Photos everywhere!

I'm really pleased, in fact over the moon, that some of my photos seem to be making it to other sites and even real publications!

The first of these was Drapers magazine - the two pictures in the top left of the page are from the Fashion City York catwalk event and from the collection of images that I took there.
I also get to say that one of my images is in Vogue next month but that's just because it's being used in an advertisement for the fabulous Notice My Name; Jo who owns/runs the company (and makes the tea) was kind enough to send me a proof for this:
I also just did a shoot for the new products she's adding to her website so hopefully those images will be appear there soon (when I've got them processed).

Websites that I know about that are using my pictures include the following

• Fashion City York - the social page has pictures from the catwalk show, most of these were from the images I took. These are also mirrored on the FCY Facebook page.
  
• Discover Vintage are using a selection of my pictures from the York Festival of Vintage that was held at York Racecource on 30th April 2011. Some of the pictures are also used on the Festival of Vintage details page too.
  

If anyone knows of any other websites where my images are being used I would love to hear about them!

Just a word on copyright: if I get paid for images then things are fairly straight-forward; I still retain copyright (unless I get paid lots and lots :D) but essentially you can do what you like with the images.

Since this really is just my hobby I do almost all of my photography for free and for fun but this is where really the rules need to be followed. All the images are covered by a Creative Commons license (the exact details can be found on my website) which essentially says you can still do anything you like with the images but you MUST give credit and link back to my website. This seems a fair exchange for free images :)

Photoshoot for me!

I think I've finally got some recent pictures of me that I might actually like (or don't cringe too much when I look at them anyway)! Must say thanks to Rachel first of all for taking them and doing such a fantastic job (given that we work together on shoots before I knew she would get the best pics possible).

I was actually trying out some different lighting and background setups for portrait work; we can't afford to get the frames and special paper/material that would be used in a studio, nor can we really transport that kind of kit to the places we wanted to shoot. So I came up with a slightly cheaper alternative using bed sheets (it's surprising how big a king-sized sheet actually is: 275cm square!).

I did try and take some pictures just using the remote trigger for the camera but it was much better to ask Rachel to do things properly. Also this meant I got to have some pictures of me: I've actually wanted some more up-to-date shots as my profile images are looking rather dull.

Anyway, we spent a rather fun afternoon shooting me in different outfits - also meant I got to learn a bit more about poses and camera angles as this is something I need to get a bit more experience with. I've uploaded the pictures I liked the best to my website, these are processed (very little) by me. Rachel has done some more interesting processing of the images and I'll try and get these uploaded at some point as well.

Overall, a very productive Saturday :)

Photoslam!

This is a shameless plug for the next big photography event that Rachel is organising: the Leeds photoslam on 30th October 2010. I think this is about the third or maybe fourth photoslam that Rachel has organised and it's essentially an opportunity for photographers and models to get together and cram many different shoots, looks, outfits and a large amount of fun into one morning/afternoon, or in this case a whole day!

For anyone that's read my earlier posts about previous photoslams, you'll know that they're quite a challenge; from a photographers point of view you really have to think about what you're doing, trying to get the best from the pictures you're taking and thinking on your feet. For everyone it's a great opportunity to learn and teach at the same time; there is so much that goes into making a fantastic picture and being able to work with some fabulous and experienced models, make-up artists, and stylists is an education.

You can see pictures from the previous shoot we did at the Leeds Corn Exchange, the venue for the photoslam, over on my website.

Snap Happy!

My hobby is getting a little out of control!
I have been spending an awful lot of time taking pictures and processing the resulting images and, if the purchase of new L-series lenses wasn't enough of a clue, I'm getting rather obsessive about it all! That said I'm really enjoying myself and hopefully getting pictures that other people like as well. The one above is of Jaymie, and below Caz.
All of the pictures are going into galleries on my website which was originally intended as a dumping ground for everything I couldn't fit on here but which now seems to have taken on a life of it's own and which probably needs a bit of a re-purpose and clean-up!

