I'm well and truly winding down for Christmas now which is just as well really because I haven't got any more work in the diary until the second week of January!. December is always quiet so it doesn't come as any surprise.

Last week was busy though with the shoot at the Thompson Holidays superstore in Greenford on Monday, the Environment Agency Bristol shoot on Tuesday and a shoot at a primary school in Leicester on Wednesday. I had a meeting in Leeds on Thursday and a day out in London on Friday so all in all quite a busy week.

The Thompson Holiday superstore job went really well and it was interesting as the entire store was lit with LED spotlights made by JCC Lighting http://www.jcc-lighting.co.uk/ . These LED spots are great for retail as they produce very little heat and last for years unlike their old Tungsten Halogen predecessors. They also use less energy so it's a win win situation. Retail lighting is generally on for long periods - sometimes 24 hours - so LED technology really comes into own!. I've included a shot of the store in today's blog.

The Environment Agency shoot went well too and there were two other photographers at work whilst I was there so it's obviously a popular building. The interior was very clean and modern and the Kinnarps furniture (my client) looked fabulous. I'll post a picture in the blog as soon as I've processed them.

The primary school was a tough shoot as the rooms were very small with high ceilings. I was commissioned by the lighting manufacturer but the lights were hard to capture and even with a 24mm Tilt and Shift lens getting a decent composition was difficult. Also there were loads of Christmas decorations everywhere which made things even more difficult. I took a few shots but didn't feel it was worth spending a day there so I'll talk to the client and offer them a reduced rate in return for fewer finished pictures. It's not ideal but I always put my client's first and I'm interested in building long term relationships rather then one off jobs.

I did my final radio show of the year yesterday on BBC Three Counties Radio which I always enjoy and I'm hoping to keep that going into next year. I've been doing the show now for the past 5 years on and off and it's something that I really look forward to!. Radio is really great fun because you can relax in the knowledge that no one can actually see you!. It builds a bit of mystique and I think it's more interesting than TV (although I've never been on TV for very long - just one appearance on a late night debate show many years ago).

I've been out in the snow with my old Canon A1 camera and 35mm lens over the past few days shooting some black and white film which has been great fun and I've stocked up on film for Christmas as I'll be avoiding digital cameras now for a couple of weeks!. I still love working with film and any chance to load up with black and white is eagerly taken. I always recommend that people try the chromagenic films like Kodak BW400N or Ilford XP2 which are black and white films with loads of exposure latitude that are developed in standard colour process machines. That means you can get the films dev'd and printed at Tesco or Asda while you do your shopping.

Lastly I took a picture of a friend and model Annalie a couple of weeks ago next to the London Eye. We wanted to include the Houses of Parliament in the background and I took the shot with my trusty EOS 5D MK2 and 24-105mm L series lens. I used a simple hot shoe mounted Canon EX 550 flashgun with an opal plastic diffuser fitted to soften the light and set the ISO to 1600. I used a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/20th of a second to let some ambient light bleed through and I was really pleased with the results. I've posted one of the pictures in today's blog.

Good news on the broken L series lens (see last post) as my camera repair guy Dave at the Camera Repair Workshop at Wharfside in Fenny Stratford repaired my lens for £25. He's a really good repair man and his prices are very fair indeed. I was fearing a large repair bill or an insurance claim with a big excess so to pay £25 was a real relief.

December is a very quiet month for me and usually results in me feeling pretty down at Christmas as I love to be busy and I need to keep lots of work coming in as my daily rate is very competitive compared to some commercial photographers. I've had a good week so far though with the shoot at the Thompson Holiday superstore in Greenford on Monday, a shoot at the Environment Agency building in Bristol yesterday and today's shoot at a school in Leicester.

Tomorrow I have a client meeting in Leeds and on Friday I'm out with some clients for a Christmas booze up in London starting at All Star Lanes in Bayswater.

Next week is pretty empty though except for my monthly radio show on BBC Three Counties Radio on Monday and a client meeting in Stevenage later the same day.

The show on Monday is about getting good pictures of family and friends at parties etc so if anyone out there has any tips you want me to pass on please let me know!.

I'm really hooked on Twitter at the moment which I find surprising as I never thought it would be my kind of thing but if you'd like to follow me I'm on Twitter as @redshiftphoto.

I've posted a couple of my favourite portraits that I've taken this year on today's blog - please let me know what you think.

Lastly I'd like to say "Come on England" for the third test that starts in Perth later tonight!.

Teeth Whitening

The teeth whitening product photography went well (I mentioned this in the last blog entry) and I ended up shooting individual products and pack shots (a shot that shows both the box and the product next to the box) as well as a montage of all the products in the range. I've attached the montage shot in today's blog entry so if you want to get hold of some teeth whitening stuff cheap just let me know!!.

I had an interesting shoot last Friday night at Coutts Bank in London where I photographed some of the back of house areas such as offices etc and also some of the beautiful client meeting rooms and conference rooms. The building is a 1970's designed concrete structure with a very interesting central atrium with concrete beams reaching up into the ceiling. I will post some of the pictures here in the blog as soon as the bank have approved the shots.

I was lucky to photograph my friend and model Annalie in London yesterday where I took a series of shots of her with the London Eye and The Houses of Parliament in the background. After that shoot I went onto the Zumtobel Christmas party where I was invited along as a guest - thanks guys! - and also took some party shots whilst I was there. As the night went on everyone got pretty tipsy (me included as I was officially a guest!) and I got some pretty lively shots right up until my 24-105mm L series lens fell off of my 5d MK2 camera body for no apparent reason and smashed on the floor. Unfortunately the £900 lens didn't bounce this time (I have dropped it before) and the front element broke off!. What do they always say about mixing business with pleasure?.

So today is all about post shoot processing from yesterday's work and also trying to get my insurance company to stump up the money for a new lens - I wonder which job will prove to be the most difficult!.

It's great to be back blogging again a bit more regularly after a manic few weeks including a bought of the Flu and I'm back up to date with a whole backlog of post shoot processing thanks to a postponed job in London. The snow seems to cause such mayhem in the UK (actually more specifically in England as the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish seem to cope pretty well with it) and the few millimetres we've had around London have caused lots of people to stay at home!.

At least the snow didn't come last week when I was up in Liverpool and Sheffield as that would have been a real problem.

Today I've got some product photography to do which I'm doing here in the office as it's a collection of small items (teeth whitening products!) so I don't need to use the studio. I'll be using two or three Canon Speedlite flashguns fired via the Canon ST-E2 remote flash controller. This is a useful setup for small product photography and the flashguns can be controlled in manual mode which gives me more control of the lighting. I'll post one of the product shots from this setup in the next blog entry.

