A little birthday tearsheet to help me celebrate!  One of my favourite ever fire photos is published in today’s Bournemouth Echo.

The subject is Simon Chainey at his Southern Lights Festival back in June.

Two weddings in three days is a record for me, and they couldn’t have been more different.  I was a little worried about traffic and parking, but I need not have been, traffic was light, and I was able to find “rock star parking” everywhere I had to go.

This was a much more traditional wedding, a few photos of the groom preparing, and then a few more of the bride, before heading off to Chelsea Old Town Hall for the ceremony.

A much more intimate affair this was than the Indian wedding a few days earlier, with maybe 35 people to see the couple wed.  The big difference for me was witnessing the raw emotion.  Seeing the groom cry, hopefully because he was stupidly happy rather than “oh shit what have I done?”!

The wedding lunch was at the lovely Aubergine restaurant in Park Walk, Chelsea.  I was treated to the same menu as the wedding guests, although I had a special table of one, all to myself.  The food was great, as was the service.

After doing a few photos of the happy couple in Battersea Park there was a brief lull in proceedings before the evening celebrations at Mare Moto on the King’s Road.  Sadly I wasn’t able to sample the food there as I left with a hot date shortly after the cutting of the cake.

With perfect weather I thoroughly enjoyed shooting my first wedding in London.  Thank you to Marita and Jakob for allowing me to be a part of your very special day.

PS. The pigeon was eating the rice that had been throw over the couple. 

I’ve never photographed an Indian wedding before so when I got the last minute call to be the photographer for the grooms side of the family last week it peaked my interest.

I wasn’t familiar with the Indian culture, so I had no idea what to expect.   All the weddings I’ve shot before I’ve been there on one day, and that’s it.  This one I was there on and off over 4 days, including from 9am thru till 1am the following day on the actual wedding day.  Not quite my longest day of photography ever, but close.

For most of the time I didn’t have a clue what was going on, there were ceremonies and traditional stuff happening, so I did my best to get good photos.  Most of the ceremonies took place in the grooms and brides house, and that normally meant as many people in the room (small rooms at that) as possible.  Photographing wasn’t easy.

There were coach rides, two white doves, a horse-drawn cart, lots of colours, a marching band, lots of alcohol, and the loudest DJ ever entertaining 500 people at the Southampton Guildhall.  If I had to sum up the wedding, it would have to be that Indians sure know how to party!

Congratulations to Gurpal & Sukchan!

August Bank Holiday Monday in Southampton might have been a bit of a gamble with the weather for a location shoot.  However it worked out perfectly.  After a slightly cloudy and slow start to the shoot we were treated to some perfect afternoon sun.

It was my first time working with Czech Republic model Eva, and also my first with my lighting director (big shiny silver thing holder), Pete K.

We started the shoot with a chat over drinks at the Holiday Inn hotel in Southampton before heading out to shoot.  As I said, the shoot started slowly.  This is fairly normal when working with a model for the first time, but the long breaks while the sun was hidden behind the clouds weren’t helping matters.

Having run out of locations to use in the centre of Southampton (it’s hard doing sexy swimsuit stuff when there is people around), I decided to move to a location in Nursling that I’ve used a couple of times previously.  The location, down a back street is quite industrial and dirty, but I knew it would be quiet.

A couple of “lads” arrived in a van shortly after, and they offered to let us shoot inside the scrap yard that had previously been locked.  They were making a few inappropriate comments towards Eva, but their goodwill gave us access to a fun location so we had to grin and bare it.  In the end I decided it was best we vacate the scrap yard, so we packed up, I drove around the corner, waited for a bit for the lads to go about their way before returning to the road to finish our shoot.

It was quiet a challenge choosing the photos from the shoot for this post, I’ve made a concious decision to keep the more raunchy images off the blog, and finding my favourites from the less sexy images was hard work.

The shoot was for a submission to American Curves, and as always it’s bit hit and miss, some you win and all that.  Fingers crossed Bob & Rico like Eva’s photos.

