Ryder Cup Celebration at Deeside Golf Club

After the great success of last year’s event at Deeside Golf Club to raise funds for the Maggie’s appeal, the event was staged again at the beautiful setting of Deeside Golf Club. To find out about this very worthy cause, see the blog post from last year by clicking here.

The event kicked off with the clinics at the driving range where Colin’s relaxed style and interesting anecdotes make it a very popular part of the day. Even I picked up a few useful tips. We were very lucky to have a beautiful day, probably one of the best days of sunshine this year.

Colin brought the Ryder Cup with him this year so not only did the teams get photographed with Colin, they also got to handle the famous trophy. For most teams, the individual players also got taken with the trophy. It was not there for the start of the event so unfortunately the first few teams at the 14th tee did not get the Ryder cup in their photographs. The strong sunshine meant I had to use a lot of flash and i was very grateful to have my Quantum lighting with me. I drained 3 high capacity batteries with the amount of flash required (for those interested in photography, the exposure was 250s at f10 – f18 so it was mainly full power flash.

The only disappointing thing for me was that I was feeling very ill and the day after was at the Doctor, and then was in hospital so it was a challenge working all day and then at the dinner at Stewart Milne’s house at night.

All the photographs taken during the day can be viewed here and the shots from the dinner and prize presentation here (separate blog post to follow)

Harley and Friends

David had a group of 7 girls in the studio a few weeks ago. Harley wanted a portrait of her friends before leaving for Spain. David had the music on and there was lots of laughter coming from the studio and the girls had great fun.

Our Studio is big enough for a group of 7 but on a 12 ft background, it can feel "claustrophobic" keeping a group contained to the background. Before the sitting, David and I spent some time chatting about the group shots and looked at the work of Babak, a photographer in Toronto. He had a nice group that we both liked but when we studied it, we realised that it had been created by combining individual shots. David tried this out with the girls and then combined the 7 shots using Photoshop to create a nice group with the advantage of choosing the best shot of each girl.

 Click here to read more!

Photography for Website and Marketing

Yesterday (Tuesday 25th January, 2011) I started on the photography for the Brentwood Hotel, a very popular and busy hotel on Crown Street, Aberdeen. A complete set of photographs are required to show the work done refurbishing the hotel, and the facilities the hotel can offer. The first shots taken were a conference room set up, private dining, the dining room, the lounge, and a selection of the different bedroom styles. For the conference set up shot, we added the hotel logo to the TV, and text to the whiteboard (better than my handwriting) using Photoshop – see the before and after above.

For the private dining shot, I added an image to the TV screen.

For this dining room shot, I framed it with the mirrors which "leads" you into the shot. This shot and most of them were taken using a Quantum Trio on the camera, and 1 or 2 radio triggered Quantum Qflash T5DR. This set up is superb as wherever you place the lights, they fire every time. Apart from a much better quality of light, and more power, the radio triggering is so much better than the infrared line of sight Nikon CLS system.

The Brentwood has 66 very nice and well equipped bedrooms and I photographed a few of the different bedrooms so guests can see the different sizes and layouts.

I am back tomorrow evening to take shots of the bar and restaurant areas while it is busy, and then again on Monday to photograph the reception, food, the chefs at work, and a range of detail shots.

The shots taken yesterday can be viewed by clicking here.

Portrait of Will Evans

David’s first portrait of the New Year was of Will Evans. It had been booked before Christmas but Will had flu so it was re-scheduled for Saturday. When Will’s Mum, Morag, booked the sitting, David chatted to her about Will and his interests and found out he was a big Dr. Who fan.

David did a bit of homework and did lots of Dr. Who poses and Will had great fun and after the sitting Morag left a nice message for David on Facebook – see below

Although the Dr. Who shots were great fun, there were other more traditional poses taken. A slideshow presentation of the shoot is below. 

Merry Christmas from aberdeenphoto.com

I would like to wish all our customers a merry Christmas and a happy new year. David and I are currently spending all our time phoning couriers and on-line tracking the orders we are still waiting for. The weather has delayed delivery of several orders although we have had deliveries today of albums, acrylic prints, framed prints, and canvasses. Everything we are waiting is despatched but we cannot guarantee everything will get here. We have 4 orders in the UPS depot in Tamworth and the UPS website is stating delivery is due tomorrow so we can only hope that the weather does not cause any further delays. As a back up, we are preparing full colour vouchers showing what has been ordered and explaining what is to follow. Although it is far from ideal, at least there will be something to hand over.

These are the icicles at our front door and despite the beautiful sunshine, there is no sign of them melting.

They look beautiful and I could not resist getting my camera out although it was too cold to venture very far from the door. They would have looked better using a longer lens and a shallower depth of field but at minus 8, I took these very quickly.

At night, these look great looking out the window, with the lights on them. I might take them at dusk on a tripod if it is not too cold but Christmas shopping will probably take priority.

Although the weather has resulted in some cancellations, the studio has been busy and David has taken some stunning images. We have also sold a lot of portrait vouchers so we should be busy when we come back in the New Year.

We are open today and tomorrow and then I will be back to work on the 28th and we are photographing Cheryl and David’s wedding at Belhelvie on the 29th. I am then on holiday from the 30th to the 6th January, if we can get our flights.

I would like to thank all past and all future clients for your business and we look forward to dealing with you in 2011.

 August was our busiest month of the year to date and we took an incredible number of photographs and over 2 days alone, the 20th and 21st we took over 6500 photographs, and during August, we took close to 20 000 photographs. This workload has meant that the blog has been neglected but today I have added or completed previous drafts for 18 posts.

 I have many more to add on weddings, commercial assignments, websites, and on new equipment purchased so hopefully there will be something of interest for all the regular visitors and for new visitors I hope to attract with a mail shot, and more effort on Facebook and Twitter.