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

Are you thinking of booking one of our world famous portrait photography sessions for Christmas?

Do you want to give your relatives and friends some fun natural photos of you and your family?

If the answer is Yes then you need to be booking your session now.  We get so busy in the run up to Christmas with the various things that we do that we not only run out of time but run out of availability.

THERE ARE ONLY FOUR WEEKENDS LEFT BEFORE WE CLOSE BOOKINGS IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!

Call us today on 020 8333 0151

More about Portrait Photography Here.

Portrait Photographer London.

Over the weekend at my stall on Northcote Road dozens of children and adults took part in our ‘Best Halloween Costume” competition. It was great fun and there were some amazing costumes. The photography sessions were free and the prints if the participants want to buy will be very reasonably priced. You can find out more about my weekend street studio here.

The stall and ‘Street Studio” will be open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in November for free portrait sessions and then in December we’ll be open every day. The sessions are free, all you pay for are the prints from £19.50. This is ideal for children because as we all know sometimes it simply doesn’t work when you point a camera at them, sometimes though the results are superb. Many families come again and again throughout the year and then order the best photos across the several sessions they’ve taken.

You don’t need to book, just turn up. You don’t need to dress up either, just be yourself and we’ll take relaxed and natural pictures of you and your family.

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About two months ago I was interviewed by a journalist about my work, my background and the connection with Northcote Road where I have my stall at the weekends. SW magazine  have printed a double page spread in the November issue.

You can read all about it on the weddings site, go to www.weddingphotographerslondon.uk.com

Wedding photographers London, Classic Wedding dress and Accessories shoot.
Last Thursday I spend the day with the people from Vogue Australia photographing brides dresses and accessories for their ‘Classic dresses and accessories edition. I’ve worked a lot with them over the years and they have featured in the magazine a number of weddings I’ve shot in the UK and in Australia and New Zealand.

I try and use natural light indoors and outdoors wherever possible. For the shoot on Thursday I was very keen to stay away from artificial light and the photograph above was taken outdoors using a reflector to even out any shadows.

Autumn is a great month for wedding photography, it’s also a great month for landscapes and outdoor portraits. The light is often best at the beginning and at the end of the day, and at midday in autumn the light is not as harsh as it can be in summer. Take a look at more information on weddings here.

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Learning how to use a camera can be frustrating and time consuming, but if you understand how to work your camera using the manual settings you’ll find it much easier to take pictures when it’s on auto. When the camera is on auto it makes exposure settings according to how much light is coming into the lens, and even though cameras these days are very clever they can’t cope with every situation. You will often need to take control yourself, and with digital cameras you can tell whether your manual adjustment has made a difference.

You don’t always need to set your camera to ‘full manual setting’ to make changes to the camera auto settings, I’ll talk about this at the end of this piece but first I need to get the tech stuff out of they way.

Aperture Size.
The size of the aperture determines how much light passes through your lens, large apertures let more light pass through, small apertures let less light pass through.
Aperture settings are referred to as f-stops, or f-numbers, expressed as a fraction, such as f/22. However, to save space, f-numbers are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 22. Note, the larger the f-number, the smaller the relative aperture.
On a manual camera, f-numbers are usually adjusted with a ring outside your lens barrel. A typical sequence of f-numbers on a camera run, from largest to smallest aperture: 1.8, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22.
The difference between each f-number is twice the amount of light. So, aperture setting f/16 lets in twice as much light as f/22.
The aperture size determines the depth of field, or zone of sharp focus, that surounds your subject: whereas small apertures (high f-numbers) produce a long depth of field, large apertures (small f-numbers) produce a short depth of field. Therefore, if you’re taking a picture of a landscape, and you want both foreground and background to be in focus, use a small aperture such as f/16. On the other hand, if you’re taking a picture of a friend or family member, and you want to place more emphasis on them by blurring the background, use a large aperture such as f/4.

