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!.

Today's shoot in Milton Keynes began at 8am and I didn't finish shooting until 6pm. I was photographing the new housing development at Campbell Square in Central Milton Keynes and my client (who attended the shoot) had a concise brief which meant photographing the various stages of construction on the site. We had some professional models booked to play the part of happy flat owners etc for the shots of the completed flats and the day went really well despite the heat!. The Bowens Travel Pak came to the rescue again today as I needed some powerful flash inside some of the unfinished apartments and the 240V supply wasn't in use so I ran the flash off the battery pack. I also used it outside to provide some fill for the shots in direct sunlight to help reduce the harsh shadows caused by shooting beneath a harsh sun.

Tomorrow I've got a similar shoot in Bromley By Bow (East London) for the same client where we're photographing a building site with various levels of completion. We're starting at 8am again but this time the early start is due to the England match as we think the site will be empty come 3pm.

Thursday is also really busy as I have two small jobs in the morning and an evening shoot - all in Central London. The first job is a basic head shot (portrait) for a website which I'm taking on location in the City, then I'm photographing a small debate from late morning until just after lunch for Lighting magazine. The evening job is a mix of both stills and video and it's of the BT Tower where I need to capture the new LED TV screens right at the top of the tower.

I'm due to be editing some video on Friday too so that makes for a busy week.

Today's picture was taken for the company that made the new street lighting in Central Milton Keynes - War of the Worlds anyone?.

What a beautiful day we've had today - bright sunshine and a cool breeze..perfect unless your outside taking location shots of some lighting bollards!. It just goes to prove that photographers are a bit like gardeners when it comes to the weather - we're never satisfied!.

I spent the day at Horwood House shooting some brand new lighting bollards which we placed in situ around the gardens and pathways for a catalogue. The direct sunlight was very harsh so I used a 6ft x 4ft diffusing panel which I bought from Calumet a few weeks ago. The panel worked very well in softening the light especially with the chrome finish bollards.

Tomorrow I've got an interior shoot in Peterborough for a new client so I'll take two diffusing panels just in case I need to calm down any daylight spilling in through the windows. I'll also take a flash head or two in case I need to add some fill as I'm photographing hotel bedrooms and they can be very difficult to photograph with dark finishes and bright windows creating a really high contrast range of tones.

I've had a steady stream of new work coming in and we've taken on a few new clients in the past month which is really great news, but I get the feeling companies are still watching their pennies and the economy still has a long way to go before we get clear of this terrible recession. There is still work out there to be had but it's getting harder to find and anyone that sits back on their laurels and doesn't really push to get new clients will find the going very tough. I'm using things like Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, Flickr and this blog to keep my profile as high as possible just to keep things moving along. The radio show I do once a month on BBC Radio Three Counties should be helping too although I never get any work directly from it.

I've found an interesting site called Stumble which is free to join and it basically allows you to type in a topic - say photography - then stumble on new sites with a click of the mouse button. The more sites you rate and stumble upon the more powerful the site becomes - check it out and see for yourself - it's pretty cool. Here's the link http://www.stumbleupon.com/home/

Today's picture is from the shoot with Annalie that I did a couple of weeks ago.

I'm still wondering how Rob Green let that goal in on Saturday night against the USA!. I started off as a sports photographer back in the late eighties and I've witnessed some big howlers in my time but that one really tops it all. I hope that both England and the USA can get through the group but it looks like Slovenia have stolen a march on us with their win over Algeria.I'm just hoping we don't slip up on Friday again the Algerians - to be honest nothing would surprise me!.

Anyway today I'm currently post processing around 90 product photographs that I took of an office chair for one of my best clients. We're going to use them to create a flickbook style movie showing all the operations of the chair. We recorded the voice over a few days ago and now I need to clean up all the shots and get them over to my editor to finalise the clip. As soon as it's finished I'll upload it to the blog.

I've had another new job in this morning which is a shoot of the BT Tower at night as the top of the tower features some state of the art colour changing LED projectors. I'll be shooting both video and stills and I'm hoping to get access to a couple of roof tops for a better angle on the tower itself. I'll also look to get some street scenes with the tower featuring in the background and I think a video should work very well as I'll be able to capture a flavour of London life at night.

I'm now 99% sure that I'm going to invest in a Mac as I'm doing more video than ever and Final Cut Pro seems to be the program of choice for editing the 5D MK2 footage and it's only available on the Mac. I'm doing some Final Cut Pro training tomorrow to see if I can understand the way the software work - if it feels good and intuitive I'll bite the bullet and go for it.

