AKA: Our engagement weekend.

As Danni was still in China for Valentines, I’d arranged for a weekend away for us as a belated Valentines day present.  This year it was two nights in Thornbury Castle’s Plantagenet room.

It was a stunning room filled with old wood, castle brick walls and large, warm tapestries that covered entire walls.  There was champagne on ice waiting for our arrival as well as some cozy sherry just waiting for a couple to relax by the fire with.

We had an amazing time in the hotel and the food was stunning, but the main reason I’d dragged Danni out to the Cotswolds was to pop the question.  I’d been wracking my brain for several weeks to determine the ‘how’ of it all, and the only thing I could decide with any certainty was that I wanted a photo of the moment.  Running with that idea, I took Danni out into the courtyard of the castle at dusk under the guise of wanting to do a few couples shots in the fading light with the castle walls in the background.

After a few shaky setup shots and a couple of just a few more adjustments, I set the timer, sprinted back into place and said ‘for this shot, we’ll need this’.  With a subtle flourish I was down on one knee, the ring held aloft for her to see through shocked and watery eyes while I asked her to marry me just as the camera triggered, capturing the moment forever.

At least, in my head this was how it worked.  The reality of it all was that I was so nervous and the box was large enough to get stuck in my coat pocket that I was a few seconds off beat and this was as close as it came.

If you look closely, there surprise is there on Danni’s face and I’m obviously about to get on one knee (that or I’m doing the worlds first run-by proposal).  It’s not what I had in mind, but photography is a game of chance at the best of times and we’re both pretty happy with the way this shot turned out.

Also, she said yes!

There are a few more photos from our weekend away in the gallery.

2 down, 10 more to go!  I wish I could say it’s been easy just firing off a few shots each day and then picking the best of the bunch, but I tend to spend most of my day trying to think of just what to shoot.

I haven’t missed a day yet though and I’m really hoping to keep that up throughout the year.  There have already been one or two days when I’ve realized at 11:00PM I haven’t taken my shot for the day and had to rush to meet my deadline.  Close yes, but still on track!

February was a good month for practicing my off camera flash techniques, something I’m really happy with and will continue to do going forward.  March will be a busy month for a number of reasons; I’m due to move in the next week or so which will consume a lot of my free time (and all of my patience).  There may be more snap-shot style images for that reason so don’t be surprised to see more of the Casio in the EXIF details.

You can view my most recently posted image here, or if you’d like to view the year thus far you can see the calendar here.

So I got a text from Neal this past Wednesday asking if I was up for heading back down to the Banksy Tunnel for a car/promo shoot with some friends of his.  The plan as I understood it was to photograph a couple of cars along with a few models and just have a bit of fun with it.

Given I’m less than 2 months into my 365 project and already running out of ideas I jumped at the chance.  It’s been a while since I’ve worked with models and I’ve never shot cars properly before so it sounds like a fun evening.

While I won’t say it wasn’t fun, it was quite a bit more work than I’d anticipated.  I was expecting 1 or 2 models and 2 or 3 cars, but we ended up with 5 girls and 10-12 cars of which we probably only 6 or 7.  Neal and I managed an almost assembly line style production of taking around 20 shots of each car with and without the girls, but there was little time to get the lighting down.  I used some ‘safe’ settings and we fired away but looking back I’m wishing for a hair light in a few of them.  Live and learn I guess.

Overall it was a good night.  Met some friendly people and walked away with some fun photos for the day, which is always better than yet another shot of my cat.

Thanks again to the folks at South East Customz for providing the cars and the promo girls, as well as helping to organize the shoot itself.  I don’t think we would have managed the number of shots we did without those guys lining up the cars so we could do one after another without much hassle.

There are a few more shots in the gallery.

I think I’m going to have to create an album just for shots of London, as my new project has me out quite often shooting scenes within the city. This past Saturday had me out with Lord Crawley again shooting the oft-photographed south bank including Westminster, the eye and even the Banksy Tunnel.

I’ve shot the tunnel in the past, but this time I dragged along some lighting kit to do a portrait shot or two.  Lee was kind enough to be my model for the evening, which made things much easier!

We also managed to spin a couple of orbs on the south bank, much to the surprise of the passersby out for a quiet stroll.  At one point I was worried about collecting tips as a street performer while I stood on a raised dais whirling my LED’s around.  Still, I think it was worth it and I wouldn’t have said no to a few quids worth of coins.

Sunday was spent with my friend Su Kim doing some portrait head shots for her London relocations website.  It was fun to do something in a psudo-professional capacity and getting a free, yummy lunch out of the deal just made my day!  We’re still in the selection process, but there should be one or two processed photos online shortly.  If not here than at the very least on my 365 site as I didn’t take any other photos that day.

A few more shots from the weekend are available in the gallery.

Well, it’s been a whole month since I started my Photo a day for a year project (or Projekt 365 as the cool kids are callin it).  I’ve managed the first month of this endeavor without too much trouble.  It has to be said that it’s easier to take a photo a day when you’re on holiday and for me at least, January was about 60% holiday.

The past few days I’ve actually struggled a bit for photo ideas so I’ve begun trolling other peoples projects to steal ideas for inspiration and writing down some concepts.  I’m good for the next couple of weeks at this point.

Here are just a few of my favourite images from January.  I don’t know if I’ll make a monthly post every month as it may just wind up getting annoying, we’ll see.

To see the whole month at a glance click here or to view the latest image here.  I’m also working on an RSS feed for that project which should be up shortly.

Edit: The RSS feed is now up and running here.