Shutter Speed.
Release the shutter, you will see the aperture momentarily open for the length of time set by the shutter speed.
The shutter speed determines how long your film/digital sensor is exposed to light passing through the aperture: the slower the shutter speed, the longer the shutter remains open, the more light reaches your film/digital sensor. So, both aperture size and shutter speed determine the final exposure of your picture.
Like f-numbers, shutter speeds are expressed as a fraction, such as 1/60 second. However, to save space, shutter speeds are often denoted by just their denominator, such as 60. The larger the shutter speed number, the shorter the amount of time your film/digital sensor is exposed to light.
On manual cameras, the shutter speed is usually adjusted by a circular control knob on top of the camera. A typical sequence of shutter speeds on a camera run, from slowest to fastest: 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 250, 500, 1000.
The shutter speed determines the amount of motion blur a moving object will have in your final picture. Use a fast shutter speed (such as 1/500 sec) to freeze fast moving objects in their trajectory, or use a slow shutter speed (such as 1/2 sec) to illustrate movement by creating motion blur.
Like f-numbers, the difference between each shutter speed setting is twice the amount of light. For example, shutter speed 1/60 sec lets in twice as much light as 1/125 sec.
Due to the doubling/halving nature of both aperture and shutter settings, closing the aperture one stop (halving the light) while simultaneously decreasing the shutter speed by one setting (doubling the light) produces no effective change in the amount of light reaching your film/digital sensor. The same is true for closing the aperture two stops while decreasing the shutter speed by two settings. This means there are several aperture and shutter settings which produce the same overall exposure of your final picture. For example, the combination f/4 and 1/60 sec produces the same overall exposure as f/2.8 and 1/125 sec, or f/5.6 and 1/30 sec. This is not to say these settings will produce the same final picture since the combination you choose will determine the depth of field surrounding your subject (aperture size) and the amount of motion blur of moving objects (shutter speed).

Exposure Meter.
Most camera light meters estimate the exposure of your final snapshot by a “center-weighted” averaging algorithm, more sophisticated DSLR cameras can also meter ‘Spot” or very small parts of the subject, and ‘Evaluative’ which can cope with backlit subjects.
One condition that often “fools” the light meter is when a subject is backlit or the sun is shining behind your subject. You can tell if the meter has been fooled if your subject is underexposed.
For the same reason, a dark or black object occupying the center of the viewfinder will also “fool” the light meter. You can tell here if the meter has been fooled if your subject is overexposed.
Objects of average light intensity are grey stone, weathered wood, foliage or dark skin.

How to fix over or underexposure.
There are a number of techniques you can use to fix over or under exposure. There are two I use most often.
1. If you have your camera set to Av (aperture priority) or Tv (speed or time priority) you can take control yourself quickly by telling your camera to overexpose or underexpose by moving the exposure slider on your LCD panel to plus or minus. Normally one or two stops will fix your image. If your camera is set to Av you will adjust the shutter speed, if it is set to Tv you will adjust the aperture.

2. Set your camera to manual. Now you have control over both aperture and shutter speed. The camera’s light meter will still tell you what it thinks the ideal exposure should be, and as you adjust both the speed and the aperture the camera will tell you whether you are over or underexposing. When you first try this out it’s a good idea to put your camera on a tripod as there are so many things to think about, and if the camera is not moving around you’ll see how your adjustments are affecting your image.

Practice makes perfect and as usual my advice is to take lots and lots of pictures, be adventurous, and don’t worry if you find it confusing to begin with.

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The key to understanding how a camera works is to understand the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

One metaphor often used is to imagine your camera is like a window with shutters that open and close. Aperture is the size of the window. If it’s bigger more light gets through and the room is brighter. Shutter Speed is the amount of time that the shutters of the window are open. The longer you leave them open the more that comes in.
Now imagine that you’re inside the room and are wearing sunglasses, your eyes become desensitized to the light that comes in (it’s like a low ISO).There are a number of ways of increasing the amount of light in the room, or at least how much it seems that there is. You could increase the time that the shutters are open (decrease shutter speed), you could increase the size of the window (increase aperture) or you could take off your sunglasses (make the ISO larger).

How does your camera know what the perfect exposure is? Your camera is pre programmed by the manufacturer to let an exact amount of light in for the perfect exposure, which is 18% of the light reflected form a grey surface.

