Thursday 26 February 2009


I had the opportunity to do something a bit different to the normal stuff I do at work. I was helping a friend with a car magazine he's putting together for a car club he's in. It's amazing to me that you can google 'photoshop bullet hole tutorial' and get loads of hits! (no pun intended).

Anyway, I'm not sure if I went a bit OTT with the red splodges but it was fun.

We're planning a night car shoot soon as I'd like to try and leave the shutter open for some star trails while popping a couple of flashes on the car. Just need to find a cool location.

For a while I've been wanting to try out some different styles and while car photography will be fun what I really want to try to achieve is a more 'lifestyle/advertising' look. I'm a huge fan of Nick Onken's work. It has a certain modern vibrant look about it that I love and wow is he not afraid of any flare. He uses it brilliantly :) So I'm a happy snapper tonight because I just found this link www.nickonken.com/Stories It's the page with all his 'stories' on it, basically photo stories of the places he's been and some of his shoots. There's so much inspiration here for anyone interested in his style of shooting.

I'm hoping to get some lifestyle shoots booked up soon but first I need to find a location that you can drive a car into, has a fantastic backdrop and has a chip shop close by! South Queensferry anyone?

Cheers
Ian

Wednesday 25 February 2009

Hello and welcome to the first post on my brand new blog. What do people generally talk about on their first blog? I've no idea. I just hope this will be a positive experience for me by giving me further encouragement to get out and take more pictures.

I generally take interiors and some portraits for editorial purposes and while I enjoy that and want to constantly improve, I'd also like to branch out into more 'lifestyle' and possibly fashion work.

I'm hoping that this blog will be a place where I can follow my own progress and lay out any thoughts I have on the way. Perhaps someone else will find it useful in some way but even if I'm talking to myself I think it'll still be worth it :)

I'll be doing something I've been thinking about for a while. I'll be posting up some of my earlier pictures and comparing them with more recent stuff. I'm a big fan of David Hobby's 'Strobist' site from which I've learned loads about lighting for portrait and that one site has improved my pictures no end.

I also still love landscape photography but having a wee boy of 3 and a half doesn't leave me as much time to get out and do it so hopefully I'll use this blog as an incentive to get out and make a little time to take some new pics.

So I thought I'd post an older picture just now that I'm actually fairly happy with. It's of the Forth Bridges taken a few years ago as a test for my then new Sigma 10-20 lens.

Cheers
Ian