I finished off the post shoot processing last night for the Unite HQ building in Liverpool that I photographed for the lighting manufacturer DW Windsor http://www.dwwindsor.com/. The building is beautifully lit with subtle LED colour change lighting. I photographed it at dusk to try to keep some blue in the sky and I captured the red green and blue colour change for each angle. The car headlight trails are a result of the long exposure (10 seconds or so) needed to work in the low light of dusk and the camera was of course fixed on a heavy tripod to prevent any motion blur due to the camera moving. I've attached a couple of pictures of the building in today's blog.

LED lighting is without doubt the future of all lighting and within 5 years I would guess that every home in the UK will be using some kind of LED lighting fixture.

Now I'm off to walk my dogs in the snow before it gets dark!.

Hi Everyone
Just a quick note to say I stupidly signed up for Google Adwords which places ad's onto a blog to see if it worked. It placed ad's for other photographers and a male dating agency on my blog so I've rapidly turned it off!.
Just to let you know I won't be monetising my blog again any time soon.
Thanks
Dave

Last week flew by helped along by the number of shoots I managed to squeeze in.
On Monday I was lucky to photograph the beautiful Angel Building in Islington (London) which was a really enjoyable shoot. I knew as soon as I saw the interior that I was going to enjoy the afternoon as I love modern minimalist architecture (sorry Prince Charles!). The interior had lots of bare unpainted concrete surfaces which I just love and the marketing suite on the top floor was fitted out with beautiful furniture and was totally clutter free. I could quite easily live on that top floor - it would make a superb super apartment and the views over London from the outside paved area were just stunning. I've attached a couple of shots to today's blog.
On Tuesday I photographed the launch of a very clever new lighting system that has been fitted into the science labs at Epsom and Ewell school by Philips Lighting. I have been back to the school a number of times during the year to photograph "before and after" shots and now the classrooms are in full use. The lighting has four settings which change the colour temperature and brightness of the lighting to keep the pupils alert through-out the day. The lighting can be set to a bright cool light for high energy through to dimmed down warm light for relaxation and wind down. Philips fitted the lighting system free of charge as part of their School Vision lighting program!.
Wednesday saw me lifted up in a hoist outside a company HQ in Aylesbury to enable me to get a shot of the front of the building including the solar panels on the roof. I hand-held my 24mm Tilt and Shift lens to get a nice perspective on the picture without getting the converging vertical lines caused by tilting the camera downwards. I then headed off to Oxford for another meeting about a new project so a busy day once again.
I drove up to Liverpool on Thursday for a dusk and night shoot of the new Unison HQ building which has been beautifully lit with some colour change LED lighting. It was bloody freezing but well worth it as I got some lovely shots with car headlight trails in the foreground as per the client's brief. Dusk shoots are always manic as you have to hang around for ages for the light level to drop and the lovely deep blue sky to appear (some photographers call this the golden hour - half an hour either side of dusk) but I always find that you actually get around 45 minutes of perfect light so it becomes a mad dash around the building in order to get in all the angles needed to give a rounded set of pictures.
I had a night in a Travel Lodge in Sheffield that evening (basic but very clean and the bar stocked good red wine!) then I had a shoot at Marks and Spencer Sheffield on Friday.
All in all a good week - I just need to post shoot process all the pictures now - probably another three days work(unfortunately we don't invoice for this!!).
This week is a bit quieter with a shoot in London tomorrow and a meeting with my PR lady Maureen. Then some product photography on Wednesday and so far that's it. At least I'll have a chance to catch up with the post shoot work.

Hi Everyone - sorry about the long delay again in posting but Manflu turned out to be a full on proper Flu bug and I've been layed up for a few days. I tried to work through it but the tiredness got the better or me so I ended up on the sofa watching daytime TV - a good incentive to get better if ever there was one!.

The last job I did before succumbing to the bug was a large shoot up in Manchester where I spent three days working with my mate Katie (marketing exec) from Kinnarps - one of my best clients!. We were shooting both stills and video of new furniture being installed in a large new primary school and then moved across the road to a recently completed school with kids in situ. This is becoming an increasingly common way of working for me where we shoot both still and video although it does add to the stress level as I find it hard to change from video mode to stills mode (in terms of the technique). I've also got the added challenge of recording sound when we do interviews etc which is far more difficult than you'd imagine. I'm getting the hang of working in this way and my EOS 5DMK2 camera shoots beautiful video as well as stills so the kit is working perfectly. I think I'm going to invest in a purpose made HD video camera though for the interviews as I think the sound would be easier to set up and record. The 5D MK2 camera only has a mini jack input for a microphone as I think sound recording is an afterthought - maybe Canon will improve this on the Mk3!.

This week I've been back with a bang - I feel better than I have for months and I think the rest has done me good. Yesterday I did a quick shoot in Stevenage for BUPA then had a meeting with a new client to discuss some ideas for their new company brochure. After that I caught the train to London and photographed the new Angel building in Islington. This is a stunning piece of architecture and I will post some pictures in the next blog entry.

Tonight I'm photographing an event in Epsom and tomorrow I've got a small shoot in Ayelsbury followed by a meeting in Oxford. Then to complete a busy week I have an external night shoot in Liverpool on Thursday and a shoot at Marks and Spencer in Sheffield on Friday - so all in all a pretty good week.

Next week is shaping up to be busy too so November will have been a good month - now I just need to worry about getting some work for December and making sure we can pay the VAT bill that's about to arrive.

I've attached a picture from a shoot in Derby early last week which was a commission for a lighting manufacturer. I love the linear recessed strip lighting in the walls and ceiling.

Another big gap in the blog (12 days since the last entry!) as I've been really busy and I've been doing a lot of travelling. Add to that an ongoing bout of "Man Flu" and you can see why I've been a bit light on blog entries.

Last week I was lucky to be commissioned once again by the guys at All Star Lanes who own the trendy boutique bowling alleys in London. I photographed the Brick Lane venue when it opened but they've had a refurb and I was called in last week to photograph the updated interior. I've attached a picture below from the American style diner. The food is fab and after the shoot Adam (the owner) fixed me up with an 8oz cheeseburger and chips - totally fab!.

That evening I also photographed a Go Karting event for a good mate at the Go Kart centre in Tottenham so that was a pretty busy day.

Last Friday I did my monthly radio phone in show on BBC Three Counties Radio with Lorna Milton. We had loads of texts and messages asking questions and the hour flew by.

This week I had a shoot in Aylesbury on Monday where I took a mixture of product and other PR shots for a new website for a lighting company. Then I was up in Leeds yesterday for a shoot and a client meeting and today I had some more product photography at a company HQ in Welwyn Garden City. I've got another product shoot tomorrow in Milton Keynes and I'm doing three small jobs in the Midlands on Friday.

The next couple of weeks are flat out too with a mixture of video and stills work so long may it continue!!!.

