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.