Well it's been a while since my last post, as you know, work has been overtaking me a bit recently.

I'm in the middle of re-vamping the wife's website that deals with designer wedding dresses, Society Brides.

The hard part is always the on-line shop as stocking it takes forever, not to mention all the product photographs etc.

There is one section I'm quite pleased with...it's a new carouselle wedding dress slideshow . If I say so myself, I think it's turned out quite well.

It's been a stupidly busy year and quite frankly I haven't been able to give as much attention to wedding photography as I would like.

Thanks to all those of you who have been patient with me whilst waiting for prints, albums and other stuff. Apologies for the unusually long delays. We have hardly had time to take a breathe.

My wedding books are now full for 2008 and most of 2009.

In the mean time, we have been focusing on studio photography and as was referred to in our last post - the search optimization business. What is search optimization (SEO)? It's a big subject, but follow the next link and you'll get a bit more information on the subject.

SEO clinic - striving to be the best SEO company in the UK.

Sorry, folks, I've not had much to say recently as we've been rushed off our feet over the past three months. I don't think I've ever worked so many hours.

Weddings are almost certainly up this year in the UK, with most pro photographers reporting full order books for the year.

In the trade we use the term 'Uncle Bob' for the aspiring photographer who, having got his new toy, now thinks it's just a matter of pointing and shooting. There was certainly a rise in the number of UB's during the 'I've got this great new digital camera' period. The majority of couples are now realising that if they want professional looking pics, then they are still better off visiting a professional.

The gap between a pro wedding photographer's work and the amateur has been steadily growing since the emergence of Photoshop as the must-have software for the professional. I occassionaly go to the odd seminar by fellow pros, and the standards they are exacting are simply amazing compared to a few years ago.

Oh sure, Uncle Bob is still alive and well, but it's gratifying that couples are recognizing the standards that pros are setting right now. Dave -Society Brides for Designer wedding dresses

We now have a PDA / mobile phone friendly version of the Rusty Search.

Find it with this link: Rusty Hippo PDA / Mobile Phone friendly Search

New Design Agency to Showcase Our Services

There are so many elements wrapped up in the photograph / graphic and web design business that as a design agency, it is sometimes difficult to showcase them all at the same time without appearing as a 'Jack of all trades'.

We've tried to achieve this with our new site http://www.theviewfromthetop.co.uk

The new site talks a bit about our complete list of skills such as SEO services, web hosting, graphic layout and design, web design, database design and management, internet services and, of course, photography (including product photography).

SEO Services (search engine optimisation) are an increasingly important part of the whole website package. After all. what use is a fabulous website if the only ones able to find it are the site's owners?

Preparation photo's are as popular as ever, and we've started to take them as early as we can. This one , for instance, was taken in the bridalwear shop during a fitting:



It's pleasant for a bride to be able to look back in years to come to see this happy stage of her life. We can so easily let a lot of these type of moments go by, and before we know where we are, the years roll by and great days like these are lost forever.

Those of you who know me, will be aware of my art photography and associated poetry, that is generally kept separate from my mainstream work.

Hopefully by the end of next month the new web gallery will be up. Here's a taster for the time being:







The theme's tend to be Gothic architecture related with wistful reflections of the past probably best summed up by this line from Thomas Moore: 'So sleeps the pride of former days'.

Managed to get along to Notting Hill Carnival the other day.....Bit worrying to see so many people squashing into the streets around the procesion.

The Police certainly had their hands full, especially into the evening as thousands seemed to be pouring onto the already crowded pavements. We saw a few people injured as barriers gave way. Sad when, in general, the event is such a happy one.

Most of those in the carnival had put an enormous amount of effort into their costumes. There were, of course a few hangers on along the way, which spoilt the look of the procession slightly, but all in all it was a magnificent display.

A friend let told me last night that my Wikipedia entry was up for deletion.

"What Wikipedia entry?" I asked.

"The one under photgraphers".

Apparently someone has very kindly been doing a bit of research about me and plonking it in to the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Well I am flattered, and if you read this, whoever you are, thanks for taking the time out to do it...although if I were you I'd stick to something more worthwhile than writing about me, I don't know...perhaps consider writing an article on watching paint dry.

That's the trouble with a bit of fame..before you know it, everyone else knows more about you than you do yourself.

Anyway, it doesn't look like it'll be around for long as our American cousins don't really follow what's going on in dear old Blighty.

On another subject altogether, I went along for the ride to a photoshoot that two of my employees were arranging yesterday. They had managed to find a fantastic grafitti-laden car park quite near to the studios. Superb art-work.

I'll post a few pics in the next couple of days.

Bye for now

Hi Just a quickie

Interesting email from Adobe to let me know that they have taken over the technology behind Pixmantic's Rawshooter.

Adobe have absorbed this into the new Lightbox project and have promised a free copy to all RSP subscribers.

