Meet Bob My Newest Addition To The Home Studio

Everyone let me introduce you to "Bob".


It is Bob's job NOT to moan at me when I want to carry out advanced lighting techniques on him with my family of speedlites.  As you can see Bob is a mannequin but again he has many advantages over his human form.  These advantages may be

• Has a 100% track record of turning up at Photoshoots on time ;)
• Does not moan at you if you fancy changing your lighting set up
• Does not moan at you if you experience a technical hic up whilst shooting
• Does not mind if you want to dress him up in silly cloths :)

 So here you go every one... Here is few pics of Bob's and my first photo-shoot together.

Regards

Gaz aka Strober

 

Teaching your friend to shoot their first DSLR......

OK so I get a text message from my friend saying that he has got a brand new Nikon 500.  And he was wondering if it was OK for him to come around to mine in order for me to teach him how to shoot it?

Darn right it is and this is why people....  When your a Photographer then at times you can get pretty frustrated with the fact that your always taking professional looking images of other people and you are never ever getting professional looking images of your-self, unless of course you put allot of effort into it your-self and shoot the image your-self.

So I jumped at the challenge of teaching my friend how to shoot his new Nikon 500.  I quickly introduced him to the basics i.e. shutter speed, aperture and ISO.  After that I took him up to my studio and I introduced him to other photographer tools such  as strobes, radio triggers etc...  Then we had a good old photo-shoot where I was the model and my freind was the Photographer. 

Any way here is the photographs from that shoot :)

Strober aka Gaz

PS:  It's nice to actually have your photograph taking for a change.

TESCO Style TV Adverts

So I've been watching TV recently and I've noticed that most of the time then TESCO will make an advert for themselves.  Their advert will always look so very clean but yet most of the time then their adverts will be so simple looking too.

So I decided to make my very own TESCO style advert by working in ProShow Producer with some of the images that it is that I've already shot in my Studio.  As a result my TESCO style advert is shown below, also I've got this feeling that I will be making many more of these kinds of adverts in the not so distant future too.

Playing in the studio...

Playing in the studio...

Ok so whilst most people have been nursing a hangover this Bank Holiday Monday.  Then I instead have been spending my Bank Holiday in my home studio shooting some product images.

I'm not quite sure how it all started, but all I know was that a)  I picked up the camera and b)  I was then off to the News Agents to buy my-self some more products to shoot with, you know such things as Chewing Gum, Drink etc...

Next thing I knew was that my entire day was all over in what seemed to be a such a short period of time.  That saying really is true i.e. dosen't time pass buy very quickly when your having fun.  Any way to finish this blog with people then I think that my next shoot is going to be of a rose or something like that... so just watch this space. :)

Who needs a Play Station ?

I've been experimenting of late with my GoPro Motorsport Videos which were shot at the Three Sisters Race Course which I have attended with, with DRB Rally Sport.

I just wanted to give my GoPro videos an "Arcade" feel to them, almost as if to give you the impression that your playing on a Playstation or an X-box or something like that .  As a matter of fact it is that classic game
SEGA Rally that I have based the above GoPro Motorsport video on.

One of the biggest problems that I face as a videographer is that fact that when I edit my videos in Sony Vegas then I am doing so on a 32" High Definition T.V. Screen.  And then when I upload the video to the internet i.e. YouTube then the "colours" of my videos can / may appear flat / bland or even over saturated at times.  Yes, this is due to a number of factors such as

• I've converted my video file to a less quality video file such as "WMV".
• Standard Definition and High Definition screens sees color in a different forms of light.
• Screens may not be fully calibrated which sees "colors" being scattered all over the place.
• Then there is different color profiles

But none the less it is pretty frustrating when you are trying to simply "guess" the correct colors in editing in order to suit all the people that may be watching your videos via different monitors. i.e. Standard Definition Monitors, Hi-Def Monitors, Uncalibrated Monitors, Iphones etc... etc...  again it's frustrating as it's not all the time that one can get that balance just right.  But one still does have to try and "Boost" the colours with in their videos in order to make their videos look better than other GoPro shooters.  Now on this occasion I've had to use "YouTubes" internal editing system and do an "Auto-Fix" in order to bring the above video back to life, due to the fact that when it was uploaded then the colors were way off when compared to the colors it is that I had on my 32 High Def Monitor.

Any way to close this blog with guys, I think that I'm becoming pretty addicted to making these Arcade Style GoPro Videos.  I just can't wait for the day now that I will be making even more GoPro Videos with more than just one GoPro Camera.

See you all later

Strober

Another day of just shooting stills...... :)

In my previous blog I talked about how important it is for me to shoot only stills at times.  This is because shooting stills to me is the main teacher behind becoming a better camera operator (well that is my theory anyway).

The problem with shooting stills for any photographer whilst they are on assignment , is then that they may have to think more creatively outside of the box whilst at the same time they may have to learn new skills or carry out pretty wild experiments all at the same time.  

Well that is exactly what I have done with regards to my current assignment.  Let me explain on the 03/03/2012, I once again tagged along with Daz from www.drbrallysport.co.uk and attended another rally event.  The problem is folks is that to Daz and his mates then being a photographer does not really mean anything to them, I mean to them then everyone is a photographer, even them, as all they have to do is press the button on their i-phone and hey presto just like you they are a photographer too.

 So on this assignment I thought to my-self right you are going to have to think outside the box on this one mate.  So I decided that I should A)  Learn the skill of panning,  B)  Tell the story of the day,  C)  Work with with one speedlite or two.  I set my cam to 60th of second, installed my DSLR onto a monopod and off I went to learn the art of panning. 

After about an hour shooting panning (wise) then I quickly did learn that panning is not just only hard but it is also a pretty boring part of photography that I my-self in the future will not be shooting to much of.  So off I went to become a little bit more artistic with my shots, there is one shot that I got and I have to say it is one of my fav, a bored young lad was wasting time in the service area simply by sitting on some tyres.  Before he had noticed I had sized the moment of opportunity and made the shot and had captured exactly what has got to be my fav images from this assignment.

Look guys I don't want to bore you all to much so sign of this blog with, then enjoy the images.

Gaz aka Strober