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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1. Move into the shade
With some subjects you’ll be able to move them (and yourself) into the shade. Sometimes the simplest solutions are best.

2. Make your own shade
If your subject is not movable (for example if you’re shooting macro with a flower) create your own shade. Use your own shadow, the shadow of someone else or bring an object with you (like an umbrella, a reflector or large sheet of card) to block out the sun.

3. Use Fill in Flash
Most of us were trained to put the sun behind you when taking a photograph so that your subject will be well lit. Shooting into the sun may lead to lens flare or a dark subject – but at times it can improve it drastically – particularly if you use a flash to fill in the shadows that are created by doing so.

4. Use a Reflector
Another way to fill in the shadows caused by direct sunlight is to use a reflector. These bounce light up into the face of your subject and are great because they allow you to shoot into the sun – as with when you’re using fill in flash.

5. Change Your Perspective
Sometimes moving your subject isn’t possible – but moving around it can give a different impact. This might be moving to the other side of the object, shooting from directly above or even getting down low and shooting up. Doing so will change the angle of the sun hitting both your subject and the camera and give your image a completely different feel.

6. Use a Lens Hood
Suffering from lens flare? If your lens came with a lens hood – get it out and use it. If you don’t have one – it’s not difficult to construct one out of card – or to even use your hand to shield your lens from the sun. Just make sure that your shot is free of your hand or the DIY hood that you’re using.

7. Filters
Sometimes a filter can be handy when shooting in bright sunlight. I try to take a Polarising or Neutral Density (ND) filter with me at all times. The polarising filter will help cut down on reflections and both will cut down the light getting into your camera to let you use slower shutter speeds and smaller apertures if you’re looking for more control over these elements of exposure. Polarising filters have the added bonus of giving you some control over some colours – particularly when you’ve got reflection on water and blue sky with fluffy clouds in your shot.

8. Play with White Balance Settings
Many digital cameras come with the ability to choose different white balance settings. While you can make adjustments later on post processing (particularly when shooting in RAW) choosing the right setting at the time of shooting can be worth experimenting with. I personally shoot in RAW and do this later on my computer.

9. Metering
Direct sunlight makes correct metering tricky. In these conditions I generally choose spot metering mode on my DSLR and choose the main subject of the scene that I’m photographing (the focal point) to meter off. Alternatively pick a mid-tone area to meter off if you want everything to be exposed relatively well. Check your shots immediately to see if you need to adjust your technique (your histogram can be handy here) and if you have time – take multiple shots metering off different parts of the scene so that you can choose the best one later.

10. Pick The Time of Day to Shoot.
For many of us we won’t have the luxury of sitting all day long waiting for the perfect light – but if you do, the time of day can dramatically impact your shot. Dawn and Dusk are particularly good times to shoot as the direction and colour of the light is often more useable than the direct overhead light at midday.

11. Shoot Silhouettes
If the bright light of the Sun is causing you a problem – why not use it to your advantage and make your subject into a Silhouette.

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I have had a lot of interest lately in my large wall prints, there are generally two on display at my stall in Northcote Road. They are contemporary and are great in offices and also on large wall spaces in homes. Many of the wall prints that have been sold to private individuals hang on side return walls and over fire places. In offices they look great in boardrooms and reception areas.
I’ve also added a number of new colour images to the London galleries and the following link will give you an idea of what they look like hanging up.
Take a look at the collection here http://www.artforoffices.uk.com/galleries.php?eventid=83478

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There are pine needles all over Northcote Road, the Christmas lights in Tony’s cafe are blowing the fuses in the upstairs flats, and next week there will be queues outside the butchers. It’s Christmas at last and we are at our stall everyday from now until the 24th December.

