I'm still feeling in Bank Holiday mode after the lovely long weekend we've just had. For anyone reading this from overseas British Bank Holiday's in April and May are traditionally wet and cold but at the moment we're having lovely sunny weather.

I missed the Royal Wedding as I had a shoot up in Sheffield at a new Marks and Spencer Simply Food store last Friday. The store is very green and utilises lots of sustainable wood panelling and features lots of glazing to increase the amount of natural light hence reducing the need to use high levels of artificial lighting. My client (LAPD Lighting Design - http://www.lapdconsultants.com/) have designed a highly efficient lighting scheme for both the store and back of house areas and every light fitting through-out uses LED's instead of traditional lamps. LED's are the future and they now provide a viable alternative to fluorescent lamps and low voltage spotlights etc. The store felt very well lit and the luminaires looked very cool and well designed. I'll post a couple of pictures in the next blog entry once I've processed them.

I started my photography career around 25 years ago when I began working for a good family friend called Roger Parker who is a top sports photographer and owner of an agency called Fotosports International (http://www.fotosports.com/). Being an Arsenal fan it was a great honour to be able to work on the touchline at Highbury and I learned a tremendous amount about photography at that time. In those days it was all black and white film and manual focus cameras and we'd develop the film in the darkroom after the game. Now pictures are sent from the touchline as the game is in progress so technology has changed sports photography more than most other types of work.

Roger called me on Friday and asked me if I'd cover the Northampton Saints v Perpignan Heineken Cup Semi Final at the MK Dons stadium which was played on Sunday. I'm not a huge rugby fan but I have to say I really enjoyed the game and the atmosphere was brilliant. I used my Canon EOS 5D MK2 with my 70-200L 2.8 IS lens for the action close in front of me and I used one of Fotosport's Nikon D2X's with a 300mm 2.8 lens for the action further down the field. I took far too many pictures and was way too snap happy but I did end up with some decent shots which you can see on the Fotospots site in the rugby section. I've posted a few action shots in the blog today along with a picture of a very cheeky cheerleader!(tough work but someone has to do it). I haven't photographed anything that moves quickly for years and it was good to try something different. I can confirm that even though autofocus lenses and digital cameras have made things a bit easier there is still a tremendous amount of skill involved in sports photography and I take my hat off to the guys at Fotosports who are very good at it.