London Girl

Adrienn

Light tests.

Light and dark tests with my beautiful wife,Jelena.

Late night shoot last night.

Had a session last night with Svetlana from Serbia.

Westcott Equipment.

Just put in my order for one of these.....its a beautiful thing!

Westcott Equipment.

Grabshot.

Had a moment to spare before I ran out the door this afternoon...I photographed Sara.

The Spring Collection-Chickenpox!

The children sporting the latest in Spring wear.From the  Varicella Zoster collection.

My Boy.

Darko has recently started collecting all his most favourite toys and putting them together on a little table.
The king of toys is the tyrannosaurus called Rex.
Rex goes everywhere with Darko.
I felt this was a moment that had to be recorded for our family history.
(If my Daughter's chicken pox gets much visibly worse then a little spotty girl's face will be here shortly!)

When I was 7

The only existing image of me as a small child.....note the brooding sullen face.
Even then I distrusted the camera.
I'm the one on the extreme right.
(One of my sisters on the extreme left)

This must have been 1971-72
Look behind us (take note Hungarian folk that labour under the illusion that all is/was milk and honey in the West) and you get an idea of the poverty of the environment.
This area actually looked a bit better than others I had grown up in, here, the rate and mice population were minimal(unlike Parkhead where I distinctly remember mice running over my bed) and only six families shared one toilet.

Just the one.

Had a great little session with Sofia(best friend) and her mum, Marta.
After a table heaped with humus,olives,cheeses and wine we headed in to my little studio to fire off some portraits and double shots.

Waiting to hear back from Sofi about her final slection of images.
This is just one that I liked.

Light test.

A good friend and her mum are coming over tomorrow for a visit,drop of plonk,bit of salad and a chinwag.
Once the bevy and nosh are sorted we'll do a wee bit of clickety click.
(have to keep me hand in)
Did a couple of quick as a flash(boom boom!) light tests with her indoors and the wee sprog.

I spent many years complaining and wondering why society(yours and mine) was ridden with problems and seemingly terminal dysfunctions.
Then I watched the first Zeitgeist film and EVERYTHING came in to sharp focus.

Maybe it will for you too.



(you can enable subtitles by hitting the cc tab under the player window)

Peer recognition.

Its always an extra boost when the,"attaboy!"  comes from your own peer group and particularly from Russia and the surrounding countries.
An honour to be among such unique visionaries.

Serbian Faces.

Recently, while in Serbia with my family over the Xmas period, we attended a friend and family celebration held every year by my wife's father. The celebration is to commemorate the exploits of a Saint adopted by the family(through the male line) as a protector.
Its traditional that there's lots of fresh fish soup,salads,meats and more booze than you could sink a battleship in for everyone to get stuck in to.
Lots of long tables set up in the Fire-station (my wife's father is the Fire Prevention officer for Novi Sad,Serbia)  friends and family all together having a great old time after a thanksgiving prayer is offered.

It was my hope that while there at the celebration I could tape up a black backcloth on the wall in a corner of the room, get my lights and light stands out and fire off some portrait shots to give to everyone as a gift from myself and family to them.


I started by taking a few shots without flash(in manual mode) in the room before I set up my gear proper.

Once everyone had eaten and were well on their way to being well oiled with the booze and fun company I set up my little corner and started banging out some nice portraits.
(post work may look a bit dodgy in a shot or two...not my personal preference but something I did for the ppl who would receive them as gifts)


My wife's father,Dragan Karabasil.

the following images are all close friends of the family.

We really enjoyed ourselves there(this was the first time we had been in Serbia just at the right time for this event)and everyone was really happy about having their pictures taken.
After the event, I did a quick process on the images(as you can see above) and my wife gave the high res files to her father to get to all of his friends.
Certainly, I have many more portraits from the evening than posted here...when I've the time I'll put some up here and over on flickr.

The 4 CEO's shoot.

After shooting more than a 1000 business portraits (the final number will probably be around 1200 )for a corporate client over an 8 day period in December I was asked by the same client to shoot four of the main executives from the firm.

The brief was very specific.....looking for "traditional" corporate images that the print (and web now) media could use to supplement comment and analysis from these guys in the local media.

Though the brief was traditional I tried for a bit of wiggle room in the settings and workplace environments I shot the guys.

The shoot itself was planned well in advance and the light set up had already been tried and tested on location using a stand in model(cheers Hans!) to substitute for the execs.

The only part of the shoot that I had to deal with off the cuff to an extent was when the guys were sitting before a laptop with their staff at work behind them. Here I used only natural light,no fill flash or reflectors.

This natural/strip office light was done in Manual mode on the Nikon D90 and was set up seconds before the guys walked in to the area.

To assist myself in this I used a humble bottle of water

This gave me an idea of optimum speed and F stop in this area to get the focal length exactly where I needed it to be to have the subject well exposed,tack sharp and the background to be nicely thrown out.

Here are a few examples from the shoot that morning.

(The shots with the cell phone were real to an extent, I had a staff member call my phone and had the guys answer the call)

(The guys also posed with arms relaxed,hands in pockets and chilled out body language) 

(The croissant was finally wolfed down by myself at the end of the shoot, after packing up and patting myself on the back for getting the shots I had imagined)

Please forgive the small size of the images posted here......would hate to see them out there as corporate stock if the file sizes were bigger!.

I was quite fortunate that I had the guys for about 10 minutes each and was able to move them through 3 different environment for the photography.

Here is the kit I used on the morning

Nikon D90

Nikon D80

50mm standard Nikkor lens

18-200mm Nikkor VR zoom lens

1 Nikon SB900 flash unit 

2 Nikon SB600's flash units

1 Nikon SB800 flash unit

3 light stands (not so many light stands as in the seated area the sb800,600 and 900 flash units were placed on and behind chairs)

1  Westcott Apollo umbrella soft box

1 shoot through umbrella

1 reflector

Duct tape

Battery chargers

Ipad

Chocolate Croissant (eaten)

It was an enjoyable shoot, the guys were relaxed and cool and all my pre-visualisation work paid off in the end.

(and the client is well pleased with the product)

:)

Fantastic Photographer.

Just classic.

Happy New Year.
:)

News.

Did a shoot last night with a friend, she wanted some shots for her annual Xmas card......was great to have her and her family over....two lovely children and a friendly helpful dad.
She was pleased with the result of the session and I'll get a copy of the card in the mail.
(her cards are really good)
Lovely person that she is she came bearing gifts......got some tickets for a wellness hotel,massage,spa and swimming areas, plus an invitation for two for my favourite Tex/Mex restaurant in town. As soon as I and my lady return from Serbia in January we'll have our children looked after by a friend whilst we enjoy a jolly good nosh up. Cheers Gabriella!

One from the shoot

Tomorrow we head off to Serbia, an extended visit to our family there.
On Sunday,my wife Jelena has a family celebration (the family's saint day....its an orthodox Christian thing) hosted by her father in his Fire Station. There'll be lots of fish soup and very many friendly faces,family and friends there for me to put before my lens.
I'm taking a couple of flash heads, black backdrop cloth,light stands,some shoot through umbrellas and my trusty Nikon D90.....I anticipate that as the party goes on the portraits will become more and more interesting!
We'll be in Serbia until the start of January so I'll maximise my time there by learning Serbian (I'll be living there by July next year) pretty intensely and taking photographs of the neighbouring families,snow covered landscapes and walking for miles every day.
I am really really looking forward to this visit.
:)

As seen over at 1x.com