Shutter Speed:
Shutter speed is measured in seconds – or in most cases fractions of seconds. The bigger the denominator the faster the speed (ie1/1000 is much faster than 1/30).
In most cases you’ll probably be using shutter speeds of 1/60th of a second or faster. This is because anything slower than this is very difficult to use without getting camera shake. Camera shake is when your camera is moving while the shutter is open and results in blur in your photos.
If you’re using a slow shutter speed (anything slower than 1/60) you will need to either use a tripod or some some type of image stabilization (more and more cameras are coming with this built in).

Shutter speeds available to you on your camera will usually double (approximately) with each setting. As a result you’ll usually have the options for the following shutter speeds – 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 etc. This ‘doubling’ is handy to keep in mind as aperture settings also double the amount of light that is let in – as a result increasing shutter speed by one stop and decreasing aperture by one stop should give you similar exposure levels.

Some cameras also give you the option for very slow shutter speeds that are not fractions of seconds but are measured in seconds (for example 1 second, 10 seconds, 30 seconds etc). These are used in very low light situations, when you’re going after special effects and/or when you’re trying to capture a lot of movement in a shot). Some cameras also give you the option to shoot in ‘B’ (or ‘Bulb’) mode. Bulb mode lets you keep the shutter open for as long as you hold it down.

When considering what shutter speed to use in an image you should always ask yourself whether anything in your scene is moving and how you’d like to capture that movement. If there is movement in your scene you have the choice of either freezing the movement (so it looks still) or letting the moving object intentionally blur (giving it a sense of movement).

To freeze movement in an image you’ll want to choose a fast shutter speed and to let the movement blur you’ll want to choose a slower shutter speed. The actual speeds you should choose will vary depending upon the speed of the subject in your shot and how much you want it to be blurred.

Use motion to your advantage. For example when you’re taking a photo of a waterfall and want to show how fast the water is flowing, or when you’re taking a shot of a racing car and want to give it a feeling of speed, or when you’re taking a shot of a star scape and want to show how the stars move over a longer period of time etc. In all of these instances choose a longer shutter speed. However in all of these cases you need to use a tripod or you’ll run the risk of ruining the shots by adding camera movement.
Focal Length and Shutter Speed – another thing to consider when choosing shutter speed is the focal length of the lens you’re using. Longer focal lengths will accentuate the amount of camera shake you have and so you’ll need to choose a faster shutter speed (unless you have image stabilization in your lens or camera). The ‘rule’ of thumb to use with focal length in non image stabilized situations is to choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than the focal length of the lens. For example if you have a lens that is 50mm 1/60th is probably ok but if you have a 200mm lens you’ll probably want to shoot at around 1/250.

What is Aperture?
Put most simply – Aperture is ‘the size of the opening in the lens when a picture is taken.’
When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you’re wanting to capture. The aperture that you set impacts the size of that hole. The larger the hole the more light that gets in – the smaller the hole the less light.

Aperture is measured in ‘f-stops’ for example f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6,f/8,f/22 etc. Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through). Keep in mind that a change in shutter speed from one stop to the next doubles or halves the amount of light that gets in also – this means if you increase one and decrease the other you let the same amount of light in – very handy to keep in mind).
One thing that causes a lot of new photographers confusion is that large apertures (where lots of light gets through) are given f/stop smaller numbers and smaller apertures (where less light gets through) have larger f-stop numbers. So f/2.8 is in fact a much larger aperture than f/22. It seems the wrong way around but you’ll get the hang of it.

Depth of Field and Aperture
Depth of Field (DOF) is that amount of your shot that will be in focus. Large depth of field means that most of your image will be in focus whether it’s close to your camera or far away.
Small (or shallow) depth of field means that only part of the image will be in focus and the rest will be fuzzy. Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field. Large aperture (remember it’s a smaller number) will decrease depth of field while small aperture (larger numbers) will give you larger depth of field.
It can be a little confusing at first but the way I remember it is that small numbers mean small DOF and large numbers mean large DOF.

