Mark Anderson photography has a contemporary approach to black and white and colour photography which has gained us a reputation for delivering distinctive and highly imaginative photography.

We have developed a unique studio providing a highly personalised service offering commercial architectural and landscape photography, portrait and wedding photography, children and baby photography, and party and special event photography.

Please enjoy our blog site which provides regular updates on what we are doing - or look over our main website www.photoarte.co.uk for our full range.

What’s the difference between RAW and JPEG?

In digital camera terms, RAW is simply the raw information on the sensor-just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s. A jpeg is inherently a photographic file.

Or, put another way, RAW is simply film that has been exposed but not developed. Jpeg is film that has been developed in a set, standard way to make an image.

Because RAW has to be “processed” to make an image, it gives you more control over how the image ultimately comes out, because you can adjust things like colour, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc. With jpeg, because it’s already undergone the fixed “development”, it’s much more limited in terms of what you can do to adjust the image. A jpeg is “lossy,” in other words it throws away data that it doesn’t think is needed.

Suppose you shoot in daylight but have the white balance set to indoor shooting. Your photos will come out blue. With RAW, no problem to fix, because you have the original data and you just change the white balance when processing the RAW file to make an image. By comparison, with jpeg, if the white balance is that far off, there’s no way to fix it because the data to correct the colours has been thrown away during the process of creating the jpeg.

If you can always get it right, jpeg is fine. But if you want the maximum flexibility and quality and don’t mind doing some computer work after taking the photo, RAW will give you more latitude.

Whenever I shoot landscapes for a client or to sell myself I always use RAW because of the flexibilty, and I can save the file as a photoshop file or a TIFF rather than a ‘lossy’ JPEG. I shoot weddings generally as JPEGs because I can control the flash and white balance quite accurately but I always shoot RAW inside the church so I can correct tricky lighting later on.

In the studio I can control the lighting and shoot on manual, I don’t have to make too many adjustments later so I shoot high res large JPEGs.

At events where we print instant photos I shoot low res small JPEGs as files are much smaller and can be moved from the camera to the laptop quickly to be printed.

Our Pop up Party Studio, Your guests will love it!

There are lots of other fun photography related things that we can do at your event.

Mobile Photo Booth: During the evening at your event we can set up our small mobile photographers studio with background and studio lighting. We’ll provide some silly props, hats, and some crazy stuff to wear. Your guests can come in and we’ll take some creative fun shots, it’s just a bit of fun and your guests will love it.

Real time slideshows: At your reception we can set up our big screen and run a selection of the photographs we’ve taken so far at your event, we update it regularly so guests can see the most recent photographs we’ve taken. Of course we only show the best photos and we make sure everyone included in the slideshow looks their best!

Our Green Screen Mobile Studio: This is the same as our mobile studio above but we use a green background which means we can superimpose your portrait onto an exotic background. The most popular backgrounds are a beach with Palm trees, the surface of the moon, Venice complete with gondolas, New York skyline, fireworks, and the most popular is the dinosaur scene. This is something we have just started doing and it is becoming a big hit.

Event Photographer London

Three years ago on Christmas Eve my backup external hard drive failed within days of my internal hard drive failing. It was very scary stuff, I almost lost my whole career – around 8 terabytes of photographs. It cost me about £1500.00 to retrieve it all and ever since I have been extremely careful with my backup scheduling and with formatting memory cards properly.

One thing I talk more about than anything else to students and fellow photographers is the importance of backing up your hard drive and how to handle your memory cards. I think I have said once or twice that you haven’t become serious photographer until you’ve lost your photos on a memory card or had your hard drive fail.

Losing data happens to just about everyone. And once it has happened to you it rarely happens again. With memory cards, particularly with the more expensive ones you can easily install photo-rescue software that usually will locate and restore pictures that get lost on a memory card, and if you back up your hard drive regularly you won’t loose everything.

1. Always carry spare memory cards. If one starts giving you trouble, put it in your pocket, away from the other cards, and use another one. Once you’ve transferred the data from the dodgy card to your pc throw the card away. In my experience memory cards that start giving you problems can’t be trusted in the future.

2. Once you have transferred your images to your pc and backed them up format the card.

3. Blank memory cards that act up should be reformatted in your camera. (Use the camera’s menus. Look for “format.”) Then try them again. If they still give you trouble throw them away, memory is cheap enough these days to buy a new card.

