I was asked by a client if I could possibly do a glamour/boudoir style shoot for her. She wanted the images for her husbands upcoming birthday as a special present, a nice canvas or two to have on their bedroom wall and she also said she wouldn't mind having them for herself to look back on when she is old and grey. This I especially thought was a great reason! The shoot was originally planned to take place in her own home, so she would feel more comfortable and to make it easier for changing clothes, make-up etc. Something came up though which made this impossible so the shoot ended up taking place in my studio instead, which limited the amount of changes of clothing style but it was still a great shoot with a few different looks included.

I wasn't originally going to write anything about this shoot, from my point of view these types of shoots are for the clients and the clients only. The images from the shoot, all except the one here are in the client area and only viewable to her or whoever she gives the access code and password to. After she saw the images though she actually said she would like if I used them on my site as she is very proud of them, I may put others on the site after her husbands birthday date has passed and the special present has been revealed but until then I will only display this one. Please if you know her do not 'tag' as it would ruin the surprise!

The main reason for the post though is during our discussions about what she would like from the shoot, she mentioned she was a little embarrassed and nervous about doing the shoot (which is natural) and wished she had done something like this when she was younger, before she had children. She had looked on the internet for some inspiration of the styles she would like and I also did some research to help her in deciding which poses etc to use and the vast majority of the pictures that came up were of obviously of proffesional models. Although great in using for reference, these I believe can also have a negative effect as lets be honest there is not many people on the planet who look like they do. This brings up the use of photoshop etc.

Now don't get me wrong, I do edit the images I produce. Photoshop and other editing programs are very useful tools in getting the desired effect for an image but what I did notice when looking around is way over the top processing done on boudoir and glamour images, for me this is wrong. The images I think no longer represent who the person in question is, some I saw I doubt even held a passing resemblance to the actual subject anymore! If you have a search for boudior studio photography and once you get passed the proffesional model images you can find the type of shots I mean. I am not critising these photographers, far from it. It links back to what I wrote in the previous paragraph about the use of professional models in these type of shots. Clients want their pictures to look just as good but over the top editing to achieve this is the point I think is wrong, lighting is the key I feel for producing very desirable pictures here. Get the lighting right in the first place and a little subtle editing is all that is required to give the client not only an image that they want to display and are proud to show to others but also one that actually looks like they do too! Unfortunetly stark depthless images and over the top processing are what appears to be the norm in boudior and glamour shots, which I think is a shame. Sure the processing may make you look like a professional model, but when you look at it, do you actually see yourself?

If this type of shoot is something that appeals to you then feel free to get in touch. Just remember that the images produced from your shoot will actually look like you!

:-)

Gary.

I had the pleasure of doing a photoshoot for a local nail salon near me, namely UA Nails which is in Konigstein. The owner Len Ritchie had asked if I could do some shots for her of the premises, her products and treatments to be used on her brand new website which is currently being built. Knowing absolutely nothing about what goes on in a nail salon, I turned up for the shoot not exactly sure what I would find! Len was brilliant, explaining to me what she does and the treatments she provides for her clients. The shoot went well and Len and her model for the treatment shots have said they are pleased with the results and as soon as they have decided which images they want to use they will be displayed on her new website, which can be found at ua-americannails.net

For anyone in the Konigstein or general Taunus area looking for an American style nail salon that provides not just manicures and pedicures but also galvanic spa treatments as well as a host of other services, I suggest you give Len a call on 06174 2599827. You really won't find a more relaxing and welcoming salon, or owner!

No pictures from the shoot I'm afraid as they are all tucked away in the client area for private viewing!

I was at the local dog daycare center or 'hundetagesstatte' in German to photograph some of the dogs for the owners website. The pictures of the dog 'portraits' can be found here. The owner Norman explained to me during the shoot that he unfortunetly has no proper pictures of his son Noel as Noel is absolutely 100% against getting his picture taken, so much so that even when the kindergarten does it's annual photoshoot the only picture he will allow to be taken is the group shot of his class, he will not pose on his own and even when the photographer tries to catch him offguard he covers his face. I offered to have a go at getting some pictures of Noel when he came to the center after kindergarten.

Noel is a shy kid, he wouldn't talk to me when he arrived and hid behind his father as we sat and had a coffee. When I took the camera out of the bag and asked if he would like a picture taken he flatly refused and hid even more! I didn't want to push it as there is nothing worse than forced pictures of children as it shows in the images that the kid is not happy and that for me makes for very bad pictures, especially for the parents as they know their childs expressions more than anyone else and would be disappointed with them.

