Yep, that's why I do this.

I'm just in the process of getting prepard for my first ever wedding fair on Sunday ( The East Midlands Wedding Show , if you're in the area drop by and say hi) and amongst all of the decision making on what to wear and how to present myself I've been sorting out which pictures to show.
The albums were decided on weeks ago (hey, getting stuff custom made in Italy isn't an overnight thing), the flyers are just right and the canvasses look really cool so it's all down to what I'm going to be showing on my nice big monitor slideshow.
Looking back on some of the pictures from the last few weddings I've done I started smiling, even had a giggle at a few. I got reminded that encouraging 230 people to do jazz hands for a photograph just so I could get them smiling and enjoying having their picture taken was a huge amount of fun.

I really like looking at the pictures, I know the happy couples do too. It's nice to be involved in what is a really romantic occasion with (usually) some laughs thrown in.
That's why I do wedding photography and it's nice to remind myself of that.

An inspiration? Me? Gosh. And why a red dress is important.

There's a bit of back story with this one, so I hope you're sitting comfortably.
A couple of weeks ago a rather nice man came round to my house from RSG Portable Appliance Testing (who are very reasonably priced, efficient and get back to you promptly - no, I'm not on commision) to do the tests on my gear to make sure it's all safe. So while he was doing lots of technical things I made him a coffee and we got chatting.
He mentioned his girlfriend was just doing an online photography course and was having a few issues with portraits. I said that she should drop me a message if she needed a little chat so a few days later she did.
So on Saturday I picked up a few things and droppped round to her flat.
She seemed a little nervous at first but we got talking about a few things and some silly jokes later we got into the reason I was there. Her dad is into photography and she wanted to learn some more herself so she went to a local photography club (which she found to be quite stuffy) and with the course that she was doing she was finding some of it a bit difficult.

Now just to be clear - I'm a firm believer that if somone is trying to teach you something and you don't understand it it's not your fault it's their's. They need to find a better or different way to explain it so it makes sense to you. End of. Looking briefly through the course materials it seemed like there was a lot of space taken up saying what to do, but not really a massive amount of detail on how to do it well.

So anyway, we got to talking about portraits and she showed me some printouts of her assignment, which was to take two with natural light and two with artificial light. The natural light ones actually weren't too bad, the artificial light ones were less succesful, but they all had a similar problem which is quite common when people first start taking portraits. Their faces, particularly their noses, were slightly distorted. They seemed out of proportion, you ever had that? Well there's a very easy fix.

Step back and zoom in
This is going to sound really stupid but if something is closer to you it looks bigger. We all know this. So when you're taking a photograph if you have the camera really close to the person's face anything that sticks out towards you will become bigger in the final shot. The nose is a common one, but if they have angled their head up a bit the chin will look a lot broader (actually a good sneaky trick to make men look like they have a strong jaw too if used carefully).

So we chatted some more and she said that her pictures weren't as sharp as she'd like them to be. I asked to see her bridge camera and noticed it was already in manual mode. Yay! She had the confidence to take the training wheels off and make all the decisions herself.
I had a look at the pictures on her laptop (and zoomed right in) that she wasn't happy with and saw the problem she was having wasn't with the focus but parts of the picture that should be dots (pores in the skin for example) were actually very short lines, again a common issue but easy to solve.

Shutter Speed
Some of the portraits she'd taken it were in quite dark conditions so she'd looked at her light meter, adjusted her settings and then taken the shot. All good so far. The problem was that, looking at the data for the picture on her computer, she had set the shutter speed far too slow (in the case of the one I looked at it was about a third of a second). If you're taking a photograph of a person and you're hand holding the camera it's a good idea to have a reasonably fast shutter speed, anything from 1/50 of a second and up, so you don't risk a slight blur when you take the picture or if the person moves a little. It also depends on the lens you're using and how good you are at keeping the camera really still but this is a reasonable rule of thumb.
Now you can go slower than this but you would need to experiment with what works for you.

So after that she had a look in my camera bag (lust shining in her eyes) and then I told her how much it all cost (starting her wondering what the hell she's gotten herself into with this photography thing).
We talked about her next assignment, which is to recreate a photograph she likes and had a quick browse through some of the ones already done by other people on the course... Hmmmm.
I reckoned she could do better than most of them.

 After some looking around online and talking about what sort of thing she liked and how to see where the light was coming from in the shots (hint - look for the reflections in the eyes and where the shadows are falling) I suggested she tried to recreate one of my favourite portraits:

Gloria Swanson by Edward Steichen for Vanity Fair - 1924

It does require some care and attention to detail, particularly with where the focus is and where the light is falling on the subject, but is doable without huge amounts of expensive lighting equipment.

So I left her feeling pretty happy and excited and went home to the pile of washing up I ought to have done earlier (my wife puts up with a lot).

Later that day she posted on Facebook that she'd had an inspirational afternoon, I got a kind of warm fuzzy feeling from that, and what did it cost me?

A little petrol and a couple of hours.

