Baby Holly visited the studio-pod today for the second stage o her ‘Baby’s First year’ photoshoot. I offer these fantastic short sessions at 4 months, eight months and twelve months. Session one sees baby lifting their head and taking an interest, session two and he or she is sitting up, and session three is usually a cake-smash with our big figure one in the background!

Frequently I shoot the second session on Greenscreen (Chromakey), as with this session. I used the Fujifilm X-T3, F=47mm, f/5.6 @ 1/125th sec on ISO400. Two Elinchrom studio lights (flash).
The Lockdown Logs
Dateline: May 28th 2020
Coalport Figurine Chromakey
In the Pod today, playing with a small green screen set-up, to see how the light works best. I’ve set a small Coalport Lady Figurine on a table, with a green-screen background. There’s a D-Lite just behind my right shoulder and natural light coming from the left of the figure. The D-Lite is set low, not to be a key-light, but to simply reduce any shadow cast by the Coalport figure.
I’m using the Fujifilm X-T2, with a Nikon 50mm manual focus lens and the camera set for focus peaking. F=50mm, f/5.6 @ 1/60th sec on ISO200.
Here’s the result:

Here’s the set-up: Continue reading The Lockdown Logs #56 →
This week the whole of the British Isles have been under a cloud of snow, with temperatures plunging into minus figures, snow drifts closing roads and causing traffic chaos, as The Beast from the East brings Siberean temperatures across Europe. Just as the Beast took hold, ‘Storm Emma’ sent gale force winds to chill us even further.
The result was that most of our studio appointments were cancelled or postponed. One determined client was Baby John, who (along with his parents) battled through the snow rather than miss his appointment for the last session in his Baby’s First Year package. So here he is, in seasonal conditions…

Continue reading Beating the Beast! →
Reaching Up…
An advantage of digital photography is the spontaneity that it allows, which makes family portrait photography so much fun,and so full of unexpected opportunities. One of yesterday’s family photo sessions at Dundonald featured a little girl who reached upwards, just as the camera was on her. What a great pose – totally unplanned, and so a great opportunity to show her reaching for the moon!

Shot on the Nikon D700, ISO200, f/10 at 1/125th sec, with studio lighting, against Chromakey ‘Greenscreen’ Backdrop.
Commercial and Family Photographer