The crafting of a portrait.

I've recently created a new blog at LoveEnfield.blogspot.com which showcases some of the great people in the borough who are making Enfield such a great place to live, work and shop in.     I decided to do this as I wanted the opportunity to make some great, considered portraits of these people, to help promote their businesses or events and to make some local connections.

Yesterday I photographed Karen & Gunther, who run a great local coffee shop, MyCoffeeStop at Enfield Chase station.   It's a small unit, and I wanted to maximise the space available to me, so I thought about using my 8mm fish eye lens.

I decided to pop this on my 40d as the crop sensor would mean that I got a slightly less wide field of view, and could focus more on Karen & Gunther than I would had I used my 5dII.   

Here's how I set up:

This gave me the following photo, straight out of camera:

Importing the photograph into Lightroom and allowing it's automatic lens correction feature to complete gave me this:

Which is OK, but leaves Karen and Gunther a little small in the middle of the frame.  I therefore chose to manually "correct"  the photograph, which gave me this, still distorted but more natural look:

My next task was to enhance the effect of the steam.  Pushing the clarity & contrast helped a little, but I didn't like what it did to my subjects who'd turned a ghostly shade of pale!

So I took this copy of the photo and layered it on top of the previously unaltered copy of the same photo.    This further enhanced the steam, and gave me further options for refining the image:

The image below shows where my photoshop work was done:

1. The image was naturally vignetted, but because of the crop I needed to darken down this one remaining corner
2. By masking out the blend over Karen & Gunther I could allow the original, natural skin colours to come through.
3. A Waitrose carrier bag behind Gunther was cloned to remove the logo, and darkened down where it had caught the flare from the flash behind him
4. The tiles were cleaned up, the various posters being removed and cloned out.

This gave us our final image (see it large at the top of the post):

I hope you found this useful and/or interesting.  Let me know in the comments below and I'll do it again if there's enough interest.

Dan

Pre-Wedding laughs in the January Sunshine

It was an absolute pleasure to spend an hour last Saturday with Nikki and Mez, who's wedding I'll be photographing at the end of the month.      We met at Enfields lovely Town Park, where we had a stroll together, getting to know each other a bit better, and taking some fun and relaxed photographs away from the stresses of wedding planning.

The guys will soon chose their personal favourites from the shoot, and I'll build them a completely unique, custom canvas montage as a memento of the shoot.     Can't wait for the wedding now!






Nikki and Mez were clearly and hugely in Love, and being so relaxed with each other helped me to quickly start getting some great photographs like this one.

Either Mez has the best set of one liners I've ever heard, or he's very adept at subtly tickling Nikki as they walked together.


Mez practices his "Action Man" pose whilst Nikki shines out from the other side.



Nikki certainly gave as good as she got - no shrinking violet she.


As well as the laughs, their love shined through in tender moments like this one.


It was such a pleasure to spend time with such a light hearted couple.  I hope the laughter continues for many years into the future guys.


Time to show "the rock" off


The January sun briefly visited, and we took advantage with this lovely natural light portait.

There are more photos of Nikki and Mez on my Facebook page - why not pop over and have a look.   Whilst you're there don't forget to click the "like" button to be kept informed of all of my news, and to have a first glimpse of their wedding photographs at the end of this month!

North London Photographer: Short Notice Outdoor Portraits

I took a short notice call last week from a client who needed some professional portraits for her own use. She told me that she needed them provided back to her that same day as this was her only free day in the near future.

Fortunately I was able to jiggle a few things out, but unfortunately I didn't have access to the studio at that short a notice. We therefore agreed that we'd take a walk in Enfield's Town Park and take some photographs that featured her in it's beautiful surrounds.

We met in the early afternoon and strolled into the park. Fortunately the skies were cloudy - which made for a beautiful soft light we could use to both of our advantages.

Here are a few of my favourite shots that we took in our hour together:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

I returned to the office and spent a short while processing the images, before uploading them to my website where my client was able to choose her favourite six shots. These were then emailed out the same evening and the job was complete barely 12 hours after the original call.

Great fun, and very pleasing to be able to react so quickly and give my client what she needed. An email of thanks from my client later that night gave me a final warm feeling of a job well done and then it was "time for bed"!

Dan.

North London Professional Photographer: Corporate Portraits for Friendly St. Albans' Solicitors

A tough assignment this week, as I was tasked with making solicitors look human! All jokes aside, my clients were a friendly and welcoming partnership in St. Albans, and they, alongside their web-designer had asked me to create some portraits of the partners to show them both as professional and approachable.



