Canal by night

Canal by night
A couple of weekends back K and I spent a fun evening with Rob and Jenny exploring the nightscapes around Islington. I captured this view along the Regents Canal before we retired to a pub.

If you can't find a model...

Self portrait, introspective
Got myself some new lights and light stands, and prior to trying them out on anyone else I thought I'd better get some practice in. Yes, once again I've spent the entire day photographing myself. As you can see I really love the modelling.

More toys definitely make a difference here and open up some classic lighting set-ups. A big umbrella diffuses the main light to give soft shadows, and a big silver reflector adds those little silvery highlights that define the shadowy side of my face. The light on the background separates me nicely from the surroundings. And I still have one light spare :-)

I get to try all this out on a willing model tomorrow, should be interesting...

Self portrait, right eye

Self portrait, right eye
I spent a good chunk of Tuesday practising my portrait lighting. As no-one else was about I used myself as the model. Above is one of the more experimental shots :-)

I shot in the dining room using a flash to light the wall behind me and a window with netting (to my left) as a side light. To get my eye pin sharp I used autofocus plus a whole lot of attempts to get my eye on the focus point (practice seems to help here!). The catch-light is from the on-camera flash running in commander mode on my Nikon.

Maybe I'll post a full face portrait next time, I do have some of those too :-)

Millenium Bridge

30 seconds under the London Millennium Footbridge
I'm currently working on a project revolving around bridges over the River Thames. Here's the first fruit of that, with more to come...