Ideas, Ideas!!

YouTube is definitely my new best mate. Watching a lot of these videos on photography is really really making my creative juices flowing! Since getting my strobe light (Canon 430EXii) I've been having all sorts of ideas for shoots. Just a couple I really want to do at the moment is I want to head to a skatepark (the one here is most difinetely too small and most importantly too dead, so any help will be greatly appreciated ; ) ) and get some photos of people getting big air, grinds etc. etc. Might head to somewhere on my next days off!! Should make a giggle trying to get some people I don't know to bust some moves for me.....

Thanks to Mr. eBay I have purchased an umbrella adapter for my lightstands so want to head off into a field with tall grass and have a shoot in there! Should be good : )

In other news my week off work has sadly come to an end. As from 6pm tomorrow night I officially have no life again :( back to long hours and rediculously shitty pay! Me and Becs (the better half) have started shopping for bits and bobs for when we finally move in together. Spent the day at Ikea on Saturday. I could spend thousands there. No shit!! Every time we went down a new aisle I wanted something else!! Computer desks, sofas, tables, wardrobes, woks (don't ask. It was only £2.44 ain't going to complain about that!) I'm pretty sure she wanted to strangle me by the time we were ready to leave. So no surprises now I'm going to say were going again in a couple of weeks!!

So apart from that it's been a pretty uneventful couple of weeks. One of my good mates, Dylan, has just joined this blogger lark so I think he deserves a shout out!! Check him out at http://welshboon.blogspot.com will give you a bit of a giggle!!!

Just before I leave, within the next couple of weeks I'll be posting a couple of tutorials on 1. How to use the speedlites with a shoot through umbrella and will show the different effects shooting with and without the umbrella has. And 2. Will show you how to make a DIY light box for less than £5

Something for you to look forward to!

Adios people!


Andrew.

Location:Blaenau Ffestiniog,United Kingdom

Good Times Ahead? I Think So!!

I've been thinking a lot lately as to what direction I want to take my photography. And after a lot of YouTubing and a lot of flickr-er-ing (Does that make sense? Probably sounds better in my head) I've decided on giving the whole strobist style a whizz. I know it's mainstream and a lot of people do it now, but I really really do like the effect. And the whole versatility of basically carrying a couple of speedlites and a couple of umbrellas (if you want) and you can have a studio anywhere really does appeal to me. My Canon 430EX ii speedlite arrived this morning and I will be getting some triggers tomorrow (thanks to an absolute legend of a photograher from Colwyn Bay) and I will be away. You will not believe how excited I am!!! If you as well are thinking of trying out the strobist style I highly recommend you go to YouTube, search 'Strobist' and just watch the videos. There are sone fantastic and inspirational videos n there!!

So not much else has happened lately except for yesterday. A good friend of mine, photographer Ian O'Neill LRPS (he'd kill me if I forgot to put in those 4 letters), and we had the whole day shooting and, fair play to him, he taught me so much about studi photography!! Some of the photos from the day to be fair are absolutely fantastic, I have an image that will forever be in my portfolio, and a model who is very VERY happy with the photos for her portfolio.

This is the image I mentioned above:





Yeah. Definitely safe to say I'm impressed with this image! Who needs to spend £2000 on a camera!!!!!

Andrew.

Location:Blaenau Ffestiniog,United Kingdom

Product Photography at Home

If you are like me and cannot afford thousands of pounds for top-notch studio lights and hundreds of pounds for light tents and accessories, do not worry! Get up, put the kettle on, sit back and breathe. In this, my first tutorial, I will show you how it is possible to get images like the ones below with items that you will most likely have lying around the house.











The items you will need are as follows:

3x Sheets of plain white paper
1x Roll of masking tape
Any silver reflecting surface (Tin foil or as seen in the photos, a cheese grater)
1x Desk lamp
1x Tripod
1x Camera (any camera will do. Make sure flash is off)
1x Product to photograph (In my case it was the Tetris game cartridge for the Nintendo GameBoy)




So, to be 100% honest with you, the hardest part of the whole thing is finding what you need. It took me 10 minutes. Yeah, so that pretty much sums up the difficulty of the project! I set up my "mini studio" in the kitchen as thats where I had the most room.

The first thing you need to do is stick 2 pieces of paper together with masking tape. The best way I found that will give you the most room to play with is if you stick the longer edges together as follows:





The next thing you will need to do is place the paper down so the masking tape is on the underneath of the paper. Place the paper lengthways away from you, then lift up the edge furthest away from you to the height of roughly half the size of the paper. Stick this to any surface you can and push the bottom of the paper away from you to create a curve in the paper. This curve is known as an "infinity curve" secure the bottom of the paper so it doesnt slip (I masking taped the paper to the worktop to secure it)





Now you are pretty much ready to go. Just add the desk lamp to the side of your choice and place the product of your choice onto the paper and voila. You're away!