The best way to get your head around aperture is to take lots of photos and experiment. Set up a shot outside and place some items near the camera as well as far away and take a series of shots with different aperture settings from the smallest setting to the largest. You’ll quickly see the impact that it can have and the usefulness of being able to control aperture.

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“Get Uncle Dave to take the photos, he’s a really good photographer and he’s got a really nice camera. He’ll take your wedding photos and you’ll save yourself loads of money”

I have a DVD sitting on my desk with 1000 photographs taken by a real uncle Dave at a wedding on December 12th last year. The couple whose wedding uncle Dave attended came to see me last July to talk about their wedding photography. They were on a tight budget which all couples have to grapple with and they were looking to make savings wherever they could.
They came to see me again last Friday with their set of photographs that uncle Dave had taken and they said that would would ‘pay whatever it cost’ to rescue their wedding photos. Having thought they would make a saving they will, in the end, pay about the same price as they would have for a professional photographer. They’ll be reminded of this everytime they look at their set of retouched rescued uncle Dave’s pics.

And on Saturday a client brought me some black and white prints that he had printed by ‘a well known high street photo shop’ from an image that I had taken and supplied to him on disc. They were badly cropped, printed on colour paper so it had a green colourcast, there were also some watermarks on the paper which indicate sloppy printing. I have offered to reprint them myself free of charge despite the fact he offered to pay me to print them properly. I have to prove to my client that the product I have provided him was as high as he had expected. My high standards have been debased by another supplier in my industry. Uncle Dave is also employed by well known high street shops because professional image makers are expensive to employ.

My point in this blog is that in the last couple of years there seems to have been a significant shift towards cost playing a much larger part in the decision making process even if the risk is poor quality, poor service, and bland, dull, lacklustre work. The recession has a lot to with this and I suspect many industries other than photographers have found cost basis decision making a problem too.

I have never been busier and I know other photographers who are busy too, but there are now many in our industry, particularly in weddings, who have positioned themselves in order to take advantage of the unwary who are looking for photography done cheaply. For uncle Dave this is excellent news. He can join the mass of ‘weekend warriors’ shooting weddings without having to give up the day job. With his new gear, and little experience he can make some easy money taking advantage of couples on a tight budget.

And then yesterday I read an article in ‘The Professional photographer’ written by a fellow photographer, Allister Freeman. Allister is an established wedding photographer with a good reputation. The article talks about his opinons on the current state of wedding photography. He quotes ” ……An age where Joe Public beleives he can do a better job than you, poor perceptions, fuelled by a mass of similar styles and monotonous imagery already saturating the market have a deleterious effect on an already beleagured industry”. A lot of the mystery of photography has been taken away by digital and it’s understandable that Joe Public thinks that he could do a better job with his new gear, but a camera has always been a box with a hole in the front of it and it takes just as much skill and experience to make a good photograph as it always did.

Several years ago it was quite clear who knew what they were doing and who didn’t just by looking at their website, now it is possible to make a slick presentation online for little cost and pitch yourself against those who are good at what they do. At least established photographers can rely on their reputation and on word of mouth, but this is becoming a real problem for photographers who are just starting out and want to offer their customers good quality. And for the client it’s almost impossible to make an informed decision particulary in these days where price is very important.

When the recession has been and gone we’ll look back on ‘the uncle Dave days’ and perhaps simply put it all down to cost driven behaviour. There are uncle Daves in all industries but in this perfect storm where the importance of price meets rapid technology change a new breed of operator has emerged who is satisfying a new demand for cheap at all costs.

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For some time now compact cameras have come fitted with zoom lenses, and zoom lenses are often bundled with SLR cameras. Because of the technology involved modern zoom lenses in digital cameras are often even stronger.

So when and why should you use the zoom lens on your camera?
One of the most important rules with portrait photography is “get close”. Unfortunately, for most family snaps, that rule is rarely applied. Uncluttered, closely cropped shots make the best family snaps and natural portrait photographs, and a zoom lens is the ideal way to get close in and get the cropping right.

