On this first one, I found the roots of a tree made a great seat and when Alan looked away briefly I realised I had the perfect shot. The sky was cloudy and this made the lighting perfect for capturing soft, shadowless images. The 70-200mm lens made light work of this.

On this shot I had my 50mm lens wide open at f1.2 which meant I could get so close that the only part of Alan in focus was his eyes. The extra wide aperture means that the depth of field (the part of the image in focus) is so small that only a tiny part of the image is sharp. Even though his eyes are sharp, just a couple of inches away, his ears are already out of focus. I love this lens!

This one just worked, maybe my favourite image of the day? The walk round the park brought us to some stone pillars which were useful for posing next to. I took a few shots, but again, it happened to be when Alan glanced down at his shoe that I knew I’d got a great image! Black and white seemed the only way forward for this, taking out the colour helps to draw attention to the subject in the image.

This image was taken from barely a metre away, but with the background so out of focus it could have been taken anywhere, which is especially useful for things like shooting couples at a wedding where there is not much of a background to use. This particular lens comes with a hefty price tag, but there is a much cheaper version available, its brother the 50mm f1.8 comes in at a fraction of the price and is a lens I always recommend to people wanting to try their hand at portraits.

It was all a bit surreal, especially as the offending car was still there and the occupants had ran off! The police turned up and took a few details and uncovered a mobile phone left in the car, the fact that they hadn’t been wearing seatbelts and so were likely to have been injured, but more importantly that the car hadn’t been broken into and whoever drove it had the keys and had taken them with them when they left the car. Hopefully the police turning up on the doorstep of the owner will find someone holding the keys and with a bad head to explain!

By the light of day we could see the full damage properly and it didn’t look good. A Vauxhall Corsa had managed to rotate my 1.5 ton Peugeot 407 by over 100 degrees. Wow! That Corsa must have been moving at some speed! I’m suprised the driver lived to walk away, or run as the case may be!

Thankfully for any weddings and photography shoots I have the option of using the better half’s car which i’m insured on, but I don’t think mine will be going far any time soon!

So what does 2012 hold in store apart from the obvious of my own wedding that I have already mentioned? Well I have some lovely weddings lined up, and have met some wonderful couples already, but before all that I want to take a step back and look a bit closer to home. I have set myself a few resolutions which include cycling instead of taking the car, and spending at least the first month of the year alcohol free, yes you guessed it right folks, I need to drop a few Christmas pounds for the wedding! But forgetting all the negative for a moment, the DON’T take the car, and DON’T drink in January, I also want to look at the positives, my goals for the coming year. First of all, I see a lot of photographers taking part in projects, such as a 365 project where they take a picture a day for a year, or a 50:50:50 project where they shoot 50 portraits in 50 days on a 50mm lens. These sound like real fun things to get my teeth into, although I know I just wouldn’t have the time, but there is one thing I wanted to try my hand at, street photography. Its essentially photojournalism, documenting things on the street as they happen. For me, i’m hoping it will make me look at things differently, see things differently and be able to catch the moment more decisively. Henri Cartier-Bresson was the master of this and one of my goals is to read his book that I bought before Christmas, before I go out and hit the streets.

One of my other goals is to get more into photographing children, I was lucky enough to have a couple of friends volunteer their children for a few shots and I definitely want to be capturing more of this…

My friends have some real cute kids and I can’t wait to shoot a few more in the coming months. I have my next shoot set up for a very handsome little man and i’ll have a couple of the photos up here as soon as they’re ready.

Thanks again to all those who have supported me, encouraged me and believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself!

Happy new year to everyone, have a great 2012!

This first image was exactly the kind of shot I was looking for, and with George approaching nap time and starting to fidget I was only going to get a few more shots in, and so had to remain patient as kids aren’t as easy to pose as adults and sometimes you just have to wait for the right moment!

Thankfully, although the grumpy hour was due, it hadn’t kicked in yet and George was loving the wicker chairs I’d brought round as props. This shot was just perfect, I knew I’d be seeing this on the walls in years to come! I wanted to get some more though and had a couple of ideas, although the next one was not quite what I expected, but still a great image in my opinion. No smiles, but it worked really well in black and white.

Without the wicker chair in place, that little boy wanted to crawl and crawl and crawl! I wasn’t sure i’d keep him still enough to get another shot in, but I got a couple more chances and this one was the one that worked for me.

It was a fun shoot and I can’t wait to capture him again next year. Kids grow up so fast, and change day by day. I always wished there had been more photos of me growing up as a child, and this may be part of the reason I find it so important to capture these images. I’m going to be almost obsessive when I have my own children, I just know it!

I really can’t wait to arrange the next shoot with another friends toddler this year, and I’ll be shooting it between Christmas and new year, my favourite time of year! I have asked friends to put their hand up in the air if they would like to have a few shots taken of their kids, and so i’ll probably be seeing a few more of you in the coming weeks while I stockpile some images for the website.

Oh and one last little thing, for those of you getting married in the near future, all bookings taken before December 31st 2011 will get 20% taken off the total cost of their wedding! Thats up to £200 discount on the Big Day package! Even if you’re not getting married, don’t forget to tell your friends!

Anyone interested?

So this weeks image of the week is one I chose from July, around the preparations at the grooms house, as these can be often overlooked. As I arrived at the house, things started to get busy and shooting wide angle I managed to capture the action from two rooms showing the action in both and the look of concentration in one, and moment of reflection in the other. This photo had to be black and white to focus on the actually content of the image, which for me really worked. No flash was used as all subjects were suitably lit from the windows in each room, the day proved to be perfect weather for the couple as the sun shone all day.

Recently I was asked to help my friend Phil, who I also went to school with, to shoot the wedding of Rob and Laura. Phil and myself knew Rob from school and were thrilled to find he’d met a fantastic girl like Laura, a gorgeous girl who was very easy to work with, making the day an absolute pleasure. We started the day well in advance of the service spending time with both the bride and the groom who were getting ready only feet away from each other in neighbouring houses. When so much thought has gone into the day, and every single little detail has been considered, it seems wrong to miss out half of the day by not capturing any shots in the morning. Sure, its great to get a lovely shot of the bride looking fantastic in the church, but we all know, especially you ladies, that it didn’t take fifteen minutes to look like that! Wedding photography has changed massively over the years, and only for the better. Long gone are the days of dull and military poses, and here are the days of documentary. I like to photograph the day as it unfolds, this is where a couple start their new life together, where a father has to say goodbye to his little girl, and it is full of emotion, from the minute the bride opens her eyes!

I like to think that this weeks picture captures some of that emotion, it is another black and white taken on my favourite 50mm f1.8 lens, shot wide open to allow for foreground and background blur. Whilst having her hair done and her tiara put on, you can see the emotion in Laura’s eyes knowing that the dress is next and then its time to leave for the church!

I’ll update the image of the week later, but for now here are some of the images from Sunday!

Thankfully I have been able to photograph some fantastic weddings, with more fantastic weddings ahead! One of the most recent was that of my good friend Sharon and her new husband David, I was really happy with the photos, but some stand out more than others, and when they say a photo speaks a thousand words, it is certainly true when you can see every ounce of emotion in a bride while her father is making his speech.

This image was taken using the Canon L 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens on full zoom with the aperture wide open to create as much foreground and background blur as possible, and a colour image would not have done this justice, black and white was the only real option here. I think it creates a prefect record of how emotional her fathers speech was to her. For me, it represents how I like to capture as much as I can without getting directly involved in certain parts of the day. Perfect timing!