Yesterday I swam with a shark which was amazing, if a little scary! Definitely an experience everyone should try!

It’s been a while since my last post, right now I am sitting in my girlfriends dad’s appartment in Singapore where despite being 7am it is 30+ degrees. The last couple of weeks before I left last weekend were pretty crazily busy. I had a big project with Oxford University for a fund raising brochure which involved shooting 7 completely different photos.

I have also been working on several websites for clients, the main one for a musician which isn’t quite finished yet, but I am really happy with! I will put that up as soon as I get back as I am waiting for final copy from the client.

I go to Thailand tomrrow for a couple of weeks, then onto Laos getting back into England on the 14th July. I have been taking loads of pictures, Singapore is a really interesting city, and the food is amazing!

I did a shoot last month with a shop from Oxford called Booty. They have a shop full of beautiful designer clothes in Oxford. I have loads of photos to put up on here as ever but I have several projects on the go at the moment so not much time!

I go to Thailand for a month on the 15th June. Before that I have a website to finish, a major photography project for Oxford univeristy and 2 summer balls to shoot! Not to mention the mountain of photos I have to edit and other smaller shoots. Fun, but busy times! I will try and get some more new pictures up soon!

Just a quick picture from a ball I took photos at on Saturday. I will do a proper update with ball pictures when I have edited them.

The above shot was handheld, resting on the table with the Sigma 10mm fisheye lens. The Cardiff Hilton has some really interesting lighting for taking photos, the abstract looking glass objects on the table are actually the awards prior to being given out.

I have just finished a new website for a client who is a lecturer on Machu Picchu (an ancient set of Inca ruins in Peru). I used her photography to create a visually appealing website which aims to give the viewer an instant feeling of the scale and area surronding Machu Picchu.

The site uses a content management system to allow the client to update the content themselves, it has also been optimised for search engines.

More websites I have designed.

Only 2 days left to enter the compeition the Microsoft Future Pro competition that I got 1st place in People & Portraits last year, open worldwide to full time students. Rules me out this year unfortunatly! I really did get paid the prize money and got the printer (eventually!) so well worth giving it a go, you never know…

Here’s my winning image from last year. Good luck all! Link to competition website

From a recent shoot, the clean, strong make-up applied by Shameen.

It was a couple of weeks ago I did this shoot but I hadn’t got round to putting pictures up from the shoot, so here they are! The model was called Ruby, she had a really interesting look and was really easy to work with. We were mostly going for beauty head shots. For these kind of shots it is important to light evenly to produce clean, healthy and natural looking skin.

Thanks for looking, more soon!

Playing with lighting ideas, trying to make a rainy day look sunny! Basically a back lit shot, with some front fill light.

1 580ex Speedlite as front left fill, silver reflector to right and 1 Elinchrom 500 with yellow gel as the backlight/bounce main. Thanks Fi for modelling!

I recently photographed a set of photos for an Oxford based band Invisible Vegas. I really enjoyed the project because the band gave me quite a free reign on the kind of shots they wanted. I found a great location in Oxfordshire by a river and with an old barn in the grounds. For this shot I used Elinchrom mono-block heads plugged into a portable battery pack. This gave me the freedom to be away from the usual mains power restrictions. I used two flashes to the left and right of the camera and the standard 45 degrees reflectors on the strobes.

Getting the background right meant that the timing of the shot was important as I wanted to capture it at dusk to get a ‘moody’ sky. I used a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second to retain good detail in the clouds and sky. The logs were already there, we just moved them around a little to provide small platforms for each of the band members.

After the outside shoot we moved into the old warehouse to get some closer shots of the band, showing their faces. This shot was lit with three lights, one above the camera through a white umbrella and then two strobes behind and to the side to give rim lights.

This shot was taken with a shoot through umbrella and then a flash behind the band members which creates a back light to the band, and also create the shadow coming out from their feet.

This shot was lit again with two rim lights and one main light above the camera.

Here’s a set-up shot of the band after we had finished the shoot. You can see the two rim lights to the left and right of the picture and the main light high and in the middle but without the umbrella which was attached for the shoot. As we were working inside and had access to the mains power I didn’t have to use a battery pack for these later shots.

Invisible Vegas will next be playing the 02 Academy, Oxford on the 27th May 2009.