Beautiful food at The Milton

Last week, I was photographing food from the new menu at the highly regarded Milton Restaurant.  These shots will be used in their new website. The food looked great, and having dined there several times, I am sure it will taste as good as it looked.

I took some exterior and interior shots of this charming restaurant. You can see all the proofs by clicking here

I was commissioned by Jay Emmerson, the restaurant manager, who I had worked with at the Albyn last year when I photographed their food.

I also took a few shots of the view across the River Dee for apart from the beautiful food, part of the attraction and charm of The Milton, is the beautiful setting.

To view all the images, click here.

Liane and Andrew’s wedding

On Saturday (16th April) I photographed the wedding of Liane McRae, who I first photographed over 30 years ago (not giving away Liane’s age) in her ballet outfit in the studio with her sister, Gemma. Her Dad, Alan McRae, is a good friend and client (Alken Construction) and I was delighted when Liane asked me to photograph her wedding. David and I took over 2000 photographs and the first gallery is now on-line, and the rest will follow later today. Click here to see the first gallery. There is a short slideshow below with a small selection of images before any editing.  This was prepared on Saturday night to show the bridal party.

A few of the shots used in the slide-show are in the gallery below.

This blog post will be updated again when the finished photographs are on-line.

Re-touching

This post is to showcase what is possible with Photoshop. Julie, the Bride asked if it was possible to have a second version of the image above without de Broy. This was not particularly easy as de Broy’s head and body is in front of the fireplace and painting, both of which are very intricate. However, Lukas, our in-house Photoshop guru created exactly what was required.

To achieve this, he first cut the lady out. then found another image where you could see the fireplace and painting that the Groom was in front of. He re-sized and adjusted it in a separate layer, and then removed more of the Groom, before replacing the lady in his place and adding an arm. He also re-touched out a blue book that was on the bottom shelf creating exactly what Julie wanted.

As I have said many times, we would much rather get everything we need and get everything right "in camera" but is very useful to have Photoshop and Lukas’s considerable skills at our disposal.

Heading

Below are the pages of an album design recently completed which is currently being printed and bound in Italy. We were very lucky with the weather on the 13th November and despite it being cold, got a nice range of shots at Castle Fraser – click here for the blog post.

Amy and Michael have been great clients to work with, and Amy has been so enthusiastic about the album and had a lot of input in the final layout. For the final viewing in my office, we had Amy, Michael, both Mum’s and Dad’s, and Granny’s. The response of everyone to watching the pages set to music makes all the effort worthwhile.

Amy has been so complimentary about the photography and the album and nothing gives all of us a better feeling than getting positive feedback – see emails from Amy below

"Hi Neil,
We’ve just picked our favourite photos. It’s been a hard job because we
love them all! …… Thanks again to you, Sandra, and David for all your hard work, we’re delighted with the photos!

Kindest regards, Michael and Amy" on 18th November2010

"Hi Neil,
We are delighted with the album, all the changes are perfect!
Can we make an appointment to come in to sort out the front cover,
parent albums and …..
Thank you again to everyone for all your hard work, we love the album!

Amy" on 10th March 2011
 

Slideshow for the iPad

I have spoken before about how useful the iPad is as a sales tool and I now have several clients using these as sales presenters. I have just created a slideshow of commercial photography to show on the iPad. I thought about grouping exteriors, interiors, etc. but eventually decided just to mix a selection of shots to give a "feel" for the type of work I do. I created it at 720p and the quality on the iPad is great. The Youtube version below does not look so good as the iPad but if you choose 720p, it will give a good idea.

I have not "blogged" much recently as I have been so busy but I have a lot of draft posts with recent work prepared so all being well there will be a new post everyday next week. I love to get feedback on any of the posts so any comments will be appreciated.

Fund raising night for Maggies at Malmaison

After being at Deeside Golf Club, Colin was going to Malmaison on Queens Road for a champagne and canapé evening to promote the Maggies appeal. The evening hosted by BBC sports commentator, Rob McLean heard Colin Montgomerie and Colin Welsh (Chairman of the appeal committee)  explain why a Maggies centre is so important for Aberdeen. Click here to see how much their centres can help suffers and their families, and click here for more information on Monty’s Maggie’s appeal.