We have been very busy this year and our framers have asked us not to overwhelm them with orders at the last minute, so here are some cut off dates.
Last day for the free portrait street studio photography- Sunday 20th Dec.
Last Day for Large Prints on Board Sunday 22nd Dec.
Last Day for large frame orders (Panoramics and 700mm x 570mm frames) Tuesday 22nd Dec.
Last Day for small frame and mounted prints orders (500mm x 400mm) Wednesday 23rd December

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After what seems to have been the wettest November on record the cold weather is set to arrive this week. After banging on recently about autumn being my favourite season for photography, Winter comes a close second.
Winter photography can be extremely rewarding as long as you follow a few simple guidelines to keep your equipment working, and modify your techniques to compliment the change in outdoor conditions. While photography in winter is different than other times of the year, a bit of understanding can make your efforts produce more dramatic and in many ways more memorable photos than the typical summer shots. Here are just a few tips to remember:

1. Carry fresh or freshly charged batteries – Cold climates are rough on batteries. The first thing to do is make sure your batteries are fresh or freshly charged, and if possible, carry spares. Your camera and especially the camera’s batteries will not work as well as in the milder months of the year. Remember that winter photography means dealing with an outdoor environment that’s cold and harsh. If your camera is small, of the point and shoot variety, consider carrying it in an inside pocket if you’re going to be outside for any length of time. If the camera is a larger, SLR type camera, think about carrying the batteries in an inside pocket until needed. For either type of camera, if you’re shooting consistently, rotate spare batteries in and out of your inside pocket to keep them warm.

2. Take advantage of the sun’s lower angle in the winter – Most fine art photographers will tell you that they prefer to shoot either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. There are two reasons for this preference. First, the colors are more “dramatic”. What they mean is that the colors are more toward the yellow end of the spectrum, which is considered “warmer”. Second – and this is the relevance to winter photography – when pictures are shot early and late in the day, the sun is lower, which creates more dramatic shadows. In winter, shadows are more pronounced for longer periods of the day. Even when the sun is higher in the sky and the colors appear to be more normal, the shadow angles will be larger, producing more dramatic effects. Try to make your shots with the sun situated across the subject rather than in front of or behind. This will increase the detail, especially in snow or ice scenes, and will lend depth to the picture.

3. Use fill flash when shooting people – Rather than place the subject in total front or back light, use a fill flash. While ‘cross lighting’ I mentioned above is a great technique for scenes, it’s not particularly flattering for people. Some cross lighting is flattering of course, but using it as the principal light is not the way to get compliments from your subjects. Almost all point and shoot cameras have a small flash built-in, and they’re great for exactly this kind of situation. Instead of the fully automatic camera mode, most of these little digital wonders have a mode that forces the flash to operate. If you use a SLR, put your flash on the camera and use it. The exposure should still be primarily from available light, but use the fill to just remove the harsh shadows caused by the natural cross lighting.

4. Keep your portrait subjects moving – If it’s cold your subjects will not be as patient standing still waiting for their photographs to be taken as they would be be on a nice warm summers day. Either capture them while they’re moving using a fast shutter speed (over 100th of a second) with a large aperture (f5.6 or below), or work out your camera and flash settings before lining them up for their picture. If your subjects are cold and bored no amount of post production in photoshop will make them look any different.

5. Compensate your exposure for snow and ice in a scene - If your camera has the ability to set the exposure, set it to OVEREXPOSE by one stop (which means one “f” stop) when a scene is primarily snow, ice, or otherwise white. Camera exposure meters try to make things 18% grey. This means is that every exposure by a camera’s meter tries to set the scene at what the industry has determined to be the color gray, at a reflectance of 18%. For most normal photography, this works quite well, but for snow and ice – where the scene is predominately white – the scenes tend to be a bit underexposed. The snow looks a little “dirty”. This will allow the camera to make the white features brighter than the usual 18% gray reflectance, and produce more white in the image.

6. In Winter, shoot a scene as soon as you see it - When you discover a shot, don’t try to come back later because there’s a good chance that it will have changed. Shoot it now. Winter scenes are dynamic. What exists now may not be there when you come back later. An overnight ice storm can bring unimaginable beauty in the morning, but be gone and muddy by noon.

