In my previous post, I promised that I’d not leave it so long before my next update – and here it is! The headline piece of activity is that we were really honoured to do the portrait photography for the RAF Cosford Officers’ Mess Christmas Draw. We had a fantastic evening, with all the guests having a great time and loving having their photographs taken, the fun props ensured people kept coming back for more! If you were at the event, and you ordered prints on the night, they are right now being produced by my favourite pro print lab (the excellent Loxley Colour) and will be with me later this week ready for mounting and sending back to the Mess for you to collect. If you didn’t order on the night, you can still get prints and downloads direct from my sales website – just follow the link under ‘Client Galleries’.

You may have seen on my FaceBook page that I’d ordered a ‘roller banner’ for advertising at events, wedding fayres and the like. It was a really good ‘Black Friday’ deal from Colour 24; I was especially pleased that it arrived in time for the Christmas Draw and that it has come out looking fantastic (if I do say so myself!)

A relatively short update this time around, but I should have a couple more posts before Christmas, as there are a couple of interesting assignments coming up. This is the first blog post that I’ve integrated with an e-mail distribution service – so if you’re getting this in your in-box it’s because you’ve booked us previously or bought images from us. I don’t want to fill inboxes unnecessarily, so if you’d rather not receive future blog posts, then there should be an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the e-mail (I won’t be offended!)

Thanks as ever for the support and messages.

Al.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with wedding bookings rolling in for 2015, and already some tentatives for 2016 (including the winner of my 20% discount competition.) I have an August booking for a central London wedding that includes an open-top bus ride and formal pictures inTrafalgar Square – I’m sure that’ll produce some great images! So with my 2015 weekends filling up fast, if you’re planning on getting hitched next year, get in touch soon to guarantee my availability.

I had a spare hour (and it was only an hour!) last Saturday and I had a quick look at the arboretum in Lincoln near the hospital. I’d seen it on a couple of road signs in Lincoln and then searched it out on Google maps, thinking it may make a great photoshoot location. All I can say is what a great spot it is! With fountains, a bandstand, large stone staircases, a wide boulevard, a mini-maze, ornamental ponds and a giant statue of a lion, there are loads of possibilities for family shoots, engagement shoots and post-wedding trash / cherish the dress shoots. Here are some of my rapid iPhone pictures:

In other developments, I have started on a project to build a photo-booth for use at parties or wedding receptions. The concept is that guests can then enter the booth, and with a remote control take their own picture that will then be added to a slideshow on a projector. I’ve had a bit of play with my gear, and after lots of faffing with various bits of software, I’ve got a workable technical solution. I had hoped to use Lightroom for everything, but I ran into a couple of issues: 1 – my laptop was still running Vista (which won’t run Lightroom 5), 2 – the camera I want to use for this isn’t supported, and 3 – the slideshow module doesn’t auto-update with new images as they’re taken. So, I’ve upgraded to Windows 7 and I now have the tethered shooting handled by a free programme called digiCamControl; the images are then auto-imported into Lightroom. I then use a free plug-in called ‘Show Biz’ that handles the slideshow element (and supports the addition of images as they’re taken.) It sounds like a mess, but in practice it actually works seamlessly – the user / customer doesn’t see the workings, just the final slideshow of their self-shot photos appearing! There are a couple of things I need to now sort – a projector to display the pictures, and then I need to actually build a booth! I have some plans (see pic) and I think I’ll build it out of PVC pipe for lightness and portability. I’ll try and document how this little project goes in future posts.

Thanks for reading,

Al.

A Great Event Shoot for Christmas.

Bookings Bookings Bookings! (and a new project!)