A pause for thought…

I’ve been laid up for a few days with the worst cold/flu that I’ve had for years. I’m blaming it in the fact that I didn’t properly get over the last one and then  got very, very cold over at Bisham Abbey last week.

The time off has been extremely useful in helping me to consolidate my thoughts and plan for the future. The fundamental problem still remains: how to raise my public profile to the extent that I’m converting leads into clients? The answer is, as always, down to marketing. For that, the main weapon in my arsenal is

Continue reading A pause for thought… »

Wedding Seminar, Day 4

And so we come to the end of the course. Today’s theme being all about the business.

This was the module that I was most looking forward to and one of the primary reasons I booked myself onto the course. Through my portraiture work I very rapidly realised that to run a photographic business, the photography was only a very small per centage of the whole. Marketing, sales, the supply chain, order processing, accounts all play a major part too as do the protective elements of insurance and legal. As much as I would love to keep costs down by doing it all myself, I have to be  a realist. Some of this is going to have to be outsourced. If not, I’ll be saddled with a lot of peripheral activities that I don’t really want to do. Continue reading Wedding Seminar, Day 4 »

Wedding Seminar, Day 3

Day 3 was post processing day and I learnt soooo much too. There is a defiinite benefit to be gained from spending a day “looking over the shoulder” of a veritable expert in Lightroom and Photoshop. The tutor was David McNeil. He is an accomplished photographer in his own right and a maestro of post processing. I’d recommend anyone to go and check out his work on his blog. Continue reading Wedding Seminar, Day 3 »

Wedding Seminar, Day 2

IMG_4046Day 2 has been even better than day 1 was yesterday. Great shoot this afternoon with two fantastic models and a bounty of amazing images too. Can’t complain.

We were shooting at Hebdon House which is a really spectacular venue. Apart from the last few that were taken outside, all the shots were taken inside in some really lovely, soft, natural daylight. One thing I have definitely learned over the last two days is simply that it is possible to work in low light without resorting to pulling the flash or studio lights out of the kit bag. That said, we were fortunate to have a sunny day with blue skies. Had it been raining outside it would have been a whole different story. Even shooting wide open at f2.8 at a high ISO may not be enough to cut it. That is definitely one to try on another day. Continue reading Wedding Seminar, Day 2 »

Miracles in no light

IMG_3929Going for bragging rights here. Sorry but I simply couldn’t resist it. Bagged this shot earlier today. It was a dark wooden door, underneath a staircase, in a dimly lit room. I’ve cropped it and rendered it down, but the original is pin sharp.

The image itself was taken on my 5DmkII with the EF 70-200 f2.8L IS lens. ISO 6400, f2.8 @ 1/15th, handheld. Yes, really. Surprised even myself with this one.

There was a bit of luminence noise in the RAW file, but Lightroom has done a reasonable job of removing it.

Have fun,
Gavin