Got Your Valentines Day (Sun 14th Feb) Gift?

It's that time of year again, Valentines Day, it's fast approaching and even though we know it a lot of us leave it until the last minute to buy a special gift for that special someone. So this year why not get in early and surprise your lover with a romantic photographic print with a custom message (optional), available here - Valentines Day Prints.

Order by Monday 8th Feb to make sure you get it in time! (UK only)

A Single Red Rose With Water Droplets

This is one of my favourite and most beautiful flower photographs to date. Shot in the studio using flash and soft boxes I spent a lot of time setting this up and making sure everything was just right. First I used a spray bottle to create the small specks of water you can see, then to create the larger droplets I used a pippet and placed them where I wanted them, all the while trying to make it look as natural as possible.

Jewellery Photography In The Studio

These studio shots are form last year before I started my blog so I thought I'd include them now. The jewellery is by Shelley Sanderson Jewellery and each piece is handmade. We took a lot of time to pay attention to every detail according to each piece, and when it came round to photographing the tiara it just didn't work on a black background somehow, whereas all the other predominantly silver jewellery had. So quickly rethinking I grabbed for a thick piece of rich red velvet that I had knocking around and as you can see the results are striking, vivid red and makes the tiara itself really stand out.

Below is one of my favourite pieces I photographed on the day and there are more examples of the work and photography on the designers website (click link above).

Origami Animals (Barcelona)

I was in Barcelona last week for a short city break and whilst there I came across these amazing origami creatures in the windows of a bar near the centre. The sun gone down and the bar was in a lane so it was quite dark but they were lit and there was a bit of street lighting, so I whacked the ISO up to 1600 and held as still as I could and hoped for the best. It was a weird and wonderful sight, I had to get some snaps of it, there were hundreds of them in about five different windows, these are the best though.

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to wish you all Merry Christmas, this is a shot of a bauble on my Christmas tree, snapped it a few weeks back as I realised I didn't have any Xmas related images!

Close Up Photography

I have been having great fun getting to know my new digital SLR and it's many many features and functions, and have been photographing all kinds of things including everyday objects that you wouldn't necessarily think of as being great photographic subjects. While this is certainly true of some things, I believe that there is potential in many everyday objects and sunjects if you look closely enough, and I also believe that sometimes you just have to take the shot before the subject or light changes and it is lost. Take this close up abstract for example, I wasn't even thinking about photography at this moment in time but the sun just broke through the clouds and lit the window and net curtain casting a shadow on the curtain itself and it looked interesting so I shot it, close up, as I saw it.

The First Photograph With New Camera

This is the very first photograph I took with my new camera, the Canon 450D digital SLR. I couldn't wait to use it and so pointed it at the first thing that looked interesting and took a few pictures. Until now all the images you see on this blog have been taken on film with a manual SLR camera but from now on there will be a mixture of film and digital images.