Competition Winner

Family portrait session with Barry, Lucy and Summer.

With Christmas and New Year done and dusted, I wanted to cheer everyone up from the January blues, and decided to run a little competition on my Facebook page . After many entries, a winner was chosen - Barry, who received a free portrait photo shoot at his home.

After calling and speaking to Barry, he informed me he 'never wins anything' (not true anymore). He also hit me with the fact that Lucy was pregnant and they were looking to book a photographer for a family portrait and bump photo shoot in the very near future.

And as they say, 'YOU'VE  GOT TO BE IN IT TO WIN IT'.

With my portable studio lights and backdrop, which were set up in Barry and Lucy's living room, it was time to capture some lovely images of the 3 of them. Initially, Summer was a little shy (but who could blame her when a strange person comes in to there home and takes over the living room!) so she sat and watched whilst I started capturing some images of Barry and Lucy.

Being a very photogenic little girl, it did not take long until Summer wanted to be in the picture as well.

One thing that I think helped, is the fact that when I was capturing the images, I was automatically uploading them to my iPad, so the whole family could view the images whilst I was still shooting.

Here we have a little selection showing some of the images they chose from their session.

 Looking forward to updating these photos with the extra addition to the family soon. All the best with the rest of your pregnancy Lucy.

A few items I carry and use for various photography jobs.

EOS Canon 5D MkIII which is Canons' latest upgrade of the 5D series cameras. Fantastic Pro camera ideal for family portraits, weddings and commercial photo shoots.

Canon 24-105mm IS F4 Lens making a very versatile walkabout lens enabling me to capture a wide angle shot such as a family group or zoom into to capture some close up details.

Canon 70-200 IS F4 Lens giving that little extra reach in zoom over the 24-105 lens allowing me to hide away a little more and capture subjects unaware and in a even more natural way, especially at a wedding. 

Portable studio equipment currently being used, consists of a Lastolite Hilite (which is like one of those crazy pop up tents you can buy, but you wouldn't sleep in this one......although it's big enough). The Hilite is then lit using two lights, one from each side to give the Hi-Key (pure white background) look. Alternatively, you can create a Low-Key (black background) shoot using the bottletop black cover.

The lighting equipment I use for this is  Elinchrom D Lites and some elinchrom soft boxes which modify the light to enable it to be pleasing and elegant towards the subject.

Of course I have plenty of other bits of kit and equipment that I use but I'm not going to bore you with this anymore, so I'm just going to add a little list: Mac, iPad, iPhone, light meter, diffusers, various computer software programs for editing, printer, tripod, flashgun and Graphi Studio Albums.