So how did I manage to finally get him to allow me to take pictures of him? It's actually very simple, the first step was to get him to trust the camera (This part may make others cringe!) so I handed it to him. Showed him what buttons to press to see the pictures we had already done with the dogs and then showed him how to take pictures of his dad and see the results. Noel and his father Norman then together took pictures of me and during this I started pulling funny faces, not hard people who know me would say! This made Noel laugh and kids being kids he wanted to make some too...

So we then kept messing about, taking more and more funny pictures then slowly started to take more normal pictures but saying 'wouldn't it be fun to get a picture with you doing ....' In the end, Norman got the pictures of his son that he always wanted and I think Noel will now look forward to getting his picture taken again in the future as when we said we were finished with the camera he really didn't want to stop!

The pictures taken of Noel and his father can be found here, for images taken where there was no planning, no choice of clothes and not even a hairbrush in sight I think they have turned out really well. I believe for Norman they are exactly what he wanted as they show Noel how he is at home and with his father everyday, a happy fun loving child. Not the impression that is given in the kindergarten group pictures where he is standing up straight with a fake smile on his face.

Kids grow up fast, it's important to capture their true characters in the pictures taken of them.

I wasn't going to mention here on my blog about my hard drive failure or my thoughts on what makes a great pc for photography use but after some of the suggestions and 'advice' from others I received after it happened there seems to be a vast amount of people out there who think you need to spend thousands and buy specific machines or your system will not be up to the task. In my opinion this is wrong and a lot of people are wasting their money.

It had to happen I suppose, after using PC's since the Sinclair Spectrum (actually used the ZX81 at the computer club at school but the Spectrum was the first I owned myself!) I have finally suffered my very first hard drive failure. Unluckily it wasn't on my netbook or laptop but on my desktop computer that is solely used as my photographic PC. To be fair it was an older machine but it had been performing faultlessly with no hint that it may be about to try to eat itself! Thankfully, I never actually keep any of my images on the computers own hard drive, preferring to have them on external drives and leaving the PC's drive free just for the operating system and the photographic programs.  The annoying thing was that I had just begun editing our road trip images and only managed to get the Balestrino and Lago Maggiore sets edited and uploaded to the site before the failure. The rest will now have to wait till I get back from work in two weeks.  

I could have just replaced the hard drive but I decided to get a fresh machine with the specifications required to handle todays more memory hungry photographic program processes with ease.  I went with an independent computer shop, gave them the specs of what I wanted and placed the order. The new PC was delivered just 2 days before I was leaving the country so I have only had time to begin installing my programs, with a few new updated versions of course! On the subject of my main workflow program I did consider switching to Adobe Lightroom 4 but after considering it, I have decided to stick with Cyberlink PhotoEditor, but I have upgraded from the 2011 version I was using to the latest PhotoEditor 3 which has a few more features with it that I really want to have.

For those of you who are interested in maybe having your own 'Photography Only PC' please do not be put off or think it's impossible by what you read on websites and forums about the serious amount of money you need to spend on even what they consider a budget/low end pc for image editing. No offence to these guys but they are serious computer buffs to whom shaving 2.5% off the process time of an application is a big deal. I can understand that (and can see the need for it in a busy commercial situation) but at the same time I'm quite happy to go have a cup of coffee whilst the computer has been set to batch edit a few hundred images! What I have found over the years is the best way to keep a pc fast, is to keep it clean. Having a pc that is only for processing your images and not for general internet browsing/home use is a great idea for anyone who is serious about their photography in my opinion as it remains uncluttered and fast. For general browsing etc.? My advice would be get a netbook to have alongside your 'photo pc', they are very cheap these days and ideal for general use.

Here is the rough specs of my Photo PC setup and the programmes I use for those who are interested.

Desktop PC with an AMD FX 4100 Quad Core Processor, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, 500 GB Hard drive (remember for programs only so no need to have a massive internal drive). 2 Western Digital 1TB external hard drives, 1 for image workflow and the other is the backup and a NEC IPS monitor.

Operating System and basic programs are: Windows 7 64bit, Firefox, OpenOffice and avast for the all important antivirus.

Photography Programs: Cyberlink PhotoEditor3, Photoshop Elements 9, Picturenaut.

Now I know a lot of people will scoff at what is listed above (some may even go as far as to say how can he be a serious photographer with only that at his disposal!) but I am not someone who only looks at the big numbers/brand names or glossy cases. What I look for is components and programs that do away with all the bells, whistles and 'must haves' and give me actually what I want from them in the first place and only what I want from them. A photography computer does not need the latest and greatest graphics or sound cards fitted, doesn't need to be pre-loaded with lots of i-this or i-that. Contrary to what others may have you believe the less you have on there and the more 'bare bones' a system is, the faster it will be able to perform the important tasks you actually bought it for in the first place - processing your images.

