Recent Work

Here's a copy of a direct mail campaign which we shot in the summer for one of our best clients, Bupa Care Homes.  We had great fun on the day shooting the models who were all actual members of staff who work in the roles they portrayed in the photographs.  Ani came along to do the make up and we also arranged for a hairdresser to attend.  It made the staff feel special and we really enjoyed the day.

BUPA Mail Out

It's always great to see how our pictures are used by the client and graphic designers.

Philips Corporate Brochure Cover Shot

Another big shoot we had this year was for Philips where we set out to capture a front cover shot showing a happy family out in the open enjoying some fresh air in Battersea Park. We had a fairly big team in attendance on the day with the actual models, an art director and his assistant, two marketing people from Philips and myself. You need to buy a permit to shoot in any of the London parks and we had half a day booked for this shoot.  We were all there at 8.30am ready to start but unfortunately the model children didn't arrive until 11.30am as they'd come from Birmingham and had only allowed 2 hours for the trip!.
Anyone that knows London traffic will tell you that it takes over an hour to get across to Battersea from the West End so two hours from Birmingham was a bit of an under estimation to say the least. Apparently their Satnav told them they'd be on time!!. Anyway we pulled it off and here's the front cover of the Philips corporate brochure.


I'll post another entry before Christmas but if you don't get a chance to read it then Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.


Many thanks for reading the blog this year!.

County Hall London

County Hall London

I had a really interesting shoot for Architainment UK last week at County Hall in London. I've photographed and videoed the colour change LED lighting there before a couple of years ago for Philips Lighting but since then more of the facade of the building has been illuminated. Now the entire facade is lit and the LED projectors do a fantastic job of lighting the building in a dramatic fashion. The colour is set to a deep blue until Big Ben strikes (every fifteen minutes) whereby the building goes into a colour change frenzy for one minute then back to the blue. I took some detail shots and wider angle shots as well as a 7 shot panoramic which I shot from the other side of the Thames with my Canon 24-105mm lens zoomed to about 85mm. Architainment supplied and programmed the lighting control system and it works perfectly.
Here's a link to their website http://www.architainment.co.uk/

County Hall London

We traditionally go a bit quiet in December and we're now starting to wind down for Christmas. I've been in the office for most of this week (we had a shoot in the diary for Tuesday but we were rained off) so I'm feeling pretty relaxed and refreshed. It's been a very busy year and I'm ready for a break. Having said that we've still had a reasonably bust month and I've got three jobs pencilled in for next week so we'll be finishing the year on a high.

County Hall London

Last weekend we had a fantastic event in Milton Keynes called the Red Bull Home Run. The Red Bull F1 team are based here in Milton Keynes and as a celebration of their fantastic season in F1 Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel drove their F1 cars up and down Midsummer Boulevard in front of thousands of people. I took my little Olympus EPL1 along with a 17mm pancake lens attached and took some pictures of the cars racing up and down the Boulevard. It was a very overcast day and I didn't expect to get much of a result but I'm really pleased with the way this great little camera worked and the picture attached came out very well.

I could have taken my 5d and 70-200mm lens but I was jammed against a barrier and a small pocket camera was all there was room to manoeuvre so I'm pleased I took the EPL1 along. The more I use this cracking little camera the more I love it.

Mega Busy

I've been running around like a nutter again over the past couple of weeks since the last blog post with jobs in London, Sheffield, Guildford , Cambridge, Gwent in Mid Wales, Swansea and Ashford in Kent.

Wharf Road Islington

I'd like to think if you put all the jobs on the map and joined the dots that it would spell a rude word but that's probably wishful thinking!!.
The London jobs were for Architainment (a division of Philips Lighting) and I've attached a picture of St Clements Church in Finsbury Park and a canal bridge in Islington with colour change lighting that responds to movement along the tow path in today's blog.

St Clement's Church

I photographed another church in Ashford for Havells Sylvania which has been lit with a combination of compact fluorescent track mounted fittings and LED based spotlights. The lighting looked great and the picture shown here is in fact three shots taken with my 24mm T/S lens stitched together to give a very wide angle view of the church interior. Photoshop has a very useful automatic action for joining pictures together and I like to use this technique with the Tilt Shift lens whenever I can as I prefer the perspective to that gained when using an ultra wide angle lens.
The job in Gwent was actually a combination of shooting video and stills over two days for Kinnarps. We've already visited site once before when the furniture was being delivered and installed by the Kinnarps fitters and this visit was to capture some footage of the building in use. We then headed over to Swansea on the third day to photograph a newly fitted out Virgin Atlantic call centre where the Kinnarps furniture really fitted in beautifully. I'll post the video in the blog once Pete has edited it.

St Mary's Church

I photographed a Tesco Extra store in Sheffield for Riegens Lighting who have supplied long runs of trunking with linear fluorescent lighting fixed to it and the Cambridge shoot was a combination of staff portraits and general shots of Cambridge for a new brochure for Hoare Lea. It was great to walk around Cambridge snapping away at the college buildings etc as the architecture there is beautiful.
I've been using my little Olympus EPL1 camera lots recently and now love it to bits. It's such a great camera to keep handy for grab shots and candid snaps on the go. My next project over the Christmas break is to shoot some medium format film with my Pentax 67 camera which I'm looking forward to. I'm thinking black and white shots in the snow and ice and if I can find a good model some nice location shots on slide film.