Although everything has been so tight this year financially I had to order a new car a couple of months ago as we lease our cars through the company and change them every couple of years. The one I've got now was delivered 3 months late and the same thing has happened again now!. I ordered a VW Passat (because it was a good deal) around two months ago and was assured that it would arrive in time as my Volvo goes back at the end of November. I popped in to see if it had arrived at the dealer earlier this week and was told it hasn't even been made yet!. Thanks for letting me know (not) and it's going to be at least another three months before it shows up. VW don't care that I've now got to borrow a car until they decide to deliver my new one - they even tried to charge me more for a lower spec one they had in stock!. Why are car manufacturers such twats?. In a deep recession where we are all having to fight so hard to survive you would expect all companies to be keen to keep customers happy. If I treated my clients like this I'd go bust.

I've got another truly great photographer to recommend to you - this time a lady photographer called Sheila Metzner. She shoots beautiful fashion and portraiture with a very cinematic lighting style and many of her shots are very grainy because they were taken with fast film. Here's the link to her website - http://www.sheilametzner.com/

Here's another shot from All Star Lanes :-

It's been a difficult few weeks on a personal level as my Father In Law has been very ill and sadly passed away last week. The cremation took place on Wednesday so I took Monday Tuesday and Wednesday off to help out with everything. I know some people take photographs at funerals as a way of recording the day and I can see how this might be seen as a way of documenting the last phase of a friend or relatives life but I think I would find it impossible to do as I would feel that every shot taken was imposing on someones grief.

I know that the famous portrait and celebrity photographer Anni Leibovitz photographed her own Fathers illness and death as a documentary type project and maybe that helped her to come to terms with it but I still think this is a strange thing to do.

On the work front I had a long day yesterday shooting both stills and video at a garden centre in Sevenoaks for a case study and Internet based film clip to show the delivery and installation of some high class Swedish furniture. My client is a leading furniture manufacturer and they offer a complete service for companies from space planning and design through to delivery and installation of the goods. I shot hours of footage and hundreds of stills although the final video will only be around two minutes long. Here's a link to the last video I did for them along the same lines as this one will be - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmZyvxeSuj0

This time I used three cameras - the 5D MK2 on a tripod for video, my Panasonic G1 for hand held stills and my 5D on a tripod with an intervalometer fitted to enable the camera to take a picture every thirty seconds automatically.I'll use the pictures (600 plus of them!) from the 5D to create a time lapse video showing the empty office right through to the completion of the furniture installation.

Next week I'm pretty busy with meeting on Monday with two clients, a shoot in Cheshire on Tuesday and another shoot at All Star Lanes in Brick Lane on Wednesday (I photographed the venue a couple of years ago but they've recently completed a refurb!). Also on Wednesday night I've got an event in London to photograph so a pretty busy day all round.

I'm back on the radio again on Friday for my monthly photography "expert hour" (OK it's not that funny) and I'm sad to say that after 4 years on BBC Three Counties Radio I think my expert hour slot might be coming to an end but that's not been confirmed yet - I hope it doesn't happen but I'll know more in a few weeks time.

I've attached a picture in today's blog of Ray my Father In Law - I took this last year in my studio and I'll miss him dearly - he was a really really good bloke!.

Another week has flown past and there's only 65 days to go until Christmas (I've just counted them on my wall planner but I've had a glass of red wine or two so I could be out by the odd day!). To really bring this home I popped in to Dobbies garden centre in Fenny Stratford last week and they had the full Christmas display up already including motorised Polar Bears - madness!.

In just doesn't feel like a year (almost) since I put up the new Sasco wall planner for 2010 - time has certainly flown past. I guess this is a good thing as it's been the hardest year I've had since I first started Redshift Photography back in 2003. Our turnover has been pretty good all things considered but it's been really hard work keeping the jobs coming in and I'm ready for a Christmas break!.

I'm hoping and praying that the severe cuts the ConDem alliance announced yesterday don't wipe out all the recovery we've felt these past few months. I'm still photographing new schools and MOD buildings but these are obviously a thing of the past now so I'm hoping we'll get some new office fit outs to photograph and new products to shoot in the studio but I guess I'm not going to hold my breath. I know we needed to tighten up on public spending but so many of my clients (big manufacturing companies) rely on supplying products to new build schools and hospitals etc that I'm really concerned that we're about to dip back into the R word - lets hope I'm wrong!.

On a positive note I'm still busy and in the past week since the last blog entry I've photographed another BUPA care home - this one a lovely home in East London with some really friendly staff, some high tech lighting control gear (product shots) and four projects up in Leeds. We've had a few jobs in for November already which is great news and I've got a few more jobs promised for November that will hopefully come off.

I've seen some of the pictures I took at the Havells Sylvania showroom launch event last week in the lighting press already - in particular in the edition of Light magazine that arrived today - so that was a boost as I really worked hard to get those out in double quick time. It's always great to see your work in print in a magazine.

I took some simple pack shot pictures for Venture Lamps last week as mentioned above and I've posted one of the shots in today's blog. It's a simple studio pack shot but I tried to choose a backdrop that showed the product clearly but that also had a similar colour to the control gear in the shot and that had a feeling of lighting and light about it. I lit the product with one flash head bounced off the ceiling for flat even lighting and I think it looks OK when put onto the cool blue backdrop.

On Monday I was commissioned to cover the launch of a new European HQ and showroom for a large electrical and lighting manufacturer in London just down the road from the Barbican. I spent the day taking a mix of candid and formal portraits of key members of staff, snapping the customers and press people that attended and also taking some interior shots of the new showroom. It was a great job for me because I love photographing people and the day had a real buzz about it. The showroom photography was a bit more complex because of the many lighting products on display (all lit up of course) so I had to take several exposures for each finished shot and blend them together subtly using HDR software (Photomatix in this case). I always get a buzz from working in London too so I really enjoyed the whole day - I even like travelling on the tube!.

I spent Tuesday in the office editing down the 500 or so pictures that I took at the launch and managed to process and retouch around 50 finished pictures and send them off to the client. I normally use Yousendit.com to send batches of pictures but they seem to be having loads of problems as the pictures almost go then fail at the lat moment. My PC nearly flew out of the window a number of times over the weekend due to this and if they don't get things sorted out I'll cancel my account and set up my own FTP site.

Yesterday I had a meeting with a PR client and collected a couple of electrical components that I need to photograph for one of their clients which I'm hoping to shoot later today. These are small blue boxes which power up industrial lamps so they're not the most photogenic things around and I'm determined to make them look interesting and artistic.

To round off a pretty good week I'm hoping to photograph another BUPA care home - this one in East London. I'm sure this will be the last one of the year and I'm looking forward to working with the BUPA guys again next year as they've been a superb client in every way.

