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.

Music Photography | Cardboard Cutouts

Any band that I have photographed in the past knows that I love to do gig shots in monochrome. This is mainly because, through experience, I have found that venues tend to want to create an atmosphere and this usually is achieved through the use of awkward-to-photograph-with lighting. If it isn’t constantly changing colour it’s a colour that the white balance doesn’t know how to cope with. If you have found yourself in this situation then you will also know that manually adjusting the white balance hardly ever works. There are obviously ways around this, an external flash gun for example. But I really hate using flash guns if I can help it.

Another thing to add is that when it comes to gig photos I like to do it all manual, like I used to do with my film cameras. Part of it is guess work, but a big part is being able to step back and look at where you want to photograph and knowing what your exposure should be. One of my hidden talents is that I’m pretty good at guessing exposures at ISO 400 [even going again the advice of a light meter at times]. So when you’re on ISO 1600 it’s just a case of maths.

I had been thinking the other day that it had been some time since I had taken any gig photos and a little while later my younger brother told me about a gig that he and his friend Dave were doing on Friday the 13^th of May.

I had first started doing gig photography by contacting bands that enjoyed the sound of if they wanted any photos taken at an upcoming gig. This was usually done through Myspace, back when I had one. And then there were my friends that were musicians and I would attend their gigs and take photos accordingly, always loving the challenge of manual photography in such a hectic lighting set-up. This isn’t the first set of gig photos that I am placing on this blog. Click the photo links below to be taken through to my other music related posts on this blog.

Although the shots of Jason were taken with an Olympus OM-10 film SLR, the photos taken at the Adventure Starts Tomorrow gig and in today’s post and all were taken on the Canon EOS 50D using a combination of lenses. This camera was used at the request of my younger brother. This was mainly because he wanted to learn more about RAW photography with the shots.

The gig itself went really well, even though it was on Friday the 13^th. The boys went through some brilliant covers, clips of which can be found in the video embedded above. I suggest giving it a view, also at the very end of it my younger brother and I do a recital of the PokeRap. Which I’m sure has swayed all of you. Hope you enjoy the video and the photos and I hope you have enjoyed reading this post.

One more thing, one of the hardest things to do in gig photography in my opinion is taking photos of the drummer, they are usually in the back with little to no lighting and they generally move around the most.

General Photography | Street Photography On the South Bank, London

Before I get a tweet or comment on this post stating that I am focusing way too much on the topic of Street Photography I would like to point out that these photographs were taken on the 12^th of April using my Rolleiflex TLR and the photographs taken in the post previous to this were taken on the 21^st of April on the Polaroid 600SE. So I’m not lingering on a subject, I just had to wait a fortnight for the 120 E6 film to be processed.

If you hadn’t of guessed, that photo above is now how links are shared on the blog. I’m calling them Badges, click on it and it will take you where I want you to go. I think it looks better than just a text hyperlink. Now, if you had been paying attention you will have read that for this post I am using my Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex camera. My camera from the 1930’s that takes 120 film. And yes it’s the same camera that I had used in the Pisa post.

As you may or may not know [depending on how often you read my blog] I am always looking to improve on where I feel that I am lacking. Hence the sudden arrival of all the videos to accompany the posts, anyhow, one thing that I’ve never really been that great at was street photography. Anyone who knows me will know that I have no problem with striking up a conversation with someone I have never met before [a habit I am sure will get me into trouble one day] but before taking someone’s photograph I feel the need to get to know them first.

For example, there is a blog post on here with photographs of my friend Azita, and as always, the link to that post is below. Now, I had met Azita for the very first time that day. This had happened because she had been referred to me by my friend Steve, who I have also taken photos of that are on this blog and yes there will be a link. And even though that was the first time we had met we still had a coffee [well, hot chocolate] at Starbucks first to chat for a bit and get to know each other which I feel improved the photographs.