One of the keys to this kind of assignment is the need to work at speed. We utilised a corner of one of the partners office for the initial shots, before lugging my lights around the building to capture each partner in their own offices.

Making each partner comfortable in front of the camera in the minimum time possible meant that we got the shots we wanted with the minimum disruption. Each client spent less than 10 minutes with me - with the rest of my time being taken up with ensuring that everything was set up to get me the shots I wanted first time, every time.

I then had the unusual pleasure of being able to spend an hour or so walking through the town centre capturing some of the local sights and vista's - looking for shots that could be used as banner illustrations on their new website currenly being crafted by the experts at e-WebConsulting.



If you want better images for your family or business then keep reading this blog. In the weeks to come I'll be showing you how you can improve your own photography and create more memorable, more engaging images.




Until then, all the best.


Dan

North London Photographer: Guerilla Portraits at MyCoffeeStop Enfield

On Wednesday 4th August, I'll be making my way to the best coffee shop in Enfield - the small, but perfectly formed MyCoffeeStop on Platform One at Enfield Chase station. Here I'll be running a Guerilla Portrait session, ambushing commuters and families to raise money for the Chickenshed Theatre

Gunter, the master barista was the guinea pig today as I took a few test shots so as to be ready to hit the ground running at 6am on the 4th August. Here's a few of my favourites:

Come along and see us, grab a coffee, a great portrait and support a great cause.

North London Photographer - Pet Dog Portraits

A break from a run of corporate work yesterday gave me a little time to get back to some portraits and a chance to capture Valerie, a young cross-bred Jack Russell/Chihuahua.

Valerie is completely deaf, which posed particular challenges in terms of getting her attention so that she'd pose for me, but with some perseverence we did, I think, hit the jackpot.

Working in a small bedroom, I used my flash on a ETTL cord, but switched to manual mode for both exposure and flash so that I could control the background to get these.



This first photograph captures a vulnerability in Valerie that I think is quite appealing. Her single visible dark eye staring hopefully forward shows the kind of trust that she has to hold for those around her as a small, disabled dog.


By moving the flash to fire behind Valerie, I created this lovely, near silhouette, which appeals to me as I think she looks almost Fox like.


Here by shooting from above, and feathering the flash so it illuminated her face but not the ground around her, I feel a sense of vulnerability along with a slight ridiculous note of the size of the ears of this deaf dog.


This final shot is a more conventional portrait and shows more dignity and a stillness, which is rare in a dog who is constantly reliant on her sight to sense opportunities for fun, love or even threats.


If you'd like similar images of your pet captured then please contact me by clicking here.

InkedImages - second shoot friday

With the second shoot for our 2010 InkedImages tattoo portraiture exhibition coming up this Friday, I thought it appropriate to put together a quick video of some of the interim images from our first shoot.

Take a look!

Family Portrait Fun

The following video should give you all a bit of an idea of the fun that we all have at our portrait sessions.

Watch and enjoy!



And for more information on our portrait photography sessions - click here.

Picture of the Day - Cool Teenagers

Sometimes it can be difficult for a photographer to engage with an older child, who perhaps is less than enthralled with the idea of being the subject of a photo session. We always look to create "cool" images that they will love as a way to bring them onside.

Picture of the Day - Another fun portrait

Following on from yesterday's post, here's another image that shows families at play:

Picture of the Day - Every Moment a potential portait

Photographing Children has particular challenges, but the images that we can create whilst they are at play can be stunning and make the effort well worthwhile.





Sometimes the moments when they are lost in the simple joys of playing and thus unaware of the camera are the ones in which we can capture their true selves.

Sneak Peek - Family Portraits, Inside & Out

Here's a sneaky preview of a few images from our recent portrait session with a lovely local family. I understand that Dad's in line for a special 40th Birthday present!

We set up the lights and backdrop in their dining room and created a studio space for a series of high key portraits. The dog was keen to get involved too!

Following this we were able to set up outside for a few shots as the sun began to set.

I had an absolute blast taking these and really enjoyed meeting the whole family. One of the things that I love about this job is the ability to make a connection with those I photograph and find out a little about them and this was certainly true this time.

I'll have the full set ready shortly - there's lots more to choose from! In the meantime enjoy a sample below: