I bought an adaptor for it recently and the image quality is just superb so I can highly recommend these lenses now too. I’ve also bought a 135mm Rollei and 35mm rollei to try too and I’m hoping these will be just as good. I find that it’s really important to try different kit and these older lenses give a softer image (not too soft or out of focus) which looks less clinical than the modern super sharp lenses when used with a digital body.

On the subject on kit I tried the new Canon EOS 5D MK3 the other day at a trade show in London and the high ISO performance is startling. I shot some pictures at ISO 25,600 and the grain was really well supressed and the pictures incredibly clean. I will be buying one as soon as we got some money in the bank!.

Product Photography and Archive Hunting

Ridi ArkTik 600 x 600 LED

Being a short week due to the Easter Bank Holiday (which was wet as usual – what drought!!!!) last week was pretty quiet and it gave me time to hunt through the archive for some hotel pictures and product shots for the new website. I like to put the most current work online but sometimes it’s great to look back and pick out a few favourite shots from the past few years.

SKL Table Lamps

As well as hunting through the archive (see the product shot of the coloured glass table lamps)  I photographed a very sleek new 600 x 600 recessed LED based luminaire from Ridi lighting in the studio. The brief was to photograph the product switched on to show the effect of the advanced opal diffuser and central prismatic strip. The secret to getting these shots right it to ensure the colour balance is correct and to drag the shutter to allow some light to bleed through to show a lit effect. When shooting in the studio with flash heads it’s the aperture of the lens that adjusts the exposure as a general rule as studio flash heads fire at around 800^th second. But by using a slightly longer shutter speed (in this instance 1/30^th second) I can let some light from the luminaire register in the opal diffuser. A standard shutter speed for studio product photography would be 1/200^th second but this shutter speed makes the diffuser look almost unlit.

SKL Table Lamps

We managed to get a lot of planning done as well last week with Ani our office manager scheduling in all the work we have coming up over the next few weeks. Things have picked up nicely and this week and next are pretty flat out.

The new website and blog is working out really well for us and it’s running faster since I deleted the rotating background shots and now we have a static backdrop to the site. The stats for the new site look good to and it’s rated at 75% for web optimisation as opposed to 40% for the old site so the integral blog is definitely helping.

Our sister company Inverse Square Media is also picking up well with a couple of new jobs to schedule in in the coming couple of weeks – here’s a link to the site so please take a look if you get a minute www.inversesquaremedia.com