On the 'phone ..

Most of us will remember the early 21st century as the period when we viewed life through other people's electronic devices. I went to the Southport Air Show on Saturday and spent most of my time peeping around iphones and tablets just to catch a view of the displays. People going to an event .. and not watching it! Just a little Monday moan for ya, though you know as well as I do that if I'd been shooting this event professionally this geezer wouldn't have stood a chance!..

Anyway, great weekend - the air show being followed up with a Sunday at the Mere Wedding Fayre, where I met a thoroughly smashing bunch of brides who all seemed suitably enthused by my ramblings when they came over to my stand. Well, none of them yawned, anyway! I'm going to spend Monday sitting by the phone to take all the calls for bookings .. 

PS: Here's a little addition now I've had time to go through my images. This was a commercial jet which seemed to slice through a sky-high rainbow during a lull in the displays. No 'phones in front of this one!...

 

Fayre enough ..

I'm busy getting my act together for Sunday's Wedding Fayre at Mere. I've been gathering together a selection of Wedding Albums, my laptop, my pull-up banner, two easels, framed prints, business cards and some tasty acrylic mounts. Then I look at the booking form. The bloomin' table's only four feet long! I've got way too much stuff for such a small space. Not to worry, it'll make it easier when I come to load the car ..

Excuse me, slight interruption! With the most amazing timing - and I kid you not, dear reader - a 'Save The Day' card has just plopped through the letter box to announce the forthcoming Wedding of a friend of ours who's going to be tying the knot next December! Wow! Wonder if he's got a photographer?...

Anyway, yes ...

I'll be at the Mere Golf Resort and Spa on Sunday for their Autumn Wedding Fayre. It's a cool venue to work at - the shot above is from a Wedding I shot there last year - and I have high hopes for bookings aplenty after Sunday's showcase..

Check out my zoom ..

Size matters - apparently - so I've bitten the bullet and upgraded my new camera to this mean MoFo! Oh boy, you're gonna see me coming next time I shoot a Wedding!..

I was chatting to someone the other day who was very complimentary about my photography until .. well, until that line came up! You know the one that photographers hate? "You must .. " said this person "Have a very good camera!..." Aaaaagh!!...

Yes, I'm so pleased my very good camera saw the composition, arranged the subjects, nailed the timing and sorted the light for me when it took the shot for me! Thank goodness for that good camera!..

You see, nowadays everyone's a photographer and 'real' snappers are getting swamped in a morass of mediocrity. What a pro can bring to a Wedding is getting lost to price! I know everyone's on a budget but quality has given way to cost. "How much?" is very often the first question I'll receive from a bride-to-be when she contacts me. Perhaps I should just show her the size of my zoom?...

The Few ..

Kind of appropriate that last night, on the 75th anniversary of The Battle of Britain, I turned left into Churchill Way and drove down to the Imperial War Museum North on Salford Quays. I wasn't there on any sentimental remembrance jaunt, though - I was working on a PR job. Among the things I photographed was an old Harrier Jump Jet that, high above people's heads, is used as a backdrop for corporate events. Companies' logos get rather spectacularly projected onto the underside of the fuselage as a scene-setter for their forthcoming swanky dinner..

On Saturday I'll be down at Southport's annual Air Show, oohing and aahing at the many and various jets and choppers and 'magnificent flying machines' whizzing around for our enjoyment - The Spitfire among them. As we commemorate the bravery of 'The Few' I hope I take a moment to remember what the 'real' job of all these aircraft was...

Threesomes ..

I seem to be making lots of triptychs lately. I just love matching sets of three images together - for my website or my blog or to attach to emails.
Well, they always say the best things come in threes..

Everyone loves a sunny Wedding day, and I've been so lucky that, after a very hit and miss summer, my last three Weddings have all been shot in glorious sunshine. Of course, that means in reality that as soon as a bride and groom waltz down the aisle as newly-weds, I whizz 'em off into the shade so I can control the light a little better!..

I had no Wedding this past weekend, but I did have three great portrait sessions at the studio. Funnily enough I can't mention too much about any of them, as they were all being shot as forthcoming gifts or - in one case - as a charity calendar! Details soon! Well, in about three weeks!...

Nice to be noticed ..