What does using a zoom do for your photograph?
A zoom lens will get you physically closer to the action, and the content of your photograph will be much stronger if you are be able to isolate parts of the action.
Depth of field can also be used to your advantage when using a zoom lens particularly in portraits. Keep the aperture at around f5.6 and focus on the subject, when the lens is wide open you’ll get the subject in focus and the foreground and background out of focus giving you much stronger emphasis on the subject.
A mid range zoom lens is also ideal for travelling. My wife has banned me from taking a tripod and sets of lenses on holiday so I take a 24mm-105mm lens which can deal with most situations. If you can get away with taking another zoom with you take a 70mm-200mm or something up to 300mm or 400mm. Photographing the locals without attracting attention to yourself is much easier with a longer zoom lens.

Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom?
If you are about to buy a camera, perhaps even step into the world of digital, buy a camera with the strongest optical zoom you can afford. Some of the digital cameras available today have zoom lenses that are 10x or even stronger! The higher the number represented in the optical zoom the closer you can get to the action and the more dynamic your pictures can be. 
As for digital zoom, well…that is another thing altogether. Digital zooms are available in many digital cameras and work on a similar principle to cropping in on a negative. Digital zoom crops in on the digital image and uses only the central pixels in the picture. Then, using inbuilt software, the image is enhanced and built into a file that can be printed. However, the sharpness of your pictures suffers and should only be used if your desperate, if at all. Don’t factor the digital zoom into your purchasing decision.

The Great All-Rounders
Advancements in lens technologies have made some lenses possible today that just couldn’t have been considered twenty years ago. Today, you can buy one lens that lets you take wide angle landscapes and then zoom in to a person in that landscape. What’s more, these lenses are incredibly sharp! Lenses like the Tamron 18-250mm for digital SLR cameras are fantastic and you could travel the world with only this lens and hardly ever miss a shot. In fact, Tamron are packaging their 11-18mm and their 18-250mm lenses together now so that you are covered from superwide to supertelephoto in only two lenses. Most high end lenses also have an image stabilisation capability which can really help with blurred photographs resulting from camera shake.
Compact digital cameras are also including lenses that do much the same thing. The Ricoh R7 has a 7x zoom. The Canon PowerShot is similar. The SX100 IS has a 10x zoom. And there are many others like these. Included with these kinds of cameras are vibration reduction and anti shake modes that prevent your telephoto pictures from being blurred from camera shake.

How Close is ‘Close’?
If you don’t know just how close to get, try this. Compose your picture as you normally would and take it. Then, zoom in. Then, zoom in some more. Keep zooming, or moving closer until you actually begin to see only what you need to see and no more. Take another picture and compare the two. Almost invariably, your second picture will be the more interesting and dynamic of the two.

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We had a busy weekend. We photographed three corporate events in London, a christening, four portrait sessions, and ran our stall on Northcote Road.

The corporate events were good fun. Novotel, the hotel group, hosted a fancy dress party for its staff. It was actually their Christmas party. They are so busy during December that there isn’t time to throw a party for the staff so they all dress up and have their end of year blow out in January.
My assistant, Jimmy and I set up a portrait studio in the ballroom where the party was held to photograph the guests in their fancy dress. While Jimmy photographed the guests I produced 7″x5″ prints for them which they were able to pick up shortly after the photographs were taken. This was a huge hit and is always very popular. So much so that they asked us to stay for another hour.

Producing prints on the night and staging ‘real time’ slideshows is great for the guests as they don’t have to wait to see the results. Also from the host’s point of view, particularly if is is a staff or corporate event it is a great opportuninty to give something fun away. There is also an opportunity to associate your brand or corporate image with the fun event by printing your logo discretely somewhere on the photo, all good stuff for you, your staff, and your clients.

We also photographed Stacy Solomon, the X factor contestant at an event this weekend. I have to admit I didn’t know who she was as I’ve only watched X factor a few times but my eight year old daughter thinks she’s the greatest and I managed to get an autograph for her.

We can generally produce finished photographs from an event between 24 and 48hrs which means that you can use the images to your advantage while the event is still fresh in everyone’s minds. We generally produce two sets of images supplied on DVD; a high res set for prints, and a low res set for web and email use. Go to our events and party photography page for more details.

Event Photographer London