As any regular readers of my blog will know I've been doing a lot of video work too shooting with my 5D MK2. This has opened up a lot of new opportunites for me and also given me loads of new things to learn - from video lighting and sound to editing. Here's a link to the king of video production using DSLR cameras like the 5D MK2. His name is Vincent Laforet and the link is to his blog which has loads of useful tips and facts on film making with these really useful cameras - http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/ The tip on how to re-create a dolly or crane shot halfway down the page (it's a video link) is really cool!.

I've attached a picture of Mark the MD of Wieland Electronics that I took last week at their offices. Although it's only a very basic portrait I've posted it because it was taken with a very simple lighting technique. I just bounced one flash head off of a white wall to the right of the camera to create a daylight feel to the lighting but at the same time giving some gentle shadow across Mark's face. I used a very wide aperture of f5.6 to throw the picture behind Mark out of focus and it made a nice backdrop with electrical components setting the portrait into context.

The end of another week and I must admit it's great to sit here with a glass of red wine and write up my blog entry with that great feeling you get after a busy and productive few days.

The week began with a big MOD building in Corsham near Bath. I was commissioned by the light fitting manufacturer who supplied all of the lights into the building and it turned out to be a really interesting shoot. The building is still unfinished so we had to work around the contractors completing their fit out but we still managed to get some good usable shots for a press release and new catalogue.

I had a portrait shoot in Guildford on Tuesday and the brief was to photograph a group of 26 people then smaller groups and finally a portrait of the MD. The building was quite small and I was a bit worried about where to take the big group shot but I emptied the reception area of all the furniture and managed to fit everyone in (just). I used a Bowens flash head bounced off the wall behind me to give a nice soft diffused light and the picture came out really well.

Wednesday was a catch up day in the office before a shoot for BUPA on Thursday and finally a portrait shoot in Bletchley today - all in all a pretty good week.

The BUPA work has been brilliant and they've been a fantastic client. The ladies that run the marketing team are all lovely and the care homes have all been really pleasant places to photograph with very friendly and helpful staff and happy residents. Unfortunately I think the shoot this week was probably the last one for the year as they are only really scheduled in for the summer months. I hope that I'm going to get a chance to work with the guys there again next year.

Next week is looking busy with a shoot in London on Monday and a possible two day video and stills shoot in Leeds on Thursday and Friday. Also there's a possible video interview for me to shoot on Wednesday for a TV company in Melton Mowbray (pork pie country!) so fingers crossed everything comes off as planned.

I've attached another picture of the lovely Maya in today's blog.

I can't believe another week has gone since my last posting - that's crazy!.
Last week was a real tough one as I had a very busy schedule and ended up working long hours to keep up - but I'm not complaining as it is great to be busy!.
Monday's job was to photograph the Moto services at Wooley Edge on the M1 just north of Sheffield. My client is basically stripping out every light fitting and replacing them with new up to date energy efficient luminaires and they want before and after pictures. I spent the day photographing every room both front and back of house (so to speak) on both sides of the motorway capturing the old lighting. I'm back there again in a few weeks to photograph the new lighting installation and it should look a lot brighter!.
On Tuesday I had a BUPA care home to photograph but the weather beat us and we had to postpone until next week so I spent the day post shoot processing.
I did the last day of photography at Epsom and Ewell School on Wednesday where Philips Lighting my client have installed (free of charge!) a state of the art new lighting system whereby the light changes colour and intensity during the day to help to stimulate the kids and encourage them to be more alert. I have been a few times to photograph the various stages of the refurb and I've now finished as the new lighting is in place and working. The kids have responded very well to the new lighting and it looks like Philips were right when they said that the pupils would work harder under these clever new lights!.
I spent a very pleasant day at the LAPD (lighting designers) office near Welwyn on Thursday photographing informal portraits of their staff for their website. I did the existing headshots on their site a few years ago but they were a bit formal and these will look much more natural - hopefully!. We're converting them to black and white for a more artistic effect.
Friday was a very long day indeed - a 15 hour photoshop session post processing all the weeks work and getting the pictures issued out on CD.
A few weeks ago I was very luck to photograph two beautiful ladies in one session - Annalie and Maya. In today's blog I've posted a picture of Maya who is a full time actress and very natural model.

It's been a really busy week with some early starts and late nights so I'm pretty worn out right now!. The week began with a night shoot up in Chester at a new Comet store - I left home around 2pm after a busy morning in the office and got back home at around 1.30am. The following day was spent post processing the Comet pictures and catching up on some other bits of post shoot processing. Then I was up at 5.30am on Wednesday for an 8am start on a shoot in Epsom where I've been photographing the ongoing refurbishment of some classrooms with new state of the art lighting. To celebrate the opening of the new classrooms Philips Lighting organised a special activity day at the school in conjunction with Esher Rugby Club and John Inverdale came along to host the morning assembly. I took pictures through out the day and finished at around 4pm. I also videoed some interviews with some of the kids and their teachers.

I had another long day on Thursday as I was up in Sheffield to photograph the Marks and Spencer store in the city centre and today I had two jobs in London - one a new school near Kennington and the other a dealer room in an investment bank over in Upper Thames Street.

I've been home since 8pm and have been post shoot processing pictures since I got in and will probably finish at midnight so another long day.

It's always been really hard to balance my workload because working freelance you have to take the work when it comes in. I never let my customers down and work long hours to keep them happy and hit my deadlines. Last week I had no work and this week it's been bonkers - that's just the way it is!.

I've attached a picture from the shoot at Comet Chester - I used the 24mm Tilt and Shift lens to keep the vertical lines straight in the shot.

There's loads of great things about having your own business - especially being a photographer. Things like doing a job you love, seeing new places, every day being different etc etc. The only downside is the fact that if you're not working you're not earning!. This week was supposed to be pretty busy but the two day event photography booking for Monday and Tuesday was cancelled (the Chairman of the company wanted to fly his own photographer to London!) and the hospital shoot has been put back to next week. That means that this week is now pretty quiet (OK very quiet!) but it has given me a chance to get right up to date with the usual load of post shoot processing and also given me time to call a few clients to chase up some outstanding work.

I spent Monday in the office all day working in DXO and Lightroom running through RAW files and yesterday I went over to see Pete at Goldmoor TV to work on the final edit of a video I've filmed for one of my clients so that was time well spent.

Today I've post processed all the BUPA work from last week and updated my Flickr page with the shots I took of Kimberley the weekend before last.

The radio show is still on for Friday though so please tune in if you can - I'm on at 2.40pm on BBC Radio Three Counties which is broadcast across Herts Beds and Bucks on FM 103.8 and 104.5 and also on the Internet all over the world. It wo

uld be great to get a call from a blog reader!.

Once again thanks to everyone who's made comments in the blog. I try to post comments back but I'm not too sure if any sees the replies as I don't actually know how the blog works in that respect but please keep them coming. You can find me on Twitter too as redshiftphoto.

