Sam and I went looking for owls (change from bats) to photograph.

We saw a couple with help of his recorded owl calls, but didn’t get close enough to get a picture.

Instead, we tried a bit of light painting – where you have an exposure of a few seconds and use [...]]]>  

Sam and I went looking for owls (change from bats) to photograph.

We saw a couple with help of his recorded owl calls, but didn’t get close enough to get a picture.

Instead, we tried a bit of light painting – where you have an exposure of a few seconds and use a torch to light what you want.

The picture above was actually mostly lit by the moon, and it’s a bird hide at Moel-y-ci farm.

The picture below is in the same location, with Sam flashing a torch in his face. We used a 10/15 second exposure, a fence post for stability, and the torch to pre-focus.

I photographed the BUCS Downhill MTB Championship in South Wales this weekend, something a bit different from what I usually do.

I thought I’d share some thoughts on how to get work like this and then take photographs for a specific client, in this case a PR company in charge of looking after [...]]]>

I photographed the BUCS Downhill MTB Championship in South Wales this weekend, something a bit different from what I usually do.

I thought I’d share some thoughts on how to get work like this and then take photographs for a specific client, in this case a PR company in charge of looking after the brands who were sponsoring the mountain biking event.

Tip 1 is: Google is your friend, work hard to get ranked for search terms relevant to you.

I got the work because of this blog and the fact that I started out in photography and journalism (if I can call it that) by writing and taking photos for Cycling Plus magazine.

So, if you google bike photography wales I come up on page 1 of the search results. It probably helped that the other sites on page 1 look pretty naff, because I’m not a sports photography specialist.

About half my clients find me through google and I always feel I should be doing more to improve my website and online presence, it’s the best way to get work.

I know my sites have got a lot of room for improvement, so specific feedback to do with user experience is very appreciated.

Tip 2: Plan, Plan, Plan

Next step, the client asks for a quote. This can be quite difficult to get right and I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes in this department.

If you really want the work, you need to give a quote that not only gives a good price (I can’t help you with that, you have to work it out yourself), but also details what is that you’re actually going to do.

If I’m working for a couple getting married, a big organisation, or a PR company I’ll always include a plan of exactly what I’m going to do and when, and exactly what it is they’re going to get.

This not only gives them the reassurance that I’ll do a good job, but also means I will do a good job because I know what I’m doing.

Tip 3: Have a relevant portfolio

Then, it is important to provide examples of previous work that are relevant to what the client is after. Further evidence you can get the job done.

Luckily for me, I’ve been doing this long enough to have a portfolio that covers pretty much everything at one point or another, so I can get work that isn’t my bread-and-butter stuff, and this can keep things interesting.

From a business point of view it is better to become very good at a specific thing, but I prefer to mix it up a bit because I find it more fun.

And if you have an area of interest, it’s not that difficult to build a portfolio of photos relevant to the work you’d like to get. Simply start taking photos of that thing, like many people do with mountain biking events, and put your work out there.

Tip 4: Your best photo isn’t necessarily their best photo

Photographers look at photos through photographer’s eyes, and appreciate things like nice composition, lighting, post-processing etc.

Clients also appreciate these things, but often have other things higher up their priority list.

With this MTB event I knew the PR company wanted images that showed their sponsor prominently. After all, a large part of their job is to get brand names into the media.

So they were very happy with the image above which has the red bull, bare foot wine and BUCS championships logos in it.

In January I attended a talk by the founder of XSight wedding photography, one of the world’s top studios, and he was saying the same thing about brides.

The photos the photographer likes are probably going to be the crazy technical ones, the ones a bride loves will probably be totally different. Definitely worth remembering as a wedding photographer who you’re taking the pictures for.

Clients often also value speed of delivery way above quality. Anyone whose worked in the media will know this – they’re looking for news, not art.

The PR company wanted to get images of the MTB event out to the BBC. I made life easier for myself by taking the photo above before the actual event.

Tip 5: Take photos before an event

I think this probably applies to most event photography. Give yourself time to play around, set more elaborate shots up, and get images to your client quicker. Common sense really.

