Had a long day today post shoot processing pictures from this past week and I'll be working late into the night tonight before I'm anywhere near to catching up on myself. For every four hours of shooting time on location there's at least that again (usually more) in post production and for the HDR shoots that I do often three times as much time spent in post production. Unfortunately the client doesn't see this and it's important to let people know how much time is spent behind the scene's. I'd love to take someone on to do this work but every time I work out the costs involved it just doesn't add up. I do use freelance Photoshop people to help me sometimes but what I do is very specialised (when it comes to shooting interior lighting installations) and by the time I've explained how to do the various stages of processing I could have done it myself. It's a real dilemma as I'm finding that I get bogged down with the post shoot work more and more so I will have to sort it out soon!.
Shooting video is more demanding at the time of the shoot but once it's in the can I pass all the editing over to Pete (my freelance video editor) and that is quite a relief to be honest.
It's a bit like in the old days of shooting on transparency (slide film) which was more difficult at the time of taking the photographs but once the pictures were taken it was over to the lab to sort out the processing and scanning. Many people say that digital photography is way easier than traditional photography BUT if you want to get the best results from digital cameras there is a lot of work to be done on the RAW files and in Photoshop so I don't agree that digital photography is quick and easy!.

Victoria Station

I'm sure this is a dilemma that faces many interior and commercial photographers in terms of time spent in post production. With fashion photography I think it's much more accepted by the client that a great deal of retouching is needed and the extra cost is more readily accepted.

Right no more moaning for today - I'd still rather be a photographer than anything else so I guess the retouching is the rough side of the deal.The smooth side is getting out nearly every day and going somewhere different to take pictures for a living and also working for some really nice people (you know who you are!).

I had a great shoot last Friday (yes I know it was a bank holiday!) where I photographed Victoria Station and Kings Cross Station for an industrial lighting company. I spent the afternoon at Victoria and captured some nice shots of the busy station thoroughfare and then photographed the platforms at Kings Cross at night. I've posted a picture from Victoria Station in today's blog (see above) - I love the feeling of hustle and bustle when I'm working in these environments and I tried to capture that in the pictures. I've also posted a night shot from Kings Cross Station where I used a 2 second exposure to show some blur on the train leaving the station.

I had a photo shoot for BUPA carehomes on Tuesday at a lovely retirement home in Battersea, one of the largest BUPA carehomes in the country. Their garden was transported from the Chelsea Flower Show a few years ago - that's pretty cool!.

Yesterday I had a shoot at the University of West England in Bristol where I shot lots of refurbished interior areas for another large lighting company and tomorrow I'm heading up to Sheffield to photograph a Marks and Spencer store which means that I'll happily miss the Royal Wedding!.

Kings Cross Station

Wow another two weeks has flown past since my last blog entry - so much for updating the blog twice a week!.
It's a very busy time for me right now and since my last entry I've been to Southern Ireland, Belfast, Bristol, Glasgow and....Letchworth.
Back on the 6th April I did a few extra shots for Perry Scott Nash (a training and CDM consultancy) who I've been working with on the concept and photography for a new brochure.This shoot was basically to tie up a few loose ends and included a couple of portraits and a couple of people shots that will be cut out and pasted into a shot of a building site to simulate the handing over of a CDM manual to a client.
Then we had a long weekend break in Ireland which came as a welcome break for us all as we have had very little time off as a family over the past few years. Being a self employed photographer is a great life but it does mean that I have to be available to work at all times.If I take a few days off and miss a couple of commissioned jobs that really hurts and I'm always worried that another photographer will step in and I'll lose a client. I know this is a little paranoid and in fact we don't lose clients as we put customer service at the very top of our list of priorities but I guess it's human nature to be protective of our source of income!.
The day after flying home from Ireland I flew back out to Belfast and spent three days working out there for Zumtobel Staff Lighting taking photographs of some very cool projects. The picture below was taken at the Northern Bank in Belfast and shows some beautiful colour changing light panels supplied by Zumtobel that utilise the latest LED colour change technology. The people in Northern Ireland are very warm and friendly and although the trip was hard work it was also great fun.