Here's another picture of Kimberley - this time one from the short studio session we did before we headed out on location.

It's been almost two weeks since my last post which is unusual for me as I love blogging but I have been really busy and the time has slipped past really quickly.

Since the last entry I've taken pictures at a large staff interaction day at Philips Electronics down in Guildford, photographed two more BUPA homes, taken some shots in the new extension at the NHBC building in Milton Keynes, photographed a model called Kimberley for her portfolio and finished off shooting a video for a manufacturing company here in Milton Keynes. In fact It's been really good to work locally for a change as I spend hours driving up and down the country between jobs (although I catch the train whenever possible) and I must admit I don't feel as tired at the end of the week as I usually do.

Next week I'm doing a shoot in Manchester at a newly refurbished hospital ward (that's probably going to be a thing of the past under the new Government!) and I'm back on the Beeb for my monthly radio slot on BBC Three Counties Radio.

I've had some new enquiries in this week too so we're still doing well at the moment although you never know how long that's going to last!.

I'm judging the annual photography competition at Mursley Show again this year (surprisingly they keep asking me back!) and although I actually hate passing any kind of judgement on peoples' photographs I do enjoy the day and there are usually a few really good entries. My opinion on photography is that a good picture is one that you like - or even better that other people like - so the old camera club competitions really don't appeal to me. All the traditional rules regarding composition and such do have a place but the bottom line for me is that pictures should make you feel good when you look at them!. I don't get this compulsive urge that many photographers have to photograph people looking miserable or folks living in terrible places looking down and out. Real life is bad enough without continually taking pictures of the crappy bits of our world.

I love recommending other photographers in the blog and today I want to give a big up to a photographer called Edward Burtynsky who takes photographs of industrial landscapes but makes them look beautiful - a very real art form in my opinion.This guy is one of my all time favourite photographers and I draw a lot of inspiration from looking at his work - here's the link to his site http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html

I've attached a picture from the model portfolio shoot I did with Kimberley last weekend.

I've just finished post shoot processing the three Bristol jobs and the Carnegie Library Harrogate job from last week - I started at 9.30am and it's now 10.15pm and I've only had a couple of short breaks. I really needed to get up to date as a big back log of post shoot processing really gets to me and I start to get pretty stressed about catching up.

Tomorrow I've got a couple of small BUPA shoots to process and a bit of work to do on the chair video demo that I've been working on with my colleague Pete at Goldmoor TV and then in the afternoon I need to pop back to one of my clients premises to shoot some extra video footage for a short clip I'm working on (again with Pete at Goldmoor) to demonstrate a state of the art lighting control system. Another busy day in store then but at least I'll get out in the afternoon rather than being tied to a computer all day.

I've just been reading online about a photographer called John Stoddart - one of my all time favourite photographers and a big inspiration to me. I interviewed him a couple of years ago at his house in Chelsea for my radio show on BBC Three Counties and he was such a cool guy and very good company indeed. Ever since I met him I keep an eye out for any exhibitions he's doing and I'm sad to see that I've just missed one in London!. If you get a few minutes to spare Google John and take a look at his amazing celebrity portraits and very sexy lingerie shots - they are truly superb.

I've attached a picture from the Bristol Skills Academy which I took on Friday showing the main atrium which I think is pretty impressive for a college - my college didn't look anything like that!. I used my trusty Canon 24mm tilt and shift lens and 5D MK2 to capture this image.

Hey where's the weekend gone!.

After a busy week last week I was looking forward to the Bank Holiday but as usual I ended up working to keep up with the post processing workload. I had four shoots in two days on Thursday and Friday which was a very busy end to the week. I left home at 7.00am on Thursday morning and drove to Heathrow where I photographed an office chair for one of my best clients at their HQ. This was some extra shots for a video production I've been working on for them and it made sense to shoot the additional few shots at their showroom rather than bringing the chair down to the studio in Milton Keynes again. Then I drove to Yate in South Gloucestershire where I photographed the new council offices. I stayed overnight in a Travel Lodge in Cribbs Causeway (not exactly the Ritz but the room was fine) and then had two photo shoots in Bristol on Friday - one at the new Bristol Skills Academy and the other Colston Hall.

After all that I had to zoom along to Clevedon to take a few exterior shots for BUPA as the weather was terrible when I photographed their care home a few weeks ago and at the time I had to abandon the exterior photography. As you can imagine by the time I got home to Milton Keynes I was shattered.

I've made a dent in the mountain of post shoot processing today but tomorrow and Wednesday will be spent in the office working through everything in Photoshop.

I've got a shoot on Thursday in Guildford and one in Milton Keynes on Friday so this week is full, and next week is looking busy too which is great news.

It's always great to get comments posted here in the blog and Andrew of Andrew Fowler Photography made an interesting point under last week's entry which is now shown in the blog (they have to be moderated first and that takes a day or two) so keep them coming!.

I've attached a shot I took last month for a BUPA care homes brochure. They have a lovely care home in Market Lavington and the brief is to photograph the home itself and the surrounding area. Here's a shot I took of Market Lavington church - nothing flash but I just like the picture.

I'm just back in the office after a trip up to Harrogate in North Yorkshire where I photographed the recently refurbished Carnegie Library. The building was unfurnished but still looked beautiful inside and I'll post a couple of pictures up as soon as I've processed them.

The drive up yesterday took about 5 hours but I enjoyed the trip as the scenery north of Sheffield is superb. I did the shoot yesterday afternoon then stayed in a lovely B and B last night in Harrogate which is a very pretty town and well worth a visit. The first leg of the drive home today was a nightmare though as the rain was so heavy I could hardly see the cars in front or behind me. As soon as I got south of Watford Gap the sun came out!.

On the way home I popped back to the BUPA care home in Milton Keynes to photograph the gardens for their new brochure then I popped in to PC World to get the latest prices on the iMacs - I'm now buying one for sure and will hopefully have time to get this all sorted by the end of the week. I did some training on Final Cut Pro last week which is a Mac only video editing program and I loved it so that really made my mind up about jumping over to a Mac system.

I've got a day in the office tomorrow to catch up on post shoot processing then I'm down in Bristol on Thursday and Friday where I'm doing three jobs for one of our major clients.

I was very lucky to photograph two beautiful ladies in the studio on Saturday - Annalie and Maya. They are both very photogenic and extremely fun to work with and we took some really cool shots over the course of the day. The problem is I took over 1000 pictures in four hours so now I've got the monumental task of editing the shoot. This was never a problem back in the days of film and is one of the reasons why I want to shoot more film in the studio - it's just too easy to snap away for hours with digital and without the constraints of a budget in terms of rolls of film one gets far to carried away and trigger happy.

I've attached a shot of Annalie from the last shoot and will post some of the new pictures once they're ready.