Ani with the Dirt Devil!

Great excitement gripped the office last week when our new hoover arrived - delivered swiftly to our door by Amazon!. Here's a picture of Ani in action with our little red Dirt Devil!.
He's so reliable I'm thinking of promoting him to the board - I'll have to ask Kinnarps for another office chair now too in case he needs to use the PC or answer the phone!.

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps

Advent Calendar - Kinnarps - Sorry guys this is the link I meant to post - win a trip to Stockholm with Kinnarps!.
Well worth a try and I can vouch for the fact that it's a genuine competition!.

Design Products - Kinnarps

Design Products - Kinnarps - Hi everyone - take a look at this link. Kinnarps are a great client of mine and they are such a friendly company to deal with. Great design and quality too with top green credentials!.

Just a very quick mini update to say please follow me on Google+ - here's the link :-

https://plus.google.com/i/-4RBs3uIiMs:s2oFkFlH43Q

Thanks!.

Dave

My feet are aching after a long week and I'm glad it's Friday although it's been an interesting week.



I had a shoot in London on Monday for BUPA at a care home in Battersea and that went very well. I always catch the train down to London and after the shoot I caught a bus back across town with Amy from BUPA and had a very late lunch (more tea really) at Euston.



Silky Chain - Olympus EPL1



Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in the office working on post shoot processing as well as designing the albums for the Philips Chairmans Awards lunch that I photographed at the Ritz a couple of weeks ago. It's the only event that I cover that requires albums (I don't do weddings etc) and it's really good to put the pictures in to the design software and create something that people are going to really enjoy looking at.

I use a really helpful and friendly company called MTA in Haddenham near Thame (http://www.mtauk.co.uk/index.html). They provide a free program called Mosaic that gives you various album templates and you simply drop in the pictures and move them around until your happy.



Cool graffiti on concrete blocks EPL1



Yesterday I was back in London doing a shoot at Smithfield Meat Market where I had to photograph a couple of refurbished office units for a large fitout contractor.I took my little Olympus EPL-1 fitted with a 17mm pancake lens along with me to London and kept it in my pocket. I snapped a few nice detail shots around the outside of Smithfield after my shoot and they're here in the blog. This little camera is perfect for candid street shots especially when fitted with the super slim pancake lens and I'd highly recommend one if you're in the market for a point and shoot camera.



Beautiful glass bricks Olympus EPL1



I was in Ashford today photographing a beautiful church for Havells Sylvania which looked superb. It's a long drive down to Kent so I decided to catch a train from Milton Keynes to London then caught a really cool super fast commuter train to Ashford from St Pancras. I made it home to Milton Keynes in around 2 1/4 hours which is pretty impressive. Next week I'm mainly shooting video rather than stills so I'm looking forward to that and the best thing about shooting video is that I don't have to edit it!.

To celebrate my busy week I've just popped in to the lovely deli across the road from our office in Winslow and bought a nice bottle of red wine which will all go tonight for sure.Cheers!.

PS Just remembered something - you'll know from my blog that my favourite camera shop in the world is Aperture Photographic in Museum Street London (there's a link on the right of my blog but the web address is http://www.apertureuk.com/). I popped in there yesterday for a coffee (it's a cafe as well - perfect!) and the guys told me that they are opening a new shop in January in London where they offer medium format processing a great prices. They are looking at around £15 to process a 120 roll film including a set of prints and a CD of the pictures - great news. I still love shooting medium format but getting prints etc has been tricky until now.









Huge panic just broke out in the office (luckily there's only me here today because some bad language followed) as I thought I'd lost some of the RAW files from my shoot in London for BUPA Care homes yesterday. Luckily it was just Lightroom playing a hilarious trick whereby it only loaded in 70% of the pictures for no apparent reason and they were there safe and sound on the desktop.


Radha



My workflow is pretty basic but effective and it works like this :-

Download all the RAW files and back up to DVD and external drive

Convert RAW files to Tiff in either Lightroom or DXO (now Lightroom 99% of the time)

Retouch the Tiffs in Photoshop CS5 (basically straighten up vertical lines etc and remove dusk marks)

Back into Lightroom for final colour tweaking then convert to Jpeg and lastly to 72 dpi for the final CD to the client.

We always issue full size Jpegs and 72 dpi versions to make it easier for people to browse the CD when it arrives.



Callum



I also do a lot of HDR work and I use Photomatix to get a basic HDR image from between 3 and 8 differently exposed pictures and this is then worked on in Photoshop and Lightroom as pictures straight out of HDR software look very odd. I've seen pictures printed in magazines that are straight out of these HDR programs and I always think it's really lazy and bad technique for photographers to do this.

A couple of weeks ago I did a portrait shoot at Philips Electronics where I set up a small portrait kit comprising one Bowens flash head and a brolly with a white backdrop that I left unlit which means it fades to grey. I used my 24-105mm F4 L lens at the 105mm end for the portraits and shot the lens wide open at f4 to give a shallow depth of field and a softer look to the pictures. I've done a few shoots at the Philips Guildford HQ before and it's always great fun to work with the guys there and I've added a couple of the pictures in the blog. Even though digital cameras give us a preview on the LCD screen on the back I always use my Minolta light meter when I'm shooting portraits to make sure I get an accurate exposure first time around and to avoid having to post process the pictures too much afterwards.

