New glass and ancient stones

Since I'd bought my Canon 5D a couple of years ago I'd used the trusted 24-70L f.2.8 USM lens. However, the 24-105L f.4 has come up as a more sensible choice. It's lighter and obviously has a longer focal range, and I won't miss the extra f/ stop as I can always use my 50mm f/1.8 in low light condition.
I went to test out my new acquisition at my favourite location yesterday. You've guessed it... Avebury! Bit blowy, but as always came back refreshed and inspired. Just need to finish selling my old lens on ebay and even my bank account will be happy!

New Website Template!

I really liked my old website template, however I understood that it was a bit complicated to use, and quite long to load up. So I've decided to try out a slightly different and more user-friendly template. All comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.

Lighting is everything!

It's such a great exercise: take a photo by a famous photographer and try and guess how they lighted it.
I've just come across a very cool blog that does just that: http://guessthelighting.com/
Enjoy!

O for a muse of fire...

Do I love performance photography! Going back through my archive, I found a varied collection of images:

 These first four were taken for Filton's college dance and theatre students. I was impressed by the quality of the performance, and the lighting was good enough to create some interesting effects. It's always a thin line between a good backlight scene and a useless photo due to poor lighting.

Then we have some of one of Zun Zun Egui's first gig before they became Bristol's favourite band. I was very lucky to meet the band a few times, and I always enjoy going to their gigs. If you want to hear something different, try out their page: http://www.zunzunmusic.com/

 Another old photograph of a band that's gone a long way since. If I'm not mistaken this was one of Shady Bard's first gig in Bristol. I also highly recommend their last album, 'Trial': http://www.myspace.com/shadybard/music

And last but not least, classic reggae band Jungle Redd live in the Colston Hall foyer. The beat is on...

Let the music play

Taking these pictures of Sarah B (see last post) took me back to the time when I used to take lots of musicians pictures. Being a musician myself I love capturing that moment when someone is really taken by what they are playing. So here are a few oldies in black and white. Next post will have more live music and performance pictures.

I'm back and alive!

Hello all, sorry for my long absence from cyberspace, I have been rather busy. I found a job in a lovely studio in Bath, and had a great time taking all sorts of portraits, but unfortunately I also had to spend some time in a windowless office making a lot of telemarketing calls, which I soon realised wasn't my cup of tea. So I'm back to freelancing, and it's going pretty well. I started with a splash of music photography for Bristol-based singer Sarah B. I also took a few standard portraits for her. She's great, have a look at her page.

I'm also busy with my new nursery photography program. Hopefully more on that soon.

I'm hoping to be back on the blog a lot more often now, so keep checking!

More Landscape Photos

I don't think of myself as a landscape photographer. However, as I live in the countryside it's sometimes too hard to leave the camera behind, especially in the kind of weather we have seen recently. So here's a few photos that I took last week when the frost was still sharp.