The rain beat me today as I was supposed to be photographing a BUPA care home in Sandy (Bedfordshire) but as part of the brief was to photograph the exterior and also any interesting places to visit locally we had to postpone until tomorrow. I can cut in blue skies easily enough with Photoshop but to be honest I don't like to do that unless it's really needed because I never really think the pictures look natural - even if it's done really well.

Although it's a shame to postpone a job it has given me a chance to catch up on some post shoot processing and this morning I've finished both BUPA shoots from last week and I'm just about to start the post shoot processing from the two museums I photographed in Norwich and Gt Yarmouth last Thursday and Friday.

Yesterday I had phase two of a three part photo shoot at Epsom and Ewell High School where I've been commissioned to photograph the refurbishment of a couple of classrooms. The first shoot (last month) was to capture the awful old lighting and run down interior of the classrooms, then yesterday was all about capturing the work in progress with a new ceiling being installed and the old kit being ripped out. Then next month I'm back to photograph the completed refurb in all it's glory - it will definitely look so much better with a brand new state of the art lighting system and and full re-decoration.

The picture in today's blog entry is from Norwich Museum where one art gallery has been re-fitted with brand new LED spotlights which give a very natural colour rendering, use less energy than the original Tungsten spotlights, kick out much less heat and best of all last for years. Sounds like a win win situation for the museum to me!.

I had a shoot in Great Yarmouth yesterday at the Time and Tide museum which turned out to be a very interesting place and I'd recommend a visit if you're ever in the Great Yarmouth area. The museum has been lit with new LED spotlights which are very efficient and also last for years and the lighting was very good and the exhibits looked great. I then stayed over in a hotel in Great Yarmouth as I had another museum to shoot today in Norwich (I was commissioned by the same client - the guys who supplied the LED spotlights) and this was an interesting job too. The castle at Norwich is very impressive and stands high up on a hill overlooking the town and the museum is located inside the castle. There were some beautiful paintings on display and the cafe was good too so again well worth a visit.

I'm in for a busy weekend as I've got a whole stack of post shoot processing to do from this week and I've also got some lamps to photograph for a catalogue for Venture Lamps - a major lamp manufacturer. Lamps (light bulbs to most of us!) are a real challenge to photograph and I need to photograph these on a blue background so I'll make up a blue curve from some card and mount the lamps on some wire about 3 feet in front of the card to ensure the lamps stand out from the backdrop. Lighting will be tricky as the client doesn't like to see softboxes etc reflected in the glass so I will probably use my ringflash or some flash bounced off the back wall of the studio.

Next week is pretty full too so I need to keep up to date otherwise I start to feel under too much pressure - I hate getting too far behind and I always aim to issue pictures to my clients within 5 days max from the date of the shoot. As I started shooting video too I've had to get used to that particular process taking longer as I have to outsource the editing at the moment and I do find that loss of control to be very frustrating.

I've posted a shot from the model room at Land Securities new HQ just opposite Trafalgar Square. This shoot was also for a lighting manufacturer and the downlights in the room are 23W LED fittings with adjustable reflectors for added control of the light output. The lighting is very crisp and clean and the colour rendering is excellent. Within the next few years all lighting is going to be provided by LED's - the future is here!.

After a quiet day in the office on Monday post processing last week's work it was great to have a really busy day yesterday. Firstly I photographed another BUPA care home - this one in Clevedon which is a lovely town in Somerset, then I drove into London for a night shoot at Land Securities new HQ where I photographed their model room which has been lit with the latest high tech LED downlights. Then today I photographed a BUPA care home in Newbury before meeting one of my PR clients to collect some lamps which I need to photograph for a press release so all in all a pretty busy couple of days.

BUPA are a fantastic client to work for and the ladies that commission me at their head office are so pleasant and easy to get along with. This makes the job so much easier and I always find that if the client is easy going and happy then the photography reflects this and the pictures are more relaxed and therefore more creative. I love photographing the care homes as I always get a nice cup of tea when I arrive and quite often a piece of cake or biscuits too!.

The model room at Land Securities was a challenge as it was quite small and an odd shape but the lighting looked terrific and the models are very good. They cost a fortune to make and I was very careful not to bang into any of them with the tripod as any breakages would have been disastrous but luckily the job went very well and I have posted a picture of the room in today's blog.

Tomorrow I'm off to Great Yarmouth to photograph a museum and on Friday I'm photographing another museum in Norwich so hopefully I'll come home a more cultured and intellectual person!.

This week went pretty much to plan with the added bonus of a very beautiful shoot in London last night of a staircase illuminated by small LED light fittings recessed into the handrail on the stairs. I had the shoot down in Salisbury in Wiltshire during the day then drove into the West End (of London) in the evening for the night shoot. It made for a long day but the staircase looked superb I and really enjoyed photographing it. I've attached two pictures in today's blog and I'll be uploading some more pictures of the staircase onto my Flickr page over the weekend.

London is such an exciting place to work and when I finished the shoot at around 10.30pm I had a drink with my client then walked up Charing Cross Road from Leicester Square and the place was just buzzing. Soho was packed although I could only see a bit of it from my route back to the car and I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

The attached pictures were taken on the 5D MK2 with my 24mm tilt and shift lens for the medium range shot and my 17-40mm lens for the wide angle shot looking upwards. I usually correct for perspective whenever possible and this shot has converging vertical lines caused by tilting the camera back but I think it works well in this instance.

These LED lights are the future as the entire staircase was lit with 600W of energy (each LED light is only 2.2W) and in the event of a power failure the entire system runs at full brightness from a battery system!.

My Volvo V50 has gone wrong again - the clutch master cylinder has broken for the second time in 6 months and I had to drive the last few miles home with the car stuck in 3rd gear!. Apart from that it was a pretty good day and it's great to be back at work.

My job today was a BUPA care home in Ipswich where I photographed the interior for a new brochure. As usual for interior photography I used the 24mm tilt and shift lens for 80% of the shots and the 24-105mm for the detail shots. The 24mm T/S lens is a real gem and I would recommend it to anyone who shoots interiors or architecture. The ability to shift the front of the lens up and down (a bit like the old view cameras with the bellows between the back and lens) means that I don't have to tilt the camera up or down at all hence removing the converging vertical lines one gets when a camera is tilted up or down from the horizontal. Canon have now added a 17mm T/S lens to their range but at £2000 plus it's a bit too dear and I'll wait until the price drops a bit once the novelty of the new lens wears off a bit.

Tomorrow I've got another interior shoot for BUPA in Gloucestershire followed by a night shoot in London so it's going to be a long and busy day. On top of that I've got to arrange a hire car while the increasingly unreliable Volvo heads back to the dealership in Milton Keynes for more repairs.

I'm hoping to do some video editing training on Wednesday with Final Cut Pro then on Thursday I've another interior shoot this time in Salisbury in Wiltshire which is cool as I love driving across to that part of the country.

