Me, me, Moorea ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a relative - a second cousin, I think (never met her!) - who is currently travelling in India and Nepal. I know this because she puts about sixty photographs a day on Instagram. (Me in a bar, me at the Taj Mahal, me in a tuk-tuk .. etc., etc., etc .. ) Now, I've no qualms with this and think it's lovely that she can relay the story of her trip to friends and family back home. It just reminds me of the time I did a round-the-world trip in 1991. Back then there were no mobile 'phones, no internet, no nothing! I shot all my photographs on Kodachrome 64 transparency film and posted the rolls home so that my Dad could forward them on for processing at Kodak's Hemel Hempstead labs. I didn't see a single one of my shots for six months. Now I know that's hardly Amundsen and the Antarctic, but it does show you how far things have come in such a short period of time, doesn't it? 

Ps: Since you ask, this is me on the island of Moorea, scene of one of my favourite films of all time. The bay on the left was deemed to be more photogenic and therefore used instead of Tahiti in The Bounty, with Anthony Hopkins. It looked so beautiful on screen that I just had to go and see it in 'real life'. I wasn't disappointed ..

Instagramatastic ..

 

 

 

 

 

It's not often I'm at the cutting edge of modern trends, but I allowed myself a wry smile when I realised I'd got in early with one of today's big-name Instagram 'influencers' ..

Model Sophia Peschisolido has 360, 000 followers on Instagram and, as the daughter of renowned businesswoman Karren Brady, appeared in some 'At Home' photographs I shot of Mum and then-footballer husband Paul Peschisolido for OK! Magazine back in the 90s ..

I really must tell my Instagram followers about this. All three hundred and eighty of them ..!

 

Colour me bad ..

It's happening, it definitely is! I'm succumbing more and more to the world of 'unreal' colour - the photoshopped landscape where white is yellow and true skin tones have gone out the window! I can't help it! I'm surrounded! I haven't got a chance! I can't watch a film now, or an ad on the box, or look at another Wedding photographer's website without being wrapped in false colour, and it's starting to rub off!..

When digital photography came into my world I used to fret for hours about skin tones and true whites - still do - but now, hey .. no sweat, I can just just throw a Lightroom preset over a shot and .. Ta Daaaa.... instant fix! I guess false colours have just become so ubiquitous that we all now accept them. Certainly the younger generation does, what with Instagram and filters on their phones. A young girl of about eight years old, in the studio for a passport, asked me the other day if I could do 'Pop Art'! She wanted a 'Hockney' type presentation of her images, along the lines of the kind of things she can do simply on her own mobile! What a modern world we live in ..

Anyway, presets are in for me now and I just bought a whole raft of them from Ebay yesterday. Not sure about some of the names of the filters though. Bad Romance? Killer Love? Emotional Blue? I might like the effect but I think I'd better keep the names away from the brides when I give 'em their images ..