We exhibited at a Fair at the Town Hall last year and found it to be one of our most successful. The brides who booked us at the fair said they found it one of the best they went to because it was a manageable size where they could have a proper conversation with the vendors rather than there being just too much to take in.

Having exhibited at very large fairs, we agree: Couples are overwhelmed by seeing 10 or more photographers, six cake-makers and a dozen florists and often forget who they liked and what they found out by the time they leave the fair.

if you would like to exhibit at the fair then please contact us and we’ll send you all of the details

We’re really looking forward to running the event and look forward to meeting lots of new people.

People are always asking us how they can take better photographs – at every wedding, networking groups we attend and, it feels, pretty much everywhere we go!

People are often surprised at weddings where we actually help and encourage guests to get good shots rather than, like a lot of photographers, fiercely protecting our shots. We even know of one husband and wife team where the wife’s main job is to stop the guests getting similar shots to her husband (names omitted to protect the guilty)!

We have run one-to-one informal training sessions with a number of people but high demand means that we have decided to make it a little more structured. A combination of hands-on traiining for those who would like a practical set of exercises along with this blog will help to get you to a level where you routinely take much better pictures, no matter how simple or sophisticated your camera is.

Praise for “An Introduction to your DSLR”

I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Introduction to your DSLR’ class last Saturday, and have since been really inspired to experiment with aperture and composition a lot more.

You presented the class in a very easy to understand way with all the information being fully absorbed.

Cheers, Carl

We will be featured alongside some of the other leading Boudoir photographers in Britain in a feature for Valentine’s Day. We have selected the following image as our favourite. See the full article at White Cherry Boudoir to find out why we chose it and how it reflects our style and approach to Boudoir Photography

If you’ve heard that this Christmas then what do you do? There are hundreds of new cameras available on the market today, not to mention fantastic second-hand bargains on sites like eBay so where do you start? Here are some tips and recommendations (the first one being that my 1936 Carl Zeiss IKOFLEX in the picture above is probably best avoided for most people):

1. Rubbish Cameras

Here’s the news from a self-confessed camera-geek: There are no bad cameras now.

Some cameras are better than others and some are really outstanding value while others are less so, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a bad one. So what do you do next?

2. Price

It sounds obvious but more than ever before you can simply shop on price. Where cheap cameras used to have few features, bad build quality and poor optics compared to their more expensive counterparts, this is now only really true at the extreme ends of the spectrum: Of course a £3,000 camera is better than a £30 or £300 one but it’s increasingly hard to find significant differences between, say, a £300 and £350 camera.

Set your absolute upper limit and look at cameras that are a bit (20% or so) below that as a starting point.

3. What matters to you (or the Person you are buying it for)

Again, it sounds obvious but try to imagine what they will use it for and in what circumstances.

For me personally, nothing makes me happier than trudging about the countryside with a bag of lenses, flashes, filters and a tripod (and chocolate) and you’ll find that most dedicated photographers are the same, but if it really is to get the best shots you can while you are walking the dogs or at your childrens’ football matches then that may or may not be what you want. If you get someone a camera that gives them every possible feature they will ever need, room to expand as their expertise grows and something they will treasure forever* but is too large for them to take with them when they go out so it never gets used, then . . . well . . . you get the picture. Or more accurately you don’t because the camera was in the house while you were all out.

* not to mention loads of opportunities in the future for you to stop worrying about what to buy them for xmas and birthdays. You can just buy them something else for their camera – take it from me, we can never get our hands on enough camera-gear!

4. Pixels, pixels everywhere

For a long time manufacturers were in what I called the “dot wars”: How many dots can we fit on a sensor?

For a while this made sense; when even expensive, pro-spec digital cameras were delivering as little as 3 megapixels (about half what my Blackberry has and about a third of the latest iPhone) then of course the race was for image resolution. But those days are long-gone and are no longer a reason to select one camera over another. For all but some specialist commercial jobs, in my opinion, 10mpx is all you need (one of my shots was placed on a billboard from a 12mpx camera and was fine).

So what should we look at now? Well, again it varies according to the types of shots you want to do but something called ISO is where the race is hotting up now. This is essentially about the sensitivity of the camera to light. Simply put a high ISO number allows you to take a shot in a darker place without having to slow the camera down too much (causing blur). ISO is something to read reviews about – the trade-off for high ISO is usually grainy images. Where some cameras score really well is that they allow high ISO but with less of this noise on the end result.

