Year: 2016

Old Cameras

Old Cameras

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So, following on from my bottles I decided to photograph some old cameras.

I love old cameras and have a couple myself, but I wanted to created some product style photos but, just straight forward shots on a white back. So nothing fancy to make the photo look old, just clean cut.

I started with an oldie.

and worked my way through the years, this one from the 50s

60s or 70s I believe

then, my first ever camera

right up to a modern day DSLR (albeit a few years old now)

I wanted a low angle on the cameras to make them stand out a bit. I did change the angle a bit on the SLR, but prefer the others.

This is a very simple setup and one I can teach anyone who wanted to take a product style shot. Very quick to do and requires virtually no post editing either.

Photographing Bottles

Photographing Bottles

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Sometimes when tutoring you get asked about a specific thing a bit more unusual than normal. This happened today.

Whilst doing a Lightroom session we were discussing past studio work that I had helped out with and the current products that were being photographed were bottles. To be precise, bottles of wine for a large supermarket chain!

I had photographed bottle products before but couldn’t quite remember my setup, so a quick bit of research and also adjusting for the fact that we weren’t in a studio, we set up the light and made some minor adjustments to how it could work and took some shots. They came out well and we wound up the session and I headed home.

I wanted to give it ago in my studio when I got home, so I setup 3 lights. 1 large octagon light as the back light and 2 rectangular soft boxes, one on each side.

I took 6 photos and selected the last couple to show. From starting to set up the lights to final photo was no longer than 20mins and this photos are straight out the camera with just a crop and minor highlight tweak in Lightroom. They are not cutout so the small block at the bottom is a toy brick and is what the bottle was perched on! If this was a ‘proper’ shoot, I would have edited out the wooden block!

The first photo is with both sidelight vertically positioned, creating 2 lines down the bottle.

The next image is with the right light rotated through 90 degrees, this makes a light instead of a strip.

My soft boxes also have a grid in them and this is shown in the highlight on the bottle.

I am not a great wine drinker, so the first bottle I found, was in fact one I had kept for photographing at some point. I was then going to find a wine bottle and try that and remove the grids, but my studio got taken over by Nat, photographing other bits so the other bottle shots will have to follow later.

I think there is some improvement to be made on this so will have another go and show the results too.

Very Lacking…

Very Lacking…

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I have to say, that my blog entries on this site this year have been very lacking.

I don’t know if people still read this blog now, but I do need to try and post more often. I have posted regularly on my other site, but this side of my photography has been quiet recently as I have been concentrating on my portraits.

My latest shoot was a pre christening photo shoot for a family just before they went to the church. I’d setup a studio in his surgery and took photos of the family and children. It was definitely a different type of shoot to normal.

I’ve also been trying to build my tuition sessions, although it has been quiet over the summer.

So unfortunately all that coupled together has meant there hasn’t been much to talk about on this blog.

A Garden Airshow

A Garden Airshow

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It’s that time of the year again, and indeed that year again, when the Farnborough Airshow is on.

The last time I went to the airshow was 6 years ago, and once again, I didn’t manage to get to it this time either. However, as I live on the other side of ‘the hill’ to the airfield (its not actually as close as it sounds) was are lucky enough to get aircraft overhead when they are on holding patterns or arriving at the show.

This time though, we didn’t really see the Red Arrows or any of the jets overhead. Maybe this is due to the new rules on airshows and where aircraft go, or can display. The Red Arrows was only a flypast. We didn’t see the Lancaster either.

It didn’t however stop a Spitfire circling above, nor a Yak & Corsair.

So, my garden airshow this time was like this.

Sadly all the aircraft seemed to circled around us, not too close.

Until it decided it was time to head to do its display, and fly right overhead! With this shot, the colours are straight from the camera and caused by the lens, but its created an interesting shot.

Then, an aircraft I didn’t recognise but a quick look on the Airshow website told me it was a YAK 3

This was taken in duller conditions so I made the images black and white and a bit grainy. I think it worked well.

There was definitely less aircraft over the garden this year but still so lucky to see them anyway.

After the show had finished, I was settled back at the computer and heard something noisy and low, I trapped the camera and got this photo of the A380 heading home.

Interesting First Quarter to the Year

Interesting First Quarter to the Year

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It’s been an interesting start to the year.

On the tutoring front, I’ve continued Lightroon tuition, done some Mac basics sessions, more Lightroom & helped the same person with studio lighting setups & product shots and lastly fixed an email problem for a lady who’d been having problems for months.

With photography, I’ve done 2 maternity shoots, plus our own. A promotional shoot for an osteopath, lingerie shoots, bodyscapes, a couple ‘statues’ shoot and a fashion shoot!

What a great first quarter of the year! Looking forward to the next quarter.

A Waiting Game

A Waiting Game

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February has started as a waiting game. Things need to start for there to be a chain reaction where other things can then start to move.

So, lots of twiddling fingers in the first week.

As this is the case, website updates have been happening! I’ve fixed an issue, that I created a while back, but didn’t realise until today, with the homepage. It now works again with the menus!

Portrait galleries have had updates to them, new images added, tweaks to text etc… New images will be added to the Newborn gallery soon.

I’ve added a couple of new photos to the Mammals Primate gallery too.

On my Portraits website Lee Orchard Photography I’ve added 2 new blog posts, a commercial page, not yet live (this will replace a page on another site that I’m turning off). It shows commercial work we’ve done, mainly Hair & Make Up Portraits, Live shows, like Magician Live and some Food and Product photos.

I’ve also added more photos from recent shoots to the Adults gallery on that site.

So, while waiting I’ll continue tidying & painting in the house, tweaking websites, sorting photos and more…

January

January

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January has been an interesting month.

Just before the New Year I did a maternity shoot, so had some nice maternity images to work up at the beginning of the month. I then had another maternity shoot as well as Nat maternity shoot too! So its been a good first half of the month for shoots.

On the training front, the first 2 weeks were relatively quiet, but since then, its been quite busy on the training front, with 2 new people booking session. 1 for Lightroom and another for iMac basics!

I have also updated my top level website. It was a website with lots of photos and information on what I do but with updates to the iPad and then later the iPhone the whole site stop working correctly. Something must have changed on the browser that for some reason stopped it. I’d spent a lot of time trying to sort it, but couldn’t, even spoke to Apple in store and they didn’t know. So I redesigned it and made it my training site.

It outlines the training I offer, costs and reference. I relatively simple site but give the information needed. It still also has links to my photography sites!

So, I’ve been busy, which is good. It stops me writing regular blog entries though, which is a shame, as I like to try and regularly put in updates for my readers!

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