Sunday, September 16, 2012

Silk Road Restaurant Milton Keynes

I have now completed a series of photo shoots at the Silk Road Restaurant in Milton Keynes.

The first was a shoot of the Team GB Olympian Andrew Baggaley before the events started as Silk Road was a sponsor for Andrew, all of Andrews family where there and we had a great time having photos done with all the staff and doing some cooking in the kitchen!

The second shoot was part of the restaurants relaunch and was mainly food product shoots.
I was very pleased how well they turned out and they can be seen on their facebook page and in the new menu (still being designed).


The last shoot was their VIP opening evening were the job was more people shoots and 'paping' people when they arrived getting their free glass of (very nice) Champaign.
As I like my food, taking pictures in a restaurant is very challenging of my self control and I have to admit to grabbing the odd
onion bhaji from the freebies evey now and then :o) (very nice)


Friday, January 27, 2012

Photo Books

Photo books are a great way to publish a bunch of images in a nice presentable format, they are todays equivalent of the good old photo album, but without the mess and fiddling about.
I’m no expert on photo books so when I started doing them I wanted an easy and quick way to produce them so I tried a bunch of different ones and opted for Jessops as their software is very powerful yet very simple to use and I have been very pleased with the results.


 Seeing as I like a challenge and most of my photographer peers are using Blurb, I have decided to give it a go, once I downloaded their free software ‘Booksmart’ and installed it, I made a start.
At first glance it seems very basic, the auto layout function doesn’t seem to work very well, it just puts one image per page and doesn’t do multiple images on single pages, as my first project has 162 images, this layout isn’t ideal as that is 162 pages which is too big and unnecessarily costly.
As it's a bit basic it has forced me to do the layout manually and in turn this has taught me how to really use Booksmart, after much clicking about and one quick ‘Google’ I now know Booksmart to be very powerful, it’s just the toolbar layout isn’t very intuitive but once I found how to do something it was easy.
My project is now down to 144 pages and I’m not halfway yet, I am very pleased with how it is looking so far.
When doing a photo book – take your time, it can’t be rushed if you want a nice book at the end of it, how would you feel once your book landed on the door matt and you weren’t 100% happy with it and wished you had spent a bit longer on the design?
Depending on the time you have to spend on your book, I would allow a week to design it, and then review it, maybe add some text with dates and names of people along with places.
The next thing I need to work out is the Blurb service where people can order books from you directly from Blurb’s website, once I have I will post more info.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Male Lion - up close and personal... almost...


Wow... wow... wow... what a brilliant few hours...
Just done a photo shoot for Woburn Safari Park, they have a new male Lion called Kasanga, he is 2 years old and came from Holland, the last breeding male Lion at Woburn died of Cancer last year :o(
The Lion enclosure at Woburn Safari Park is bigger than all of London Zoo.. and Kasanga had the run of the whole area as all the other lions were locked up in the pen, they haven't met each other yet so need to slowly introduce them to each other else there will be some 'proper' trouble.
I spent my time in the passenger seat of a orange and black Landrover being driven by Craig, a very nice bloke and very knowledgeable.
The first 10 mins I was continually winding up my window very quickly as Kasanga was getting too close for comfort, he would run up looking straight at me as I sat with the window fully open taking pictures, he would get to a point that he could have leapt in the window if he wanted to.... panic...., Craig suggested that when the lion got that close he would drive off instead of me having to frantically wind the window up, "Good idea" I said, "although tell me when you do so I don't bounce my gear against the door frame", the price of a Canon 7D and 70-300mm telephoto makes me go cold when I think about it!
After a while of Kasanga chasing us about in the hope he would get some food, he sussed our game and started to wonder off on his own, so Craig would get out and wave his arms about shouting - ha ha, that worked.. until he got bored again.
He then picked up on the scent of the other Lions on a tree and starting getting very animated which was good to see but didn't make very good photos as he had his head under a log so all I could see was his backside.
We managed to get him up onto a frost covered bank, got some great shots of him here, although a lion in frost just doesn't look right, it should be dusty :o)
Once I had got 200+ shots we thought it was time for his treat, a nice big chunk of raw meat which he enjoyed and spent quite some time getting every last bit eaten.
We then drove back to the 'safe' area where my own Landrover was parked, the head keeper, Robert' asked me if I would like to see the other lions in the indoor pen, "damm right" I said, as we walked towards it I could hear the deep growls of the residents inside, once in I could see 10 lions, male and female, 8 in one area and 2 in another, I can't explain my disbelief in how big they are, I am 6' 3" and the biggest lion came up to just below my shoulder, I have seen these guys outside many times but never realised they were so big, and here I was the other side of a wire wall, millimetres away from then as they came up to the fence snarling and barring their teeth, absolutely amazing.

For the 'geeks' out there, the kit used was a Canon 5D MK II with a 24-105 L f/4 lens - used when he got very close, and a Canon 7D with a 70-300 telephoto lens for the safer distance shots.


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All images are copyright Woburn Safari Park and Rob Kelley, and may not be used without consent.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Christening in Bedford

Had a great time last Sunday photographing an Italian baptism or christening, not sure which is correct, the sun shone, and priest was very accommodating, I could use flash and do what I wanted, so got some fantastic mages for the proud parents.
Bedford has a big Italian community and to be part of this wonderful event was an honour.
Afterwards the party was at Kempston cricket club, nice food was laid on and I thought it rude not to participate, note to self to be more restrained as ate too much, although I did turn down numerous drinks that were kindly offered.
Throughout the entire day I took 566 photos, this many as multi shots each time because someone always blinks at the wrong time....
Finally got the DVD done with 160 fantastic images and done a 8x6 free print in a nice mount, going to hand them over tomorrow, also loaded them into my iPad so I can show them on the TV.