I’ve always wanted to do a studio shoot, and this was my ideal opportunity to give it a go. Once word was out, it wasn’t long before I had 9 groups of people who wanted to have a session. It took a lot of organising to get everyone into suitable time slots, and all too quickly the day came.

I had booked Lowford Studio for the day, along with some help from the proprietor Chris, to help me with the lighting. I was then advised to buy a roll of white paper, as I was sure to use some during the shoot, and it would be cheaper to buy a roll than pay for damage by the metre. Chris arranged for purchase and delivery for me. I basically showed up and was ready to shoot.

A quick snap of the studio shoot

On the day, 3 people couldn’t come, mostly due to a nasty flu bug which was around, but to be honest, this eased the pressure a little bit. Chris and I spent a very short time with the lights, as he was suffering from a computer crisis and I hadn’t allowed much time before my first victims clients were due to arrive. Within 15 minutes I was ready.

The first people were a large family group of 10 people, including a 3 month old baby, and grandparents. Talk about in at the deep end! I made a few mistakes, including positioning someone too close to the backlight, and I hadn’t noticed that one of the rear lights was too dark, but overall I was happy with the result. The time my wife and I had spent researching poses, and controlling people correctly was well worth it.

The day went on, I had a couple more disasters, including a bit of confusion with the rear lights at one point, however on the whole the day went well and I now I have lots of people who are very happy with the results. The main issue was because of the high number of toddlers and very young children who can’t be persuaded to smile, and find the whole thing very confusing. My technique was to try to relax the children, and just let the day happen. We spent a long time trying to get a good shot of one girl in particular, but the photo only came right at the end, when everyone was in the foyer putting their coats on. The girl relaxed and started running in and out of the studio with loads of energy. Everyone just let her, and each time she was in shot, I took a photo, and got a great series of shots.

I can’t put many up here until I get permission from other people, but here is a taster.

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If anyone knows a fix for this, let me know.

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In that last photo you can also see the camcorder mounted. The video is on youtube – it’s 10 minutes long.

This trip was to core 4×4 near chichester, on a pay’n'play day to try out the Jimny for the first time. I had great fun, even if I did manage to fill my footwell with mud. I now need to fit some recovery points and go out again

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It was also floodlit. It was really strange watching the moon rise, whilst watching a game of cricket.

Enjoy the photos.

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So what are my thoughts? Well, it’s fun and different, that’s for sure. However I think I need to make a couple of modifications. Firstly, the viewfinder – it needs upgrading. Looking through a single rectangle doesn’t work, as a minimum, you need two rectangles. This is probably going to be too tricky to do, both in terms of focal length and general aim, so I’m going to try a gun sight. It won’t help my composition, but should at least allow me to centre my shots.

Secondly, the wrist strap. I thought it was ‘useless’, but now I realise it is more attention seeking than Paris Hilton. Too many of my shots feature it, although never on all three parts as they aren’t lined up.

Finally, it’s a good shutter speed for panning, giving a good level of background blur. Here is my favorite shot of the film;

GT40, robot 3 camera test shot

I wanted to try panning, so went to a place I thought might have some good passing cars, just the otherside of my village. As it was, the parking place was way lower than the road, and of the first 4 cars, one was a TVR, and the other was this GT40, a replica I assume. I lucked out and got a great photo.

It does show the difficulty I have in aiming, especially vertically. I must fix that. Anyway, I’ve put it on flickr and added it to ‘score my car. I can’t wait to see the comments. I’m expecting scores in the 3/10 range, especially as most photos in that group are uber sharp. This is a bit out there for them, lets see what they say…

These were taken mostly at Silverstone, at the FIA GT racing, with my Pentax ME Super. It is suprising how many odd looks you get when using a classic film camera, and manually focusing, but I love the result.

I can’t recall the film I used, I’ll look it up when I scan it properly. It was slide film, and I had it developed and scanned at Tesco for £1.98. It can take a bit of persuading to get them to put it through the developer, but once done, you can’t argue with the prices! 99p for processing with no prints, and another quid for a CD? All within an hour? Yes please

Anyway, let me know what you think. I know that xpro is a love it or hate it effect, so I won’t be offended if you don’t like the results. All feedback and comments are welcomed.

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This is a photo I took with my 10D in New York from the “Top of the Rock”. I am trying to get a lot more human interest into my photos, and I think I hit the mark with this one. Let me know what you think, in particular whether you think that adding people to photos like this makes them better.

I’d appreciate the comments on flickr, it increases its ‘interestingness’ and more people will then view the photo. Thanks

I borrowed the camera from a friend, and details of the conversion of his camera can be found on his blog. ‘Strangeparty – converting a 300D to infrared’

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This is also my first real post, please let me know what you think of the blog, the gallery software, and the ability to post comments.