7. Don’t unnecessarily stress the wildlife - When you stop along the road to photograph an animal and that animal gives you more than a passing glance, you’re probably too close for comfort. When winter comes the food source for most animals gets more scarce, don’t add more aggravation to what is already a stressful life.

8. Use the rule of two thirds- Try and divide your frame into thirds. If you’re shooting in landscape try and fill the frame with one third sky and two thirds subject rather than half sky and half subject. The same applies when shooting on portrait. Once you’ve mastered that, try and use the vertical thirds across the frame as well as the horizontal.

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It’s difficult enough buying presents for people you know well, let alone entire families and people whose tastes you haven’t yet pinned down or don’t share in their taste in art or photography.

At my stall in Northcote Road we see the agonising over ‘what to get you know who’ first hand. It might have been decided that a framed or mounted photograph is the ideal present for ‘you know who’ but will ‘you know who’ like the image you’ve chosen.
The relief is palpable sometimes when a gift voucher may be the answer. OK, its not the ideal solution as you would much prefer to give ‘you know who’ something to unwrap rather than a voucher but ultimately ‘you know who’ will get exactly what they want rather than a near miss.

We can send you your gift voucher through the mail or by email. You can see the selection by going to the following page;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/vouchers.php

You can use the voucher to purchase or put towards any of the framed and mounted prints we have on offer as well as any of the services we offer.
Below is a list of links to the relevant pages. To buy a voucher just go back to the voucher link above.

Portrait photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/porgallery.php

Event photography;
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/eapgallery.php

Wedding photography;
http://www.weddingphotographerslondon.uk.com/portfolio/

London photographs, Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Photographs, Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

London Panoramic photographs
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New York photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Paris photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Prague photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

Sydney photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Colour
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

New Zealand Photographs Black & White
http://www.photoarte.co.uk/galleries_index.php

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My favourite time for taking photographs is autumn. I think I’ve said this a number of times in this blog. One of my clients said to me on Saturday at my stall “If Autumn is your favourite time for taking photographs where are the new photographs then?”

Here they are, There are eight new photographs. I’ll have these at my stall this weekend to view. They can also be viewed and purchased by going to my London Panoramic Gallery.

During the summer I decided to bring out a small set of Autumn Panoramic photographs and I also decided to use my old medium format camera with Fuji Velvia 50 film which produces beautiful rich, saturated, smooth colours. Ideal for Autumn. I spent the morning last Sunday on Wandsworth Common, and on the river in Putney in the afternoon waiting for sets of rowers to pass and to my amazement a group of sailing boats perfectly spaced out sailed along in front of me. Today I took the View from Richmond Hill, Clapham Common, Key Green and Hammersmith Bridge.

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Beyond October in the run up to Christmas we get so busy with autumn photography, photographing parties, and stocking the stall, so this will be the final competition this year.

And because it’s the last competition of the year the prize is a BIG ONE!!!!

A big welmome to The Nappy Valley team and their members, we’re going to present the prize on the 21st November with the Nappy Valley Team at our stall on Northcote Road. More about that in November.

Can you guess where the following photograph was taken? I need city and country. The prize is a pair of framed 700mm x 570mm photographs worth £370.00.

You have until the 15th November 2009 to enter. All you need to do is reply to this post or if you don’t want others to see your answer email me with your answer ma@photoarte.co.uk.

You’ll find this image somewhere in the buy and rent prints gallery.

Good luck and I hope to hear from you soon.

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Autumn is by far my favourite time of the year for taking photographs. One of the things that I noticed most in my first year in the UK after my arrival from New Zealand was the change in seasons. We did (still do) have seasons in Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand, but the South East of England regardless of how awful or good the summer has been always seems to enjoy a period of settled weather around this time of year and you can tell that the autumn colours will be with us soon.