I'm using Flickr more and more to promote my work these days as it is faster and easier to access than our website. If anyone gets a minute please take a look and let me know what you think - here's the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/redshiftphoto/

Here's link to the final video of the IUCN HQ in Gland Switzerland using my stills and video footage that I took over two visits to site. The editing is superb and was done by Future Labs in Sweden - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAAy5ksS8No

I've posted a picture in today's blog from a shoot at 5 Aldermansbury Square in London - a dusk shot to show the effect of the accent lighting in the reception area.

The drive up to Leeds and back yesterday was pretty tiring due to some really bad weather but the meeting went really well and I've got a new client with a lot of upcoming work!. The first job for them is next week over in Peterborough. Although work ahas slowed down in the past three months I am getting a lot of enquiries from new clients so I'm sure things are on the up.

I've been post processing the shoot from S Lucas group's new HQ this morning and I'm about to head over to my video editing guy to get the clips that I took there edited into a movie along with some still images and interviews. Video is the way forward I think as more clients want clips on their websites and to post onto You Tube.

I cleaned the sensor on my 5D MK2 yesterday before the video shoot as I've noticed a few nasty marks appearing on the video footage recently. That's easy to cure with still photographs by using the clone tool in Photoshop but with video it is a real problem and takes hours to remove. I need to make sure I clean the sensor regularly to avoid this hassle in the future. It's a bit daunting at first swabbing a sensor in a £2,000 camera but after a while you get quite bold and just go for it.

I've posted a picture in today's blog from the IUCN HQ shoot in Switzerland that I took last month. This is the most environmentally friendly and sustainable building in the world and the video footage and stills I took over two visits have now been edited into a 9 minute video (superbly edited by Future Labs in Sweden!). The video is now finished and on Youtube - here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAAy5ksS8No

The picture I've posted is a portrait of the Architect Hanspeter Oester of AGPS Architects in Zurich.

I spent the morning shooting some video interviews and some footage of an office interior for a short film I'm making for an office furniture company along with some stills for their website. OK so it's not Avatar but it's been great fun and I'm looking forward to editing the footage on Thursday and Friday!. Some of the footage is a little over exposed - the 5D MK2 is a fantastic camera for stills and video but the LCD screen can be a little misleading when it comes to reviewing footage - I should have put a test clip onto the laptop to check for brightness etc but never mind, I can pull it back slightly in post production.

Then I drove over to my client's showroom near Heathrow and photographed a new office desk (it was too big to take to the studio) and I'll need to cut the desk out and drop it onto a plain background in Photoshop to make it look like a proper studio shot. Sometimes this needs to be done but it's much easier to shoot things in the studio and capture the whole image in one go.

Tomorrow I'm driving up to Leeds for a meeting with another potential new client and there's the chance of a lot of work from them so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything goes to plan.

I've attached a shot from the shoot at Ropemaker Street from a few weeks ago because I've just included the shot in a PDF portfolio and I really like the feel of the picture with the blurred figure adding some dimension.

Hi Everyone - Has anyone had a problem accessing the blog lately?. If so please drop me a note via email or via the comments box. I've had some odd emails in today saying my blog is sending out spam but I can't see a problem anywhere here so it's probably yet another scam!.

The internet is so full of people trying to scam you or wreck your website and blog - you'd think they'd have other things to worry about!.

Anyway today was a great day as I had a meeting with a potential new client and came away with two jobs and the promise of more to come if everything goes well. Work is harder to find right now so that's great news.

Tomorrow I've got a video and stills shoot in London followed by a product shoot in the afternoon at one of my customer's showroom near Heathrow.

Then on Wednesday I've got another meeting with a potential new client so I'm hoping this week is going to be a good indicator of things to come!.

I've attached a picture from the shoot at Ozwald Boateng last week. This was on yesterday's entry but I deleted the entire entry after these emails arrived this morning re the spam.

I post processed a few more of the shots of Annalie from the shoot on Friday this morning as well as some extra shots from a shoot a couple of weeks ago with a model called Jade, then worked through some video clips I shot at an exhibition last week for a short demo movie.

The phone was busy too and we had two new enquiries in which was great news as June and July are often quiet months for me and I really need to keep busy!.

We had some good news on Sunday night too as this years International Masters Cup held the online nomination and winners ceremony. For the second year running I've had a picture nominated in the architectural section which I'm really chuffed about as the competition is intense and there are entries from photographers all around the globe. Here's a link to the nominees page - http://www.thecolorawards.com/presentation1/nominations.php?x=p&cid=72

Tomorrow I'm doing my monthly photography phone in hour on BBC Three Counties Radio with Lorna Milton. I'm on a 2.30pm so give me a call on air if you get the time!.

I've attached a picture from Friday's shoot with Annalie in today's blog. This was taken with my EOS 5D MK2 and 24-105mm F4L lens with a Bowens 500W/s flash head fitted with a small softbox. This was powered by a Bowens Travel Pak battry unit - a really useful piece of kit.