Don’t get hung up on ISO or Megapixels or anything else that the manufacturers fight about; they are mostly choosing battles they feel they can win, they are after all, corporations. We are about ISO because we work in Churches which are dark and we don’t ever use flash during a ceremony but in real life it’s not your biggest problem. If there’s one thing that matters it is aperture which is as old as the hills and pre-dates anything that Fuji or Sony, Canon or Nikon have their spats about. If you’d like to find out in detail why it matters then please contact us or sign up for one of our training courses but for now you just need to understand that aperture is measured in something called “f numbers” and if you look at the spec of any camera or lens it will be mentioned somewhere. It is usually a number like 2.8 or sometimes 1:2.8. All you need to know is that the smaller the number the better it is – 2.8 is better than 4.0. If you want to find out more then please do contact us – we’d be happy to explain to you (bore you about) what it is and why it matters

5. Types of Camera

Once you know roughly what you want to spend and whether convenience, expandability, size, weight or whatever else are your priorities, then its time to look at the types of cameras available.

Compact Cameras

Compact Cameras are extremely popular and for good reason; they are, well, compact: You can put them in your bag or pocket and they are really easy to use. To geeks like me they are “Point and Shoots” (PaS)  because that’s what you do and they are great.

If you don’t want to do anything arty, if you just want to get a good, clear shot of something then they are brilliant. Expect to pay between around £70 and £200 for a PaS. All of the major manufacturers produce really good PaS cameras. As someone who has been shooting with canon kit since I was eleven years old I can say I would buy . . . a Fuji!

Well, actually it’s not that simple because of the reasons stated in the previous points but here are two really good comparisons of Compacts less than £100 and Compacts less than £200.

My favourite compact is actually the Canon PowerShot G12. Surprise, surprise, Mark likes a Canon! But it is a great camera and it has a couple of features that I personally like – Raw shooting and a full manual mode. However at around £360 it is quite expensive.

Bridge Cameras

So-called Bridge Cameras look a bit like professional cameras but are small and light, though not as small and light as a compact. Bridges are typically between around £200 and a whopping £700. £700 is probably pretty good value for the features and quality you get but if you are contemplating spending that sort of money then it’s really worth thinking about a Compact System or a full dSLR in my opinion.

Bridge cameras tend to have a much wider zoom range than compacts and better quality video than compacts (they are also often known as “Super Zooms”. Again from a geek point of view there is a thing we like which is a techie thing about how far the back of the lens is from the sensor which has an effect on “Depth of Field”. Don’t start me on the geeky stuff but contact us if you want to know why we care..

What Digital Camera likes the Fuji HS20 and its hard to disagree, even for a Canon bigot like me

Compact System Cameras

Now we’re talking! Is there anything more beautiful than an Olympus PEN? The PEN looks like cameras looked when my dad bought me my first one 1n 1977 and we spent hours in his darkroom making my not-very-good photos of swans and tress appear out of a tray of chemicals! Aaahhh, I can smell it now. It was a pretty horrible smell actually.

Compact Systems give you some of the flexibility of dSLRs in terms of additional lenses and other accessories for you to tackle different types of subject but they are small and light (and did i mention that they are beautiful?)

What Digital Camera chose the Sony NEX-C3 although I personally like the second choice of the Panasonic Lumix because it is known really fast focusing so you never miss a shot. But, as you have probably worked out, I would save up for the PEN. It’s more expensive but it’s just lovely and if the battery runs out and you can’t take any more photos you can just gaze at it.

Digital SLRs

This is where things switch a little. The previous categories are integrated machines that are built to do everything so, for example, a Sony NEX includes Carl Zeiss lenses. Carl Zeiss have been making lenses for various machines (microscopes, telescopes etc.) since 1856! So when you buy a camera in the above categories you are trying to balance lots if things that make up a total package. dSLRs are different: You buy the camera and it doesn’t have to have a lens attached at all.You buy the lenses you need for the jobs you want to do.

I shoot Canon, I know people who shoot Nikon and, to be honest, there’s not much in it. And if Nikon overtake Canon in for example, ISO, Canon will leap-frog them the following year.

So, weirdly, even though these are the types of camera we make our living from, we’re actually a lot less hung-up about which one to buy than we are in all of the other categories.

The power of dSLRs is that you buy really high-quality (though not necessarily expensive) lenses and accessories for them and these last longer than the actual camera. The lenses we use in our work which we have bought over the last three or four years all fit my twenty-year-old film camera so the camera is the bit that you can chuck away while keeping hold of the accessories.

Personally we recommend that you stick to Nikon or Canon and if you can then buy a full-frame model like the Canon 5D or the Nikon D700 but whatever you do contact us about the lenses you need.

Good starter kits are the Nikon D3100 and the Canon 1100D – you can build from there.

