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.

One of the most common questions people ask me is What is the best way to convert my colour pictures into Black and white?

Most camera and imaging software has some means of doing this, but whatever you do DONT ALLOW YOUR CAMERA TO CHANGE YOUR IMAGES INTO BLACK AND WHITE – DO IT LATER! It is always better to manipulate your photos using photoshop or your bundled camera’s software because you can’t change or go back to the original image if the camera has made any changes, and image manipulating software is much better and more subtle than anything the camera can do.

So here is how I change a colour image into Black and White. I use adjustment layers in photoshop. It’s very easy and quick.

Step 1: Open up a colour image in Photoshop and make sure you have your layers pallet visible. If it isn’t visible just click on the window menu in Photoshop and select the layers option.

Step 2: Next we will create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. To create this layer just click the button on the very bottom of the layers pallet that looks like a circle that is half black and half white. Then select the Hue/Saturation item.

Step 3: Now you will see a dialog box with sliders for hue saturation and lightness. For now we will leave all of those settings alone and just click OK. You will notice there is a new layer in the layers pallet.

Step 4: Now create another hue saturation adjustment layer the same way we just did, only this time when the dialog box opens adjust the saturation slider all the way to the left. You should notice your image has turned black and white. Click ok. Now there should be a total of three layers in the layers pallet.

Step 5: Select the middle layer clicking on it once. Now we need to change this middle layer’s blending mode to Colour. To change the blending mode look near the top of the layers pallet for a little drop down menu that currently says “normal” click on this menu and select the “color” option near the bottom of the list.

Step 6: Now if you look at the layers pallet you should notice that the middle layer is split into two sections, the one on the right should be a box that is just white. The one on the left looks like a bunch vertical of grey smudges with a slider below it. Double click the left and the hue saturation dialog box should come up. Now the fun bit. Try sliding the hue slider around and watch your image. Your image should be changing. Some parts will get lighter while others will get darker. This works by changing what colours Photoshop sees as black and which is sees as white. When you have found a setting you like for the hue slider, try adjusting the saturation slider to fine tune your image. Click ok when you are happy with your image. The good thing about using adjustment layers is your original image is still sitting untouched under the two adjustment layers and you can get back to it deleting or hiding the other two layers.

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Wedding Photographers Devon, Melissa and Steven.

I first met Melissa three years ago at a wedding I photographed in Scotland. I then met Melissa again with Steven in January this year at another wedding, and we talked about their wedding planned for later in the year in Thurlestone in South Devon. My wife and I have been coming to Thurlestone with our children for many years and we know the area well. For more more information of wedding photography.

Coincidentally Melissa and Steven had booked their wedding on the same weekend we had planned to arrive for our holiday in Devon which worked out very well. So I’m writing this blog while on holiday, the weather has been great so far and we will be back in London this weekend.

Melissa and Steven are moving house next week and will probably take a holiday later in the year.

Wedding Photographer London, Fiona and Matthew.

Fiona and Matthew were married on Saturday in Central London. The ceremony was held in the crypt in St. Paul’s Cathedral and the reception at Fiona’s parents house in Hampstead. Find out more about our wedding photography here.

The guests were taken by two beautifully restored Routemaster buses from the ceremony to the reception along with the Fiona and Matthew on board. Drinks were served on the bus by Matthew’s groomsmen which made the trip more fun for everyone. Fiona’s mother had made a fantastic job of dressing up the marquee in the garden and we left the party when it was in full swing at about 11pm.

Fiona is a work colleague of Madelaine Davis whose wedding I shot three years ago, and I met Fiona and Matthew in February this year.

Fiona and Matthew will take their honeymoon in Edinburgh where Matthew’s father lives.

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On Thursday evening we took part in the opening of the new Benetton Store at Oxford Circus in the heart of London’s West End. To find out more about our event photography go to out event photography website.

Free makeovers were provided by the store and we photographed and produced glamourous studio prints for the shoppers who had taken part in the opening celebrations. The store opened at midday on Thursday and the photography sessions started at 4 o’clock. We finished at 8pm having photographed and produced prints for over 180 people.

Our mobile studio has been very popular this year, the photographs we can produce are studio quality and we can print and supply photographs at the event.

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London Wedding Photographer, Emma and James.

Emma and James made the best of the weather yesterday and we were able to get some great photographs of them and their guests in the rain. Find out more about our Wedding photography here.