3. Always reformat your memory cards before using them again. Don’t just erase your pictures. Continual erasing is the main reason memory cards go bad. Reformatting gives them a clean start.

4. Never allow any software of any kind to erase photos as they are transferred to your computer. Keep the pictures on the memory card until you have seen all of them on your computer.

5. Don’t do ANYTHING to the bad card. Don’t try to read it again from your camera and don’t try to store another photo on it. You’ll need to put the bad card into your card reader – not from the camera, and run your photo-rescue software.

6. For all of our commercial work we use cards that are no larger than 2GB. The reason for this is that if the card fails or a camera is lost or stolen with a card in it I won’t loose all of my images. Buy 4 x 2GB cards rather than an 8GB card. Also keep the cards in the plastic covers they come with, grains of sand and fluff can ruin cards.

And buy an external hard drive that is larger than your internal hard drive, you’ll be surprised how much memory all that holiday video takes up!

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Samsung Product Photographer Netherlands.

Last Sunday evening I flew into Schiphol airport in Amsterdam to join the sales team at Samsung on Monday morning. Ten projects throughout the Netherlands and Belgium were lined up to photograph over the three days. Samsung is best known for televisions and mobile phones etc and not necessarily air conditioning units, but market share is growing for the Korean company despite the poor economic situation in southern Europe.

On Monday we started with photographing ceiling units in a doctor’s surgery near Amsterdam and then set off for for a rooftop near the border of Belgium where the photo above was taken. We finished the day at a new fashion store in Brugge where a large number of Samsung units had been stalled in the ceiling.

On Tuesday morning we visited an enormous asian restaurant on the outskirts of Amsterdam and the took the long drive to Groningen in the north of Holland to photograph a very modern physiotherapy clinic near the medical school. These will be great brochure pictures. We then drove all the way back to Amsterdam taking in another stop along the way, a newly completed shoe store.

On the last day, Wednesday, we photographed three more projects all around Rotterdam and Amsterdam. The architecture in Holland is very striking and Samsung with their partners there have seen a real opportunity to complement contemporary interiors. The team in Holland were absolutely brilliant and helped me out wherever possible. There are also sites in the UK including a BMW showroon in Park Lane which I will hopefully photograph next month.

What’s a Histogram?

A histogram is a graph that displays how light is distributed in your picture. The left side of the graph represents the shadows, while the highlights are on the right. This means that if the histogram has a high peak on the left, you can tell that a lot of pixels in the picture are dark, or in shadow. A peak on the right of the graph means that a lot of pixels are bright, or in highlights. Peaks in the middle of the graph represent pixels in the midtones of your exposure. Often it’s difficult to tell if your photograph is correctly exposed by looking at the image on the back of the camera particularly in bright light. I set my camera display so that I can see an image thumbnail as well as the histogram.
 

The Histogram of a Good Photo.
Let’s look at some examples of histograms. Refer to the picture below. On both the left side and the right side of the graph, you can see that there are no high peaks. This kind of histogram tells you that no part of the scene is over or underexposed. Ideally the graph information should fit within the left and the right hand side. 

The Histogram of an Underexposed Photo.
Below is a the histogram of an underexposed photo. You can see a spike in the shadows that starts with a peak on the left of the graph. That means that the picture has lost data in the shadows. There’s also just a few pixels trailing off the right side of the graph, so a tiny bit of data might have been lost there as well. Skin tones suffer particularly when an image is underexposed. To move the histogram over to the right and get a better exposure use the camera’s exposure compensation, and overexpose the photo until the graph fits within the left and right sides.
 

The Histogram of an Overexposed Photo.
Here you can see a pronounced spike on the right side of the graph. You’ll note that the height of the peaks is somewhat low in this picture; that’s not an indication of under or overexposure, it’s a measure of the spead of tones from absolute black on the left to absolute white on the right. All you need to worry about is whether they breach the left or right edges of the histogram.
 

 When composing your photo always try to avoid the histogram from spiking at either extreme end of the graph, where you’ll lose data and have under or overexposed parts of your picture. It’s important to make sure your image is correctly exposed at the time you take the photo as although you can fix minor over and underexposure problems by shooting in RAW, it’s often impossible to correct overexposed highlights.

We’ll give you a Free wall print worth £565.00 if you book a £250.00 photography session by Sunday 8th May 9pm. This is a great deal and only 5 are available.

More about the £250.00 photography session:
I can come to your home or you can come to my studio in Battersea. I find that children are always much more relaxed in their own environment and we can mix up a session to include some fun photographs outside as well as the studio style photographs we take inside.

