Alison and Scott’s album

We have just completed the design for a 40x30cm Graphistudio wedding book for Alison and Scott. They were in last week for the final viewing and to choose the cover. They chose a Crystal Glance cover which is a beautiful solid perspex finish with any artwork you want.

I love the image they chose for the cover which is fun and the spot colour highlights the wellington boots that Alison had to change into to go under the Bridge at the Old Mill Inn where David got some great shots. You can view the images here.

The pages of this book has a good mix of formal and informal creating a complete story of the day. You can view the book pages here.

These shots were taken in the wooded area under the bridge.

Having the table plan and some shots of the speeches is nice to have in the book.

As David was there up until dancing, he was able to get dusk shots after the meal in the evening.

Jane and Kenny’s wedding photographs

Friday 10th October was a wet and miserable day. However meticulously you plan your wedding, you cannot plan the weather. David was taking the photographs and managed to get some outside but most had to be taken in the restaurant of the hotel. You can view the images here.

It was not so wet when the Groom arrived so David photographed Kenny and all the guests outside before the service.

David always gets nice shots of the rings, and if there is not a suitable background, he has a piece of slate in his back which works well as a backdrop for the rings.

He managed to get some during the service and here we see the couple exchanging rings with Rev. John Watson conducting the service.

This shot has Jane and Kenny with their daughter Sophie who although only 16 months was a beautiful flowergirl.

On the way from the restaurant to the function suite, David has got a nice walking shot with the dusk lighting.

You can view all the images here.

Amazing New Cameras from Nikon

On Wednesday of this week, I was at an Nikon Professional Services event to launch the new D4. It is always worth attending these events as there is a camera clinic and you can have your camera checked and cleaned while you attend the presentation. I was really looking forward to seeing the new D4 which is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary upgrade to the beloved D3s that I use. The day before the trip to Edinburgh Nikon launched another camera the D800 to the world’s press in London and other places across the world. I knew it would be a talking point but I did not expect to see it one day after the release.  However it was very exciting that there was a D800 there so those at the workshop were among the first group of photographers in the world to handle this amazing new camera.

The ground breaking news is that the D800 has a full frame 36.3MP sensor. High resolution is usually delivered at the expense of high ISO performance but this new D800 can still perform amazingly at 3200 ISO or even 6400. It cannot compete with the 16MP flagship D4 in this area, as it can virtually "see in the dark" and goes to an insane 204 800 ISO but it does have twice the resolution. Most photographers are taking the view that the D800 will be the logical choice for the commercial, studio, and wedding photographer while the D4 with it’s ability to work in very low light and it’s speed (up to 11 frames per second (compared to 4or 6 of the D800) will be the natural choice of the press photographer. I would expect to see lots of D4′s at the Olympics. However I do not think we can make a decision until we try the cameras and see the files.

It was great to see and handle both cameras along with the full range of Nikkor lenses and I cannot wait to properly test them both.

This is me in Edinburgh on Wednesday with the D4 and D800

As the cameras were pre-production models, the memory card slots were taped up. However someone in our group (who will remain nameless for fear of repercussions) managed to sneak a memory card into the D800. Although I cannot open the raw file as Adobe are not supporting the new cameras yet, a jpeg shot with available light at 3200 ISO is below. The "male model" in the shot is Charlie Stewart of Royale Photographics.

A small file on a blog post cannot convey the resolution and quality of this jpeg straight from the camera but it certainly looks very impressive. However, Nikon has made a selection of sample images available for download on its official site for the new cameras. As always, these are compressed JPG files – we will wait to see what the RAW files of these cameras can produce before we can even begin to really judge the quality. Still, interesting nonetheless.

Nikon D800 Sample Images

I have not went into any detail on the specification or even mentioned video as there are hundreds of opinions, and detailed technical reviews on-line (I have probably read them all) and all the specifications can be obtained from Nikon or DP Review.

There is already huge debate over which is the best camera. However they are both fantastic tools and both will yield amazing results – it is a very exciting time to be a photographer.

Wedding on Sunday, 22nd January

Finally back to blogging and hopefuly in 2012, I will have much more regular posts. I am delighted that my first post for my first wedding in 2012 is for a friend’s wedding. As well as being the photographer, Sandra and I were guests at the wedding of Jill and Pepe (Guiseppe) on Sunday 22nd January.

As a regular client of the Ciao Napoli in Bon Accord Crescent (the best Italian restaurant in Aberdeen), Pepe and Nino (Pepe’s brother) have become close friends, and I was delighted to be the photographer at the wedding.

It was a nice sunny day but was very very cold. Everyone was very cooperative and braved the cold to let us get most of the shots taken outside in the nice winter sun. I was using a new Nikkor 180 f2.8 which has a fantastic bokeh and I am looking forward to using it this year. Pepe is a keen photographer and has some nice Canon equipment so he will appreciate the quality of this lens.