This got me to thinking. I like helping other people, I like the feeling it gives me so why don't I do it more often?

I've seen an idea floating around online started by The Bloggess involving the travelling red dress. Essentially it boils down to women giving themselves a boost by wearing an absolutely beautiful but thoroughly impractical red dress (imagine going down to the supermarket in a red ballgown on a Wednesday afternoon for no other reason than to feel wonderful).
The dress then gets handed on to someone else and they do it too. I liked the idea so much I've liked the Travelling Red Dress Facebook Page and offered to donate my services as photographer for a red dress day.

I'll let you know how it all turns out.

A little side project

So anyway, my wife has been struggling with her barely functioning laptop for quite some time. It kept misbehaving, doing impressions of a moody teenager and having a tantrum for no reason and generally dying on her when she least expected it.
So this year in the January sales she got a new one.
It's shiny.
It's red.
It actually functions as something other than a doorstop.
In short, it works.
So she made a simple request for me to video her destroying the old one, giving vent to all those frustrations that had built up over the many many months of trying to coax some life out of it.
Then she turned her back for one second and I'd done a storyboard, scouted locations, thought through her makeup and wardrobe and had a great idea about the song I wanted the destruction to occur to.
So, after spending a long time editing it all together I present the End of the PoS.

Thanks go to Tova for being generally wonderful and wearing not a lot in very chilly weather and to the lovely chaps who are Talanas for allowing me to use their carefully thought out and meticulously performed music for what is, in essence, actually pretty silly.
Hope you like it.

I love breasts not cryptic messages

What bees can you get milk from?
Boo bees (boobies... get it? Just me? Oh. ok then.)

I like breasts.
I like them in all different shapes and sizes.
I like to photograph them like this:

The amazing Jess Abidde

So far no surprises right? This is pretty common. I mean, you just have to watch everyone's favourite Aunty Gok for a few minutes before you realise that even gay men love breasts.
Women love breasts. They talk about them, support them, dress them up and decorate them and yet somewhere in that wonderful place that is Facebook there is yet again a campaign to put out cryptic messages that in some way are supposed to help them.
You may well have seen a few odd status updates on Facebook - well more odd than usual - with no explanation as to what they mean. I'm not here to spoil the current game but in the past it's involved posting barnyard animals and locations around the house (where the ladies in question kept their handbags but the last part wasn't included so all we got was 'I like it by the bed.' or 'I like it next to the sofa.' the animals one I still don't quite understand).
Men are supposed to be kept in the dark about this, as the message being circulated says 'It's time to confuse the men again (not that it's really hard to do ;])'
Leaving aside the glaring sexism of that statement, I have one question.

How does this raise awareness for Breast Cancer?

Posting what essentially boils down to a massive non sequitur doesn't really help make everyone aware that breast cancer is an important health issue that involves all of us. Not only should men who are lucky enough to have regular contact with women's breasts know what to look for but should also know what to look for in themselves.
Yup. That's right. Men get breast cancer too. The incidence is less than 1% of the female rate but it still exists. Should men be excluded from this issue?

So I'm stating it nice and clearly. I care about the health of the woman I love. I care about the health of my friends. Stop all this silly childish nonsense on Facebook and actually say something useful.
Instead of being random post these and get involved:
Breast Awareness - What to look for
Like the Breast Cancer Care Facebook Page
Take part in a Breast Cancer Care Fundraising Event

New Camera! Errrrrrrmmm, eh?

A little before Christmas I went along with a bunch of friends to go and see the Red Bull Racing team event in Milton Keynes. A little chat with one of them went along these lines...

I got my camera out with what I affectionately call Lenscalibur on the front (a pretty big really cool lens).

Her - Oh, I just got a new camera. I should have brought it along. You could've shown me how to use it. I don't really know what to do with it.
Me - Oh, sure no problem. Quick question, did you read the manual at all?
Her - No of course not. (looking at me like I'd started to dribble.)
Me - Riiiiiight.

This seems pretty common with people I talk to so I figured it was about time to share a few tips for those of us who were lucky enough to get a new camera this year.

1) Embrace your inner geek and read the manual.

Yes all of it. No you're not allowed to skip the boring bits, they're character building. Sit with the camera there while you're reading and try out the different buttons and switches so you know where they all are. It won't bite (much).

2) Go take a lot of pictures.
Sounds pretty obvious right? The thing is that if the camera only comes out occasionally you're not going to remember what everything does. Practice so that when you need to take a picture at a party you can get it set up right and start shooting rather than having that “Smile... No wait, hang on a sec, that didn't work... Let me just try this... I'll just be a minute...” thing that we've all come to know and grimace through.

3) Take lots more pictures (but in different situations).

Ok, so this looks a lot like number 2, but there's a subtle difference. Your camera will probably have a setting for all sorts of different things like landscapes, portraits, pets, fireworks, indoors, wet Thursday afternoons... Well maybe not the last one, but if you deliberately put yourself in those different sort of places to take particular shots you're going to see how it all works.

Done all that? Great! You know how your camera works now right? Awesome.
Sneaky trick time...