Now, what about WEDDINGS you ask? Obviously I don’t know every person in the wedding party yet I am able to go along to the church or registry office and take their photographs. That is a very good point but when they go to a wedding they expect their photograph to be taken, to be remembered as part of that particular couple’s special day. But when you take that person away from the wedding scenario and put them in the everyday I doubt that they are prepared at all times to have their photograph taken and not feel strange about it.

The video at the top of the post shows a short clip of the busker who is the subject of a few of the shots below. This video came about for two reasons. The first was the couple that you will see thoroughly enjoying the lady’s singing and the second reason is because upon noticing the couple and how happy they looked I was midway through changing a roll of film. So making a video seemed the quickest option available to me. And may I add, I think that it works well as a video, much better than it would have done as a still image.

The shots below were taken on Fujifilm Provia that expired in 2005 and although I am usually quite lucky with the results I achieve from expired film this was not one of those times. But I decided against editing the colour and tone of the shots. I generally dislike editing to begin with. And although the video is of the busker there are other shots of people on the South Bank enjoying the day. Hopefully you will enjoy the shots. There are six images in total, all of them taken on the South Bank in London.

I gave her a business card.
I wonder if she will get in contact.

General Photography | Instant Photography In London With The Polaroid 600SE

If you are a regular reader of this blog or just a casual passer-by, by looking at a few of the posts that are on here you can no doubt surmise that I have a few rare cameras. A few of them I can’t really use because you can’t get the film for them, but there are ways around that. Click the link to the previous post to find out.

One of my favourite of these cameras is my Polaroid 600SE. It’s not the easiest of cameras to carry around with you, one good example for this can be seen when I have to separate the camera and lens to fit it into my bag. Add to that that I had to take a light metre [due to the camera’s lack of an internal exposure metre], a couple of notepads, pencil and the HD camera for the video. So as you can imagine my bag was pretty heavy. Oh and before I forget to mention, in the video above I give a quick ‘how to’ on using the Polaroid 600SE and things to remember as well.

The camera itself was quite hard to find with a lot of people on eBay either selling it for way too much in my opinion or without lenses, which makes it useless to me. I found myself calling around a large group of local photographic shops at first and then expanding my search. And that’s when I found one at a camera store called Mr Cad [link below] at their Croydon branch.

I got the camera body itself at a slightly reduced rate because of a slight dent on the top but aside from that the camera works perfectly. I have used the Polaroid 600SE is one other blog post and that was my portrait session with Holly Defroand.

Actually the photos that I took of Holly were actually taken on the day I bought the camera, getting a lift from Mr Cad to the train station and making my way to central London. If you have clicked the link it may be obvious that it is only the top image that was taken with the Polaroid 600SE and that’s because that was the image that I was actually proud of from that day that was taken with the Polaroid 600Se the rest were taken with the Canon EOS 50D.

On this particular photo trip [the one that this post is about] I was joined in London by Tom Giddings and Heather Torrance. Both of which had their own individual photographic equipment and all three of us had our own techniques that we were trying out. These are explained in detail in the video which is above. And you can see examples of their photography in the links below.

Street Photography. Now although I have always thought that Street Photography has always lent itself to film photography but it’s somewhat hard to feel inconspicuous when you are holding a Polaroid 600SE as it is pretty big but I feel that with some of the black and white shots that I managed to get some good ones, especially the one of the two old men.

All of the photographs in this post, if you haven’t guessed it, were taken with the Polaroid 600SE. The colour shots were taken with Fuji FP-100C Instant Peel-Apart film and the monochrome shots were taken Fuji FP-100B Instant Peel-Apart film. I used one pack of each. One pack should in theory give you about ten exposures but the majority of my Fuji Peel-Apart film expired in 2005 so photographs are never really guaranteed. Also, the day before I went up to London I found a Polaroid film back with five shots remaining in it and decided to get through those. So on this trip I had five colour shots and ten black and white shots. I am including eleven shots in this post with the majority of them being taken on the Fuji FP-100B monochrome film.

Also a little note, I digitally edited one of the shots, the first shot below had a black mark on it that I decided ruined the shot somewhat. Also, below I have put the links that I said I would include in the video.