In September I spent a day at the new crematorium in Milton Keynes shooting some stills and video for Adrian Morrow of AJM Architects who designed the building for Milton Keynes Council. The new crematorium is a beautiful piece of modern architecture and utilises some cutting edge technology such as heat recuperation and natural ventilation among many and I love the natural concrete finishes and flowing shapes of the structure. I posted some of the still images a few weeks ago in the blog and here is the finished video.




All the footage was taken on my EOS 5D MK2 with a 24-105mm F4L lens, 24mm T/S (Tilt and Shift) lens and 17-40mm F4L lens. My partner at Inverse Square Media (our video production company) edited the video footage with a program called Avid and the client was very pleased with the results!.

I'm working at the Lux Live event tomorrow and Thursday at Earls Court as the official photographer which should be fun as the show is going to be really busy and many of my clients will be there. I'm also shooting some video clips for the Lux website so if you're attending the show and want to be in the video give me a shout!. I'm hoping the show will really catch on as this is the first one and the signs are good as there's lots of talk on Twitter etc about it.

Speaking of Twitter you can find me there as redshiftphoto so give me a follow!.

All Saints Westfield Stratford

This week feels like it's been a bit more gentle although I've still been pretty busy. I did a shoot in Ipswich on Monday at the new Klick Fitness gym, a portrait shoot at Philips Electronics HQ in Guildford on Tuesday morning followed by a video interview with a landscape gardener called Tom Harfleet in the afternoon for a video we're producing for Philips Lighting. Then I headed off to Norwich on Wednesday for two retail photo shoots - one at a Jeweller's shop and another at a ski and surf shop (not what I'd expect to find in Norwich!).

Yesterday was spent in meetings with Pete my video partner at Inverse Square Media and with Jan Baldwin from VPL PR - a top lighting industry PR company (http://www.vastpublicity.com/) followed by an afternoon of post shoot processing mixed in with bouts of PC bashing as the computer is on the blink again!.

Today I'm working a half day as we're moving into our new house this afternoon so it's going to be a busy weekend!.



Gt Pulteney Street Reception



My poor car is suffering with all the travelling and it's currently in the garage being looked at because it keeps spluttering along as every few miles some orange warning light comes on - I hope it's not going to be a big bill!. We've just had to buy one new PC and I'll need one soon too (mine's heading for the window!) so I don't need a big garage bill on top.

I'm going to be the official photographer at the upcoming Lux Awards (http://www.luxawards.co.uk/) covering both days of the show and the evening event. If you're going you'll see me wondering around with my trusty EOS 5D MK2 photographing stands so give us a shout if you want a picture taking of you.



Following on from my last blog entry last month I nearly made it through a mad period of work unscathed but I ended up getting a bad chest infection which lasted three weeks and is still hanging around now. I've been so busy though that I could only take one night off and missed a job in Covent Garden but then I had to keep on going as I didn't want to let any of our clients down.


Finsbury Park Station



I'm feeling a lot better now but it's been a tough month and I've had both photography and video to shoot as well as writing a brochure for Llumarlite via my other company Inverse Square Media were we offer video and media services as well as blogging and brochure design etc.

I've had some nice work in though including a shoot at River Island HQ, one at All Saints Westfield in Stratford and another really nice shoot at Liberty in London. The video work has been fun too and I had a two day shoot down in Wales were I video'd a furniture installation for Kinnarps and also video'd some interviews with the client. Add to that two office interior shoots, a night shoot in Oxford at Queens College, a really cool shoot at the Tate Gallery and a day and night shoot at Finsbury Park Station and you can see I've been mega busy.



Tate Modern



Whilst I've been in London I've had a chance to pick up a new lens for my little Olympus ELP-1 which I use as my point and shoot camera. I bought the Olympus 20mm pancake lens which means the camera can fit into my pocket and so far it looks like a cracking lens. I'll be taking some candid shots next time I'm in London with it and I'll post some pictures in the blog once I've got some.



One of the big problems with shooting video on the EOS5D MK2 is the crap sound quality that the camera produces. I've tried putting a good microphone on it but it's still very noisy so I've invested in a Zoom H2 stand alone stereo mike and I have to say the sound quality is superb and it's really easy to use. The sound does have to be lip-synched back in to the video but it's worth the effort and I can recommend these little recorders very highly.

 

Liberty



I'm here working late tonight (Sunday) as I need to get up to date as next week I've got four days booked out with a shoot in Ipswich tomorrow and a portrait shoot in Guildford on Tuesday for Philips Electronics. Then I've got two shops to photograph in Norwich on Wednesday and a photoshoot in London for BUPA on Thursday. That's a lot of post shoot processing to take care of so I don't want to fall behind now!.



Finally I've just bought the latest Photoshop CS5 Extended and it's brilliant!. My previous version was CS3 and things have come on a lot since then. I'm not a fan of spending hundreds of pounds on software and in having the latest version of everything but I'm glad I splashed out on this and I can highly recommend it if you do a lot of retouching.



