I say this every time I post…but it’s been a really long time since I posted anything!

This isn’t just cause I’m bad at blogging It’s also cause I’ve been putting a lot of time into other things – it takes so much time getting stock images uplaoded all over the place, and all the other things that this always ends up bottom of the pile

Recently I’ve been working with a wedding photographer I know, Colin Harper. He is a really talented and professional wedding photgrapher working in the North West, and I have been working as second camera for him. Go take a look through his gallery, and here’s a few of my recent wedding shots, done with Colin.

Also, he told me about some training he did with the brilliant wedding photographer Brett Harkness, and showed me some great new ways of using off-camera flash – some great shots to be had that way!

I’ve also spent some time organising my stock images, and getting my first batch of image released faces uploaded to Dreamstime. All the images are of my friends two children, who are both great in front of the camera. I got 10 images of them approved – and they each had one sale within the first week! Very grateful to the both of them and their parents! Take a look through my new and improved portfolio there, and please join up if you need stock images!

Here are the first two sales -

So, if you see them around let me know!

I also uploaded some of the same images to IStock, but have decided to leave these with just Dreamstime for now, and maybe make them exclusive if any sell well.

I’ve also been updating my profile on Redbubble, adding a lot of images from back before I was selling stock. Most of them are either too small, or have too much noise to be considered for stock ,but I think some would make for great prints or greetings cards.

Next time you are thinking of buying a card, print, T-Shirt or anything definately take a look at Redbubble – there’s some real talent on there – some of which I will have get links to in my next post!

That’s about it for my updates for now – hopefully will be more to post soon!

I love tilt shift!

This tecnique is one of my favourites to look at – done well it makes an ordinary image look so different. Interesting in terms of how we can trick the eye, and also can be a great way to display certain things.

Here’s the wiki on how it’s actually done, using a tilt-shift lens and also the world of tilt-shift miniature faking. I know it’s a while since this first did the rounds on Digg and Flickr, but it’s always interesting to see.

A quick search on Flickr, Google images, or any image site really will probably pull up a long list of tilt-shift images, mostly photoshopped, but probably some manual. Part of the reason I like this tecnique is that the effect can be very accurately copied in photoshop, and very simply!

Here’s a quick tutorial on miniature faking – thanks for that!

I finally got round to trying it myself today, and can conclude that the most important part is getting the right image for the illusion. It’s all about a good image, from the right (high) angle, with some actual interest points – or that’s what I think anyway!

Here’s my first decent attempt – looking down past Sheffield Winter Gardens, across to the Graves Art Gallery, with the snooker tents and trucks in the centre.

That was my second attempt, after realising that without the right angle it just doesn’t work the same. Going to have to look through all my old images and see what I have that would be good for this – I think it could look really good done on some of my sports shots – looking down from the top of an arena to a wrestling ring or ice-hockey match.

Failing that I’m just going to have to make the effort to look out of more tall buildings and get good shots for this!

Like I said, any search will turn up a load of tilt-shift images, but to save you the trouble here are 41 Amazing Tilt-shift miniature fakes, from Digital Artist Toolbox. It is fun to have a read through the comments and see the amount of people shouting ‘fake’ – not sure what it is they think is fake about them. I’m pretty sure they are in one way or another entirely fake, although I don’t think that’s what they mean .

I’m going to finish up now, but with another quick couple of links. Olivo Barbieri takes aerial photos and processes them in a similar way for awesome results, for his Model World and Site Specific projects, of famous locations all over the world! Great stuff – go and have a look!

Taking this idea even further is Keith Loutit – he uses time lapse tilt-shift images to create videos. I first saw his vids of beaches and boats a year or so back, and now it looks like he has plenty more!

I’m off to watch some more time lapse tilt-shift, and will have to see if I can take some good shots for making more of my own! Enjoy!

I’ve just been looking through a collection of some stunning images from the riots in Greece over the last week or so – well worth a look.

Also, this reminded me of one of my favourite sites to look through – whenever I get a bit disenheartened by my shallow, pretty photos of boring things -  The World Press Photo Awards are always worth checking this time of year, and include a gallery of winning images dating back to 1955, plenty of which are famous, iconic photo’s of world events, and really demonstrate the power of good journalistic photography. Go have a look…although not generally very cheerful stuff

Everyone should be checking back in January to see this years entries and winners!

