"Creating Engaging Lectures"... a new lecture

I have been asked by my photography federation (NEMPF) to deliver a lecture on… giving lectures!

I really enjoy lecturing, for me it's one of the most rewarding aspects of my photography and in this new 2 hour tutorial lecture I'll tell you how I go about putting my lectures together.

We'll cover my complete workflow from concept, planning and creating building blocks through to assembling in PowerPoint.

There's a USB stick that accompanies the lecture containing lots of bonus material;

• a PDF copy of the lecture

• an editable version of the lecture (that you can use as a template for a quick start to creating your own PowerPoint lecture)

• a video guide to using PowerPoint

• a video guide to creating slideshows in Lightroom

• a video guide to creating Photoshop workup videos

• a video guide to shooting and editing your own videos

The date is 22nd May and tickets are free to NEMPF members and £10 to everyone else. Details in the flyer below plus a short taster video.

Inspiration Comes From Many Sources - The Swimmer Series

As I’ve stated many times before, inspiration for my images invariably comes from the work of others. Here’s a quote I particularly like;

“Inspiration can come to us at any time and from many sources” - Jim Rohn

“The Swimmer” series was inspired by a photo that appeared in my Pinterest feed - it was an Art Deco bronze sculpture, 'Swim Series II’ by Deon Duncan (below).

I love the Art Deco period, particularly the fashion, and I instantly fell in love with the sculpture. Could I create something similar as an image?

Working with the ever adaptable Jane Riley and assisted by Marlies Chell I decided to give it a go… the Swimmer Project was born!

I thought the pose of Duncan’s swimmer made him look almost alien. I decided I wanted to go down that route, moving as far away from a recognisable human form as possible, so I bought a Morph costume on Amazon to make Jane look less human.

The column is a stand used to build music sets. Marlies’s dad built a top for the stand, Marlies made a sleeve for it & sprayed it.

I guess total time from concept to first shoot was around 3 months & cost circa £200.

Our first test shoot (in my lounge) was of the one pose and it immediately highlighted a problem - the Morph suit was way too large for Jane. It created lots of creases when she took up the poses and they were very difficult to take out in Photoshop. We ordered a new suit and Marlies took it in even further - poor Jane, it really was a tight squeeze to get in it!

On the second shoot we created 3 more poses, all inspired by Art Deco sculptures.

Results below - I’m really happy with them. Massive thanks to Jane and Marlies.

The Swimmer

'Swim Series II’ by Deon Duncan

Phil Bradley Guitarist

I rarely take on private commissions but I made the exception this week for guitarist Phil Bradley. He’s a “friend of a friend” so that was one factor, but the main thing that tipped the balance for me was that he looks the part!

We shot in my home studio and it went really well. Over 2 hours we set up 9 different sets and I took over 700 shots. I selected 289 “keepers” - here’s sets 1 to 4 & here’s sets 5 to 9

Phil will choose his favourite 12 & I’ll give them a final polish so he can use them on his website. The images I’ve uploaded so far have all been edited in Lightroom - I only go to Photoshop for competition workups. Lightroom’s sync facility makes it easy to apply edits to batches of photos really quickly. I’d estimate total time to get from 700 photos down to 289 lightly edited and uploaded to my website was around 3 hours. If you’d like to see the techniques I use to get to the keepers there’s a video here

One bonus of this shoot was that Phil actually played whilst we were shooting. Marlies & I really liked his music tbh, so there was lots of dancing while shooting :-)

I prefer the relaxed environment of my own lounge when shooting

Bromsgrove Talk Tickets on Sale Now

Bromsgrove PS are hosting one of my underwater talks on Tuesday 3rd May, 7.30pm at the Avoncroft Arts Centre, Bromsgrove B60 4JS.

More details here.

It’s a different format to my normal lectures because it’s a two hour presentation and combines the best bits of my three underwater lectures. Tickets (£8) can be bought here;

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-sharks-to-sea-lions-tickets-234237991137

Reef sharks patrol the surface layer, Cuba.

Ice Hockey Project Underway

I’m a Nottingham lad born and bred and as I grew up there were (for me) two major team sports to follow - football and ice hockey. I went the football route but several members of my family went down the ice hockey path and are now Nottingham Panthers season ticket holders. I’ve been to quite a few games and it really does make for a great night out.

I’ve photographed it twice too, both times in Coventry at Coventry Blaze games. I went there because they are more photographer friendly than Nottingham - but you are still shooting through the plexiglass. It’s ok, but there are so many more possibilities, so I contacted Nottingham’s National Ice Centre to see if they could point us in the direction of the local ice hockey club.

Our contact is Matt Bradbury, the Head Coach of the Nottingham Lions, the senior team of the Nottingham Ice Hockey Club. When we make these pitches timing is everything and we were really lucky this time because the NIHC have just commissioned a new website, so they are looking for images to populate it. Matt has pulled together a project team of managers across all the age groups right up to senior Lions level to facilitate the shoots.

The project will have two distinct outputs;

• Standard photographs of players & matches for their website & social media

• Iconic images, closer to art than reality

I’ve created a Pinterest Board for the iconic category - lots to go at there!

I think this will be a long running project and video will be a big part of it - which is great for Alex because he’s massively into ice hockey, although sadly for him it’s the wrong team since he’s a Sheffield Steelers fan :-(

Matt has his own sports coaching and consultancy business. He works with schools and community groups coaching Urban Hockey (street version of ice hockey), cricket and other sports, so we’ve said we’ll help him with that too.

I’m really excited about this one!

This image came from a Coventry Blaze game - I shot this through the plexiglass

The High Board Diving Shoot

I did my fourth platform diving shoot at Ponds Forge, Sheffield, just before Christmas. This is probably the most technical shoot I do & involves me triggering 4 remote flashes from 70m away in the stands. You can watch the behind the scenes video at the bottom of this article.

I shoot at 1/2500s to freeze the water droplets so I need to use High Speed Sync for the flashes. As you probably know, when you are shooting with a DSLR camera most flashes limit your shutter speed to 1/250s, otherwise you’ll literally see the shutter curtain coming down on the finished shot - it appears as a horizontal black line across the image. That’s because the flash is not firing for longer than 1/250s, so part of the image is lit & part not. Not every flash can fire faster than 1/250s but fortunately for me my Elinchrom & Rotolight Neos do.

I also used some constant LED lighting this time & it was a good job I did. I’d neglected to take account of the fact that my previous shoots had all been done in daytime, so I had ambient light flooding through the roof to help me. This shoot on a December evening didn’t have that luxury & boy did it make a difference. I was shocked at just how much extra benefit the daylight brought - lesson learned!

Anyway, all went well. Massive thanks to Alex & Tom for the video, Marlies for organising the divers on the platform and of course to Nikki Smith and the girls, boys and parents of Sheffield Diving Club, without whom none of this would be possible.