Danni and I have been wanting to do a bit of a photo shoot in a nearby park with Danni in her ballet shoes.  We took a short bus ride (actually 2 bus rides as I realized after the first trip that my camera battery was dead) to Beddington Park to take advantage of some of the lovely scenery.

One of my favourite shots of the day.  It wasn’t a particularly complex setup, just a single flash with a shoot-through umbrella to Danni’s left.  It doesn’t take much to make her look good!

We did a couple of natural light images that turned out quite nicely as well.

It always amazes me that someone can look so graceful while balancing themselves on their tip-toes, but I think she certainly managed it here.  There are some more photos in the gallery as usual.

For the past couple of years we’ve been doing Christmas portraits and this year was no different.  We had mom visiting so it was another special year, though the photos were a bit trickier to do in our tiny flat.  Still, we’re happy with the results and very happy to have been able to share the holidays with my mom (who, by the way, is a terrible cheater when playing any type of board/card/dice game.  That’s right mom, it’s on the Internet so it must be true!).

I realize now that I probably shouldn’t have posted the link to our 2010 Christmas photos.  The keen viewers out there might have realized that I’m wearing the same sweater/jumper.  I seem to only have two that are suitable and just rotate them out each year.  Look out for the return of the purple one in 2013!

Here is my lovely (London based) family for the holidays.

I didn’t want to bore you with too many photos of the same three people over and over again, so here’s some of the snacks we had that night.  I don’t know about you, but it makes me painfully hungry just looking at that photo.  I don’t know why I save mini-burgers for special occasions.  They really should be an everyday affair.

There’s a few more family style images in the gallery.

We’ve been waiting patiently for over a month now for a weekend that closely approximates summer (or at least one that wasn’t raining) so that we could take mama out to our wedding venue for lunch and some photos.  She wasn’t able to attend our big day last year, so we wanted to show her around and get some nice portraits done so she would feel included.

The reception room we were married in seemed somewhat smaller this time.  Presumably due to the tables being set out for drinks but also I think there was an air of grandness due to the occasion the last time we visited that lent to it’s vast feel.  Regardless, we settled in for some light refreshments while waiting to be called into the dinning room for lunch.

Lunch in general was rather disappointing, which was surprising given how good our meals in the past had been.  Mama and I had the same lackluster terrine starter and Danni regrettably dared a sardine option that I couldn’t get far enough away from.  The mains were marginally better, Danni and I selected the vegetarian & duck egg salad while mama had the fish (the only other option being a liver dish in case you’re wondering why I’d opted for vegetarian).

Fortunately, this isn’t a food review site and Danni and I still love the castle regardless of our sub-par lunch.  We finished paying and headed outside for the real reason we came.  The photos!

We tried to emulate the brilliant photos taken at our wedding.  I’ve still got a ways to go in order to catch up to our wedding photographer, but I think everyone was happy with the results.  There were a few people milling around the courtyard that we had to work around, but nothing a little Photoshop cloning can’t fix.

The weather held off nicely, but the sky was overcast and boring so if you can see blue skies in any of these photos they’re compliments of the Caribbean.  I like to think I’m getting better at inserting fake skies to the point that people wouldn’t be able to tell, but then I go and tell everyone they’re edited in anyway so I’m not sure why I try so hard…

Anyway, brilliant day at one of our favourite places in the world.  Very happy that we’ve been able to share with the vast majority of our family and I think mama was pleased with the prints we sent her home with.

More of the same in the gallery!

After an afternoon at HyperJapan and not taking many photos, I was itching to use all this camera equipment I’d unpacked.  Fortunately, Danni was all done up in a cute outfit and willing to be my lovely model.

It was the nicest day so far this year so we opened up the patio to take advantage of the cherry blossoms erupting from the trees in the park.  Our patio worked out to be the perfect height to give us some lovely (if not a little busy) backdrops.

This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been hoping to do more of this year, but haven’t really gotten around to doing.  We’ve been busy with house hunting and that, coupled with a pair of photo shoots I’ve had fall through I haven’t done nearly as much portrait photography as I’d like.

Thanks to my lovely wife for being such a good sport, and to Pepsi for always getting involved whenever the lights and cameras come out!  There’s a couple more images in the gallery.

Danni and I made the lengthy bus ride from West Brompton to what was worryingly describable as a ‘ghetto’ on Sunday.  Fortunately, the ghetto was just where the bus terminated and London’s lovely Richmond Park was just down the street and around the corner.

We don’t make it out this far that often, so we had a purpose in mind.  A lot of my fellow photographer friends come to the park in order to photograph the wildlife like the many, many deer that can be found here, but we were after a doe of a different kind.

Danni was kind enough to get dolled up and pose for a few photos in the chilly winter air.  She was a real trooper as it was only about 3°C and she hadn’t actually picked an overly warm outfit for the day.

All three images were shot roughly the same way.  One great, big softbox sporting 2 of Canon’s 580 flashes as a main light, and a single, unmodified flash (another 580) as a rim light.

Normally this is where I’d link to the remaining images in the gallery, but as it was so cold we only took about 15 shots in total and quite a few of those showed my poor wife visibly shaking from the cold.  You’ll have to make due with 3 images I’m afraid!