You've got to be a certain type of person to get on as a freelance. To work alone - with no colleagues or work-mates, no water-cooler moments, no slap on the back, no after-work drinks - can get to you if you let it, so the smallest thing can make all the difference to your day. My day started today with a cheque in the post. Not a big amount- just a few bob from a local business for a few PR shots I did for them recently, but written on the comp slip enclosed was the word "Fantastic.." And it was! It was bloody fantastic just to get that little nod of approval, that thumbs up, that little bit of feedback to send you on your way smiling...

Yesterday Lesley and I went for Sunday lunch to a place we've never been before. When we got to the bar the one girl that was serving was already busy. Instead of just carrying on as we arrived she looked up, smiled and said "I'll be with in one moment.." That one sentence meant we'll definitely be going back to that pub. Well that, and the fact that the roast beef was bloody delicious!..

Being noticed, getting noticed ... fantastic!

   

But ..

9/11 again - or 11/9 as we always said in England before the tragedy - and the world's an even worse place to be in today than it was fourteen years ago...

But ..

Despite everything, I can look at this photograph and get a big smile on my face! This shot brings back such happy memories of a time I took my Dad on a trip to America after, believe it or not, winning a trip for two to New York. We spent a week travelling round by Greyhound bus, and I have such fond memories of Dad at the top of the Twin Towers, The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building; of him stopping firemen in the street so that I could take a picture of him with them; of police in Washington keeping us behind a cordon as - of all people - Imelda Marcos landed by helicopter next to The White House, and of him straddling the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls so that he could be in two countries at once! In fact, the only photographs I took - for the entire trip - were of my Dad. He was my project! Dad does America! Every single photograph had my Dad in it!..

Well, the towers are gone and so is my Dad.
But I still have my photographs ..

No age at all ..

I'm addicted to all these bloomin' Wedding programmes that seem to have appeared on telly lately. 'Don't tell the Bride' - 'I want that Wedding' - 'How the rich get hitched' and so on, but this week saw another one that had me squirming!..

'Baby-Faced Brides' was all about - well, you can guess! Kids getting married, basically! Teenagers, twenty-year-olds and so on! Ugh, it was awful! My whole body was screaming out "Too young, too young.." but none of them listened and all of 'em went ahead and tied the knot, their flabbergasted parents looking on with ... er, well, looking on, anyway!..

I've been trying hard to think of the youngest couple I've ever photographed but I think early twenties is about as low as I can get. This week, though, I was at the other end of the spectrum with the Wedding of Margaret and Barry. I'm not giving away ages but let's just say that I've never had to get a Wedding couple's grand-children on a photograph before! It was a fantastic day all round though - probably because this couple actually knew what they were doing in life ..

God Save 'er ..

Today's the day the Queen clocks on for overtime. She's now the longest serving UK monarch ever, ever, ever...

I was lucky enough to be chosen to be the 'Official Photographer' for a visit by the Queen once. She was opening a 'Festival of Food and Farming' in London's Hyde Park in, I think, 1994, and I got the PR 'gig' to go down and shoot it. I was the only photographer allowed into the sponsor's marquee to photograph her as she toured around the stands. Those, of course, were the dim, dark days of film - no looking at the camera back to check your shots in those days - but that was absolutely normal and although I was nervous I didn't think anything of it. I was a professional photographer and I knew what to do to make sure the shots were good ones..

That's more than can be said for the first time I photographed Her Maj! Then I was a spotty sixteen year old who sneaked out of work to grab this shot of her as she sped down the M63 in Eccles on her way to some posh party or something during her 1977 Silver Jubilee Year. This picture was probably taken on my old Zenith EM camera and all I can say is I was damned lucky that bloody lamp-post is where it is or I'd have failed miserably in my efforts!..

Keep on truckin', Liz ...

Images ..

Here's the next episode in the sorry saga of people who only have their family photographs on their mobile phones. A guy in Manchester is in the awful position of just having had his parents found dead at their home, although not under 'suspicious' circumstances. The poor fella's distraught because the police won't let him into their house to pick up any photographs of them, and he hasn't got any pictures of them on his new phone! I despair ..

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about that! I wanted to tell you about the two Wedding Fayres I have coming up in the next month. The first is at Mere Golf Resort and Spa - or Mere Golf Club as I used to know it - where I'm taking a stand for their September 20th event. The other is the second ever Culcheth Wedding Fayre - my very own fayre! - being staged once again at The Culcheth Arms pub in the village. I've got together an amazing list of at least 17 different Wedding specialties, with no duplication of a single 'expert'! This one's on October 12th - a Monday evening - and I can't wait!..

