It’s with a heavy heart that I’ve deleted all of my Pinterest boards. For some of the reasons why have a look at this post by photographer and lawer Kirsten Kowalski. Until all the copyright issues bubbling away in the USA settle down fully I’d rather not put myself at risk. Anyone I’ve invited to Pinterest should read the article and Pinterest T&C and make up their own mind to keep their boards or not.

In the long term Pinterest and sites like them could do a number of things to improve the situation: (read the rest of the post…)

Should press pictures with half blinks be banned?

I’d started this post a couple of months ago, recently spotted pictures of the late Whitney Houston looking worse for wear and last night caught Avijit blinking in every shot at Kaushal’s leaving drinks. X^)

Wind back the clock and….

I’m on a train into London reading the Metro. Page 25 in the “Guilty pleasures” section has a photo of Kate Moss and Jamie Hince leaving Soho’s Box. “.. after what looks like a damn good night. The notorious party girl ..” reads the text.

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I’ve seen a lot of “mirror shots” like the one on the left over the last few years, people wanting to start as a model and needing something they can upload to a profile site in the hope they can get a photographer to help them shoot something better. Many are shot in low light indoors in the evening, blurred and very noisy.  Everyone on this planet starts with nothing, so the fact they’ve taken some initiative is good, not everyone has the money to pay for shots and sign up with an agent day one.  Of course not everyone will make it, many will give up early leaving the determined, hard-working and persistent ones to continue on.

If you’re just about to start and using a phone with a reasonable camera here’s some tips that might help. (read the rest of the post…)

During one of my fashion and portrait shoots the person being photographed may use a number of different outfits and each may be shot in a number of different ways. When sorting through the images to select the best I find it helps to group like shots into subfolders in the Lightroom catalogue.

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I’m still doing the final sort and edit on the images from the shoot with Holly and friends, but a few stood out for an early post. I’m loving the results from the beauty dish.

On a non-lighting side the biggest takeaway is that I need more flexible clamps to hold lighting mounts onto polls. Thankfully tarp fasteners and lots of electrical tape were to hand as an alternative!

Got one of these cards and wondering about the test shoots I spoke of? Chances are I’ve bumped into you in town, it may have been your face, hair, make-up, fashion style or everything combined that caught my attention.

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It’s been quite a satisfying week; some new code I’m very pleased with written for an IT client, some new photography contacts and DIY at home giving our rooms a fresh new look. Amazing what you can do with a tin of paint or two. And the house wasn’t the only thing to get painted. This Sunday sees me return to the studio for another test shoot.

Instead of the silver bounce reflector I will be using a large beauty dish. One of the old Bowens bowls has been adapted with a home made diffuse reflector and flash mount.

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I’ve been watching more and more TED.com talks and was pleasantly surprised to find this talk by photographer and digital artist Erik Johansson this evening. Enjoy!

I’ve taken a few quick adhoc backups in the past, copying whole directories of image files onto the server with a view to “sorting out that lot later..“.  Having an almost full file system, new disc drives at a premium and being rationed, that time is now! (read the rest of the post…)

A massive thanks to Lydia and Kiran (MUA) for their help with the first two of the fashion lighting test shoots.

There were a few things to note from the shoot on a technical front:

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