After years of great service my EOS 5D MK2 has started to do some really odd things. Twice this week the LCD screen has gone mad basically turning itself into a flashing mess of lines and colour!. After a quick off and on manouvre it's reset itself but I think it might be time to send her back to Canon for a service.
My camera kit is used pretty much every day and although I'm careful with it all there are the unavoidable bumps and dings but I have to say that the Canon kit seems to be unbelievably reliable. My L series lenses are now about 8 years old and they have never missed a beat and my original EOS5D body (that I use as a backup or for jobs when I don't need really high res files) has taken hundreds of thousands of pictures.
My biggest advice for anyone buying camera kit is to get the best you can afford even if it means buying fewer lenses etc. Often people buy several cheap lenses when in reality one or two top quality ones would be a far better bet. Also buy second hand - my Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS lens was bought used from Aperture Photographic (http://apertureuk.com/)  in London and I saved around £600 on a new lens!.
I still use my 1976 Canon F1N too when I need to shoot black and white film and it still works perfectly to this day.

I started to write this entry last Sunday so my timeline has gone a bit mad but to bring my diary up to date on line I had a shoot on Tuesday 15th at the National Physical Laboratory in Shepperton.This is a very cool place and I took a few shots of the newly refurbished offices where Philips Lighting have supplied some very state of the art LED recessed office lights. I was very impressed to find out that they have a mini Hadron Collider at the NPL although unfortunatley I didn't get to see it!.

On Wednesday 16th I had the "after" shoot at a warehouse in Birmingham where Dialight (http://www.dialight.com/) have supplied LED highbay luminaires to replace the existing SON lowbay fittings. Not only has the lighting level improved dramatically but the colour is also far better. I was very impressed with the result and I've posted a before and after picture in today's blog to show the effect. They've even managed to reduce the quantity of fittings substantially too so it's a great lighting solution all round. I was commissioned by Christine Gupta of The Gupta Partnership (http://http://www.guptapartnership.co.uk/) who specialise in high impact marketing and PR to take the pictures.

 

I've been working flat out since my last blog entry on some varied and interesting commissions and it's been the busiest time that I can remember. I keep meaning to write at least one blog entry per week but I just haven't had the time to sit down and do it.

The week beginning 1st March was pretty full on with a shoot at the new Environment Agency building in Bristol (I've photographed it before but this time for a lighting company) followed by a shoot in Oxford at the Earth Science building. Hopefully these are the students that are going on to save the planet from global warming etc!. Then I had three shoots in London over two days - one at the International Students House near Portland Place, a shoot at the Marni fashion concession area in Harvey Nicholls in Knightsbridge and a big shoot in Battersea Park where we hired in a model family for a lifestyle shoot for the front cover of a brochure. That one was great fun although we had to work under a lot of pressure as we only had the models for a couple of hours and the budget for the shoot was pretty high so I had to get the right shots quickly. The design agency attended the shoot to art direct things which helped a great deal and I also roped in my client to help hold the large 6ft x 4ft reflector panel in place which was providing some much needed fill light onto the models.

Last week was even busier as I had a product shoot in the studio on Monday, a video and stills shoot in Manchester on Tuesday (followed by a very entertaining evening with my clients involving lots of red wine) and a shoot at the Arndale Centre in Manchester on Wednesday. Then it was back down to St Albans for a shoot on Thursday afternoon and finally I had a shoot in North London on Friday.

On top of all the actual photo shoots I also have to do all the post shoot processing in DXO, Lightroom and Photoshop so I'm really working hard to keep up with everything.

I've found a really useful company based in India that I now use when I need products etc cut out onto a white background. I upload the product shots and the guys at Clipping Path India (http://www.clippingpathindia.com/) then cut them out and send them back the next day. The service is exceptional and they charge around £2 per picture so the price is really competitive too. If you ever need this service I'd highly recommend them.

Well it's still full on at the moment in terms of workload and the time is flying by.
Last week I had a shoot down in Worthing, one in Christchurch and a shoot inside Tower 42 (previously called the Natwest Tower). I also did a portrait shoot in the studio last weekend so quite a varied week!.

Tower 42 is one of my favourite London landmarks and I love working in such iconic buildings. The shoot was for Philips Lighting who have supplied some LED office modules and downlights into one of the floors.

The fittings look great and the lighting is very uniform and the space feels very well lit. The colour from the LED's is also very good and I noticed that the skin tones of the models looked great and I shot most of the pictures without any fill flash at all. Once the designers have chosen the pictures they want from the contact sheets I'll process them and post a couple to the blog.

The week before last I did a portrait shoot at Philips HQ with a very basic setup of one flash head and a white backdrop that I left unlit so that it faded to grey in the shots. The pictures were really well received by the guys at Philips and I've posted a couple in today's blog.

I've started working with a new client called Perry Scott Nash who provide CDM and health and safety training and yesterday we spent the day at The Holiday Inn Shepperton shooting pictures for a new brochure. This was an exciting day for me as we were looking to capture very subtle and suggestive pictures about training and working in partnership rather than more obvious shots of people in a room being lectured. I was involved in creating the ideas at a meeting back in January and I was relieved that on the day everything fell into place. I've attached a couple of my favourite shots in today's blog.

Later today I'm off to Bristol for another shoot at the new Environment Agency building for a different client and then tomorrow I'm in Oxford - one of my favourite cities in the world!.

I'm photographing a party in London on Wednesday night (a quick dash up the M40 from Oxford) then I've got a day photographing products in Milton Keynes of Thursday. To finish off a busy week we're scheduled for a shoot in Battersea Park on Friday but that one is weather permitting and looking out of the window right now I'm not too hopeful of getting a nice sunny day!.