Words and pictures

Amy and Andrew: Behind the scenes

Tony — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:45:20 +0000

I met Emma from Emma Lappin Flowers last summer, when I was asked to photograph a wedding to help with the launch of their new blog, Postcards from the Potting Shed. The good news is that the site is now well and truly up and running. Emma included lots of my photographs in her recent twelve days of Christmas series of posts, which was amazing to see. I’ve carried on working with Emma, producing behind the scenes photographs and video of two more weddings. Emma has been incredibly supportive, giving me these opportunities to photograph her and her team at work, and I’m very grateful. This weekend Emma e-mailed me with some very exciting news that I can’t wait to share.

Anyway, back to last summer. I met up with Emma and Amy at Lainston House Hotel near Winchester, a superbly impressive venue and a beautiful English country hotel. I could have shot there all day, there were so many little gardens, lawns, walls and even a crumbling old chapel just perfect for beautiful wedding photos. The wedding itself was stunningly decorated and we even got to see the bridal party before they left for the church. You can read more about this wedding on my wedding photography site.

Big Blue Box

Tony — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:09:54 +0000

Last Saturday I went to a Doctor Who convention. Called “Big Blue Box”, it was held in support of Compaid. It was the first one I’d been to in fourteen years, so I was slightly apprehensive about whether it would be very different from those I’d attended in my youth. Happily it was a relatively small event, with only 100 or so people in attendance. That meant there was good access to the guests, with plenty of time to chat. Along with the usual discussion panels (with guests from AudioGo, Big Finish and Doctor Who Magazine) there was also a chance to see Cleaning Up, the brilliant short film from the Guerrier Brothers starring Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson. John Leeson, the voice of K9, and Colin Baker were also at the event. Colin was there with a camera crew from Channel 4, recording a show that involved him trying to sell merchandise to us all day, albeit in a good cause. I also got to meet James and Ian from The Doctor Who Podcast, who turned out to be very pleasant fellows. The day was rounded off with a performance of Louise’s show, Pulling Faces, which is on tour now and well worth seeing.

I know that organising events like this takes a lot of work, so thank you to all those involved. The venue was great, if a little cold, and really got into the spirit of the event with a special menu for the day. The best part of the day for me? I got to have a new photograph taken with Louise Jameson.

Vicky McClure – the next Doctor?

Tony — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:31:53 +0000

I hope that Matt Smith carries on playing the Doctor for a long time, I really enjoy his portrayal. But when he moves on, as he eventually will, I’d like to make my suggestion as to who should replace him in the role. I think Vicky McClure would make a great Doctor. You may well have seen her brilliant performances in “This is England” where she demonstrated a huge emotional depth. She’d do a great job of delivering the range required by the character of the Doctor and looked powerful striding around in a big coat and boots in “This is England 86″.

I’ve even created a Facebook group to that effect which you can join if you think that I’m not totally talking out of my hat. http://www.facebook.com/groups/188805587884093/

Photo by National Media Museum on Flickr under Creative Commons by-nc-nd 2.0.

It comes before a fall

Tony — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 17:02:53 +0000

“I’m putting together a landing page for my website and would like a photograph of me to sit behind it. I was wondering if you’d be up for taking/making it? I have a vague notion of walking down a track through a mist-filled woods, wrapped up in a big coat. But that might just be because of the weather. I think something informal (or at least, informal feeling) and in a natural surrounding. Does that make any sense?”

That was what I sent in an e-mail to Graham Binns before Christmas. The obvious subtext was “please make me seem likeable, co-ordinated and, if possible, a bit cooler than I am.” So what’s the first image I get to see from the shoot?

Yeah, thanks for that.

We got together for the shoot just before Christmas. Graham is always fun to be with and it was an enjoyable shoot. He was ably assisted by his awesome wife Sarah. I felt pretty relaxed posing and enjoyed a nice meal in a nearby pub afterwards to defrost! I can’t wait to see the photos where I am actually managing to stay upright and get it on the landing page…

How was your 2011?

Tony — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:22:04 +0000

I said last year that 2011 was going to be a “game changer.” Yup, I actually used “game changer” in public. In my defence, either I used it ironically or I said it before it was a cliché. Ahem. Has 2011 lived up to its hackneyed description? Let’s have a look at some of the most significant events (in no particular order):

Setting up my photography business and actually starting to work photographing weddings!
Attending “The Workshop” run by the awsomely-awesome Jasmine Star
Having a great week in Cumbria, despite the rain
Attending my first ever Grand Prix at Silverstone
A full season of doing the Ubuntu Podcast live: the most fun season yet
Flying to New York for Zoe and Stuart’s wedding and had a great time
Meeting Colin Baker, John Leeson and David Gooderson
The loss of both Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen
OggCamp 11: the biggest and best yet
Attending Home Camp 4. Mmm, vietnamese food!
Helen and Jeff’s 1920s themed wedding
Seeing Chris in his first stage appearance in a long time
Recording a LugRadio reunion
The Box
Doing very well at Puretech Racing
Seeing Richard Herring live twice
Visiting the Doctor Who Experience
Completing a weekend of fun and adventure with Graham Binns to make some great images
Getting Ubuntu membership
Losing a couple of stone (and so far have kept it off!)
Doing fun things with Neil and Amy: A canal boat trip, a murder mystery, a tour of Christmas lights
Visiting and playing host to more family and friends than last year!