Some of the best outdoor photographs I think I’ve taken of families outdoors have been in the autumn using the colours and leaves as props, and I also think some of my best selling gallery photographs have been taken in various cities in autumn.

So how do you take photographs in autumn? My biggest tip for photography in the autumn is KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You can break all the ‘keep the sun behind you’ rules in Spring, Summer and Winter but in autumn the direct light is much softer than it is in summer and worth using to your advantage.

For Portraits and shots of the children playing in the leaves set your DSLR to AV (aperture priority), and set the aperture to the lowest it will go to – maybe 6.4 ,5.6 or 4. The corresponding speed will be quite high and you’ll be able to capture the movement without too much blur.
You could also try this in reverse if the children (and the adults) are throwing leaves at each other. Set your camera to TV (time priority) and set the speed to 60. Take plenty of photographs, I take 50 or 60 images in a burst if there’s lots of action, the law of averages dictates that six or so will be good. take a look at my portraits page for more info.

For Landscape photographs take your time. Most lenses perform best at around f11 so set your camera to AV and the aperture around 11. If you have a tripod use it even if you can take the photograph handheld. I find that using a tripod slows the picture taking process down and I think much more carefully about the composition. If you’re standing with your back to the light the camera’s metering system will be quite accurate although you will need to take a few frames at different exposures just to make sure you get a spot on exposure. Take a look at my photograph galleries for more autumn photographs.

I’ve talked a lot about the settings you should use on SLR cameras. With compact cameras where you can’t make many manual alterations to the camera exposure don’t worry KEEP THE SUN BEHIND YOU.

You’ve got plenty of time, the colours in the last two years according to my records start to look good in mid October, and oak trees don’t start falling until mid December.

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This is a subject I can ‘talk the handle off an iron pot’ about. It’s a subject I’ll revisit again and talk more about specifics.

When I first arrived on London in 1985 it was a much grimier and dirtier city than it is today. Since then all that post industrial revolution smoke has been cleaned off the brickwork of the major London landmarks, and the general gentrification of the city over the boom periods has been responsible for a much cleaner and greener city. London isn’t unique in that it’s cleaner these days, most cities are cleaner. The inhabitants of cities in general, like London’s, are more proud of their urban space these days.
When I started taking photos of London the first thing that struck me was how ‘low rise’ London was, and you can see this from the bridges and on the river. Of course this was before the Docklands was developed but cities like New York are so different to photograph as all the views are vertical. London suits the panoramic photograph and river cities often do (OK I know New York is also a river city but it’s an exception). London is a mediaeval city and much of is is bolted together with no apparent street plan, but I’m constantly surprised how symmetrical the views are and it is something I look for in my panoramic photographs. The modern architecture that’s been added more recently particularly the jubilee bridges, the London eye, and Docklands has been enormously helpful to us photographers looking for patterns and symmetry. There are two photographs that demonstrate this. the first is the image below I use as the header image at the top of my website and the second is a photograph I took of the Hungerford Bridge and the London eye. I really like the fact that I’ve managed to keep the bridge sharp and get movement in the London eye.

London is also full of quirky images, the telephone boxes in Kingston, the rows of cabs outside Harrods, and the way the London eye looks as though it’s falling over from a certain angle. I find that the quirky images people often comment on don’t sell that well but sit well alongside the images that do.

Being in the right place at the right time plays a huge part in my photography. Getting that ‘great shot’ often doesn’t happen first time, and if I go back several times at different times of the day there’s much higher chance that I’ll get a good shot and often a greater chance of shooting something completely unexpected. To illustrate this I spent one Friday morning photographing Tower Bridge which wasn’t successful as the weather wasn’t great. I met my sister for lunch at the Oxo tower (she was paying!) and I took the following shot of a storm rolling through from the balcony of the restaurant. Being in the right place at the right time counts for a lot.

Over the coming months I’ll talk more about the specifics of photographing a city, my next blog about this will be on Panoramics, how to shoot them, how to stitch them together in photoshop, and how best to print and frame them.

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