The committee had kindly invited Sandra and I as guests. When I got my invitation, I noticed that there were 10 raffle prizes of a photograph of Colin with the Ryder cup. I accepted the invitation and emailed asking if they had arranged the photography and offered to do this free of charge, and my offer was accepted. Malmaison Set up a room for the photography and all the prize winners came up and got their photograph taken and they will get a print sent to them. The photograph above is of Colin and Andy Roger, the General Manager of Malmaison in Aberdeen. Malmaison and Andy have been great supporters of the appeal and last year Andy and a team of  Mal staff walked 164 miles covering both the West Highland Way and the Great Glen Way. Click here to read more.
 

Sandra was with me, and took the opportunity to get her photograph with Colin and the Ryder cup.

Click here to see all the prize winners and shots of the famous Ryder Cup.

Colin Montgomerie forum for Deeside junior members

Last Thursday, Colin Montgomeris was back at Deeside Golf Club with the Ryder Cup. He had kindly agreed to have a question and answer session for the junior members at Deeside Golf club. Colin established a relationship with Deeside last year when there was a special tournament at Deeside with Colin to raise funds for the Maggies appeal. Click here to find out about the event and the appeal.

The junior members had some great questions and Colin is very articulate and gave them a great insight into his amazing golfing career. Doug Watson, the club captain, made a very good job of hosting the session and finished up with a rapid fire series of either or questions so all the juniors and members present could find out more about "Colin, the man, as well as the golfer"

After the Q and A session, all the children and a few of the members there lined up to have their photograph taken with Colin and the Ryder Cup. When Lucinda, his assistant saw the number in the queue, she said it would be impossible as he was on a tight schedule but we started and went very quickly and took 64 photographs in well under 10 minutes. Colin was very complementary about how quickly it was done and although I would have liked longer, at least everyone got their photograph taken. I had a background set up which was only big enough for a tight shot of 2 people so Lukas had a lot of Photoshop work to do to "add background" where required. I have already had some very positive comments about the images (see below) which we are selling on-line with 50% of the sales going to the Maggies appeal.

Click here to view all the images.

Good Morning Neil,

The photos from the Colin Montgomery Juniors session at Deeside GC are superb.
……
Would you let me know sizes and prices please? I’ll probably go for standard sizes for all of them apart from the threeshot (NWG2816) which we’d like enlarged – it’s brilliant.

Many thanks, Kirstin

Kirstin Gove, Communications & Media Training Manager
AVC Media Enterprises

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!

Portrait of Miller Giles

Two weeks ago, David was talking to me about a portrait sitting where the little boy was not at his best so he arranged a second sitting and he got much better shots, the second time round. I did not realise until the viewing that the sitting was for Wendy and Bruce, who’s wedding I photographed in 2007. (Click here to see their album).

At the viewing there were several shots of Miller that Wendy and Bruce liked so instead of one large portrait, David suggested 3 box frames to hang together. and prepared a visual to show how this would look. Wendy and Bruce decided to go with this idea and less than a week later, the box frames were ready to collect.

They looked fantastic. The very narrow black moulding against the black background gives a very minimalistic look but the 2 inch deep moulding gives the depth and looks great without distracting from the image. As the shots were full frame, a smaller size was more appropriate but three of them together will create a very impressive wall display.

The day after the portraits had been collected, David got a nice email from Wendy and Bruce – see below

Good morning David,

Just a quick e-mail to let you know that we are delighted with the
pictures. They look amazing.

Thanks again.

Bruce & Wendy

We are currently working on a product brochure that we will give to all clients so they can see all the different presentation ideas there are – canvasses, box frames, acrylics, metal prints, beautiful frames, etc. If we can arrange it, we will photograph how our clients use our images in their homes, and possibly we will include the portraits of Miller on Bruce and Wendy’s wall.

Photography for re-branding

Last week, I had photographs to take at the Holiday Inn Express in Chapel Street after a recent re-brand from Express by Holiday Inn to Holiday Inn Express. The hotel has been upgraded with new signs, new flat screen TV’s in the bedrooms, and many other upgrades. I have photographed the hotel several times but obviously the recent changes meant new images were required.

With the Brentwood Hotel being photographed last week, and photography booked for the Bauhaus, and more shots at the Brentwood for later this week, I am spending a lot of my time in hotels.