G & S Photography

Messing about down by.....

2010-09-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

the river. Had a nice job down by the river in Northwich today.....Barhale, the builders of the new Riversdale bridge booked as to take a few pics of the first section of the new swing bridge arriving by river. Here's one below.......

Playing Catch Up!!!

2010-08-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

Its been really tough in a great way keeping the blog current with what we are up to.....we have been soo busy. Here's a few from recent weddings and we'll add more and some info over the next few days.

A Really Nice shoot.....

2010-05-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those special days when I truly loved my job.....I always like my job.....but today I loved it. We had one of wedding couples, Claudia and Ed, over for a pre wedding shoot and they were just fabulous.....great people, great location and a great way to spend some time on a Bank Holiday morning......couple of proofs below...

Watching the Watchers.....

2010-05-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, amongst the weddings, passport pics and portraits, we had a request to attend a BBC shoot and do some stills of the Springwatch team at work. In normal G & S fashion we put out best foot forward and grabbed a load of shots of the guys at work a couple of pics below showing ace wildlife cameraman Mark Yates doing the business from the cage of a cherry picker.....

A Couple of Musicians.....

2010-05-31T12:16:00.001-07:00

I guess I should chastise myself for not knowing the names of the two musicians below who helped to keep the crowds entertained at Thundersprint but we got them anyway:-)

Rings and Flowers.....

2010-05-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

After you have shot what feels like a zillion flower and ring arrangements I'm always impressed and often surprised at how well Sharron arranges bouquets and rings for me to shoot. I've given up interfering when all her artistic senses are on the boil......what would I know anyway? I've just got to take the pic:-)....

The Square Crop....

2010-05-31T12:05:00.001-07:00

I'm real sucker for the square crop.....my first decent camera, a Yashica TLR, introduced me to the 6x6 format many moons ago and it has long remained a favourite crop for me.....in fact when I had a look at our album samples in the studio we had more "square" albums than any others......just goes to show what a square I am:-).......

The Great 70-300mm VR.....

2010-05-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

has to be one of my all time fav lenses.....its one of those lenses that is often passed by for more exotic glass such as the 70-200mm F2.8 but for me this Nikon lens is just great.....here's a few from it all mounted on the Nikon D700.....

The Return of Norton.....

2010-05-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

for our sins we were the official photographers for Thundersprint this year. We have always supported the event by providing a measure of photographic cover for Frank Melling event organiser but he wanted us to provide end to end cover of everything this year. It proved to be quite a challenge but we got just about everything going on plus all the racing....but for me as an old biker the return of Norton motorcycles to the fray was something special and here is a few of my fav Norton shots........

A Fab House....

2010-05-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Willington Hall is.....its one of my fav places to shoot a wedding.....there are just so many nice spots both indoors and outdoors to shoot the bride and groom in a relaxed way with real eye candy scenery......

A Great Shaz......

2010-05-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

pic. It seems at every wedding we shoot Sharron gets one of those great decisive shots....you know the one that gets the spirit of the moment.....here is one she captured earlier this year.....

A Gang of Kids....

2010-05-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

its been hard over the last few months to keep up with work and our hectic personal life which has been a constant cycle of hospital appointments.....now hopefully over. So to get back into the spirit of things I thought I'd kick off with a few kids shots........

"Jade"....

2010-03-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

We have been very busy of late so the Blog has been neglected but we had a great session with Jade today and I thought I'd get one posted up. Jade is really great to work with and very natural in front of the camera....pic taken with the 1ds 24-105 combo for those interested in such matters:-).....

KISS....Keep It Simple....

2010-02-14T05:33:00.000-08:00

Stupid....we have a ton of software for producing album spreads....some from album manufacturers some as plugins and actions for Photoshop. With these we can produce just about anything with every imaginable combination of overlay, border and special effect. BUT I often remind myself how good simple collections of images can look with just simple keylines added.....one below....in fact so much so its how I'll produce our next sample album......

Endless Possibilities....

2010-02-02T04:03:00.001-08:00

One of the great benefits of the digital era in photography is how quickly you can edit, crop and create different moods, simple portraits and album spreads from one shot.

The shot below, a low light shot taken with the S5, has been cropped and converted to black and white with lots of dead space on the right for the inclusion of further colour images. I like the shot as it was but I believe it will make a great background shot for an album spread.

I'll post the page when its finished for everyone to have a gander at.

Just a Dad....

2010-01-31T12:04:00.000-08:00

I love watching fathers with their daughters on their wedding days....its a whole bundle of emotions but mainly "wow she's all grown up" and "she looks so beautiful". Being a father of three girls myself I know how proud I'll be when that special day happens....gawd knows who'll take the pics:-) anyway here is Laura's father George just sitting quietly as she finishes getting ready.....

The 1DS Mk2 earning its keep....

2010-01-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

Well the 1DS MK2 got used in anger properly today after a slow and cautious start. I passed the D700 to Sharron today and used the 1DS as my primary camera when shooting the wedding of John and Laura. I've posted a few quicky conversions below and have to say I'm very pleased with the image quality.....Sharron really liked the D700 too and it looks like she has just got a new camera..:-)

The 1DS MK2.....

2010-01-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

Well that didnt take long did it....LCE at Colchester had a mint, boxed, one owner in stock and yours truly relieved them of it....and they relieved me of a pile of money:-) It arrived on Tuesday this week and was as described with very low shutter count....so thanks to Dave at LCE for that.

We've just started to use it alongside our other cameras and early testing is looking very good....well excellent to be fair. It gets used in anger for the first time tomorrow when we are shooting a pre wedding location shoot and I'll post some pics here after we are finished.....