Last Wednesday I had a fitness photoshoot with Henrik scheduled.  The day before I checked the weather forecast, it looked bad.  I gave him the chance to re-schedule, but he’d been dieting and training hard for Wednesday, and was travelling at the weekend so re-scheduling wasn’t an option.

The day came, and the weather was indeed awful.  Cold, wet, and windy.  It’s at times like this I wish I had a studio.

So to plan b it was.  We started the shoot in the Bargate Centre multi-storey carpark in the centre of Southampton.  This time instead of holding a reflector, my assistant was holding an umbrella over the camera.  A couple of outfit changes later and we were ready for a hot cup of tea.

Next location was under the car park at the East Street centre.  It was a little odd for me because my Gran used to live right opposite, and I can imagine her looking out of her kitchen window and enjoying the sight of Henrik!

The last location, and the coldest, wettest and windiest of all was near the Itchen Bridge.

Shoot over, we battled through the worst than normal traffic to the DeVere Grand Harbour Hotel where all three of us enjoyed a big fat burger!

It was easily the worst weather I’ve ever had to shoot in, but strangely I still enjoyed the challenge, and I really rather like some of the moody photos.

It’s been a week of firsts.  My first Indian wedding, my first wedding in London and today I receive a copy of my first South African publication!

Good times indeed.

I photographed Leigh in August 2009, on the morning of the day when she won her IFBB Bikini pro card.  We were shooting in the not so glamorous Richmond / Airport area of Vancouver.  We decided to move the shoot part way through because we were all getting bitten to death by mosquitoes.  I was quite well covered, but Leigh, obviously couldn’t be and I was a little worried the bites might effect her chances in the competition later that day.

With the help of Dean, her then fiancée, now husband, we had a great shoot as I hope these photos show.

Interesting use of the photos by MEM, cutting out the backgrounds is not something that magazines normally do to this extent.  Looks good though!

Big thank you to Muscle Evolution Magazine and of course to the stunning Leigh Brandt.

I’m normally quite good at making babies cry.  On look at me with my camera and they’re away.  Thankfully with this little one the tears only lasted a few seconds after which she gave me a hard time chasing her around while I tried, and very nearly failed to get her to stand still enough to have her photo taken.

It’s normally me who gets to photograph the pretty girls, but yesterday I had the tables turned on me and it was a pretty girl who got to photograph me.

There was a time, not so long ago, where I used to shy from the camera, and hated having my picture taken, but now, it’s actually kind of fun.

I was introduced to new photographer Jennalise Kassanis through a client of mine, and we met up for a bit of a chit chat yesterday about all things photography.  We had a walk around Netley Abbey, and snapped a few photos of each other.  It’s not often I’ll recommend another photographer on my blog, but I have to say I am really happy with the photos Jennalise took of me.

Thanks J!  It was fun!

I spent all afternoon shooting with the wonderfully talented gymnasts Senga & Jess, and I’m almost ashamed to admit that this is my favourite photo from our shoot.

It was a moment of silliness from Jess that inspired the shot, but I like it.

Real pictures from the shoot coming later…

The latest copy of American Curves Magazine landed on my doormat this morning. Although it’s been a while since they used any of my photos, I’m happy to say my name is still listed as one of the photographers.  As you can see from the names above, I’m in some very good company indeed.  I’m rather proud to be one of the few photographers they use who is not based in North America.

I really want to change the fact that I’ve not been in there for a while, and I’m already planning a few shoots in Las Vegas to do just that.

I’m always looking for American Curves quality models to shoot, more so here in England, but also in the USA in September and October.

What do you need to be to be an American Curves model?  In no particular order, because they’re all very important.

Confidence (Curves uses lots of butt shots, so thong bikinis etc is a must), a great figure, a good all over tan, you need to be able to do lots of different facial expressions, you need to be able to freely pose yourself…

I’ve probably missed something.  If you have some creative ideas to bring to the shoot, then our chances will only get better.

I should add, that although I sometimes do shoots for submission to American Curves, it is no guarantee of actually getting accepted by the magazine and published.  I know what they want, and I know how to shoot it, but the final decision of who gets in is in the hands of  Bob Kennedy and Rico Marques.