Half pressing the shutter.
Picture the scene... You're in the pub. The camera comes out to immortalise everyone's advanced state of refreshment and they all dive on top of each other in the corner to pose with stupid grins. You point the camera, say smile and then you all wait for an eternity for the shot to happen. This results in very fixed smiles, a glazed look in the eyes, someone getting bored and moving out of shot and generally all that stuff that we've come to love seeing on Facebook pages.

But there is an answer.

Get everyone roughly where you want them. Now press the shutter button but only halfway down. The camera wakes up, does it's little focussing thing and decides if you need the flash. Essentially it gets itself all ready (most cameras, including point and shoot jobs, work like this – you may well find it in the manual that you carefully read under focus locking or something similar).

Don't move your finger.

Now shout at everyone to smile, push your finger all the way down and boom! The picture gets taken without all that tedious waiting around.

Incidentally here's a couple of shots I took from the Red Bull day.

You can find out more at the Red Bull Racing website

And for those of you that are interested here's a picture of Lenscalibur, isn't it pretty?

More sneaky tricks (and maybe a few different pictures) coming soon. I am going to be updating this blog on a much more regular basis so if there's anything you'd like to know just drop me a message or leave a comment.
I'll do my best to help.

No Cheese!

'And now everybody...smile!' Click.
The sounds that are at the start of some truly cringe-worthy pictures.
Fake smiles held slightly too long so the eyes glaze over a little, we've all seen them and had them taken of us. Someone says 'Cheese', we all repeat it and end up looking like Wallace having a go at Grommit.
But don't worry, there is a better way.

As a photographer it never ceases to amaze me how often I come across people behind the camera who just don't have great interpersonal skills. They have all the technical knowledge and they have all the gear but they forget that there is real a person standing in front of them.
Now to be fair I do get a bit silly at times when I'm taking portraits (and if we're going for a moody look it can be slightly counterproductive) but on your wedding day I reckon you're supposed to be happy.
Result?
Well some nice really nice photographs (you can see loads in the RobG Photography wedding galleries) and qute a few silly ones.

I want people to come away from having their photograph taken with a smile on their faces.
Over 200 people in a group doing jazz hands at a recent wedding in Kent can't be wrong.

When the bridesmaids are too tall something must be done!

Nice to see him making that special effort with his appearance on the wedding day isn't it?

The jazz hands method of relieveing tension just before the ceremony.

I can't take any credit for organising this awesome bit of photobombing by their son, it was all him.

The camera never lies and Photoshop is evil!

So the AMA has said that photoshop is evil. This headline alone has been enough to trigger rants across the internet.

Lots of people have leaped onto the photoshop bashing bandwagon and denounced it with many photographers saying that they don't use photoshop. Others have said that they don't alter their images in any way – presenting them just as they are in camera.

Very laudable you might say. But is there a little bit more to it than that?

One particular photographer who's a member of an online forum I'm on stated proudly that he didn't photoshop his images. A few posts later, and with some people carefully examining some of the work in his portfolio, he admitted that most of his images are actually manipulated, just using a different piece of software.

Not exactly a shining beacon of honesty there.

Presenting the image as it is in camera does demonstrate lots of things but does this show they don't do anything to change the image? Really?

Take a look at this fantastic portrait of Judy Garland.

Judy Garland by George Hurrel

The light is positioned to minimise the appearance of any flaws, the chin is lifted to elongate the neck and the arms are raised to create a much more slim body shape – all controlled by a great photographer.

Result – an extremely flattering photograph but unmanipulated? That's a matter of opinion.

While we're here, lets look at the origin of the word 're-touching'. Pretty much ever since there have been photographs there has been a very skilled artist with a brush who would literally paint over various parts of the final print to make it as perfect as possible. This combined with all the little tricks in the darkroom such as dodging and burning meant that an awful lot could be done to change the final outcome. The only difference between those days and now is that we have more control and the techniques are more accessible.

So, where do I stand on this issue? Well I agree with the AMA up to a point. They don't actually say that all Photoshop usage is bad. They do say

'The appearance of advertisements with extremely altered models can create unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image – especially among impressionable children and adolescents.' source - AMA new policies

So if that's the problem there is a very simple solution.
Education.
If everyone knows that pretty much every picture they see in a magazine has been altered they will see them for what they are – an artistic work (admittedly some of them with questionable artistic merit but still...) not a realistic representation. Much like portraits that were painted of the nobility in the 17^th Century they are designed to flatter the subject, not to show them as they actually are.

I have tweaked the figure of my subjects in the past (only in Photoshop, there's a name for people who do that in real life) and will do so again in the future, but only by a small amount.

If a bride has an inconvenient blemish on her wedding day I will still remove it on the computer.
In one person in a group isn't smiling I'm still going to go to a different picture and swap their head from the one where they were.
I don't see anything wrong with that.

So there it is. My camera doesn't lie, but my finished pictures might fib a bit.

And finally if you want to have a look at an opposing viewpoint -

A feminist opinion on manipulated photographs