Portraiture Photography | Tommi Gibbons

Photographing a wedding is always a big deal and shouldn’t be taken lightly. If you have been chosen to photograph someone’s wedding day they have entrusted you with the responsibility of their special day. A once in a lifetime event that cannot be repeated, I mean you’ve heard it all before, but imagine having your equipment fail because you hadn’t pre-checked it, shrugging and going home. I’d be very surprised if you managed to get another wedding for some time.

Pre-wedding day every photographer (that I know) has their own ritual, their own way of preparing for the monumental task at hand. But, I don’t know their rituals so I can only give you mine and my ritual generally starts about a week (or more) before the actual wedding day.

Now, by ritual, I don’t mean meeting with the bride and groom and deciding on a pre-set photo list. That should have been done weeks or better yet months before the actual wedding day. No, in today’s post what I mean by ritual could otherwise be described as the checking over of all equipment that you tend to use on the wedding day.

Now I find that I am never really satisfied with just sitting in my home using the camera for a few shots and giving it all the a-OK. I’m just a bit more picky than that. With my equipment I like to go over everything and the only real way I know to do that would be to go  out and take photographs, mainly portraits. Because you want to see how the lens/camera/memory card/etc reacts to real world use. So what I do is arrange meet ups with people I know and give them free portraits for the chance to help me test out my equipment.

As well as helping me test my equipment it also gives me something to write about on this blog and I can also get enough footage from my camera to make a video. Today’s video (which should be above) is more of a video blog from my day than anything which you’ll learn from, but you may enjoy it. Even though I am taking portraits of friends of mine at the time I am more focused (if you’ll excuse the pun) on what my camera is doing.

First off, it’s best to check that the auto focus is working correctly (you would be surprised how often it isn’t). When that has been checked I then check the lens on manual focus,  just to make sure that the focusing ring doesn’t get stuck at any point and if it feels a little stiff then it’s best to know this before the wedding day. Once I’ve taken few shots with one lens I then switch over to another and start all over again. Today I was testing out the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 and the Canon EF 28mm f1.8, I was especially eager to test out the Sigma as I had only received it back from repair a few days ago and I needed to make sure that it was working correctly. Like I said earlier, you should test every piece of kit that you are going to be using on the day. I am probably going to also be using my Canon EF 50mm f1.8 and I’ll definitely be using my Canon flashgun so I’ll test those out on my next portrait shoot which will probably be next week.

It’s not just about the lens either; you have to keep an eye on your camera. Just after taking the photograph I’m keeping a mental note of how fast the images are being saved. A fast memory card is a must with Wedding Photography. I generally don’t keep an eye on the battery, this is because two days before the wedding day I charge all my batteries.

So, as I said earlier in today’s post we have Tommi sitting in for me and all the photographs below were taken with the Canon EF 28mm f1.8 except for the first one. I wouldn’t expect portfolio quality shots from today’s post but I am still happy with the results, also, the shots were taken pretty much whenever I remembered that I had a camera on me.

Just before a wedding I tend to doubt my abilities and add that to the fact that I haven’t done any photography recently means that these tests are far more beneficial that usual. Oh, expect some gig shots in about three weeks, just saying.

Documentary Photography | St Phillips, Aldwych

This blog, in its heyday (and it’s had a few) was a twice weekly photographic blog exploring a broad range of subject matter and photographic techniques. All of it written by myself in my spare time and all the photographs taken by me also.

Each post was generally written in one go, with some taking a bit longer. There are about 53 posts on the blog (not including this one) and seeming that I am not a writer by any measure I’m quite surprised that I managed to write that much. Photography is a passion, it’s my passion, it’s what I do and what I’m known for. From time to time I try to write and that’s the main reason that the posts on the blog have progressively increased in size since I started this blog all the way back in August of 2009.

But I’m not done yet.

Earlier on today I was looking at photography jobs and saw a role taking photographs in a theatre. On the job post it said to send a CV and a link to a website/blog and as I added the link to this site and I realised that I had not placed a post on here since photographing my younger brother’s band on the 15^th of May. This calls for two things, the first is a short apology for the lack of posts I’m not sure if this blog had regular readers but I can guess that no posts may have been annoying. Secondly, a return to blogging, photography, writing, videos and such.

And so we begin.

Out of context, today’s photographs, and the video for that matter will seem kind of strange. If you skipped the text of today’s post you will have seen shots of empty hallways and photographs of people laying down on the floor taken at a very high ISO. Saying that, I have to say that the video is kind of dark but if does give a great explanation of the monochrome images and the context with which they should be taken in. So, I shall begin to explain the first set of photographs.

First off, the photographs of the empty hallways do have some meaning to them. They were taken in the St. Phillips building in Alwych which is on the campus of the London School of Economics. And the reason that you find photographs of empty hallways and gutted rooms in this post is because St. Phillips had been emptied out prior to it being handed over. This handing over will ultimately result in this building being demolished. Work on which, has started long before I wrote this post. The reason for this I place to taking so long to write this particular post.

There are certainly a few things to be said about a building that is going to be demolished. The first of which that pops into the mind of quite a few people is simply “Who cares?” and I can understand what they mean. A city, like London, is never actually finished. It will continue to grow and evolve over time and there will be never be a point when nothing new is needed. But that shouldn’t mean that when a building is set to disappear we should ignore the history of that particular building. And that is what the exhibition that inhabited the St’ Phillips building shortly before it’s handing over was trying to convey.

I was thinking about this viewpoint on construction and deconstruction as I was walking [and photographing] my way through the empty hallways. But a couple of other thoughts were going through my mind. These thoughts mainly occurred when I was looking out of the third floor window.

“No one will ever see this exact view ever again. No one will see what I can now see and no-one will be able to stand here and see what I can’t either”

A certain view at a certain time can inspire quite a lot in people and it just kind of struck me that this building wouldn’t have that opportunity to inspire in the future. And that’s what I meant when I said that no-one will be able to see what I can’t. I look down and see a street; someone else could have looked down and wrote a novel.

I came to this by accident really. I had met one of the exhibitors, Jesse Darling, last year and I have had her as a Twitter contact for some time. I had asked whether or not she had anything that she wanted photographed and it was then that I was told about this exhibition and through that I learned a lot about the history of the building.

The exhibition “Students, Patients, Paupers” wished to celebrate the history and the many roles played by the St. Phillips building. Some of which include a venereal hospital, a work house and a dentist’s practice among others. These are but a few of the roles this building has performed over the past century.

I was there on Wednesday the 11^th of May where as well as Jesse Darling’s exhibition piece “Live Sleeping Event” there was also a public symposium going over the history of the building and the idea of construction and deconstruction.

Like I mentioned above, I am not a writer. A good example of which is this post, that I’ve been trying to write this since May. This building has a rich history and an interesting one. But, for some reason I find it hard to write about empty hallways, except to say, that a lot of history has passed through them. But I don’t just want to give you a history lesson. If you would like to know more please visit the link below.

http://stphilips.tumblr.com/

But for now, I shall simply show you the photographs and the video, before I break right through the thousand word barrier without having said very much.