Lady in Red

I enjoy the challenge of arriving at a new location and seeking out the best setting for my subject. It didn’t take long this time: the moment Patricia Masters of Westgate CVs opened the door to her rich red hallway I knew where to shoot the business portraits she’d commissioned. I placed my lighting strategically to build some intrigue and create a sense of recession through the arches. And the other week the Northwest British Institute of Professional Photography Awards confirmed that my hallway hunch was right when, in the Environmental Portraiture category, my lady in red won me a gold.

Hero Ride

As a self confessed cycloholic (is that a word?) I had a dream assignment this week at the Manchester Velodrome. I was asked to photograph the launch of Hero Ride on behalf of Help for Heroes. Centre stage were Jon-Allan Butterworth, triple silver medalist at London 2012 Paralympics and Afghanistan war veteran Nathan Cumberland along with other members of Team GB cycling squad.

Why not join the ride. If you fancy Manchester to London it's only 230 miles! You've got 5 days though...

Jon-Allan in action

 And again, I know it's blurred but he was motoring. It's now art!

Is that banking steep...

  Nathan and Jon-Allan next to statue of another cycling legend Reg Harris.

Yes, they train behind a motorbike

And a real treat, Jason Kenny, triple olympic gold medalist and double world champion at full bore in training. Can he move!

Happy Christmas

A photographer friend of mine told me about the work of Kevin Best, described as one of the top 12 photographers on Flickr. Take a look, it's worth it. He specialises in sumptuous still lifes in the style of the Old Masters. There's a certain richness and quality to his work, so I was intrigued as to how he'd achieved it. He uses medium format, Pentax I think, but he also knows a lot about lighting which is ultimately what counts.

It gave me an idea for a Christmas still life of my own and I thought I'd investigate the relative qualities of a dslr versus medium format to assess just how much advantage it gives and it's significant.

so here's the first shot on a Canon 5D Mark II

and the next on a Hasselblad H3D-39

The medium format shot is much more colour accurate, has a wider dynamic range - one of the principal advantages of this large sensor, and a beautiful tonal range. The web browser doesn't do it justice but look at the candle and the fir cones. There's more tones and shadow detail evident, plus it handles the highlights so much better.

Capturing the smoke was fun, fortunately I got the better effect on the higher quality shot.

Have a great Christmas!

Ode to Michael Kenna

I took the opportunity recently to visit an exhibition by one of my photographic heroes, Michael Kenna. It was held at The Brindley in Runcorn, near his home town of Widnes. I've admired his work for a long time - it's landscape based, characterised by an abstract simplicity devoid of people so no sense of scale is easily imparted. His work is often minimalist with a very small range of tones. He predominately shoots in black and white, often in the square format, a format I particularly like.

I know you shouldn't photograph other people's work but I do so here to explain a photo I took myself in a Kenna style. I hope he doesn't mind!

One of his major projects has been the photography of Ratcliffe Power Station concentrating on the impressive cooling towers. Whilst going round the exhibition I noticed the light on the distant cooling towers at Fiddler's Ferry and as it had just stopped raining the window was covered in an attractive pattern of rain drops. So I combined the two elements to make my own composition as my ode to Michael Kenna.

Awards Season

November is awards season and last month saw me busy again. The big ones for me were the Macclesfield and Wilmslow Business Awards and the Prospects Postgraduate Awards. You might think they are quite staid affairs but quite the opposite is true, so I always like to catch the atmosphere and the guests enjoying themselves.

Of course all the winners receiving their awards, a 'grip and grin' as we call it in the trade!

The comperes, speakers and singers doing an excellent job of holding everything together.

And anything else which catches my eye...

Congratulations to all the winners.

Great North Run

It's got to be one of the country's most spectacular events, a half marathon from Newcastle to South Shields. Suspect weather didn't dampen the day as 55,000 runners or so took to the streets.

David Weir (in white) on route to winning the wheelchair race. They are seriously fast.

Billed as the best field to ever grace UK roads, Mo Farah, Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele were the elite of the elite athletes. What a finish with Bekele just holding off a sprinting Farah.

The event would not be complete without the Red Arrows.

Just call 118118...

It would have been easier to cycle!

My dear wife Lindsey, looking far too fresh 500m from the finish.

She was proud to be running on behalf of Parkinsons UK. Do support them if you can to find a cure for this wretched illness.

Last days of film

‘Pomp and Circumstance’ and ‘Jerusalem’ stirred the Albert Hall again at Saturday’s Last Night of the Proms.

Digital computer trickery now makes it relatively easy to produce a layered image like this, but I actually did this one the hard way, using film and entirely in the camera. Combining multiple exposures, transparency projection and the precise alignment of the different elements made it just the sort of challenging composition I really miss.