As part of the website creation process for my fencing clubs new site I’ve taken several head shots of the coaches.  It’s the first time I’ve used a 3 light setup (having just picked up another 580 EX II while back home), and it wasn’t as difficult as I was expecting.  I think the trick is just to add one light at a time until everything looks the way you’d imagined.  The setup shot is here, where the tripod in the middle is where I had the subject stand.

In this case I wanted to use the colour of the walls in our gym to add a warm, orange-ish background and use a fairly fast shutter speed to kill any ambiant light and make the rest of the image darker.  In this way I could get an orange/black look that would match the colour scheme of the website and I’m quite happy with the results.

A couple of examples are here, and the rest are in the gallery.

I picked up a new toy for the upcoming winter months so I can keep shooting without having to go outside.  It’s a fairly simple set up with just a couple of flashes, but it’s got a lot of potential.  So far I’ve played around and helped Danni with a batch of charms as well as taking some shots of my new toys (a Dell laptop and a Wacom Cintiq 12WX).

There’s a few here, and some more in the gallery like always.

I spent a bit of time in Hyde Park last evening trying to capture the latest autumn colours.  I think all of the photos that got posted from this set were done with my tilt-shift lens.  It doesn’t get as much use as it should, mainly due to being a manual focus lens and the fact that I’m rubbish at manual focusing.

I thought the fact that it would require more attention from me would help to slow me down and think about what I was shooting.  It succeeded in this, but mainly it succeeded in increasing the number of out of focus photos I ended with at the end of the day.  Always a learning process, and the lesson yesterday was to bring along a tripod and use LiveView

Here are a few keepers from the day and as usual, there are a few more in the gallery.

I’ve mentioned it to a few people, but for the most part I haven’t really talked much about my new regieme.  For the past couple of months, I’ve basically cut out all of the booze I drink plus any food that I didn’t prepare myself (apart from the occassional night out with friends on both counts), in addition to going to the gym.  There were a few reasons for the switch, but for the most part I was just trying to keep my mind occupied and stay busy and this managed that all quite nicely.

I had a lot of help from a personal trainer as I’m not really a gym guy, and recently I’ve been working with a nutritionist as I’m well aware I need to put on some weight (10kg according to my nutritionist!).  It seems like a lot of weight and I’ve been struggling to eat as much as I’m supposed to each day, but I’m trying!

Anyways, I did a couple of self portraits that are a bit racy!  A lot of the look is done with the lights so I’m not quite as these seem (yet!) but I’m getting there.  No real photoshoppery apart from the black & white conversions.

A few of us wandered out to Sandwich, Kent for an evening of off camera flash shooting.  It’s something I’ve been trying to do a lot more of as I really like the looks that can be achieved.  I’m still a long way off from where I’m happy with the shots I’m getting, but you’ve got to start somewhere right?

There’s a few shots here and a couple more in the gallery.