First of the four is this shot of baby Mariella with dad, taken when she was six days old. I love this shot for its intimacy, and also the eye contact, which is hard to capture with a newborn baby. Although this looks like a studio shot it was actually taken at the client’s home, using window light only.

Next up is one of my favourite wildlife photographs. It’s not widely known that I lead photo safaris to Africa on behalf of a specialist USA-based photo tour company.  This one was taken on a tour to Tanzania. A few moments later and it was all over. Feel sorry for the frog

The next gold is a powerful and moving picture of a young Masai, also taken in Tanzania. The day before I’d run a ‘photographing people’ workshop for the tour participants, and one of the techniques I taught was shooting in to the sun when the the light is harsh and there is no shade. That technique works well here – I love the way the light rims her face. There’s a soulful look to her expression that really appeals to me too.

The final gold award (for now?) was for this image we took of Richard Ashcroft at a rock festival promoted by one of our clients. Photographing at a rock concert is a real eye-opener. You’re only allowed to be in the ‘pit’ for three songs so it’s a mad scrum with all the other photographers to get the best angles. Because Karen and I were working as a team the pressure was off slightly, so I could take a step back and look at what the lights were doing. Positioned myself carefully in a line with Richard and the backlight and this is the result. The lighting director should really get half this credit

These four pictures now go forward to the annual judging in January. Flushed with initial success I guess we’ll be entering a few more images next year

If anyone’s interested in the photographic details, all but one of these was lit by an Elinchrom Ranger with either a big Octa softbox or a grid.  The odd one out was lit by a speedlight.

It’s not unusual for clients to see the results from a creative day shoot and ask for something similar themselves.

On this shoot I had the pleasure of working again with our good friend Toni Perryman.  Toni created the stunning hair and makeup, and styles and also found us the fab urban location.  My only brief to Toni was to create something that would look completely incongruous in a grungy urban location.

Our models for the day were Georgia and Ash who were both brilliant and super tolerant as we experimented with our lights to create these images.

Lola assisted on the shoot and is responsible for the stunning post production work on these pictures.

This first set of pictures are of Georgia.  Look out for Ash’s pictures next week.

Our view is a bit different. We think that with the right approach, equipment and technique you can take great photographs at an event and they don’t have to look down-market or cheesy. Our objective is to get results that are 90% as good as we can create in the studio or on a location shoot, but do it in a fraction of the time.

Last weekend we photographed the leavers’ ball for Northampton School for Boys. It was the second time we’ve photographed this event. Last year we did outdoor portraits at the Guildhall. This year we were indoors at the Park Inn. Different challenges, same underlying approach.

I teamed up with an event specialist to print these photographs on the night. That means getting everything right in camera first time and printing  shots with no editing (normally we edit every picture before a client sees it).

If you are looking for someone to photograph your prom, ball or other event with flair and style, contact us and see if we can help!

Here’s a few of my favourite pictures from the prom:

Working to a very strict brief and governed by hair competition entry guidelines these images were created in our studio earlier this year.  Lola Williams, our picture editor, edited these images to the very highest standard and one of them is now in the hands of the competition judges.  We’re immensely proud of them and hope that the judges agree and give Toni the credit she deserves!

Two World Cup winners:  Ben with his uncle George Cohen

Ben with Martin Bayfield and Mike Catt:

Martin attempting to extract money from guests during the charity auction:

Final round of the quiz with Matt Dawson as guest captain:

Ben captaining the other (winning) team:

And here’s Gemma: