Goodbye 2010...and Thank you!

So, a rousing cheer for the year, and on we step into 2011.
Exciting, challenging...scary! Let's just wish ourselves all the best..and get on with it!.
See you Next Year !!

Made it!

Welcome to "The Other Side"! We've survived Christmas...even this family member, who's now eaten her "Annual Sprout"! Hope it was great for everyone, and I can't help wondering how many brand-new digital cameras are now unwrapped and causing consternation to their new owners! Hey, perhaps I can help! Try one of my relaxed Shoot 'n Tutor sessions!!..  :-)

So, a real end-of-year feeling to everything now. My Weddings are done for 2010, and there's a quieter time ahead, so I'll soon be planning my Valentine's Day Portrait Campaign and my new Joy Division exhibitions.

Keep warm!

Merry Christmas!

Well, it's here again....we made it to Christmas 2010!
Congratulations!!
Here's me and my sister Catherine in, I think, 1964.
(Must have been a hot Christmas 'cos I'm in shorts and sandals!)
We look happy, excited and innocent. I wish you all a Christmas just like that!

With Glove at Christmas...

Some interesting reaction to yesterday's blog...ranging from "Send the shot to the local press"  to "...an excellent example of how photography, in 1/125th of a second, can tell the viewer so much!!"

Ta for the input, guys!

Anyway, there's been a (snow) flurry of Glove activity lately. This addiction (affliction?) is driving me mad...I keep seeing abandoned gloves everywhere! I almost missed my train back from London the other day because of all the glove shots I was taking on the way through Hyde Park. See 'em for yourself in my "On the one hand" series....

Goodwill to all ...

...even to the guy in this car, who parked up on the pavement-engine running to keep warm- and watched as this nurse had to push her elderly patient up onto the shovelled snow to get passed him.
Christmas...a time to grit your teeth and smile at all the selfish, inconsiderate bastards in the world!
Don't it warm the cockles of yer 'eart, guvnor!

Hmph...wasn't this blog supposed to be about photography? You'll have to excuse me...I've got Man-Flu and I'm grumpy! The show goes on, though..and I'm stuck in watching out of the window for the delivery of my new printer. The built-in bloody obsolesence of my old one has meant it's now in the loft and I'm £235 down after buying a new one! (Oh, seems I'm still grumpy!) At least I can invoice for December's work, now! Done some great acrylic portraits for clients this Christmas, and a fantastic 18x20 Florescence acrylic that's so good I don't want to sell it!

Hope my delivery driver doesn't park on the path....

Listen to teacher....

The last-minute gift for the snapper in your life?
A session (or two) on my laid-back Shoot 'n Tutor Photography sessions...of course! 35 quid a pop and ideal for the digital camera owner who erm, wants to be able to use it !

My own initial 'lessons' consisted of reading every damned photography book in Eccles Library, then enrolling on a night-school course in 1977. The teacher, good old Phil Lingard..where are you, Phil?..had just graduated in photography (Fine-Arts, methinks), and the poor bugger didn't have the foggiest idea how to impart his knowledge to us raw recruits! I remember he stuck a light in front of a model one night, and left us to our own devices. (Actually, she was lovely..we had a blast!) Another night we hit Manchester for an evening of low-light photography and we all nearly froze to death looking for defining shots of the city in the winter (Rings a bell !)

If you want to go that step further in photography, though, it takes a lot more than knowing your f-stops from your focal lengths. I actually didn't get on the NUJ Press Photography course when I was 17 because one of my O levels was not of a high-enough grade. I promptly went out, starting shooting news pictures and got a job with the first newspaper I applied to! I perversely loved it one time when I failed to clinch a Wedding booking because the Bride's mother asked me what qualifications I had. "None" I replied..."Just 32 years experience as a Photographer!"

Albums a go-go!

Phwoar..check out my stack!
Story-books, parents' albums, guest books, brushed-metal covers, open-flat pages.....my new Wedding range is in! (Doesn't take a lot to get me going, does it?) It's been a long time in the making but I've taken the decision to join the 'Digital Story-Book' world, and I'm so pleased I'm (finally) able to offer this range to my new couples. The photographs look fantastic, and the design's amazing (Yes, I know I did it but when did boasting ever bother me?)

Speaking of boasting...lovely email yesterday from the proud father of one of my young portrait subjects... "Just to let you know, the photo of Jack was tremendous!!  Really love it!!  It will take pride of place in the lounge...Great work mate!"