St. Mary’s church in Battersea is one of the few churches in London that is next to the river and fortunately as Emma and James had provided their guests with umbrellas we were able to take some of the group shots alongside the Thames.

We all made our way by Routemaster bus to the One Aldwych Hotel, a much drier location, where a fantastic reception was held.

Emma and James are planning to go on honeymoon next weekend to Malta.

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Professional Wedding Photographers London. Charlotte and Max.

Charlotte’s father has a garage full of classic cars at their home in Weybridge Surrey. Max lives next door and is his father is also a big car enthusiast. It is a classic boy and girl next door story and you can tell by the way Charlotte and Max are together that they are a perfect couple. Find out more about our wedding photography.

We made good use of the cars and above is one of the many shots that were taken on Saturday. The rain threatened to disrupt things at times during the day but it added to the fun with guests and the family dodging showers in and out of the marquee. I met Charlotte and Max at two weddings I photographed last year in Scotland and they came to see me at my studio in January.

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They are off on honeymoon on Tuesday next week.

Wedding Photographer London. Caroline and Paul.

Over the years I have photographed a number of weddings at The Church at the end of Lombard Street, it is a beautiful intimate space and has a wide entrance set of steps ideal for relaxed group and confetti shots.

I’m always surprised how little traffic there is in the city at the weekend, and you could see Caroline arriving with her father in her white London taxi from some way away.

They had a fantastic day with their family and friends and they are off on honeymoon to the lake district on Wednesday.

I have met Caroline and Paul a number of times at their friends weddings during the last year and they booked me last September at a wedding where Caroline was maid of honour and Paul was an usher. Find out more about my wedding photography services here.

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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.

Holiday time is almost upon us and there are two things you need to think about before you pack up your cameras and head off to the great outdoors:
Memory!!! Back up your hard drive, and format your 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.

Note that I said “usually.” There are no guarantees in memory card photo rescues. But there are several ways to boost your chances of success.

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.

If your memory card fails and you can’t get your images from it here are my choices for memory card rescue software:

For Windows, I recommend MJM Data Recovery from www.mjmdatarecovery.co.uk/photos/free-photo-data-recovery-software.html. It’s free.
Note that MJM rescues only JPEGs, the standard photo format. If you need to rescue photos in other formats, try PhotoRescue Wizard PC, from www.datarescue.com/photorescue. It’s about £20. The demo version (free) will rescue up to 10 photos.

For Macs, I recommend the Mac version of the same program. It’s also about £20 and will rescue up to 10 photos without payment. Get it from the same site, www.datarescue.com/photorescue.

And for hard drive backup I use Timemachine for my macs and there are plenty of good applications for pc. A backup takes some time to transfer your files so don’t do it the night before you leave on holiday. The great thing about Timemachine on a mac is that you can go back to the point in time where you lost data and retrieve it without having to bring all of your backed up data across. Go down to pc world or go online and you’ll find an external drive to do the job.

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!

If you are off on holiday in the next couple of weeks I hope you take some great pics, I’m going to run a holiday photography competition in September so bear that in mind!

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Wedding Photographers London. Karon and Simon.

Simon and Karon have been buying my photographs for years and they have a large collection of my London and New York photographs in their house in Clapham, South West London. I was very pleased when they asked me to photograph their wedding. For More information on wedding photography go to my dedicated wedding photography site.

Saturday was a windy but otherwise a sunny day and the confetti shots on the steps of The Chelsea Town Hall were excellent. The party moved morved across the road to the Bluebird restaurant where they had their reception.

Simon and Karon will take their honeymoon in New Zealand later in the year.

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Asian Wedding Photographers. Asha and Justin.

Last Weekend Asha and Justin were married at Asha’s parents beautiful home in Surrey. The wedding lasted all weekend and typically with Asian weddings the guest list was enormous with friends and relatives arriving and departing during the weekend. Both Asha and Justin come from large families and this week the couple will travel to India where they will repeat the ceremony for their Indian relatives.

Asha and Justin have asked me to come to India to photograph the Indian celebrations but unfortunately I am committed to work this weekend in the UK. For more wedding information go to my wedding site http://www.weddingphotographerslondon.uk.com/portfolio/

Asha and Justin will be exhausted I’m sure by the end of this weekend and they will be pleased to have a well deserved break when they Honeymoon in India next week.

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