New Work Wednesdays

After working for a year and a half at a family portrait studio at home and working at a similar studio since I've been in London it is hard to imagine the amount of living rooms that photos I've taken will be hanging in for years to come. The thing is though, because I have been working for companies they own the copyright to all of the images I've taken so I don't get to show the amazing photos like a little girls first steps, or how amazing it is to take maternity shots of a very pregnant soon to be mother and then the very next week taking photos of the newest member to the family.

I decided recently that I needed to have some of this for my portfolio and so I started doing sessions for free for people who would not otherwise have got photography of their baby bump or bundle of joy. Why free when I know on average even at the studios I've worked for the average family would spend over $300 on photographs I've taken? Because I feel that if I don't have anything in my portfolio to show people they wont be able to visualize what I will be able to take for them, so therefore don't know what it's worth. Also I'd rather do it free than setting a really low price for my building portfolio sessions and limit myself to that for in the future.

When I first spoke to Amanda she was41 weeks pregnant with her second child and so I knew we had no time to loose. My next available day I went around and started my first on Location maternity shoot. She said she felt a lot more at ease doing the photos at her own house compared to at a studio and It was great because if I got an idea for a photo, like with the sonogram photo we could easily access whatever it was that we needed.

Memory Mondays Week 5

Half way there through the weeks that I'm bringing you random side stories from the year that was 2010 which haven't been shown here at all yet. This week is another cupcake related one, so just in case you're like me and haven't had breakfast yet, you better do so before you go raiding your baking cupboard to start making some of the sweet little things!

So one day I was walking down Spring Garden Rd on my way to work from the gym and I saw a poster on a telegraph pole saying two of my favorite things, CUPCAKE camp and PHOTOGRAPHY by Chelle Wooten Photography, I went to NSCAD with Chelle so I was able to ask her all the details that I was unable to get in my rush to work that morning. You can check out her blog about it here.

These cupcake campfire's won the best presentation award

So basically it was a charity event and you went along with some cupcakes that you baked and a note, of the $5 or $10 variety. I wore my cupcake dress and felt sick after eating 2 cupcakes, the magnolias recipe one- (HAD to sample that one to see if it was anything like the original, and I'm happy to say it was very close) and a cookie monster one, because well, it was just so darn cute!

My signature pink icing was also in attendance..

Photokina (Part 3)

I've left the two big guns til last, Nikon and Canon. When I worked at Atlantic Photo, everyone would come in the store and see the display cases that we had and ask, so which is better, Nikon or Canon. To which I would always reply, 'It depends on the person and the camera' I would also always encourage people to check out snapsort, to compare and contrast features of different cameras in point form. I personally, and a Canon fan but this is due toafewreasons,The first (and only so far) DSLR camera that I bought, is a Canon. I like their range of lensesand the colors that the sensors come out with. I also don't mind that the sensors tend to 'work' the image a bit because I honestly don't do much photo editing at all so thats fine with me.

In the first pavillion that you walked into in Photokina Canon had escalators taking you up to the color and intensely lit canon floor, not shared with anyone else and occupied by the variety of cameras and lenses as well as all the other consumer products like printers and scanners. I had my photo taken and printed on one of their new at home 4x6 printers which claims to have the photo stay good for 100 years. I would like to see something that is not chemically based last that long but anyway, the guy seemed to like my photo, probably because of the dirty great big (and very worn) Canon camera strapped around my neck. He did although ask me to put down the Nikon bag which was given to me at a very early stage to carry all of my freebies in.

Me, with a mighty fine piece of glass..

Taken with EF800 F5.6L IS USM

Taken with EF400 f2.8L IS USM

Newest in the series of my favorite point and shoot cameras.

By the time I made my way to the Nikon floor, to be honest I was getting a little tired so I didn't take as much time to walk around as I did at the Canon floor but I did like how they were personalizing the products for everyone, I am telephoto, I am sharp, I am precise, I am imagination.. On of my faves, I am marco polo.. Which had a double page spread in the Photokina times and I took a photo of it while in my hostel in Berlin and I like the wallet with the map on it sitting with my ear buds and phone.

Impossible Project weere of course there and although they are only relatively new on the scene, to me they are another of the big players. At their modest stall they had Beppe Bolchi doing creative techniques on impossible instant films and there weren't many people there so I got to ask him lots of questions and get up close to look. I'm still keen to try it out but the thing is, with instant film, If you take a photo and decide to play with it then that is it. It is like deleting a raw file or scratching a negative, but sometimes that is the way to get the best out of your work..

The last place I visited at photokina before running off to kind a post office to send all my goodies home was the gallery, with various different methods of hanging and loads of different styles and series I was in my element because in the end, that is what the whole show is about, coming out of it with the equipment and knowledge to make these beautiful photographs, not how many free things you can give away or how great the lighting is on your models.

Photokina (Part 2)

Kicking off where Photokina Part 1 left off, but with less criticism about the flamboyancy of the event, and more about the fun of it!

So as I briefly mentioned when I first got there I headed straight for the Lomography stand, I knew that Lomography were giving away free cameras to anyone who came to them with a good enough proposal for a new LomoLocation to put on their map and I had the perfect addition, The other London. When I found out about the giveaways while I was still in England I had a arts and crafts extravaganza and cut and paste my way to winning a new Colorsplash camera! After I finish my series of blogs on Photokina I'm going to do one on Lomo, coz it deserves one all to itself..

Fujifilm were also there with a both their consumer products and their professional products, I made a softcover book that they were trying to sell the new machinery to vendors and the products out of the machines to the consumers and so i took my chance to do it for free and basically how the new machinery differs to others is that you input 100 images, it uses 'smart technology' to then put the images in order and group them how it thinks they should go. I asked the woman doing it if it used the date of the photos at all but she said it didn't but I don't know how much I believe her to be honest but it did do a good job, however it did it and so I got a little booklet of Oktoberfest photos.

Next up the as I call 'Luxury' camera manufacturers were there, Leica with their giant lenses and Pro photographers doing shoots behind glass..

Hassleblad, another of the luxury camera manufacturers, had Pro Gunther Raupp using the just released at Photokina, Ferrari branded medium format camera doing a car interior workshop. On a Ferrari, of course!

Also at Photokina they had an Underwater imaging world, where you could get into a diving pool and try out the latest underwater cameras, to be honest I didn't really take too much notice of what was going on down there because, other than Fuji, I didn't recognize any of the other manufacturers names. When I think underwater, I think Olympus because I have had for the past four years one of their Shockproof, waterproof cameras which treated me very well being dropped deliberately into peoples beers at the club, smashed on the cement outside clubs and taken swimming in various chlorinated pools and salt water at the beach, and it wasn't until it got a light bump from a coffee table that it decided to stop working and I invested in a Canon D10- which I think had far superior image quality and is extremely quick compared to any of the Olympus cameras on the market that I've seen.

Panasonic were also there with new technologies including the 3d tv's and cameras. It was quite a sight seeing a bunch of people standing around with 3d glasses on. In my opinion, out of all the new technologies that I saw at Photokina that this is going to be the one which will develop and grow and eventually convert a great deal of the market into wanting to see everything in 3D.