For Halloween every year Sheffield has Fright Night in the city centre – billed as ‘Britains biggest Halloween party’. I went last year, and managed to miss everything as I was too late, so this time, turning up nice and early after a good pub lunch, I got to see everything I wanted and had a great time!

The zombies in Marks & Spencers window were really good, tons of rides, stalls and fairgroundy stuff, and a lot more people in costume this year I think. Plenty of people on Sheffield Forum sound to have had a good time, but there are a few complaints about it being too crowded. It was really busy all day, so maybe spacing things out a bit more next year will make it even better!

Zombies! I’ll be uploading more images to Flickr as soon, once I’ve got them sorted – got a lot more decent shots than last year, but then last years was pretty much done when I was there

It’s great to see the city centre like that – once it gets dark the lighting looks really good, and they definately go all out filling the streets with stuff. I would have loved it when I was a kid! I’ll hopefully be going again next year – still need to get some good pics of the stilt walkers and storm troopers

Also, hope all the zombie fans are planning on watching Dead Set tomorrow! It’s a 5-part zombie horror show running all week up to a Halloween night finale, set during the Big Brother eviction. It’s full of gueststars and ex-Big Brother contestants and is rumoured to be getting an 18 on its DVD release – all showing post watershed on E4. I’m hoping it will be right up there with Ghostwatch for good Halloween viewing – maybe a little too much to ask, but it’s made by Charlie Brooker, so I do have faith

It’s been a long time coming! For the past year or so I’ve had regular leaflets through my door from EOn UK explaining their plans for the old Blackburn Meadows power station site near Meadowhall. I don’t think anyone was in any doubt about the fact the iconic Tinsley Towers by the M1 would be coming down…but it’s so strange now to see that gap in the skyline!

So, myself and a few friends found ourselves on Meadowhall car park at 2am on Saturday the 24th, along with a few thousand other people! I was surprised how many people showed up – I think some of them had been there most of the night! I always loved the towers, but not being a Sheffield native I don’t think I can get into the debate over whether they should have been left there Love them or hate them they were certainly a landmark – signalling the entryway to Sheffield from the North. Anyway – there’s been plenty of discussion about them over the last few months, so here’s the sheffield forum thread, and the bbc report, if you want more info.

As I live pretty close to them they were my photo of choice when I learnt about HDR a year or so back -

I really like this pic, cause it was taken from right up next to them – a view a lot of people didn’t get a chance to see, and cause it shows just how close they were to the motorway. Not really been a popular one on stock sites though!

The amount of nice sunsets I’ve had round here over the last few years, I’m pretty sure I’ll regret not getting more photo’s of them now they’re gone, but I did go down to meadowhall and get some last shots on the Saturday before they came down, so just for comparison, their last day -

and…much later that day -

down they go!

We got a quick video of them going as well..although only just! I know there are plenty of good vids of the towers going out there, but this one is ours!

All in all – sad to see them go but it was great to watch – only really kinda wish I’d stayed on the side of the viaduct that my house is on – got home at about 5am! o.O

Wow…I’ve managed to go over a month without any posts! I guess I’ll be posting a lot all in one go then…

First, Stock updates – I finally got approved with IStockPhoto last month! I’ve not sent that many images to them yet, been too busy, but so far I’ve only got 3 approved out of about 8 I sent, but then everyone knows they do have pretty high standards. I got a copy of Noise Ninja a while back and was v. impressed! It’s much better than any other noise reduction software I’ve used, so I need to find the time to go through all my rejected stock images and noise-reduce them all.

On the positive side though, in the month I’ve had these 3 images available on IStock one of them has sold twice already! It’s also sold twice on Dreamstime, so is easily my best-selling image so far!

I guess people are just morbid – can’t get enough of the dead sheep! I’m pretty sure I can get my hands on a few more animal skulls to get some decent shots of, so hopefully they’ll prove as popular as this fella!

I hadn’t heard anything about this program but caught it late last night. It’s available to watch on BBC IPlayer. Shown on BBC3 I think, Alesha Dixon, who was unhappy with her retouched cover for FHM, presented this show about retouching, magazines and the beauty industry. I thought she did a really good job of presenting the information, despite the obvious contradiction of having a beautiful professional model trying to expose the lies of the beauty industry.