Last week was very busy but mainly with client meetings. I did one photo shoot for Willmott Dixon at a newly refurbished Travelodge in St Swithens Lane right in the City of London and also I spent a day in the studio shooting some products for Llumarlite.

Llumarlite LED based AR111





The meetings were all regarding some interesting new projects for both Redshift and my other company Inverse Square Media and this week is the week when everything is going to happen!. I must admit I'm a bit anxious about getting everything finished but a bit of pressure is good I think!.

I had a shoot yesterday at the new cafe in the Cambridge Botanical Gardens which was great fun and the cafe is a beautiful piece of modern architecture. I was commissioned by the company that had supplied the ceiling mounted heating panels and the brief was to capture both the general interior and the panels close up. I also took some shots from the outside to show the modern design.

Today I'm working in the office but tomorrow the mayhem begins!. I've got two jobs in London for different clients - one at a retail company HQ and the other at the new Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford.



Travelodge City of London



Then on Thursday I spending the day in the studio shooting some street lighting products both for still images and also on a rotating turntable to create 360 degree rotating movie clips. Then I'm off to London for another two projects in the evening - one at Selfridges Oxford Street and another at an event. My colleague Chris is taking care of most of the event photography to enable me to focus on the Selfridges shoot.

On Friday I'm spending a day in Oxford photographing three university buildings by day and night for Hoare Lea Lighting and on Saturday I'm shooting the video at the new crematorium in Milton Keynes.

I'm hoping I can get through all that and have a nice peaceful Sunday to recover!.



I've spent the past couple of days working on some interesting stuff for my other company Inverse Square Media. We've been asked to design a brochure and video presentation for Llumarlite who specialise in the manufacture and installation of lighting products in industrial and commercial buildings. It's great to get involved in something different and I'll post the video clip here and on the Inverse Square Media blog (www.inverse-square-media.blogspot.com) once it's finished.



We've recently employed Ani Lansdown to be our office manager here at Redshift Photography and I have to say it's worked out really well!. Ani is really cheerful and full of energy and she's already an integral part of the team. Having someone come in with fresh ideas was just what we needed and Ani has already come up with some new ways of doing things.



Ani



Our new website is under development and I took a picture of Melanie a while back ready for the new site and posted her picture here in the blog. Yesterday I put a small studio lighting setup together in our office and took Ani's picture ready for the new site and I've posted it here.

I'm about to update our Flickr site with some new photographs which I've been meaning to do for ages so please click on the link to the right and take a look. Flickr is a great way to display photographs and I prefer it to our website as it's so easy to upload and delete pictures etc. Also by tagging the pictures Google Images can pick them up and we've had people contacting us over the past few months asking about purchasing pictures that they've found in this way so it obviously works.

Being a photographer I guess it's natural that I love cameras and I've just fallen in love with a big heavy old Pentax 67 camera that my camera repair tech has for sale in his workshop. Melanie isn't happy but I guess there's worse things in life than buying cameras so I'm off to pick it up tomorrow and I can't wait to shoot some medium format slide film through it. Once I've got to grips with it I'll post a couple of pictures up in the blog.

My PC has just flipped out again and spent the last 30 minutes trying to repair itself which is a pain. Last time this happened it took me all afternoon to get it working again. It might be wishful thinking but I'm sure if I could afford to upgrade to Mac's they'd be more reliable. Typically these things always seem to happen at the worst possible time and right now a new PC or Mac for that matter is out of the question as we've just had a £4.5K VAT bill and the Corporation Tax which is due at Christmas has just been calculated and we've got to find the money to pay that too!. On the plus side I've never been as busy as I have in the past 6 months and the diary is looking pretty full from now until mid October so I can't complain to be honest.

BUPA Chef

Here's a picture from the BUPA's Best shoot which I did last month. It's one of my favourite pictures from the day and I really hope the guys at BUPA put this one in the campaign. The shoot was great fun and the models were all real BUPA employees who had won an internal competition to appear in the ad's. I had to work fast on the day and be very flexible so I decided to shoot with 2-3 Canon Speedlite battery powered flashguns rather than my Bowens studio heads. I used a set of Calumet wireless pocket wizards to fire the flashguns which worked perfectly all day and they enabled me to set the flash power manually and use my hand held meter to get the right amount of light for each picture. I used a brolly, softbox and in some cases an opal flash diffuser with the lights bounced off the ceiling or walls for a soft and even light. To make sure the white balance was correct I used my Expodisc to get a neutral grey target and set the camera to custom white balance.

I've had a few fun photoshoots since I last blogged and another one was the Philips Employee Day last week at their HQ in Guildford. I photographed the events during the day and finished off with a portrait shoot where the guys from Philips could have their picture taken with Roger Black the famous 400m athlete. Once again the pocket wizards were fantastic and I used a simple stand mounted flashgun bounced off the ceiling to capture Roger and the Philips Employees in front of a Philips backdrop without any noticeable shadowing on the backdrop. We used a Canon Selphy 6x4 instant printer to run off prints as we went along and I was really impressed with the speed and quality of the prints. I had Canon 6x4 printer a few years ago and the print quality has really improved since then so my initial scepticism was proved to be wrong.