Everyone who used RSP knew that it was a good program and it doesn't surprise me that Adobe wanted it onboard.

Interesting to see how many films the director has cobbled together to create this masterpiece.

At a recent fund-raising event for Bournemouth School for girls, Society Brides and many of the stores from Castlepoint shopping centre provided gowns and day-wear for pupils at the school to wear on the catwalk.



There was a great buzz at the school and a general air of excitement throughout the whole show.

I just happened to have a camera with me, (with wrong lens, of course!).

Click here to go to our wedding site and click on the pic to see a slideshow: BSG Slideshow

Society Brides Provided the enormous ball-gowns at the end of the show with some by style guru Lionel anthony and promwear supremos Razzle

There's always a danger of putting people in boxes. My feelings are that we should never judge someone by what we know them for, and always assume that they are capable of excellence inother fields....

I suppose what I am trying to say can be illustrated by Christopher Walken appearing in Spike Jonze video of Fat Boy Slim's 'Weapon of Choice'...




Walken, although not known for being a dancer, gives a fantastic perfomance here and proves that we shouldn't make too many assumptions about people until we have got to know them well.

Most portrait photographers will tell you how hard it is to get a bloke in front of the camera.

Generally wives, mother and girlfriends think it's a great idea, whereas the other half emphatically does not.

All of a sudden those long put off jobs around the house take on monumental importance on the day of the photoshoot. Long lost friends suddenly turn up at the house with a nod and a wink to whisk him away for the day.

So what's the problem?

Well basically we guys are used to being photographed really badly...School photo with that awful fringe, mother with her instamatic trying to catch you at an embarrasing moment.....

What we guys really want is to look cool.

Photoshop has certainly made epic inroads into the whole imaging business. Since it's emergence around 15 odd years ago, it has revolutionized the way that many photographers now work.

Well I've just got back from Focus imaging.

Big surprise that Canon did not have a stand! What is going on? Are they becoming complacent? I know they virtually own the new digital market-place, but what about supporting the customer?

All the other usual suspects were there of course, although it is interesting to see how many mergers there have been in the last twelve months eg Pentax and Tamron.

A few more losses to the industry - Apparently Konica Minolta have just chucked in the towel and by all accounts are selling what's left of their share of the digital market to Sony. This is of course on the back of so many others....Agfa, Bronica et al.

We live in strange times!

I've just heard that Kodak weddings are calling it a day as well.

Whatever lies ahead, it is certainly going to be in a general atmosphere of change. Maybe that's not a bad thing, after so many years of comparative sameiness.... although I am sure the thousands of ex-employees of the fore mentioned companies wouldn't agree too readily.

Ho hum, I suppose it's time to polish the lenses for the year ahead......

Bye for now.

A friend of mine (also a pro photographer) had a bit of a problem this week. He'd left some of his wedding albums on display in a prominent wedding dress shop (that shall remain nameless.

All seemed well until he got an angry call from the shop owner, who had had a very upset client complaining that one of the albums he had on display was of her daughter and that they had not given their permission for him to use it for advertising.

Needless to say, my friend was horrified, and tried to remedy things as quickly as possible.

Is there a lesson to be learned here?

Well, the truth is, he already has a clause in his contract that allows him to use the pics for advertising unless the clients ask otherwise.

What this goes to show is that it would still be well worth remembering that we should still ask permission personally and O.K. it with the client.

He could have lost his slot in the bridal wear shop (which would have cost him a few clients each year) and worse still, any bad feeling we create with clients new or old is often quite costly in terms of the reccomendations that we lose.

There's a lot of tosh written about decent studio portraits always requiring five lights. Yes, sure most of us use them from time to time, but it is altogether more satisfying to see how few we really do require to nail all the required elements.

We have been experimenting with one light for quite a while. Perhaps an obvious choice for low-key lighting. We will often use a single side facing main light with a black panel between it and the white backgorund to achieve some quite pleasing results. Add a reflector on the other side of the subject to brighten up those really dark shadows, and it starts to look good.

Low-key sorted, but what about high-key? Impossible? Certainly not! The trick here is to place the subject close to the background and get the main light in close with a largeish softbox (1m square or larger) and angling down at around a 30 degree angle. Make sure you install reflectors all round the subject. Use one as a kicker, one as a hair light and one either side of the subject to get rid of the tell-tale shadows on the background and hey-presto....high-key lighting.

Not convinced?

Try it.

Yes, sure there will be quite a bit of fiddling around with exposure and reflectors. We would tend to use silver as gold can give uneven colour temperature issues and white may be a little flat with only one light source.

The point I'm trying to make is that although most of us use multiple lights, it doesn't have to be that way. If a photographer is just starting out in portraiture, he/she doesn't need to feel hampered by not having huge amounts of kit.

If I'm truly honest, I normally prefer to work with four or five lights, as it allws me to build more depth into the shot, but it doesn't hurt us to experiment from time to time.