Every seen a race car with a stereo fitted?

Thought not.

:-)

Having decided this year that for our holiday we were going to go on a road trip, I was searching around the net looking to see if there would be anywhere interesting along our route photography wise. Our route was Lake Constance, Lago Maggiore, Savona, Monaco, Nice, Cannes, Grasse, Vienne and finally Dijon. I discovered that on route between Savona and Monaco and just a little inland lay the abandoned town of Balestrino. Although calling it abandoned is not technically correct as the whole town moved, and not very far either!

Very little detail is known about the abandonment, in the late 19th century much of the Savona area was hit by successive earthquakes which destroyed a lot of the old medieval towns. Balestrino however is not mentioned but there does show a dip in population around this time period. The town continues to be inhabited till 1953 when due to what is recorded as 'geological instability' the remaining residents left the town... for a new Balestrino about 1km along the road! What they left behind remains for the most part untouched since that time, and although it was actually used as a movie set for the film inkheart when walking around you still get the sense that it is exactly as it was when the residents finally gave up on the place and left.

It really is well worth a visit, I would have loved to have been able to wander a little deeper into the abandoned buildings but my 7 year old daughter was with us so we stuck to the safer looking areas. I must mention there are signs and the paths into the abandoned town are partially blocked as they really don't want to encourage people to explore the old buildings, they are as you can see from my images slowly crumbling away!

I had the pleasure of being invited to a my friends Linda and Luays wedding party last weekend. Originally another friend was supposed to be being the official photographer for them and she had asked me if I would help out so that we could both enjoy the party and capture the wedding pictures for the happy couple. When we arrived Luay had arranged for another friend of his to take the 'official' pictures so that myself and Chrissi (you can visit her site here - http://www.cts-fotografie.de ) could enjoy the occasion more as guests and not have to worry about capturing the important images of the wedding party. As myself and Chrissi had all our camera gear along with us we decided that it would be a nice gift for the newlyweds if we captured the essence of the occasion for them by grabbing a more candid selection of images of the guests and the official aspects of the party.

It has to be said it was one of the most joyous wedding partys I have ever attended and I believe this is conveyed in the images I have captured for the bride and groom.  Also as you can see from the cover photo they had a belly dancer! For this wedding occasion we threw the rule book out the window and took an unorthadox approach to the wedding photography and I for one believe it has worked well.

I wish Linda and Luay all the very best for the future and I hope you enjoy your pictures!

I took my camera along with me to my daughters dance school show in Oberhochstadt. Although I had also packed my speedlight they said just before the show started that flash was not to be used if taking pictures. This posed a major problem since the only lighting in the hall was going to be the ever changing spot and stobelights used for the lighting effects. I ended up having to up the iso a lot to try and get some pictures of all the dance groups, took over 450 pictures during the show and although still far from great I have managed to keep about 130 of them that are useable. They can be found here. All the kids did a great job and the show was very enjoyable, just wish the organisers had switched on the air conditioning as after about an hour the heat inside the hall was getting a bit too much for almost everyone!

I was lucky enough to go to Silverstone for a track event in May. The day included trying out different models of car on the circuit, a Nissan 370Z, Caterham 7, single seater racing car and the highlight for me was being able to get behind the wheel of a track prepared Nissan R35 GTR with around 580bhp for a few laps with tuition from an experienced racing driver. Having always been a fan of the GTR models it was even better than I thought it was going to be, the car is utterly astonishing in what it is capable of doing, even with a ham-fisted driver like me behind the wheel. I have finally had a bit of time to process a few of the (many) pictures that were taken during the event and they can be found here.

As of today all the images on the site are available for download under personal or commercial licence. There are three size options for personal use available:

Small/Med Print - Facebook/Blog etc: This size is suited to printing off your own small to medium sized prints or using the image on social media or for a blog or personal website.

Large Print - Online - Personal Use: This is suitable for printing off your own larger sized prints or using as background images online, desktop wallpapers etc.

Original Image - Personal Use: This is the original high resolution image file which can be used for printing to the same sizes that are offered by the print lab on this site.

To purchase, click on the buy link and select downloads and choose the size you require.

Commercial Use: There is a commercial use option available if you would like to use an image in this manner, it is for the original high resolution image file.

Thanks,

Gary.

I'm currently looking to add to my portfolio with more portrait style images. If you would like a free photo session for yourself,  your family or friends then please do get in touch. Whether you have in mind a classic studio style portrait, something more fun and relaxed or anything else you can think of please contact me via the contact page and we can discuss what you have in mind!

Thanks,

Gary.