I have a lovely warm glow about me...and it's nothing to do with the Bell's in me coffee! 

Fairytale, storybook...

The world's gone white but my fairytale's come in the shape of my new Storybook Wedding Album, a sample of which made it through the snow to get to me this morning. I'm loving the brushed-metal cover, the fold-flat pages and the many and several mini-versions of it that come in handy for passing to parents and pals! Can't wait for 'my couples' to cast their beadies over these beauts!

So, it's snowing...a lot, and I was just one of the weather's victims last night...stuck on a train back from London and finally getting home at 12.50 am. I went down to present samples of Florescence to a couple of the Big Stores there. Hopefully something might come of it, and this time next year you'll all be dining off my placemats and coasters. Well, use plates and cups, obviously, but you get the idea!

Now let's shoot this new range of albums and get 'em on the website...

Ya boo sucks....

Another nipper for you, and this ruffian from a Wedding I'm working on sums up my feelings for Epson this morning! My printer has frozen..telling me that parts of it have reached the end of their service life. So why the heck was it working fine until it 'decided' to stop? Now I'm either going to have to send it back to Epson or ditch it and start again..depending on the costs!! Talk about our throw-away society!

Tell you one thing I am throwing away...a flier that was delivered this morning offering me cheap Christmas gifts of a Deluxe Photoshoot (Gee, thanks...)..and a "Farrari" (sic) driving experience!

Ding, dong...

Ah, the Christmas spirit is finally starting to seep into the old head, and I'm loving all the carols on Classic FM. Reminded me of this little nipper, who you'd swear was beltin' out the songs at this Wedding!

Incidentally, does anyone know how to reset an Epson R1800..'cos if not I'll be asking Santa for a new one soon!

Face the music...

The new image on my home page is the music to 'Here comes the Bride', just one of the detail shots I'd take as I shoot a Wedding, and a good way to say I saw a great gig at the Royal Northern College of Music last night. Our old friends Everything Everything played their album with the backing of a 13 piece orchestral ensemble, and very good it was, too!
Time to take note (Ha!) of the fact that times are hard out there, and I've now decided to introduce an even more affordable Wedding Photography Package, aimed at the smaller Wedding or the budget-concious couple.
Also on the subject of music...erm, no, I won't mention Putin singing Blueberry Hill..although I did have a great night once photographing Bryan Robson and Peter Schmeichel singing Karaoke in a Manchester club..sozzled..at 3am! Music to my ears!

Hic, burp!

Where am I? What day is it?....

Ah yes, our annual Photographers' booze-up is now done and dusted, and I'm guessing there won't be many more opportunities this year to reminisce about leaving HP5 to stew in Microphen for nine minutes...Oh, we know how to have fun! (That's film, developer and darkroom technique to you digi dudes out there!) The picture's not really from the 'do', by the way..it's from my Don't Miss This series!

Anyway, on with the show, and time to get all the portraits ready before Christmas..oh, and the one 8x6 print that's been ordered from a wedding in 2002! It's a 6x6 negative. Aha, maybe my darkroom dealings aren't over just yet!

And before I go boozin'....

..I'll get a bit of work in.

Busy making my Florescence 'Wall Art'..(Picture frames to you and me!!) These 9 image sets are now just £35. Lots of different images, all genuine photographic prints on Fuji Pearl high-gloss paper.You want one, you know you want one!

Party, party...again!

Time to dig out the dancing shoes for tonight's Freelance Photographers' Christmas Get-together.
Ok..time to stand at a bar, get drunk and moan about the lousy state of Photography these days....
I'll be seeing a lot of my old muckers from the Manchester Evening News and even, heaven help us, some of the guys I've known as snappers since 1978! The event's changed a lot over the years..in relation to the fortunes of newspapers in Manchester. Once..a long time ago..there were actually so many Staff Press Photographers in the city that we had an Association, the MPPA, and the Christmas booze-up was a black-tie, sit-down 'do' in a swanky hotel. Now, we're all freelance and settling for a bowl of chilli and a few pints!  A full bowl? You were lucky.....!

The image is from Don't Miss This, my Olympus XA series.....

Yeah but no, but.....