I've attached a picture in today's blog from the IUCN shoot in Switzerland back in May which illustrates the use of the tilt and shift lens. Here I took a picture looking down the staircase but because I've shifted the lens down rather than tilting the camera the vertical lines still look straight and natural. I really dislike architectural pictures that have walls sloping in and although this is sometimes done for effect I'm always careful to avoid this if at all possible.

I've just spent the week camping in the Cotswolds with the family and feel really refreshed and ready to go again. It was our first camping trip together and after a couple of wet days and some teething problems it all went very well. We camped at the Cotswold Farm Park near Stow on the Wold and I decided to take the Panasonic G1 camera along with us as it's small and compact but also has a good resolution and a great zoom lens. I also took along an old Canon FD lens that I use with the G1 with an adaptor and this gives top quality results too. I took a few shots of some animals around the farm with the old Canon lens and G1 and I've posted a couple to today's blog.

Next week is full which is great news. I'm looking forward to getting back to work and I'm glad I'm coming back to a really busy week.

It's been a really busy week and I love that feeling you get on a Friday when you get home and feel like you've earned a good rest because you've put in a good solid week's work.

This was the busiest week I've had for a while and I spent Monday in the office doing a solid day's post shoot processing followed by a shoot at a lovely care home in Wimbledon on Tuesday. Wednesday's shoot was at another beautiful care home - this one near Devizies in Wiltshire. The drive there and back was stunning as the sun was out and I took a back road route both ways. Then yesterday I spent the day shooting some video to show the operation of a high tech lighting control system for a lighting manufacturer which was great fun and got the old brain cells working flat out as we had a storyboard to follow

Today I left home at 6am for a shoot at a large distribution warehouse in West Thurrock where we had a 7.30am start. The shoot went well and I left Thurrock at 12.30pm and headed off to Luton for my monthly radio show on BBC Three Counties radio where I do an expert hour on the Lorna Milton show. I had to be there at 2.30pm for a 2.45pm start so basically I had 2 hours to do about 30 miles. I made it into the studio with literally 30 seconds to spare before I went on thanks to a massive jam on the M25.

I've had some very kind comments on the blog from some of the readers (thanks for the feedback - it's always good to get comments on the blog) about the high dynamic range (HDR) pictures that I sometimes post. I do use HDR techniques and mainly use Photomatix to layer the various images to together but I always then open them in Photoshop and work on the pictures extensively to ensure they don't look too artificial. I've attached an example of an HDR picture to today's blog which was taken at the Wyndhams Theatre. A standard picture showing this scene would have the highlights blown out and the light fittings and chandelier would not be clearly visible.

I've just got back home from a shoot in Wimbledon where I photographed a very smart retirement home for a brochure. It was an interesting old building right on the edge of the Common and apparently a lady once lived there who had an affair with King Edward 3rd so it's a very old and grand place as you can imagine. The drive home was pretty hot and stuffy though as the aircon on my Volvo V50 has broken again!.


Tomorrow I've got a shoot down in Devizies in Wiltshire which is a lovely part of the world and I always love driving in that direction (even without aircon) then I'm shooting a video in Milton Keynes on Thursday and on Friday I've got a warehouse and supermarket interior to shoot in Thurrock starting at 7.30am and then I'm on BBC Three Counties Radio in the afternoon from 2.30pm so all in all a very busy week.


I was thinking today that I haven't bought any camera kit for a couple of years now and I'm still blown away by the quality of image I'm getting from the EOS 5D MK2 and the original 5D too. I've got four L series lenses too which I've owned for a few years and I think we're arriving at a point right now where the need to continually upgrade to the latest camera is now over. I can't see me buying the next generation Canon Pro DSLR now unless something goes wrong with my existing kit or something groundbreaking comes out with say high dynamic range imaging built in but I can't see this happening for a few years yet. I think the resolution of the 5D MK2 (22MP) is enough for anyone unless you're routinely shooting full size billboard images, and for that reason I'm happy to stay with the kit I've got.


I get asked a lot by enthusiasts as to which camera to buy and my advice is always the same - buy a used DLSR body from a camera dealer with a guarantee and spend the bulk of the money on top quality second hand lenses as these really make the difference. A great lens on an 8MP camera will give a better picture than a cheap lens on a 20MP camera!.


I've attached a picture from a shoot I did at the excellent All Star Lanes boutique bowling alley in London - I'm lucky to have been commissioned by the owners to photograph all three of their venues in London and they are well worth a visit if you fancy a great night out in stylish surroundings. Here's a link to their website - http://www.allstarlanes.co.uk/
I took the pictures without people in on their site (the pictures with people aren't mine!!)

OK so another good day today as I finished off all the outstanding post shoot processing including yesterday's shoot in Milton Keynes which was an interior shoot for a large private healthcare client. Then I had a meeting with a new client in Aylesbury who have now commissioned me to shoot three locations for them over the next few weeks and they are also interested in my new Redshift Media company through which I'm offering video production and also Internet marketing via Twitter, Blogger and Flickr etc.

Tomorrow I'm off to Newbury for another healthcare shoot then on Friday I'm down in Bristol photographing a new academy school so all in all a really good week.

I get the feeling that our economy is very delicately balanced at the moment and I really fear for the next couple of years and beyond because of all the cuts the government are making. I only hope I'm being paranoid and that I'm proven to be wrong but so many of my clients - both architects and manufacturers - rely on education and healthcare projects to keep going.

That's why I think we as photographers need to offer more services and therefore more value to our clients to help keep busy.

Having said that I'm very pleased that the next two months look very busy so I'm going to focus on that and keep as optimistic as possible!.

I've attached a picture to today's blog from a shoot a while back where I took a series of 6 shots from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to show a motorway section lit with street lights made by my client. I stitched the pictures together in Photoshop to create a panoramic image.

Post shoot processing was the order of the day today (after a visit to the dentist!) and I finished processing all the pictures from the Talk Talk shoot and made a start on the Homebase shoot from Friday. The Talk Talk pictures look good and I'm pleased with them so hopefully the client will be pleased too. I need to keep up to date now as I'm out every day this week and next week is full too so I don't want to fall behind with the post processing. I always get a bit stressed when I know I've got a big backlog of work to catch up on so I'll be working late tonight and tomorrow to keep on schedule.

I've attached another two pictures from the Talk Talk shoot to the blog today. I noticed the reflection of the light fittings in the glass cabinet and used that to create a more interesting shot that a straight forward picture of the open plan office. I always like to use reflections when possible to add a bit of extra visual interest to the shots. I also love to use blurred people in the pictures to add a sense of scale as in the shot of the reception -to achieve this effect you need to have the camera fixed onto a sturdy tripod and use a shutter speed of around half a second. I like the blurred effect from an artistic point of view but it also means that people in the pictures aren't recognisable and therefore there isn't any hassle in terms of getting permission from them to take their photograph!.