Onitsuka Tiger

Another shoot that I really enjoyed was for Illuma Lighting who commissioned me to photograph the Onitsuka Tiger store in Westfield Shopping Centre in West London. The store was quite small but very colourful and the merchandise looked very well lit under the Illuma spotlights. The spotlights themselves were black against a dark ceiling so I had to overexpose slightly and pull the main picture back a little to ensure the spotlights were visible in the pictures.

I tried to upload a picture from my Flickr account directly to the blog earlier today and it worked perfectly but I couldn't add any text!.The picture shows a superb new bollard that I photographed for Holophane last year and I can now show the pictures as the product has been released to the market.
I've linked all my online bits and pieces together so my blog,Linked In, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr are all in some way linked together.Now I can add pictures directly to the blog from Flickr I can update the blog a bit more regularly. This is great as I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to really do justice to the blog which is a shame as I really love updating it and keeping an online diary to look back on.
I've done some interesting commissions since the last entry including a day shooting the BUPA's Best campaign (more info in the next entry), the new crematorium in Milton Keynes for AJM Architects, a week in Scotland for Zumtobel lighting, the new LED test lab at Holophane in Milton Keynes and the new Severn Trent Water HQ in Coventry.I've also photographed another couple of BUPA care homes so I've been really busy and covering some miles in my trusty Ford Modeo (or my Capri Gear as I like to call it!).
The new office in Winslow is working out really well and most evenings after a shoot I head back there and do the post shoot processing meaning that I keep up to date with that part of the job which really relieves the pressure. Having the business outside of our home is the best thing we've done in the 9 years that we've been operating and I've found that I can really focus on work whilst I'm there and switch off more easily when I'm at home.


Taken with an Olympus ELP-1 and old Nikon 28mm MF lens



I like to review kit on the blog whenever I can and I recently decided to buy a new small SLR camera for my non work photography. I've always been a strong advocate of second hand kit but this time I picked up a bargain in PC World and bought new. The camera I bought is an Olympus EPL-1 which has now been replaced by the EPL-2 and EPL-3. They were over £600 a couple of years ago but PC World were selling off the old stock for £279 including a kit lens!. This deal is still available online and I can recommend this great little camera 100%. I've bought an adaptor to allow me to use my old Canon FD lenses and another to allow me to fit Nikon lenses to it.Today I took some pictures with an old manual focus Nikon 28mm lens mounted to the camera and the results were really good!.I've posted a picture in the blog that I took at the Bucks Railway Centre at Quainton today with the Olympus and Nikon 28mm lens.Because the Olympus has a small micro 4/3rds sensor the 28mm lens is effectively cropped in half and becomes a 56mm lens which is a great focal length for everyday photography.

We've just had a scarily large VAT bill and we should know the final Corporation Tax bill soon which we'll need to pay in December so I really hope the current busy workload carries on for a while yet although the economists seem intent on talking us into another recession!. Lets try and keep positive and hopefully we'll all be OK!.

Denver Elite

Denver Elite , a photo by David at Redshift Photography on Flickr.

Here's another quick video update. This time it's another Kinnarps job - this one filmed at two schools in Manchester.As always the video is filmed on my Canon EOS 5D MK2.

I've just had my annual week off and we headed off for a few days camping in the Cotswolds where we camped at The Cotswold Farm Park owned by the bloke off Countryfile. We did the same last year and although it's not exactly a glamorous break we did have a good time. I took my old Canon FD cameras along and shots a few rolls of colour film which I picked up from Morrisons in Bletchley for £1.99 per roll as it was a year out of date!!.

Club Helsinki

Now it's back to work and I did a BUPA shoot on Monday in Enfield, a shoot for Collingwood Lighting at Club Helsinki in Leicester where there was some cool blue LED products installed (see picture) and a shoot at the new Museum of Liverpool yesterday. This is a really stunning new building and I've attached a picture of the exterior in the blog. The spotlights were supplied by a very innovative British lighting company called Precision Lighting. Their products are made to a very high quality and the design of the fittings is superb.I met Andy Molyneux (Precision Lighting Design Manager) up on site and we spent a very enjoyable day photographing the building. The museum has just opened and in the first couple of weeks they've had 120,000 visitors!. The exhibits are all things made in Liverpool (including a Ford Anglia!) or things to do with Liverpool. The sheer number of visitors made it very hard to photograph the interior and I was only allowed a short time to use a tripod, the rest of the shoot was taken hand held. Luckily the Canon EOS 5D MK2 is superb at high ISO settings so grain wasn't an issue in the final shots. I used Lightroom and Neat Image to reduce any grain that was visible but it wasn't a problem. After the shoot we took a walk around the Tate Liverpool and the waterfront. The waterfront area and docks are just superb and I'd recommend a visit if you ever get the chance.

I was supposed to be on a shoot for BUPA today up in Derby but the rain has beaten us so we've had to re arrange but that has given me a chance to catch up with myself and tomorrow I'm shooting some portraits at DW Windsor lighting over in Ware.

Museum of Liverpool

Inverse Square Media has really taken off and here's a link to a lamp demo which Pete has created from a series of 16 product shots http://www.inversesquaremedia.com/lampdemo/ . To make it spin around just hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse left or right. We're looking to enhance this idea further with a moving background image too and maybe the option  of changing the product colour etc at the click of a button as it spins around.We think these VR product video clips are a great way to show off products on a website and because they count as video content they're great for optimising a website too.

