Sunday 17 March 2013: Summerlee Photomedia Studio

Local photographer Alec Kirkham will host a one-day workshop aimed at people wanting to ‘skill-up’ generally as well as those important social and family occasions.  Alec will take you through from the beginning, covering aperture, speed, ISO and ambient light control, flash unit choices, light modifiers and off-camera flash use.  There will be hands on practical exercises balancing flashes with Ambient light, colour balancing, bouncing flash and finally how you can use your environment for effect.

Suitable for beginners with some experience of cameras, and those with a little more photographic knowledge.

Booking is essential.

Course Link

The good news is that the course is now full.

I was asked to run a lighting workshop by some members of my camera club. The remit was they are relatively new to the world of flash and studio photography so wanted to get some practical experience of working with various light set-ups and light modifiers. I was just there to facilitate with the set-ups and give some advice if advice was needed. So we had 4 hours in the studio and thanks to another member of the group we also had a model (Mhairi McGowan) and make-up artist (Charlie Doherty), which always helps when running a workshop 🙂

In order to help with the session I had spent some time searching the internet looking for some interesting studio photographs, each with a different lighting set-up. In total I selected about 10 images. I then showed these images to the group and asked them to select an image that we would then try to reverse engineer the lighting set-up in order to recreate a similar looking image. This approach was very successful and it meant we were not trying to invent anything for ourself on the day and it made the job for the model really easy as all she needed to do was to copy the pose from the selected image. As there was 10 members of the group and time was limited meaning each person could only take a few shots of each set-up; however everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and all contributed well to the session.

So now that everyone has have had a bit more exposure to the studio and tried different lighting set-ups I hope it has demystified some of the technical aspects and perhaps my simplistic approach will encourage the members to explorer the creative realms of flash photography.

To see more examples taken on the day please read on

Continue reading →

When I was asked if I could photography baby John celebrating his 1st birthday I could not day no. I first photographed John when he was just weeks old and then again when he was about 6 months old, now it was time for another milestone, turning one. His parents were having a little family gathering at home to celebrate this event and wanted me there to capture some natural pictures of John just before all of the the party goers arrive. Unfortunately when I turned up John was not in the mood to have his picture take  and the only thing that could calm him down was to go for a sleep, so what we did was reschedule the  photoshoot for the following day when hopefully John  would be more willing to get his picture taken. The following day things went much better and we were able to capture a nice collection of natural images of John with his parents and playing with his toys. Whenever photographing young children you are sometimes better off rescheduling the photoshoot if the child is not in the mood, otherwise parent start to get stressed and children more unsettled.

Here are a few of the natural picture captured during the session with John in his own home.

WATCH ME GROW

Your baby’s first year is full of changes.  Every day your baby will experiences new firsts and you will witness these magic moments and little discoveries.  In a blink of an eye, you will see your baby grow from the precious innocence of a newborn to the charming, active 12 month old and everything in between.  Your baby’s first year moves at a startling pace and all too quickly.  Trust me, as a father of 3 I know first-hand how fast babies grow, how much they change every day and how quickly our memories of their precious beginnings fade.  You can’t stop time, but you can record it through photographs, forever.

To find out more please select the link

I have had the idea for this project for a few months now however yesterday was the first opportunity I had in the studio to actually carry it out. My 3 children where all exited about this as I had told them in the morning what to expect. They had spent most of the morning practising forming letter and when they arrived at the studio they were all eager to get started. The whole thing took less than 5 minutes which meant I still had some other time to take individual pictures of the children before they attention moved on to other things. I had to ensure that every was in the picture the same amount of times, anything to avoid another family feud 🙂