Just a Black & White Portrait

2010-01-23T14:28:00.000-08:00

Had the pleasure of shooting spiritualist Michael Heath this week. Michael was a great sitter and we quickly got some nice shots.....the one below was my favourite, captured as always towards the end. I dont know if its a spiritual thing....I must confess I'm not much into that...but Michael had an air of calm about him you could almost feel....

The Saga of the 1ds Mk2...

2010-01-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

We've spent nearly a year looking, testing and evaluating all the latest and greatest from Nikon, Canon and Sony and everytime I do the comparison the files just dont do it for me.......when compared to what we've already got, Nikon D700, Kodak 14n, Canon 1d mk2 and Fuji S5. There just doesnt seem to be a quantum leap in image quality.....that wow factor that I got when I first shot any of the cameras we currently use just isnt there.

I'd said to, friend and fellow professional photographer, Adam Tidswell a year ago that if I could buy a new Canon 1ds mk2 that would be my first choice. There is something uniquely special about the images from the 1ds mk2 that its newer incarnation, the 1ds mk3, just doesnt have....I guess its that magical and difficult to define "photographic" quality that the newer model seems to lack.

I am rarely critical of images on a computer screen, I love them as prints, and this is where I'm looking for that photographic quality.....I loathe digital looking prints and can spot them at a mile especially with the current trend by many to over process and manipulate images to the point that they no longer remotely resemble the original scene.

So here we are a year later now searching in earnst for a mint second hand 1ds mk2....I'll post here if and when I have any luck......

Another day another dollar....

2010-01-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

We had an urgent request from Nigel Collins over at "The Ring" magazine last week to get some fairly informal snaps of boxing promoter Frank Maloney if we could. As always we put our best foot forward and endured the 400 mile round trip to London through snow and ice and caught up with Frank in the East End. Frank was the perfect gent and allowed us to blast a few shots out before we headed home......pic below of Frank in his "for gawds sake hurry up I'm freezing" pose:-)

Best Church Pic....

2010-01-01T03:29:00.000-08:00

We got some really nice ceremony shots last year but this one is my favourite. Its St Marys at Gt Budworth and its the wedding of Simon and Dot, fab couple to shoot, anyway I had to dash up into the bell tower to get this one. I think it was worth the climb.....

A New Years resolution.....

2010-01-01T03:13:00.000-08:00

Well other than all the normal promises you make for yourself for the New Year we've decided to shoot more film....and no I've not lost the plot entirely. At the end of each year we have a review of what we've done and how we've done it. I was surprised at post processing costs for digital images, the time spent at computers fiddling with images, it was far more than we would have guessed at. So the Pentax 645n is coming out of semi retirement and we will shoot it alongside the DSLR's to see how well it stumps up and what the real costs are to get out a selection of nice 10x8 prints.

There is a lot of misconceptions in many of the film v digital comparisons you find on the web.....the biggest being the seemingly never ending cycle of upgrading digital cameras, film cameras will last a lifetime, and the hours spent by photographers fiddling at computers. Anyway we'll see....I'll post my findings here when we've got some.....and Happy New Year folks:-)

Laura.....

2009-12-31T03:34:00.000-08:00

One of our beautiful brides from 2009, Laura, in the proverbial in the mirror getting ready shot. Its a very over used shot by all wedding 'togs but I really like this one, the lack of other colours on walls etc draw your eye to just Laura....who looks great. Laura and Gary are still choosing their pics so I hope she liked it too:-)

The Shot John. G. Didnt Get

2009-12-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

I love this shot, BTW its new world champion Tim Bradley standing on the ropes after his victory over Junior Witter, because of the guy right foreground "chimping" the LCD on the back of his camera. Its world famous Getty Images 'tog John Gichigi missing the action as all of us freelancers grab it....to be fair I did give him a prod and he got it eventually.....

Great News for 2010

2009-12-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

We have been appointed as the official photographers for Thundersprint 2010....we are really pleased with this as I love sports photography. You can learn all about Thundersprint here http://www.thundersprint.com/

A Day in the Life.....

2009-12-30T10:12:00.001-08:00

We love shooting informal portraits outside on location when we can....they are much more relaxed than studio sessions. A few weeks ago we had a session booked with John and Laura as part of their wedding package with us and as always happens here in the NW the heavens opened on us. So we agreed to meet John and Laura at the studio in Northwich rather than Marbury Park, one of the locations we use for location portrait shoots. Anyway to cut a long story short the rain stopped just long enough for us to dash out of the studio and to the Weaver navigation at the rear of the studio and grab a few shots.....one below and everyone happy.....

A Few Favourite Websites....

2009-12-30T08:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a few of my favourite photography websites in no particular order......

http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/

http://www.outbackphoto.com/

http://www.dpreview.com/

http://www.fotografie.fr/

http://www.kenrockwell.com/

http://www.magnachrom.com/

and I guess I should add ours although its a bit like a building site most of the time...

http://www.gandsphotography.co.uk/

A Place to.....

2009-12-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

waste an hour or two if you like photography..... http://fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi

You can find some lovely pics on the Flickr Hive Mind as its known.....even jaded old pro's like me can find inspirational work there:-)

Who's in Charge?....

2009-12-30T08:25:00.000-08:00

I wasn't sure who the main sitter was in this shoot.....in any event both were very well behaved:-)

A Fav Portrait...."Charlies Angels"

2009-12-30T07:54:00.001-08:00

These girls, three sisters, all so beautiful, were great fun to shoot. This shot, a fun shot, reflects their fun personalities which makes my life easier and rewarding:-)

A Few Fav Pics...

2009-12-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

Here's just a few favourite photographs from this years wedding season...

Day One

2009-12-30T07:15:00.000-08:00

Well folks this has been long overdue but welcome to our blog and my various ramblings mainly about the ups and downs of my life as a professional photographer.