A few weeks ago I popped down to Alexandra Bastido's animal sanctuary (Alexandra starred in The Champions back in the 1970's and has been in lots of other production too) in West Sussex and took some still photographs and a few video clips as a favour as the BBC where going to show a few seconds of the video I took on the local news to promote the annual open day at the sanctuary. Pete my partner at Inverse Square Media has edited the clips into a short video that the guys at the sanctuary can upload to their website. It's only 30 seconds long and very basic and here it is:-

Here's the teeth whitening video that I mentioned in the previous blog entry. This was shot entirely on my Canon EOS 5D MK2 and was directed by my colleague Pete Rimington with sound recorded by a specialist sound guy!. This was produced by my new company Inverse Square Media which is a joint venture between Redshift Photography and Goldmoor TV. Our new blog for Inverse Square is www.inverse-square-media.blogspot.com so please take a look if you get a chance!.

Without wishing to tempt fate I'm still mega busy and this summer could well be my best yet since I set up Redshift Photography 9 years ago!.The past two weeks since the last blog post have been flat out although last week I had a touch of man flu again so I did struggle to keep going but I got through it thanks to Lemsip Max!.

Philips Bright Idea Garden Hampton Court Flower Show

I've been photographing more care homes for BUPA, photographed (and video'd) a very cool concept garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show which was sponsored by Philips Lighting and also photographed a newly refurbished building in Henrietta Street (Covent Garden - London) for Zumtobel Lighting.

Philips Bright Idea Garden Hampton Court Flower Show

The diary is looking pretty full for the next couple of months too so at the moment it's a case of making hay while the sun shines.
I'm still doing the odd show on BBC Three Counties Radio too and last Saturday I did a two hour phone in on photography on BBC 3CR which went really well.It's great fun taking calls and emails from the listeners on all aspects of photography and it really keeps you on your toes as you never know what you're likely to be asked. It's usually questions about red eye and flash as flash photography is pretty tricky until you get used to it and every month I give the same advice so it would be good to get some new questions next time around. The best call I've had so far was from a guy wanting advice on how to photograph his wife in the nude!.
I have to prepare a fact sheet for each show now which is pretty time consuming but I still like doing it as I'm hoping that one day I'll get snapped up by a TV company to produce a TV show on photography but it hasn't happened yet after 5 years on the radio!.

Alexandra Bastido

I mentioned a shoot that I did in the last blog entry with an actress called Alexandra Bastido who owns and runs a lovely animal shelter down in West Sussex. She used to be in a 1970's TV series called The Champions and has made various film and TV appearances since then.I took some pictures of her for the sanctuary website and as promised here's a picture of her from the shoot. We're also producing a short video for YouTube for the sanctuary and I'll post a link here once it's uploaded.
Our new venture Inverse Square Media is going very well too with a couple of video commissions coming up soon. Last month we finished the Teeth Whitening video for Dioxiwhite that I've mentioned before and here's a link to the video on our ISM website http://inversesquaremedia.com/mainmenu.html

I've got another two weeks to go until our annual family camping holiday to the Cotswolds and although I'm loving the workload and I'm chuffed to be so busy I am really looking forward to taking a break.
When I do go on holiday I always take my old Canon T90 and A1 and take loads of pictures on black and white film. It's great to take pictures and not have to sit here at the computer working with Photoshop etc. Much as I love digital SLR's I do miss shooting film and working away in a darkroom and it's great to load up the old Canon FD kit with film.

The past two weeks have been both very busy and very exciting as we've moved into our new office in Winslow and launched a new company called Inverse Square Media which is a company aimed at producing high quality video content for lighting companies and architects. I've been shooting video for a couple of years now and it seemed like the right time to finally launch this new venture. Inverse Square Media is now fully operating and registered and I'm now about to start a new blog and Twitter feed etc so watch this space.
Speaking of video Pete (my partner in the video company) and I shot the teeth whitening advert last week at a salon in Milton Keynes. It was tough but great fun and we shot 25Gb of video footage on the 5D MK2 in a 6 hour shoot. Pete is now editing it all together and I'll post the video here in the blog when it's done.
I've also been very busy with stills photography too and I've been to North Wales, Newbury, London, Leeds and Manchester in the past week or so. The guys at BUPA are keeping me busy (they are a great client and fabulous to work for!) and I've also been doing quite a few location shoots for Holophane Lighting including one late last night in Stratford (East London) at the Orient Way railway sidings which was good fun as I love trains!. I also have a big soft spot for Holophane products as I worked for them for 9 years after I left school.
I know I've mentioned this before and nothing happened but I have decided to buy an iMac and this time I'm definitely going to take the plunge as my fast Photoshop PC has crashed. The main hard drive with all the programs on has corrupted and it's going to be a real hassle to re-install everything so now is my chance to make the change. I've been getting more and more frustrated with the office PC's as one of them always seems to have an issue be it a virus or something else. I guess iMacs go wrong too but I've heard great things about them from other photographers and video editors so my mind is made up. I'll have to lease one as cash flow is a bit tight (as usual!) and I'll post my progress with it once it arrives.
I've posted a video clip in today's blog that I shot last year for Kinnarps which is basically a user guide for operating their superb range of office chairs. It's all made from still pictures that I took in the studio and Pete edited them into this short movie clip.