You’ll get a mix of colour and black and white photographs on a DVD, the high resolution photos are all yours to keep and you don’t have to come back to me and pay for extra prints. I will of course be delighted to print any you want me to.
Three prints up to 12”x8” are also included in the package.

We have teamed up with a local company who are going to produce our large wall prints, and they are offering us 5 wall prints free as part of our ongoing deal with them. The wall prints measure 900mm x 700mm and are stand alone contemporary pieces. You choose which photograph from the portrait session you would like to print and we’ll do the rest. We normally sell these large prints for £565.00.

Read more about the family portrait photography session here.

Portrait Photography London

Photographer London.

Spring and Autumn are my favourite seasons for taking photographs, in spring I feel more invigorated after the winter and more inclined to get out and take new photos.
Here are a few of my tips for taking photographs in spring.

Landscapes:
Spring landscapes are colourful and the new spring growth looks great against against a blue sky. To make the colours more saturated, particularly the blue sky, fit a polarising filter. Look out symetrical shapes and unusual views such as rows of strong green vegetation or views through tree blossom. Try and frame your landscapes with tree branches, doorways, arches window frames etc etc. If you have a wide angled lens take it out of hibernation and use it to incorporate a foreground view as well as the landscape in the distance. Don’t forget about your depth of field to get everything in focus, use a higher f number such as 11 or 22.

Sunrise and Sunset
Take advantage of the sunrise now the days are getting longer. The air is cleaner at sunrise and at this time of year where day and night temperatures vary a lot the colours will photograph very differently early in the morning than they will late in the afternoon. Fog and mist can also be an extra bonus. Try getting up high, the tops of hills or mountains are a perfect as they give you great views over valleys which may hold early morning mist and fog like a bowl. A polariser can also help here, and also remember that fog acts like a soft box and can lower the contrast of your surroundings which can leave you with rather long exposure times so take a tripod if you have one. Your camera may also have a few exposure problems and as a result, you’ll have to use + exposure compensation to rectify this. If your skies end up looking a little washed out try fitting a neutral density grey graduated filter.

People
Although the days are getting longer the sun is still low in the sky and this can create problems with heavily backlit scenes. Rather than photographing your subject with their back to the sun try photographing them with the sun to one side but still slightly behind them, or photograph them in the shade under a tree and use your flash to fill in. Try using a low f number on your lens to throw the background out of focus, this will also help to bring the shutter speed up to prevent camera shake if the light is too low.

Flowers and Blossom
Try and look for patterns and look for the abstract when photographing flowers and blossom. Get down low and zoom right into the subject or use a wider angle lens and very little depth of field around 5.6. Try and break the rules also, flowers look great with the sun behind them. Be very wary of underexposing if you’re looking into the sun, you make have to use your exposure compensation +1 or +2

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Wedding Photographer London.

Last Weekend on the 5th and 6th of February was the UK Wedding show at the Excel Exhibition Centre in Docklands and I took charge of stand no 200 next to the stage and the Champagne bar.

Before the show began on the Saturday I met up with a number of the 13 other photographers and also had a chance to put faces to the names of the various suppliers we’ve been networking with online for the last year.

The show was great and the large wall prints I had produced reflected my style of wedding photography very well which meant that brides and grooms didn’t have to trawl through lots of albums to understand what sort of photographs I would produce at their wedding.

I ran a competition at the show for a pre wedding shoot, congratulations to the winners, all have been notified this morning.

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Party Photography London

On Friday night we photographed the Novotel Christmas party which historically has always been held in January. Because the hotel is so busy during Christmas and the yearly figures are published in January it means that they can combine an awards and bonuses party with a Christmas party.

‘Wild West’ was the theme and the hotel supplied the fancy dress costumes. The cast of Toy story, various wild west villains and damsels in distress attended, and the manager of the hotel was dressed as a sheriff. We set up our ‘real time slideshow and our photo booth to take studio photographs of the guests in a wild west saloon studio set.

Supplying prints on the night is an excellent way of giving guests something to take away from the evening. We can add a corporate logo to the photograph and present it in a sleeve or mount and the guests can choose which photographs they’d like us to print.

Our ‘real time slideshows’ are also really popular at corporate parties and events. We bring a huge screen along to the event and project the photographs as they happen. We also include this service in our wedding photography packages along with the photo booth and green screen photo booth, you can find out more about this service here.

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