Your Next Step

We hope you found this article helpful although it has only scratched the surface of, especially, dSLRs. If you have a specific question or want some more detailed advice before you take the plunge then please contact us or put your comments/questions in the comments box below

Happy shopping!

We elected to do the shoot outside rather than to use the interior because we didn’t want to take any of the magic away from their images on the big day. We’re really looking forward to working with such a lovely couple at such a fantastic venue

But it got us thinking . . . why offer it to people we don’t know when we have all these people we have worked with in the past and who we know we love working with? Why not offer it to them instead?

So we have decided to run regular offers to all of our clients and subscribers and readers of our blog.

These offers run until the 26th of November but they can be used any time up to the end of 2012 So you could use them yourself or give them as a Christmas present.

There is no limit to the number of packages that you can buy, just that they need to be redeemed separately.

Offer 1: Gift Vouchers

Gift vouchers are available in £25, £50 and £100 denominations and make a great gift for family and friends. Gift vouchers can be redeemed against any of our prducts and services including Wedding Photography, prints, canvases, album upgrades or additional images.

Gift vouchers bought during ths promotion can be redeemed at one and half times their face value until the end of 2012 so for example, a £100 gift voucher is worth £150 against any of our products and services – you choose *

Buy £25 Gift Vouchers

Buy £50 Gift Vouchers

Buy £100 Gift Vouchers

Offer 2: Portrait Sessions

A reduction of £40 from our portrait sitting fee (usually £95), a reduction of over 40%. In addition to this great reduction on the sitting fee, all products bought within a month of the shoot will also be subject to a 25% price reduction

£55 Portrait Sitting Fee

Offer 3: Nurture

Nurture is our “bumps and babies” package. We shoot you during your pregnancy and present you with up to twenty of your favourite pictures in a beautiful album.

Nurture involves your partner and any other babies, toddlers and children that you already have to celebrate this amazing family event

Nurture is usually £395 and includes a £50 voucher redeemable against our Papoose baby package. this exclusive offer is for a reduction of £150 off of the usual price making it just £245

£245 Nurture Promotion

Offer 4: Papoose

Papoose is our first-year baby package. We visit you to photograph your baby as soon as you are comfortable after the birth (usually within two weeks) and then again at three months, six months, nine months and one year. You receive a CD of low-resolution images after each stage to share with your friends and family through email, facebook etc and at the end of the year you select sixty images for a beautiful Album or coffee table book.

Papoose is available from £795. This special offer is a reduction to £595, saving you £200 off the usual price.

Papoose for £595

Offer 5: Genus

Genus is our family portrait package. This is the classic family shoot. We shoot you in a variety of locations over the course of a day and combine your favourite shots into a stunning hand-made album

Genus is usually available from £795 but we are now offering the same package for £475 – a 40% reduction!

Special Offer: 40% off Genus

We’re also offering our customers preferential rates on our beautiful Boudoir Photography Packages. More details will be posted soon but in the meantime please contact Jo for further information

* Please note that gift vouchers redeemed against any of the other promotions available through Mark Bradford Photography can only be redeemed at face value, not at the 1.5x face value rate.

We managed to get some great Spirit shots, those shots which convey the atmosphere of the day.

Have you ever seen a bigger grin on a groom.

Reading-based Wedding Photographers Mark and Jo Bradford have opened a YouTube channel to showcase their Wedding Photography work using montages of moving images set to music to capture the atmosphere of the Weddings they shoot throughout the country.

“it’s hard work to produce these videos and sometimes we think life would be easier if we didn’t do them but then we see the results and see our couples’ reactions and it’s all worth while.” says Jo.

Slideshows set to music have long been a part of the couple’s wedding packages and their clients love them. Each wedding video for the couple is around 20 minutes long and shows around 300 images. Mark says “Many of our couples who hired a videographer as well as us actually say they prefer the video we produce to the one they got from the videographer. Videos are great and they obviously capture things that our stills just don’t get like the content of the speeches but often sound quality lets them down and they tend to be shot in long set-pieces from tripods and so can be visually a little monotonous. We think people like our videos because they are dynamic and really show our photography in an emotional way.”

The productions on YouTube are limited to around sixty shots – usally a selection from the shots the couple themselves chose for their album.

“It’s early days” continues Jo “and we’ve got a lot of work to do to get more weddings online but the feedback so far is great and we think it will be a really good way for prospective brides to see how we work

Click to visit: Mark Bradford Photography’s Youtube Cannel

This wedding is a great example of how bold, vibrant colours of the bridesmaids enhance the wedding photos. Once again we are very happy with the first dance pictures; the effort we put in to lighting really pays off.

It was a beautiful wedding with a relaxed atmosphere and Suzy and Glynn were great to work with as you can see from our photos.

suzy and glynn