Another two crazy weeks have passed by since the last blog entry and work is getting busier by the day which is just fabulous!. Since I last blogged I've photographed a railway depot in London, four BUPA care homes around the country, an art gallery in Newcastle, Bemco Wholesalers in Wandsworth (London) and I did a free shoot at an animal sanctuary in West Sussex so all in all pretty busy!.

The animal sanctuary is a lovely peaceful place near Horsham and it's owned and run by a lady called Alexandra Bastido who was in a 1970's TV series called The Champions among lots of other things. I was asked to pop along to shoot some video by Maureen my PR lady who also does PR for the sanctuary. They had an open weekend this weekend and BBC South needed some video footage to show on Friday night's local news bulletin. It was great fun filming Alexandra with the animals and they do a great job there taking in all manner or unwanted pets from pigs and horses to cats and dogs. The footage was shown on the bulletin and it was good to see that the EOS 5D MK2 picture quality was more than good enough for broadcasting on TV. I also took a couple of portraits of Alexandra and I'll post one in the blog once their finished. Here's a link to the sanctuary website - please take a look if you get a minute http://www.abcanimalsanctuary.co.uk/

The railway depot at Bounds Green was great fun to photograph because I have to admit that I love trains (although I'm not a proper trainspotter! - honest!). I photographed the workshop during the day and again at night to show the effect of the new industrial lighting which has recently been installed. I'm doing a lot of night photography at the moment and it doesn't get properly dark until around 10pm so it means long hours but it's all good fun.

I'm still very busy with BUPA too and they are a fabulous client to have as they keep me busy but more importantly they're so nice to work for and they pay their invoices on time!. This is a real problem for us at the moment as some companies are taking 90 days to pay and that creates havoc with the cash flow. It's no surprise that small businesses are going under!.

I was commissioned by Havells Concord to photograph the Laing Gallery in Newcastle which has recently been re-lit with energy efficient LED spotlights. The Concord Stadium fits onto the existing track system and provides a really clean and precise beam of light that can be focused on site. The other benefits of LED lighting is that the UV content is low so there's no damage to the artwork on display and heat output is kept to a minimum. This makes LED fittings ideal for art galleries and I think Tungsten display lighting is really on it's last legs due to the new LED technology.

Due to the extreme workload and the need for more space we've just hired a new office in Winslow which is really exciting. It's a second floor office in a 1700's building just off the Market Square so the location is perfect. I'm looking forward to moving in next week and I'll post a picture in the next blog entry.

We've also just finalised a partnership with Goldmoor TV to create a new company called Inverse Square Media which will be a specialist architectural and lighting installation video production company. I've already worked with Pete at Goldmoor TV on several videos over the past year so I know we can work well together and I'll post a link to our new blog once I've got it ready.

Speaking of video I've got the teeth whitening advert to shoot next week and tomorrow I'm doing a final recce of the salon I've chosen to film the ad in. We're shooting it next Friday and I'm looking forward to the day very much as video is great fun. I'm shooting some of the video on my EOS5D MK2 and some on Pete's DV Cam which is a top piece of kit and I'm looking forward to using it.

I'm also shooting some more work for BUPA next week along with a night club interior and a railway siding in East London so I'll be having a few more late nights this week.

I'm working 16 hours a day at the moment (during the week at least) to try to keep up with my workload. Over the past couple of weeks since my last blog entry I've had 9 commissions including a night shoot at Selfridges in Oxford Street where the store was floodlit with beautiful colour change LED's, an event at The Ritz hotel in London (I had to wear a suit and tie - not cool!) two days working with models on a photo shoot for the NHBC and a night shoot at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.I've also photographed another couple of care homes for BUPA which is great work for me as everyone there is so nice to work with and the homes are always friendly and well run and I've also photographed a dual carriageway at night in Bristol!.


Sheldonian Theatre Oxford



The post shoot processing for all this takes me ages and when I finally manage to lease an office (hopefully within the next two months) I'll find someone to take over the post shoot processing which will mean I can have less stress and a bit of free time!.

I've just been commissioned to work on two new video productions too - one for a lighting project and another for a company that supply a teeth whitening kit to beauty salons. I did some stills photography for these guys a while ago and they've asked me to film and produce a short video clip for YouTube to promote their products further.Video is a great way to promote products and raise awareness of a brand etc and with iPads and iPhones being used so widely now it makes sense to have video content on your website as well as still pictures.



Selfridges Oxford Street



I'm very conscious of the fact that I've spent the past 8 years or so building up Redshift Photography as a company and hopefully as a brand but I've never had time to sit back and try to look at the way that we do things from an outsiders perspective. To remedy this I've asked a management consultant called David Tighe to take a look at the way my business is working and he's been with me for the past few days both out on photo shoots and visiting some of our best clients. It's been a real eye opener to get some feedback from someone neutral and it was great to introduce David to some of our top customers. We had some great feedback and identified some areas where we can offer extra services which can only be a good thing. If you need any business coaching or advice please let me know and I'll put you in touch with David.

