Salisbury Skate Park

"Bridge"

"Lloyd"

Me at work - image courtesy of Steve Wood

Me at work - image courtesy of Steve Wood

Me at work - image courtesy of Steve Wood

Me - Courtesy of Steve Wood

I went down to the skate park by Salisbury College tonight with a mate from work to see if their was any activity. We were surprised to see how busy it was, so quickly started looking around for where we wanted to shoot. 

We met up with a lad called "Bridge" who is a keen photographer himself. Once we got chatting & explained what we wanted, he quickly rallied the lads to help us out. 

We started by breaking the ice with a few informal portraits before getting them to perform for us. The lads were awesome. Lloyd is the park pro, & is currently sponsored by Motion Coalition BMX Team in Bristol. What can I say, this lad has an amazing talent & completely amazed me with what he could do. They really love what they do & were more than happy to perform the same trick over & over until we were happy we got "the shot!"

Will definitely go down their again with a view to take the lads off & do some street shots.

A trip to the Capital

I managed to go and assist with a job in London last week, and had the privilege of staying with another photographer based in Canary Wharf. Once we arrived and got settled in it was off into the big smoke to take some pictures. These are a mixture of images by both day & night during my short overnight stay in London.

Strobist shoot with Michelle

         

Today I had a very productive shoot with a model from Basingstoke. Having finally plucked up the courage to do a whole shoot using nothing but off camera flash, we hit the streets of Basingstoke. I did the whole shoot using 1 SB900 flash on a stand & my 2 pocket wizard Plus II's. I found it a lot easier having played around with them at work first! The location we used was ideal, very run down looking and very moody.

Michelle is a great model & worked very hard despite the cold & rain. I will definitely  be working with her again!

Amport House HDR

Original

Full Colour

Desaturated

Black & White

Edited using Aperture Silver Efex Pro for a nice vintage look

This is my first real attempt at an HDR image. In normal circumstances you would shoot at least 3 images all bracketed to get your start point. For this shot, I cheated a little. I took the shot in NEF (RAW), and then selected various parts of the image & layered them individually. I then had full control over each layer. So after tweaking the levels on each layer this is it. 

It doesn't look too bad for a first attempt.

I decided to go with 3 different looks to see how it worked with each. Full colour, desaturated & full black & white with the original as the first image.

Your thoughts please.

Steve

The Weird & Wonderful

While on the Defence Photographers Course last year, we were sent on many a task within local towns to get portraits. It was a confidence building exercise as much as it was photographic, helping the younger & more timid to lads come out of their shells more.

I popped into a coffee shop in Shrewsbury & met a girl called Ellen. After I gave her the low down on who I am & what I wanted she was more than co-operative. After I bagged the shots I needed we got chatting. It turned out Ellen was heavily into amateur dramatics & was very keen on having some weird and wacky pictures taken of her.

So with several projects looming I called upon Ellen several times to help me out. She was a natural, changing her pose with every "click" of the shutter, & she was not shy to be dressed up, made up & posed to look the part.

Crazy shots, but I love them

Oliver

Just dug out some old portraits of my friends son Oliver as she wants to get him into child modelling. Although these were done when i was in training, i still quite like them, especially the cheekiness of them! Kids aren't great at posing for the camera, but catch them playing around & you've got a great shot!

Area 55 Tattoo Studio

While visiting the Georgian Fair in Blandford this bank holiday, I popped in to see my friend Vikki who runs the local tattoo studio. I thought I would get some portraits of the staff in their Georgian attire, then grab a few shots of them at work. After a quick trip through Photoshop they're done!