It's been a really quiet week since my last blog entry but things have just picked up again big time!. I had a shoot today in London at the new HQ of Talk Talk (broadband suppliers) who are based in Notting Hill. I made the mistake of trusting Google Maps on my Blackberry and ended up walking bloody miles around West London before realising that the stupid phone didn't have a clue as to where I was supposed to be going. Having wasted an hour walking around London W11 I gave up and got in a cab and the cabbie then got lost too and had to resort to his A-Z!.

Once I got there the shoot went really well and I took some good shots of the interior of the building for my client who supplied all the interior lighting to the building.

Tomorrow I've got two jobs - one in Esher and another in Crawley. It's going to be a long day and I've got to leave home at 6.45am but it's great to be so busy again after a quiet couple of weeks. Then for the next two weeks the diary is pretty full so happy days!.

I had another two video commissions in today which is very exciting. The video clip work seems to be really taking off and I think this will soon account for 25% of my turnover. I saw this coming with the advent of search engine optimisation whereby Google promotes web sites further up the rankings if the site contains video content. I've just finished a video for one of my best clients and I'll post it in the blog as soon as they sign it off.

Next week I'm hoping to do some more training on the video editing software called Final Cut Pro which is the hottest editing program around. At the moment I pay to have all my footage edited and I will probably carry on doing this as my workload is high enough as it is but I am keen to learn the basics in case I need to edit something quickly for a client. The files from the Canon EOS 5D MK2 that I use are very big as it records in full 1080p HD so I'd need a powerful Mac system to be able to edit these but I think it would be a worthwhile investment.

I've attached a picture from today's shoot at Talk Talk showing the linear fluorescent lighting system in the canteen - the food was great by the way!.

We've had quite a few new jobs in this week for July and August which is great news as July can be a quiet month for us. Looking back over the past few years June and July have always been quiet so it would be good to buck the trend and keep really busy.

This week has been pretty quiet in terms of getting out and about although I did the shoot on Monday in Peterborough and also did a small local shoot on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the week post shoot processing a lot of pictures and I'm now up to date which always feels good.

Does anyone remember the Canon FD series?. I've still got a Canon F1, A1 and T90 with a few really nice lenses but these can't be used on the newer Canon EOS cameras including the digital bodies. They can however be fitted to the Panasonic G1, GH1 and G2 cameras via a cheap adaptor and I've been using my 30+ year old lenses with my new G1 body and they are fantastic. If anyone is looking to get a small digital camera with the ability to change lenses then the G1 is a great piece of kit and it's now down to around £400 including the kit lens.

Here's the good bit - the old Canon FD lenses are dirt cheap on ebay right now and offer serious quality when compared to brand new lenses so I would recommend anyone to buy a couple of old FD lenses and put them onto one of these G1 cameras. A really clean 50mm standard lens can be found for around £20-£30 on ebay and this would work beautifully on the G1.

I'm going to shoot some pictures over the weekend on my old A1 with black and white film as I always find it liberating to shoot film and not rely too heavily on LCD screens and auto focus / auto everything digital cameras.

I've attached a picture in today's blog that I took last month at a gig in Wolverton where my nephew played drums in a band called Lower than Atlantis. I took this shot on my G1 with a lens made in 1976 (Canon FD 35mm F2) with the lens wide open at F2 and the camera ISO set at 1600. OK there is some grain but the picture is pretty sharp considering how poor the lighting was so I reckon these old Canon lenses are well worth buying while they're still cheap!.

Last week was back to being full on and ultra busy again which is great news and I therefore spent most of the weekend post processing pictures in an attempt to get up to date. I'm pretty much there now although I did have a small shoot near Peterborough this morning which I'll need to work through later tonight.

I had some good feedback today from one of my new clients (the guys who commissioned me to photograph the two large construction sites last week) and it's always great to hear that any client is happy - especially a new one. I've posted a picture from the Bromley By Bow site photography in today's blog.

Work is still hard to find at the moment and I feel lucky that I've managed to keep so busy. Many photographers seem to be very light on work and I'm very grateful to all our regular clients for the continued flow of commissions. Hopefully though the economy will start to really pick up again within the next few months making life a bit easier for every one!.

I like to recommend websites in the blog and today I'm going to give a big thumbs up for photo.net. I love this website and it's free to join which is an added incentive to try it out. You can post questions about all aspects of photography into the forum and also post up your work for critique - here's the link - http://photo.net/

As mentioned above here's a picture from the construction site last week. The brief was to capture all aspects of the building process from foundations to finished flats as the site is huge and has each stage of development going on right now. The shot I've posted is illustrating the health and safety aspect of the site and shows an inspector and the site manager looking over the builders working up on the top of the block of flats. I took the picture with my original EOS5D (not the MK2) and used a lot of fill flash to try to even out the harsh full sunlight.

Another early start today as I headed up to London for a couple of jobs with my super duper assistant Kirsty. The first job was a corporate headshot which the client wanted on a bright white backdrop. As we were travelling by train I tried to keep all the kit to a minimum but I still needed two camera bags, a tripod bag, a large softbox bag and a very heavy case containing two Bowens flash heads. For the first job I set up the large 6ft x 4ft softbox to act as an illuminated background and used the second flash head as the main light with a silver brolly. I haven't used a brolly for years but it fitted into the tripod bag along with the two lighting stands very well and in fact the lighting looked really crisp so I was very pleased with the setup. I metered the main light source to F8 and metered the large softbox (illuminated background) to F13 giving me a two stop difference between the subject and backdrop which made the rear softbox appear to be perfect white behind the guy I was photographing.

The second job was in the Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell and the client wanted candid action shots of a meeting of architects and designers discussing lighting design in buildings. The pictures will appear in Lighting magazine alongside some transcripts of the discussion that took place.

The meeting was in the basement and the lighting was very dim and dark (rather unfortunate considering the topic of discussion!) in the room so we needed to use some fill flash (via a Speedlight mounted on the camera hotshoe) which we fitted with diffusers and bounced off the ceiling to minimise shadows. The ISO still needed to be set to 800 and the shutter dragged a bit at 1/30th sec to allow enough of the room behind the subjects to read through which avoids that horrible look you sometimes see in Hello magazine etc where the subject is lit with harsh flash and the background is pure black!.

The third job that was pencilled in for tonight has been postponed until next week which was probably a good thing considering how much gear we had to carry around in all that heat.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a start on the mountain of post shoot processing that I have to do and I'm really keen to get at least two jobs out before the close of play.

I've attached a picture of me from the shoot in East London yesterday in an inspection cage hanging below a crane 80m above a building site - I'm not great at heights but I actually enjoyed this strangely enough!.