Tip 6: Deliver quickly

This is where I didn’t do so well on this job. The bbc were after a handful of photos for an online gallery, but I missed their deadline.

In fairness, I’d had chest pains and NHS direct ordered me to casualty as it sounded like I was having heart problems. Thankfully it was just a strained muscle, but frustrating nevertheless.

The BBC used my initial photos instead, so it was ok.

If anyone has any other tips or comments I’d love to hear them.

Update: Here are images from the event….

There are different challenges when it comes to photographing children and adults.

In my experience, young children want to grab my camera out of my hands, so I get a load of super-up close photos of them slobbering into the lens.

Or they’re not interested, but don’t stop jumping around.

On the plus [...]]]>

There are different challenges when it comes to photographing children and adults.

In my experience, young children want to grab my camera out of my hands, so I get a load of super-up close photos of them slobbering into the lens.

Or they’re not interested, but don’t stop jumping around.

On the plus side – with young children – you don’t have to work to get them to act natural. They are so in-the-moment they can be incredibly photogenic – and this is why I love photographing children.

I chose this photo of Sol, my friend’s son, out of a whole bunch of photos I took while we were all trampolining in my garden.

In the other photos he was actually being very smiley, but I liked his expression here.

I also chose this over photos of my son Jac doing crazy jumps on the trampoline, because although he loved them, I couldn’t get past the fact they have lots of background distractions.

If I’m taking photographs of children – usually my own – I generally try and get them to ignore me and then take a lot of photos, which compensates for the fact that I can’t ask them to pose.

Also, it’s easier to keep things simple with regards lighting etc.

I think the only light in this photo comes from the evening sun, (although there may have been some off-camera flash to the left of the frame), and this allowed me to photograph him with great light wherever he decided to toddle to.

The biggest challenge with photographing adults is probably getting them to act naturally, or simply look comfortable – usually they don’t grab and slobber.

The best photographers of people are not the best because they know what all the buttons on their camera do, they’re the best because they have the best people skills.

A good tip for photographing adults is to try and get them to behave more like children.

Put them in the spot where you want them – where the light, background etc is good – then ask them to talk/interact with other people, things, whatever.

Bingo! Great photos…

Most people think that you should have the sun behind you when you’re taking a photo.

And they’re right – it makes sense to have your light source pointing at the thing you’re taking a picture of.

But – with a bit of flash – it’s also great to have the sun in [...]]]>

Most people think that you should have the sun behind you when you’re taking a photo.

And they’re right – it makes sense to have your light source pointing at the thing you’re taking a picture of.

But – with a bit of flash – it’s also great to have the sun in front of you and to use it as a hair/rim-light, which you can see in this picture of Raffi.

Granted, it’s not the most amazing photo in the world, but it illustrates what I mean.

It was taken after Raffi had cut his mouth open on a toy drum and was smearing blood all over his face – great pic opp

If I took this photo without any flash then his face would be dark, so I bounced a bit of light off the wall behind me.

You can try this with a camera that has a regular pop-up flash – just make sure you’re close enough to the person you’re taking photo of for the flash to light their face.

This is a technique that I use at weddings all the time (well, the sunny ones) because it’s very quick – no need to set up off camera flashes – and sunlight in a bride’s hair looks great.

Your camera will have something called different metering modes – the place/s in the frame that the camera will take a reading from to decide how much light is needed.

If you choose the one called spot metering or central metering and focus it in on the face your flash should  light the face just right.

Oh, and you should be in manual mode and adjust your aperture and shutter speed to the hair lights.

Haha, sounds bit complicated maybe, but pretty easy once you’ve got it sussed – feel free to contact me if you want me to elaborate.

I picked up the keys to my new studio yesterday and will perhaps aim to run some classes. I’ll keep you posted.

I took this photo of a monk in Burma not long after our taxi driver had crashed down a big step (see a couple of posts down)

As you can see, the original image isn’t great. The symmetry of the building is broken, the monk is somewhat lost in the picture, [...]]]>

I took this photo of a monk in Burma not long after our taxi driver had crashed down a big step (see a couple of posts down)

As you can see, the original image isn’t great. The symmetry of the building is broken, the monk is somewhat lost in the picture, and there is a bit of a red cast.

