Damien Lovegrove - From Concept to Print

Damien Lovegrove is currently presenting this fab seminar, offering lighting, picture editing and print demos.  It's being sponsored by Jorgensen, |In Focus, Loxley, the Photographer's Guild and Lupolux, so as well as a great and inspirational day out, it also gives photographers the opportunity to speak to suppliers and to look at a range of products (Jorgensen have just added some new products to their already great collection!)
At £18, it really can't be missed.  The lighting demonstration was really inspirational - and made to look so simple by a great professional at work.  What I love about Damien is the way he approaches his work - with a sense of fun, passion and simplicity to produce stunning and innovative effects.  There are still some places remaining at various locations - my advice would be to snap one up!
http://www.lovegroveconsulting.com/training_zone/concept_to_print.aspx
www.songbirdphotography.co.uk

Family Portraits at Melen Studios

It was great to photograph this family and to capture the fantastic relationships between the different generations.  There was much laughter, which made it a really enjoyable and relaxed shoot! My thanks to the lovely Field family for choosing me as their photographer x

Ice the Cake Wedding Fair at the Aylesbury Waterside Theatre

This venue is perfect for all the magic of a wedding fair.  Today the Waterside Theatre was buzzing with excited brides-to-be planning their special day and with a great range of fantastic suppliers, including a chocolate fountain and steel drums!  The vintage zone added a further touch of glamour and the icing on the cake was the 3 runway shows featuring a range of beautiful and stylish gowns.  A heaven for brides - and my daughter and I had a ball too!
Well done to Sue at Ice the Cake for hosting a great event!

www.songbirdphotography.co.uk

Using Gels

The effect of coloured lighting gels with off camera flash

www.songbirdphotography.co.uk

My Girl! x x x

www.songbirdphotography.co.uk

Global Angels

Instead of exchanging Christmas presents this year, we started saving the money we would usually have spent so that we could contribute towards a water project in Africa. We got our 5 and 7 year old daughters on board and explained that they would get small gifts from us this year because we wanted to be able to give as much as we could afford to this project.  Global Angels was recommended to us and we choose to donate towards the project in Tsavo, Kenya.  Many thanks to our family members who also donated rather than give us gifts.  We have managed to provide water for 55 people for the next 20 years -  and all for skipping a few xmas gifts!!!
Global angels is a great organisation - you can check them out here:
www.globalangels.org
www.songbirdphotography.co.uk

The Magic of Photography

Yesterday was pretty bleak, with a cold white sky, and not a particularly photo-worthy day.  However, I'd been walking with our hound in the morning and seen this tree on its side and wanted to get a flash lit shot there.  I collected my girls from school and tentatively suggested a trip out.  To my surprise they were up for it (must be hoping for good Christmas pressies!!!) so off we went, cookies in the car as sweetners!!!  When we arrived, it was the usual story, it had all seemed like a good idea, but they'd changed their minds once we'd got out of the car - to be fair, it was pretty grim!  However, I helped Em up on to the tree and set Aimee up with the flash (a great assistant, and only 7!!!) I took my ambient test shot - what a dull and boring image, then I dropped my exposure by a couple of stops, got Aimee pointing the flash in the right direction (!) and BAM!  This was the result!  Their reaction - WOW!!!  That's the power of photography!!!  It's magic!  Emma wants to know if she'll be famous now - I told her I couldn't promise that, but she'd definitely given me a shot worthy of a blog post!!!  Nice one, girls! : ) x x x x

BEFORE: - Uggghhhh!

AFTER: - YAY!