I spent the following Friday and Monday on post shoot processing and then headed down to Bristol for a shoot at the Airbus factory at Filton for Philips Lighting last Tuesday. Philips have supplied some street lighting around the site and the product utilises LED technology instead of a traditional discharge lamp and the lit effect was really impressive.

Yesterday I caught the train to Glasgow for a shoot at the House of Fraser store on Buchanan street. I was lucky to get a cheap upgrade to first class on the Virgin trian and the whole experience was very pleasant. Usually I travel standard class and often end up standing for much of the journey but first class on Virgin is fab and I was given lovely food and a few glasses of red wine on the way home!.

Today I photographed a recently re-lit factory in Letchworth (I did the "before" shots a couple of months ago) where Llumarlite (my client) has gone in and supplied and installed highly energy efficient lighting fittings that work with daylight sensors and movement detectors to save energy and at the same time provide better lighting levels.

I'm very busy right now and May and June are filling up fast so at the moment I'm working my socks off to keep up with everything whilst making sure that my post shoot processing work is still of the highest standard. It's tempting to cut corners with the post shoot processing but it really doesn't pay as the quality of a shoot can be lost in the post production stage very easily.

Perry Scott Nash brochure image - Stand Out from the Crowd!

Here's a short video clip that we put together for Kinnarps based on a very quick shoot that we did at One Central Park in Manchester a few weeks ago. We had a couple of hours left at the end of a two day shoot so we arranged to call in at One Central Park where Kinnarps had provided some furniture for the reception area to create a kind of informal meeting space. I took a few still pictures of the reception area and then we set up a video interview with Marj the CEO (all shot with the Canon EOS 5D MK2) to give a brief voiceover to the clip. These little video clips are great for posting to YouTube etc and if you can embed the video into your site it will help to boost your ranking with Google. One of the main ways to optimise any website is to make it media rich and video is a great way to achieve that.

The great thing about the Canon EOS 5D MK2 is that it's ready to shoot HD video with the flick of a switch and it means that I can offer both stills and video on the same shoot without bringing loads of kit!.

There's been another big gap in the blog (about two weeks since the last entry!) because I've been so busy and I've literally been working all hours just to keep up with the workload - great!. It's finally back to being mega busy as we were a couple of years ago before the big R took hold and long may it continue.
Since my last posting I've been away in Holland for a three day shoot for Megaman lamps, I've done a House of Fraser "before the re-light" shoot in Newcastle for Philips, a beautiful private house for DPA Lighting Consultants and photographed two campuses of the London Met University that have been recently refurbished.I've therefore spent the past three working days solidly post shoot processing loads of pictures and I'm now finally up to date (almost!).
Added to this I've had a couple of client meetings to discuss some video production work and also a day of script writing and pre production meetings for a couple of videos for Kinnarps (a top office furniture manufacturer and all round great client!).
I must admit the trip to Holland was intense (we squeezed in lots of different locations) but great fun and I went with Louise Ball the European Marketing Manager for Neonlight the owner of Megaman. Louise is great company and the time flew past and I've posted a night shot in today's blog of a superb house that we photographed which is lit entirely with Megaman LED lamps.

The best time to capture shots like this is between dusk and dark and there's usually about 30-40 minutes of deep blue sky before the light fades totally and the sky goes inky black (or in fact orange if you're near a big city).

The London Met University shoots were great fun too and I wanted to include blurred figures to give the space a sense of energy and liveliness that you'd expect to find in a college full of bright young people.

Here's a couple of shots - the one to the right from the Whitechapel

campus and the one to the left from

Holloway Road campus.

I've got a shoot with a local indie

band tomorrow where we're hoping to shoot something cool for a promotional poster and I'm doing some more pictures on Wednesday for Perry Scott Nash (a training and CDM consultancy) in Stevenage for their new corporate brochure.

Next week I've got some work in Northern Ireland (not a great time to go unfortunately due to the sad news about the young policeman who was killed) and the next few weeks are beginning to fill up with jobs in Glasgow, Newcastle, The Olympic Site in London and some work at Victoria and Kings Cross stations to name but a few!.