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

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

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

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

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