Check out today's montage! Cool, innit? I happened upon some software that throws a selection of images together specifically for blogs and I'll certainly be getting my money's worth out of it! Click on it for a larger image..

He's going on about the 'old days' again ...

"I know you! .." said the Best Man as I shook his hand on Saturday "You did my Wedding photographs!.." he laughed.. "In 2002!...

Well it's nice to be remembered, although I could only apologise for my puny memory and the failure to say I remembered him too. Anyway, he proved his point by pulling out his 'phone and there, in glorious technicolour, was a shot I took of him and his wife cutting their Wedding cake all those years ago..

Yesterday I began the task of editing the 800 and odd photographs I'd taken on Saturday. I went to pop a couple of images on Facebook, only to find I'd been beaten to it with scores of images uploaded by numerous guests and family members. Every moment of the day was covered with snaps from their phones and tablets. It was as if they'd all watched the whole Wedding via their screens. A lot of the pictures - Grrr - were assorted copies of the groups I'd set up and which, in the old days, I'd have sold as reprints! My mind went back thirteen years to the Wedding of the Best Man - those dark, dank days of PD! Pre-digital! The thing is, although the image he showed me was on his 'phone, I could tell by the quality of it that the original photograph was shot on film. At his Wedding I was still shooting on a Mamiya RZ67 with a 220 magazine and .. oh, stop yawning at the back. Anyway, back in those days it was the photographer's job to take the photographs at the Wedding, and the guests got on with actually being part of the day rather than recorders of it!  I know, I know .. I'm going on about the 'old days' again and it's no good to moan about it now, 'cos times have changed and digital is God.
Like I say though, it was nice to be remembered ..

Getting on a bit ..

When I first set up my studio it was in one of the many and vast empty rooms at O'Neill Towers and, to give it a dry run, I asked some nearby neighbours if they'd come in for a family portrait. Yesterday I bumped into the daughter of the family - dairy aisle at Sainsbury's since you ask - and asked her what she was up to these days...

"I'm a teacher!" she said ..

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather, and the look on my face must have said just that! "I'm twenty-five now, you know..." she laughed, as I threw my zimmer frame out of the shot, and it dawned on me that those test pictures - those sweet family photos - were now 14 years old! The woman in front of me was an eleven year old girl when I took them! I mean, come on, they were on film, for goodness sake!..

It kind of brought home the shock there must be on the part of all those Dads that walk their daughter down the aisle on their Wedding Day. Their Princess, their little girl, has turned into a woman in the time it's taken to change a vest and go for a pint with the darts team! Now I've never had kids, but when I shoot a Wedding I'm always very tuned in to catching any of that emotion on the faces of those Dads as they look down that aisle with their pride and joy on their arm. It's just dawned on me that part of that expression is the realisation that they've grown old ... 

I want it ..

There were two new programmes about Weddings on television last night. I've watched one and recorded the other. The one I watched was called 'I want that Wedding' and featured couples going about the planning of their Weddings. There were some absolutely fantastic ideas out there, from table plans to room decoration and dresses to menus, but what was also apparent - in a few of the Weddings - was the one-upmanship that can so easily creep into a couple's Wedding planning. One couple's budget, for example, doubled from £20K to £40K as the 'must-have' items started racking up, and don't get me started on the couple who built a replica Greek temple to hold their reception - replete with a 42 foot high statue of Athena - or the couple whose Wedding was only described as costing "Six Figures"!!...

It's not rocket-science but I always tell couples to let their Wedding reflect their personalities. Thinking about it, though, that's only what all these people have done, innit?..

Moving along nicely ..

I'm exhausted! Yesterday I went canoeing, bowling, and jet-skiing. I played basketball, frisbee and table-tennis .. and I even made a few free-fall parachute jumps .. and all before I had me tea! Of course, it was all on the Wii, but that's because the weather outside was so bleedin' awful. Well, it was supposed to be, wasn't it? It was a Bank Holiday - the last one for flippin' ages - so now, on the 1st of September, I think we can all bid good riddance to the worst summer we've had for a long time and get on with the steady old decline towards Christmas!..

I have a spattering of Autumn Weddings to come, but I think it's fair to say that the biggest part of my Wedding 'season' is now behind me, too. Still to come, though, are two Wedding Fayres - one at Mere Golf Resort near Knutsford and one I'm organising myself at The Culcheth Arms - the same venue I staged a Fayre in the Spring..

And today? Just the 1,200 images to edit from Tish and Simon's Wedding last Saturday! I think I'd better switch off the Wii..