I’m pretty pleased with that. Getting my business up and running has taken a lot of time and meant not seeing as much of some friends as I’d have liked. I’ll work to redress that. I think 2012 will be even more eventful though. Especially as I start a new job in January…

The most wonderful time of the year

Tony — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:40:19 +0000

I’m a big fan of Christmas. Not just because I take two weeks off work! I love preparing for the Christmas episode of the podcast (the version of A Christmas Carol in this year’s is getting rave reviews!), spending time at home as well as travelling through the dark to visit friends and family. This year we have added rather snazzy TARDIS and Dalek decorations to the tree. And the food! Those treats which never seem appropriate at any other time of the year are suddenly justifiable!

It’s also a time to catch up on little projects. This year I’m experimenting with a medium format camera. Even though I’ve only used a few exposures, it’s already had the effect of slowing down the process of making a photograph happen. I’m so used to the instant feedback of a digital SLR and working iteratively to get a shot right that using a camera with no review screen, no internal light meter and only a paltry twelve exposures on a roll of film has made me really make sure I get everything set up correctly before firing the shutter. Hopefully I’ll have some results to share in a few weeks.

Every year I make a Christmas donation to an open source software project or two which I’ve used in the preceding twelve months. This year I chose the OpenShot video editor. I’ve been using it to edit some video projects for the lovely Emma Lappin Flowers and I hope to be able to share them with you very soon. It’s a long way from being finished but hopefully the developers will deliver a stable, fast and feature-rich video editor for Linux.

Merry Christmas!

Colour management on Ubuntu

Tony — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:35:32 +0000

Any good photographer will tell you that colour management is important in ensuring that your photographs look their best regardless of where they appear, be it on screen or in print. Making sure that the screen you are using is calibrated to display colours correctly is the first step.

The Windows and Mac software that came bundled with my Gretag Macbeth i1 (now available in its second model) is really rather nice. A simple GUI with large, friendly buttons guides you through the process of characterising your display, then creating and installing a profile. The offerings available on Ubuntu at the time were complex and pretty unintuitive in comparison. There was Lprof, which is competent but very complex to use and doesn’t integrate the resultant profile easily with other applications. Then there’s Dispcalgui, a front-end to ArgyllCMS which is closer in functionality to the bundled Windows & Mac software, but still a bit of a maze to get through.

Fortunately things got a lot better in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty). Gnome Color Manager is a much more simple application for characterising output devices, including monitors, and supports a range of measuring devices, including mine! I connected my device and selected the “high quality” measurement. After about 20 minutes of flashing squares on the screen, the profile was generated. A tickbox let me toggle it on and off, just like the Windows version.

You can make your new display profile the default for both the current and other users of the system, but at the moment it doesn’t apply to the login screen. This interview with Richard Hughes shows that further developments are planned which will make colour management available more easily for all devices and users on a system.

Michelle and Simon

Tony — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:47:03 +0000

Michelle and Simon are a great couple who have been together for seven years. I photographed their wedding earlier this year. Michelle is a bundle of energy, there’s never a quiet moment when she’s around! Simon is the perfect complement, quieter and more considered but with a big zany streak which jumps out every now and again to surprise you. My second shooter for the day was James Hodgson, a fellow Hampshire photographer.

Michelle’s bridesmaids all looked stunning in merlot dresses, complete with accessories given to them by Michelle the morning of the wedding.

The ceremony took place at the Archbishop’s Palace in Maidstone and the tiny but beautiful Apothecary’s Garden next to the palace was an ideal place to take Michelle and Simon for some quieter photos. The flowers were in full bloom and the trees provided a welcome respite from the sun!

It was a pleasure to spend the day with Michelle, Simon, their family and friends. Read more on my wedding photography site.

Jorgenson Album Designer on Ubuntu

Tony — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:36:27 +0000

Jorgenson supply beautiful, customised photo albums and I’ve selected them for my wedding photography. Not only is the variety of albums wide and the quality very high, but they have album design software which is dead easy to use. I use Ubuntu on my computer, and software isn’t always made available by third parties in a version compatible with it. The Jorgenson Album Designer (JAD) is officially provided for Windows and Mac OS X. When I saw it demonstrated at a recent exhibition it looked very slick running on Windows.

A little investigation showed that the software is actually written in Java. I was able to install and run it on my Ubuntu computer just as easily as on Windows. (I have the ~~Sun~~ Oracle java runtime installed.) Java on Linux is just ugly, so sadly the application doesn’t look anywhere near as nice as the albums which it produces. But it does allow integration with any external image editor and seems to play nicely with the GIMP. So I can continue to use my favourite operating system for yet another aspect of photography.

I’m a wedding photographer

Tony — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:07:11 +0000

A year or so ago I was asked to photograph a wedding. The couple, Michelle and Simon, had approached me after seeing a photo calendar I’d produced for 2010. I was flattered to be asked and really enjoyed the day. And I had two other couples ask me to photograph their weddings too. That set me thinking…

I’m now launching my wedding photography website. I’ve been able to photograph some other weddings this year and have included them on the site. I live in Hampshire so hope to be working mostly in the south east of England but I don’t mind travelling further afield. So, if you know anyone who is looking for a wedding photographer in Hampshire or elsewhere, please ask them to visit my new website. There’s also a Facebook page for people to like.

It’s been an exciting process over the last few months putting not only the site together but the services behind them. Massive thanks to Laura, Jeff, Neil and everyone else who has given their time to help me get this far! Laura and Graham have also written lovely supportive blog posts – thanks!

So, please check out the site and leave me any feedback in the comments!