When I look through my photos to see which ones I want to edit I look to see if I can make a stronger image by cropping in. In this photo it was obvious that the monk is more interesting than the building, and I wanted to focus attention on his face.

I cropped so that the doors either side of him act as a frame, and the banister gives lead in/pointing lines towards his face.

I used Adobe Camera Raw to convert the image into black and white, because I think it looks better. When you convert into black and white you get 8 different colour sliders which will adjust how light and dark specific bits of the image are.

A good tip for Aperture is, after you’ve done the bw conversion, you can use a bunch more color sliders under the color tab than those offered under the bw tab, but I still prefer using Adobe camera raw for bw.

In my original image the banisters were lighter than the monk’s face, and so were a bit distracting.

I wanted your eye to be drawn to the monk’s face, so I made this the lightest part of the image.

I made the other parts of the image a bit darker by adding a couple of gradients in Photoshop.

I probably also sharpened and increased the contrast, which you need to do to pretty much every image that starts off in RAW format. And that’s it – prob took about 3 minutes in total, discounting messing around time .

I spent a bit of time wandering around the backstreets in Mandalay and Yangon taking photographs of people.

I didn’t take as many as I’d have liked, it took a while to kinda of get in the zone – and it was actually the first time I’d done street photography in a non-English [...]]]>

I spent a bit of time wandering around the backstreets in Mandalay and Yangon taking photographs of people.

I didn’t take as many as I’d have liked, it took a while to kinda of get in the zone – and it was actually the first time I’d done street photography in a non-English speaking country, so that was an added challenge.

I resorted to learning the Burmese greeting for how are you – Mingleba – and then pointing with my camera to ask if it was ok to take a photo.

I realised after I’d taken this photo that the lady was either blind or not all there because she kept chatting away, even as I was leaving.

In the post processing I exaggerated her wrinkles by increasing sharpness and contrast, and lightened her eyes a bit using layers and a mask.

This was taken in Burma last week – it was the scariest taxi ride ever.

We started by rushing [...]]]> I didn’t do particularly well with my attempt to do a 365 project last year – where I attempt to post a new photo every day – so I’m going to try it again.

This was taken in Burma last week – it was the scariest taxi ride ever.

We started by rushing around the mountain roads looking for a monastery to pick up a couple of monks who would be sharing a ride with us back to Mandalay.

Because he wasn’t sure where he was going the driver seemed a bit stressed  – although it could’ve been the beetle nut red stuff he was chewing on that caused this- and when he eventually found the monastery he decided to take a shortcut down this step.

Needless to say, we got stuck with the bottom of the car grinding along the rock. It took us, the driver, some laughing monks and a couple of randoms to lift the car back up (wish I’d got that picture!)

The journey back to Mandalay was insane – no-one wears seatbelts, everyone is buzzing on beetle nut, and our driver was overtaking on the hard shoulders as a matter of course. Bumping into the back of a motorbike didn’t slow him and it seemed a miracle that we didn’t hurt or kill any of the other bikers, cyclists, school children, carnival processions or anyone else.

On the plus side, it put my fear of flying into perspective.

Commercial work

Tom Simone Wedding Film & Photography

Tom Simone’s personal work

Photos on [...]]]>

Commercial work

Tom Simone Wedding Film & Photography

Tom Simone’s personal work

Photos on 500px.com

Mum died at 11.30pm on Monday, October 3rd, 2011.

She died peacefully at home, knew what was happening, and had said that she was ready to go.

Her cancer had spread to her lungs and heart, making breathing difficult. Her health deteriorated over the summer and into autumn.

Apologies I can’t remember this guys surname… his first name is Mark and he’s an artist, pictured here giving a talk at Dance Encounters, March 31 2001 at y Galeri in Caernarfon.

He’s got some interesting ideas relating to art projects.

More info available from Datrys in Llanrwst [...]]]>

Apologies I can’t remember this guys surname… his first name is Mark and he’s an artist, pictured here giving a talk at Dance Encounters, March 31 2001 at y Galeri in Caernarfon.

He’s got some interesting ideas relating to art projects.

More info available from Datrys in Llanrwst http://www.datrys.org/.