The next couple of months are looking very busy and it's great to know that I've got lots of work already in the diary - that takes the pressure off no end and and means I can relax a bit and just focus on producing good work.The one thing I've learned above all else is that you're only as good as your last job and that standards have to be high at all times.



NHBC Lifestyle Shoot



I'm still feeling in Bank Holiday mode after the lovely long weekend we've just had. For anyone reading this from overseas British Bank Holiday's in April and May are traditionally wet and cold but at the moment we're having lovely sunny weather.

I missed the Royal Wedding as I had a shoot up in Sheffield at a new Marks and Spencer Simply Food store last Friday. The store is very green and utilises lots of sustainable wood panelling and features lots of glazing to increase the amount of natural light hence reducing the need to use high levels of artificial lighting. My client (LAPD Lighting Design - http://www.lapdconsultants.com/) have designed a highly efficient lighting scheme for both the store and back of house areas and every light fitting through-out uses LED's instead of traditional lamps. LED's are the future and they now provide a viable alternative to fluorescent lamps and low voltage spotlights etc. The store felt very well lit and the luminaires looked very cool and well designed. I'll post a couple of pictures in the next blog entry once I've processed them.

I started my photography career around 25 years ago when I began working for a good family friend called Roger Parker who is a top sports photographer and owner of an agency called Fotosports International (http://www.fotosports.com/). Being an Arsenal fan it was a great honour to be able to work on the touchline at Highbury and I learned a tremendous amount about photography at that time. In those days it was all black and white film and manual focus cameras and we'd develop the film in the darkroom after the game. Now pictures are sent from the touchline as the game is in progress so technology has changed sports photography more than most other types of work.

Roger called me on Friday and asked me if I'd cover the Northampton Saints v Perpignan Heineken Cup Semi Final at the MK Dons stadium which was played on Sunday. I'm not a huge rugby fan but I have to say I really enjoyed the game and the atmosphere was brilliant. I used my Canon EOS 5D MK2 with my 70-200L 2.8 IS lens for the action close in front of me and I used one of Fotosport's Nikon D2X's with a 300mm 2.8 lens for the action further down the field. I took far too many pictures and was way too snap happy but I did end up with some decent shots which you can see on the Fotospots site in the rugby section. I've posted a few action shots in the blog today along with a picture of a very cheeky cheerleader!(tough work but someone has to do it). I haven't photographed anything that moves quickly for years and it was good to try something different. I can confirm that even though autofocus lenses and digital cameras have made things a bit easier there is still a tremendous amount of skill involved in sports photography and I take my hat off to the guys at Fotosports who are very good at it.

Had a long day today post shoot processing pictures from this past week and I'll be working late into the night tonight before I'm anywhere near to catching up on myself. For every four hours of shooting time on location there's at least that again (usually more) in post production and for the HDR shoots that I do often three times as much time spent in post production. Unfortunately the client doesn't see this and it's important to let people know how much time is spent behind the scene's. I'd love to take someone on to do this work but every time I work out the costs involved it just doesn't add up. I do use freelance Photoshop people to help me sometimes but what I do is very specialised (when it comes to shooting interior lighting installations) and by the time I've explained how to do the various stages of processing I could have done it myself. It's a real dilemma as I'm finding that I get bogged down with the post shoot work more and more so I will have to sort it out soon!.
Shooting video is more demanding at the time of the shoot but once it's in the can I pass all the editing over to Pete (my freelance video editor) and that is quite a relief to be honest.
It's a bit like in the old days of shooting on transparency (slide film) which was more difficult at the time of taking the photographs but once the pictures were taken it was over to the lab to sort out the processing and scanning. Many people say that digital photography is way easier than traditional photography BUT if you want to get the best results from digital cameras there is a lot of work to be done on the RAW files and in Photoshop so I don't agree that digital photography is quick and easy!.

Victoria Station

I'm sure this is a dilemma that faces many interior and commercial photographers in terms of time spent in post production. With fashion photography I think it's much more accepted by the client that a great deal of retouching is needed and the extra cost is more readily accepted.

Right no more moaning for today - I'd still rather be a photographer than anything else so I guess the retouching is the rough side of the deal.The smooth side is getting out nearly every day and going somewhere different to take pictures for a living and also working for some really nice people (you know who you are!).

I had a great shoot last Friday (yes I know it was a bank holiday!) where I photographed Victoria Station and Kings Cross Station for an industrial lighting company. I spent the afternoon at Victoria and captured some nice shots of the busy station thoroughfare and then photographed the platforms at Kings Cross at night. I've posted a picture from Victoria Station in today's blog (see above) - I love the feeling of hustle and bustle when I'm working in these environments and I tried to capture that in the pictures. I've also posted a night shot from Kings Cross Station where I used a 2 second exposure to show some blur on the train leaving the station.

I had a photo shoot for BUPA carehomes on Tuesday at a lovely retirement home in Battersea, one of the largest BUPA carehomes in the country. Their garden was transported from the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago - that's pretty cool!.

Yesterday I had a shoot at the University of West England in Bristol where I shot lots of refurbished interior areas for another large lighting company and tomorrow I'm heading up to Sheffield to photograph a Marks and Spencer store which means that I'll happily miss the Royal Wedding!.

Kings Cross Station