Most interesting for me was the section where she spoke to schoolchildren. The younger girls, like we’ve seen in Child of Our Time, were sometimes disturbingly image-conscious, but the older high-school aged girls interviewed surprised me! I’m not sure how old they were, but at least 11-12, and they were so surprised when she demonstrated the level of retouching that goes on in magazines. One of them commented that she had no idea they could make people look thinner – and these are girls years beyond the ones that have already developed these ideas about ideal body image etc that she interviewed at primary school.

In another section Alesha ran a poll in a young girls magazine asking readers to vote on an image of her – chosen from 4, from a very distorted super retouched version, to an untouched photo. The final result was for one of the partly retouched images, but a close second was the number 1, super-retouched version – which I have to say, really didn’t look like her…or that much like most humans!

To be honest, I wasn’t really surprised by much of the social commentary of the show, but was surprised how well presented the information was, and was able to watch some of the professionals in action in London, and find out more about the world of magazine retouching – all interesting stuff!

Also, if anyone does watch it, look out for the section on the studio shoot. Alesha follows a woman to a studio shoot and retouching business to have photo’s taken, as she was insecure about her body and wanted good photos before her wedding. When they look through the untouched photos from the shoot it’s a great demonstration of just how much can be done without retouching. Just through good photography – composition, postures, lighting, a comfortable and happy subject – they took some really nice shots of her, some of which I really don’t think will have needed much work doing to them.

All in all – I recommend! Guardian reviewer Stuart Jeffries thinks that Alesha was a bad choice to present given the subject, and although I agree with him in part – especially the section with Cheryl Cole – I think she did a really good job. She had an intelligent and interested approach throughout the show, and as someone in the industry was able to connect with the subject and offer us an insiders perspective.

It’s been a while since I posted anything!

This is cause I’ve been pretty busy doing a new batch of product shots for my favourite customer Your Own Brand Golf. They are a local company and were my first customer when I set up the business, so it’s been great to go back and do more work for them, and see how much their company has grown!

I’ve been looking forward to shooting some All Star Wrestling shows in Blackpool this summer for wrestler Rene Dupree, but it’s looking like he might not be back in the UK until the Autumn. Oh well..next time he’s around maybe! I might still have to go to Blackpool though I was really excited about Fridays at the Pleasure Beach!

Hmm..what else is new? I’ve made my first sales on Fotolia – odd that it took so long, then I got 2 sales in a week! I’ve not uploaded as many stock images as I’d have hoped to be honest, so should definately spend a bit of time soon updating the stock sites – and trying to get that elusive 3rd image accepted for IStockPhoto!

Well..much as I’ve not been posting – I have actually been working quite abit – so back to the golf bag editing for me I suppose! I also have a portrait shoot for a friends kids next week, and I’m currently trying to scan and repair printouts of images that were stolen when a friend had his house burgled recently . Today I have to search through old prints and find one from back in college that I think could be a great fit for the Sheffield Forum Photo Competetion this month – I’m pretty inactive on my local forums..and all forums in fact…so thought maybe this could be a good way to get involved with local photographers!

So to summarise – busy busy! I’m trying to be a bit more organised and get a few posts up now – so I don’t miss the chance at the end of the month again!

This weekend I attended the Sheffield Fencing Open at the English Institute of Sport -and it was great! I got a lot of photos – some of which are turning out pretty well, met some cool people, including another photographer, Rob Comerford, who was really friendly and let me try out his new lens…which was brilliant! There were some big names there, with UK no.1 ranked epeeist Jonathan Willis winning the Mens epee, (full results here) but across the board some really top notch fencing and a fun weekend!

Plenty more images to be uploaded to my gallery over the next week or so!

We’ve had a couple of days of nice weather so I’ve been out in the garden a lot this week – yay to Spring! Or was that Summer….?

Also..it does seem that seasonally themed shots are getting are lot more hits on microstock sites right now, which makes sense, so why not load up on nice Spring images

WordPress have launched a new theme – the Monotone Photoblog theme, and it’s great! I wish this had been around when I had set up this blog, as I would probably have focused on posting more images…

Anyway, it’s a really impressive theme that alters the layout colours to match the first image in a post – check out the demo site here!

Right now I think I’d end up with a lot of black and white pages, as there are a lot of posts with just text…but my aim is now to up the image posts so I can switch to the Monotone theme at some point!