I tweeted last night about a couple who decided against booking me as their Wedding Photographer.
They couldn't afford my lowest price package of £595 because they'd only budgeted for £850 !!? Go figure, as we don't say in England!  I know we're all looking to shave a bit off prices at the mo, but I'm hearing some great excuses to avoid spending lately! Like the guy who asked if his Wedding Photography could be cheaper if he did his own processing...or the lady who pondered buying some of my Florescence placemats but decided against it as she wanted them in orange. She was looking at pictures of lavender!
Anyway, here's a lovely example of the cut-price world of Wedding Photography, from a 1980 edition of the Warrington Guardian, with a £39.99 package being undercut by one at £39 !
Just think what you could have got if you'd gone that extra 99 pence!

Hot Dog!

A cute shot of a puppy to let you know that my shots from last week are hitting the media now...with the dogs getting a starring role! My little hot-dog shot is from my Olympus XA series, Don't Miss This, with the book still available as a great Christmas Gift Idea!!

Oh, and whilst we're talking about dogs, could someone please tell my neighbour that just because she goes to work and can't hear her dog barking all day...doesn't mean it doesn't !!
Grrrr.....

Corrie for the Nation...

Eeeeeh, Annie..have you heard what's happened on't street?
50 years of Corrie, eh? I celebrated my own half a century this year too, and all I can say is I'm glad I didn't get a bloody tram dropped on me 'ead!
Here's Annie Walker and Bet Lynch, aka Doris Speed and Julie Goodyear, getting down to a good old chin-wag and a fag at some 'do' or other in Manchester back in the day. Working for the Manchester Evening News, I got to meet a whole lot of the actors, and often went to Granada TV for photo-calls and promotions. I once shot a 'real' Wedding for OK! Magazine where many of the cast were invited. I set up a studio in a room at the V&A hotel (as it was), and the actors were grabbed and yanked upstairs for their photoshoots by a poor, hassled OK! lacky. Shoot over, I dismantled the 'studio', and slept in the room. When I checked out I got charged a fortune for 'emptying' the mini-bar. The lovvies from The Street had all helped themselves to the costly booze when they got to my room!! Have to say though, that the cast were, on the whole, a really great bunch of lovely people, although I remember Jean Alexander moaning at me once for wearing a Hilda Ogden T-Shirt! (Still got it, Jean..you're a legend!)
Happy Birthday, Corrie...see you at 100 !

Not to be sniffed at...

Budgets are being slashed left, right and centre, and quite often a PR firm can now dictate the price for which it wants a job shooting. Professional photographers are being squeezed hard by the financial constraints of clients on the one side, and the blatant theft of our work by the multitude of Shamateurs out there...the already-employed of this world who fancy making a bit of pocket-money at the weekend by knocking out Weddings for peanuts!
Still, once a pro always a pro, and it says a lot that I keep on getting a kick out of my work, especially when I pick up something unexpected like this shot. I was on a PR shoot for a client promoting a new "Art Gallery in a house". I wanted to retain the homely feel of the place by keeping the client's dogs in the shot, and I think it's safe to say I achieved the objective!
Good Boy!

Ooh, Matron!

No apologies for the repeat here, 'cos we're all in need of a good laugh in this weather!
I'm working on a Wedding from the summer, and I'm so pleased the Bride & Groom have selected this shot for their album. It was their reaction to a line in the Best Man's speech. He wished the happy couple a great honeymoon in North Wales.

"I think that's where they're going" he added.."He said he was going to Bangor for a week!"
Bum, bum!

Stop Press: No Blog tomorrow, as I've an early start at my Altrincham Market stall. Come down and stock up on your Christmas prezzies...!

Here comes the commercial break...

Ok, I need to be honest...my Weddings are a bit quiet this Christmas!
I love Christmas Weddings, but have nowhere near as many as I had last year so...make that last minute booking and I'll upgrade your album to the Package above....saving you  £250 !!!

Santa's come early, folks!

Yeah, December...whatever!

Whoosh...December! Where did that come from?
It's just dawning on me that Christmas is only three weeks away and as usual, I've done nothing about it! "Dear Father Christmas, I'd like a new 85mm 1.4 lens, three new SB-900 flash guns and a train set!" There, that should do it!

I remember when I worked for the Manchester Evening News, I'd be covering Christmas fairs from mid-November, carol concerts from about now, and burglars stealing gifts from around peoples' Christmas trees any time you like! Ho, ho, ho...!

Inceidentally, I've become a victim of my own "On the one hand"...
I lost a glove yesterday!! Bah, humbug!