Here's a few of the recent galleries and shoots I've done in the past month or so, I still have several hundred images still to process and upload but that is a very time-consuming task so need to just attack it a bit at a time work and life permitting!

• Jaymie - Portfolio pictures
  
• Manchester Pride - Pictures of people from the weekend, still need to processes the parade shots!
• ASK York Shoot - Caz and Holly with make-up by Natalie, in the ASK restaurant in York

Hopefully I'll get the other sets of images in the queue processed by the end of this weekend ... but then I'll probably have even more pictures to deal with!

It really is an all-consuming hobby at the moment but I'm really enjoying it so much and think the investment in time and money is worth it for the amount of fun I'm having :)

It's all about Image(s)

You'd think the web and the numerous sites I'm on would be perfect for showcasing the pictures I take, and you might also consider that this is a pretty easy thing to achieve, e.g. upload picture, point people at it. Well, apparently it's not that simple because alot of the pictures I produced just didn't look right at all which was rather annoying and upsetting - particularly as I spent all that time calibrating my monitor and painstakingly tweaking the settings on the images to get something that looked right in Bibble.

After MUCH Googling and reading about similar problems it seems that I've run into the same issue that alot of photographers hit; we're the only ones with calibrated monitors and colour management enabled properly! That isn't the specific issue that is affecting me viewing my own pictures on the web but it's as a result of it; FireFox doesn't correctly render colours in image files by default, and even with this setting on it still needs to know the correct monitor profile to render to.

[ Note: this is based on my experience on Ubuntu Linux, I'm not sure if FireFox on Windows will hook into the default system monitor profile or not. I would be inclined to believe that browsers on Mac's would do all this automatically but it does assume that a correct profile is present ]

Anyway, there is a partial solution to this problem, I installed the Colour Management add-on for FireFox which meant I could easily change the relevant settings (they can be found using about:config I believe) and load the profiles I'd generated for my desktop and laptop machines.

Now, when I view my pictures on the web, the colours match those I set while processing them so at least I know that they are correct. The only problem is that I have no idea at all what they look like on anyone else's monitor so it might be that I'm the only one who gets to enjoy them properly! That is a little irksome when you're hoping people will say nice or constructive things about your images and, in actual fact they just look terrible to them!

Motoring Through the Ages!

Sunday turned out to be rather a surreal day! We started off heading to Tatton Park to meet up with a friend who was at the BMW show. Sounded like a good excuse to get pictures of cars and of the fabulous park itself. We spent several photography-packed hours there, taking pictures of cars, army Jeep, and finally Deer. The picture above is obviously from the BMW show.

I should point out at this point that I've got nearly 1000 images to process and sort out from the weekend so it'll take me a while to get them all on the website and DeviantART, will post another blog entry when I finally manage to do that.

After Tatton Park it was back to York to quickly dump our things and then rush off to do a photoshoot that Rachel had organised with Maddy. The shoot was at Maddy's house and quickly evolved to include a harp, a cat, Maddy's Mum and then a rather amazing vintage car that her parents own!

I should explain that both Maddy and her parents are pretty cool (for want of a better expression). This shoot came about simply because Rachel was doing her usual thing of constantly keeping her eyes open for people who are particularly photogenic and who could fill a role in some creative idea that happens to be bouncing around in her head at the time.

Since Maddy is sixteen Rachel, of course, made sure that her parents were fine with doing the shoot and it was her Mum who arranged everything in the end and was so welcoming and enthusiastic about the whole thing. In fact, so much so, that she ended up participating in the shoot as you can see from the picture on the left (I've deliberately de-saturated the colours to try and make it look like an 'older' picture). For anyone that is interested, the location is the York Racecourse car park.

In itself this made for a perfect and rather amazing shoot ... and then it got even better, some friends of Maddy's parent's turned up in a, erm, new purchase.

I really didn't think the day was going to turn out so amazing and fantastical when I got up in the morning! It really was such an enjoyable day and certainly one to remember! Also further proof, not that it's really needed, that York has some amazing, hidden gems in and around the city; and not just the cars, the people too.