Soooooo, it’s been quite a while since my last blog update – and I really have no excuse apart from being busy busy busy!
My last post was about the great time I had photographing the Summer Ball at RAF Cosford – and the good news is that I’ve been given a repeat-booking to cover their Christmas Ball next month! I’ve got lots of ideas for this next ‘event’ assignment, not least a better way of wirelessly getting the photographs from the camera to the laptop. At the Summer Ball, I tried to use an EyeFi Mobi Pro memory card – essentially a memory card that generates a WiFi bubble for transferring photographs over to a laptop or tablet. Although it worked flawlessly in testing ahead of the night, it wasn’t playing ball at all and I had to resort to a very (very!) long USB cable. I’ve since invested in another WiFi solution, this time from Nikon themselves – again it’s been totally reliable in testing but I’ll be keeping the long cable handy just in case!
Should've been great - but was a big frustration.
Those of you with eagle-eyes may have noticed my FaceBook feed has had some more wedding pictures appearing, it’s been a great year for weddings, and it’s been an honour (and lots of fun) to be able to document these really special days. At the most recent wedding, I offered the couple an extra of a photobooth-style setup for their reception. That was a great deal of fun, with the addition of a few props their guests really let their hair down and it added a wonderful extra set of pictures for the couple.
On a personal level, I’m building a portfolio of sufficient quality to qualify for a Licentiateship of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), which will allow me to use the post-nominals LRPS, which shows that the quality of my work has reached (or exceeded) the very high standards of the RPS. To that end, I attended an advisory day in Nottingham to have my current set of images examined with a view to suggest improvements. As luck would have it, my set of images were first up – and I got a lot of positive feedback, with some pointers on areas for improvement. These were mainly related to technical aspects rather than artistic ones – the LRPS process is largely aimed at proving a photographer’s technical ability ahead of their artistic vision. For example, I have a photograph on the site of a bride looking out of a window; I hope you’ll agree that this is a great image; however, as much of the picture is pure white, it’s deemed not up to standard. No big deal, I now know what the judging panel is looking for, and I need to get a collection of 10 images that meet the full guidelines. I should (other commitments notwithstanding) be ready to apply early next year. I will of course let you know how I get on!
My 10 images ready for critique (along with my daughter's ballet bag!)