If one side of your product is dark, just use the extra sheet of paper left over from earlier or the silver from either the cheese grater or tin foil to reflect the light from the lamp back onto the product. The most crucial thing here is to make sure the camera is on a tripod because you are more than likely going to be using shutter speeds that are well beyond handheld speeds.










I hope this is of some form of help for you all. I know its by no means professional but even if youre bored at somepoint and fancy trying something new go for it. It doesnt take long to set up and the results you can have from it can be quite interesting. You can also try mixing things up by having a black background and have something really white as your subject creating an image with strong contrasts. I don't know. I let your imagination run wild and let you decide on what you want to do.
Thank you for taking the time out to have a look and I would absolutely love to see some of the images you've taken yourself! Feedback would be appreciated and as I mentioned earlier its my first tutorial so go easy on me ;)

If you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to send me an email at andrewcockerillphotography@gmail.com

Thank you :)



Andrew.

Location:Blaenau Ffestiniog,United Kingdom

Catrin, Megan and Ffion Shoot

En Route From Focus on Imaging

What a day!! I've surprisingly learnt more than I thought I would today. On watching a few of the workshops and demonstrations that were going constantly all day there were a few that really stuck in my head. The main one being On One, the Photoshop plugin that allows you to do so many things that I have tried and failed to do. For example adding your own depth of field. It sounds easy enough but there is only so much you can do with limited knowledge of photoshop, before you start hitting walls, such as halo's around the subject you're trying to make stand out. So when I get back I will definitely 100% be looking into getting their software. All I was on the look out for today was flash triggers, shoot-through umbrella and a stand adapter to attach the shoot-through umbrella to the flash stand. But I know for a fact, even though the prices weren't that bad, I can get them cheaper online.

Thursday I will be recording my first video tutorial. It will be about my basic workflow using Adobe Lightroom 3 and it will be covering everything from first import the photographs to a final edited image. I will also do a written tutorial for the exact same image going into a little bit more detail.

If you have any questions about anything on Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at:

andrewcockerillphotography@gmail.com

Thank you and happy snapping!!

Andrew.

Location:Birmingham, England.

It's been a while

Okay unfortunately my photo of the week project has kind of been knocked on the head. Because of the hours I work it was nigh on impossible for me to get photos every single day plus get the adequate rest in between shifts. So, what to do, what to do. So far in 2011 I have had a much more hands on approach to my photography. Ive done a few photoshoots and have got myself another wedding lined up for September. Once I get a decentportfolio set up I am going to hit places like cafe's etc to see if they'd be willing to put some of my photos up on display. I still need to do a lot of marketing and advertising. I'm notngetting much feedback at the moment (except for the ones I've mentioned above) so something isn't working somewhere so I just have to find what it is and resolve it.

At the moment I'm looking for a program where I can record what I am doing on screen on the computer, and after getting inspiration from the likes of Gavin Hoey (www.gavtrain.com) and Jarred Polin and Greg Cazillo of FroKnowsPhoto (www.FroKnowsPhoto.com), I will be posting up tutorials, workflows that work for me and may work for you, and basic organizing skills for the likes of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

If there is anything you'd like to know in advanced about Photoshop or Lightroom then don't hesitate to get in touch with me at:

Andrewcockerillphotography@gmail.com

Regards,

Andrew.

Location:Blaenau Ffestiniog,United Kingdom

Just to let you know I'm still here...

Okay I haven't had much time to update this week because its the busy period at work so have been working 50+ hours there.

Anyway the new year is nearly here and so my first photography project will begin. Project 365. I will attempt to take at least 1 photograph every day for the whole of 2011. Not only that, having a trully inspiring conversation last week with James Taylor of Outlaw Photography, Some of my "Must Buy In 2011" Blog is now completely irrelevant. Im going to stick to my 30D until it completely dies on me. Im just going to invest in 1 lense, as well as other things which make perfect sense and I don't know why I didn't think of it before. The main one being attend improv comedy workshops. As he said:

"You think I Jest (no pun intended)? I can promise you, being a more entertaining and engaging photographer will make you far, far more popular and successful than all the megapixels and speedlights in the land"

Genius. Pure Genius.

Ill try and update once more before the new year. If not have a happy new year people and I wish you all the best for 2011, and I will see you with my first photo of the year on January the first!

Andrew