The slideshow above is a nice way to view a selection of images and we often create this and give them to clients for their iPads, Smart phones, and laptops, but there are also images to view.

Norwood is an excellent venue and it was a great wedding. I took the formal groups and bridal portraits and David took over and photographed during the speeches and dancing, while I joined the party. Pepe is a big music lover and he had booked a fantastic Soul band from Glasgow  – A-Side Soul. Visit their website to hear how good they are.

It was a great day and an excellent way to start 2012, which is already guaranteed to be a busy year.

Latest weddings

After a long absence from the blog, I am finally about to start posting again. The absence started with being off ill and in hospital part of April and May. We then were very busy over the summer and had a great season photographing some amazing weddings.

I was on holiday in July and got some great shots in Sardinia and Italy which there will eventually be a blog entry about. July also saw my daughter, Natasha graduate with a first class honours degree in Accounts.

August was another eventful month with Natasha getting married, my friends, Alan and Jill also getting married, a trip on the Orient Express, and lots of interesting commercial assignments.

September saw far has also been a very busy and eventful month starting with Offshore Europe, then Sandra and I getting married in Edinburgh on my birthday on the 6th September, my daughter Brittany’s 18th on the 8th, and lots of great weddings and other assignments. I have spent a lot of time this month on a new on-line ordering system which we are very excited about. We are currently beta testing with 8 Bride’s to get their feedback. There will be a post about this very soon and the most recent wedding on Friday is on-line using the new system.

Our new website is being created at the moment and will feature some fantastic new wedding and portrait products.

On the technology front, we have been upgrading to Apple’s new operating system, and I am using the latest Macbook Air (the best Mac I have ever owned) so there ill also be some posts about this for anyone interested in how we utilise technology.

This is only a brief summary of what has been happening at aberdeenphoto.com since April while the blog has been neglected. Therefore there is no shortage of content for the blog and I just need to make time to try and post at least once a week.

I am very encouraged by how many people read my blog and have been surprised how many emails I have had asking when it was going to be resumed. To be honest, I was using the blog to create posts to use as links in emails to give information relevant when quoting or emailing and did not realise how many people were reading it.

I realise now from the number of emails that I have a lot of people following my blog and viewing our wedding photography from the blog links and therefore I have listed all our weddings here as well as on our website.

Look out over the next few weeks for lots of "catch up blog posts"
 

April 2011 weddings

April 29th – Alana and Don at the Town House and the Marriot (Formal)

April 30th – Debra and Andrew at Pittodrie House (Formal)

April 30th – May and Derek at Norwood Hall :: Formal,  Informal

May 2011 weddings

May 1st – Michelle and Gavin at Craigiebuckler Church :: Formal, Informal

May 7th – Deborah and David at Drum Castle (Formal)

May 14th – Katie and Steven at Gerard St. Baptist :: Formal, Informal

May 28th – Fiona and Brian at The Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

May 28th – Claire and Luke at St. Palladius Church :: Formal, Informal

June 2011 weddings

June 3rd – Anna and John at the Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

June 3rd – Sian and Scott at Palm Court Hotel (Formal)

June 4th – Lucy and Rudy at The Douglas Hotel (Formal)

June 11th – Natalie and Allan at Maryculter House (Formal)

June 11th – Jeanette and Eddie at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

June 11th – Alison and Alex at Craigieburn House :: Formal, Informal

June 11th – Donna and Lee at Northern Hotel :: Formal, Informal

June 24th – Louise and Gary at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

June 25th – Joanne and Stuart at Pittodrie House Hotel :: Formal, Informal, Speeches and dancing

June 25th – Gwen and Steven at The Maryculter Church (Formal)

July 2011 weddings:

July 9th – Sarah and Gavin at the Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

July 11th – Darlene and Drummond at Drum Castle and Norwood Hotel :: Formal, Informal

July 14th – Kathryn and Alex at Norwood Hall (Formal)

July 15th – Emily and Scott at Kings College and Dunecht Estate (Formal)

July 16th – Angela and David at the Old Mill Inn :: Formal, Informal

July 16th – Gillian and Mark at Belhevie Church :: Formal, Informal

July 17th – Elizabeth and Andrew at the Winter Gardens (Formal)

July 22nd – Karen and Ian at The Old Mill Inn (Formal)

July 23rd – Emma and Mathew at the Holiday Inn West :: Formal, Informal

August 2011 weddings

August 5th – Nicola and Neil at Winter Gardens :: Formal, Informal

August 6th – Jacquie and Steve at the Old Mill Inn (Formal)

August 6th – Emma and Kevin at Pittodrie House Hotel :: Formal, Informal

August 11th – Natasha and Jason at The Marcliffe (Formal)

August 13th – Jackie and Mike at the Northern Hotel (Formal)

August 13th – Laura and Keith at Cults Parish Church and Marcliffe (Formal)

August 18th – Debbie and Graham at Winter Gardens :: Formal, Speeches and Dancing

August 19th – Jill and Alan at The Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

August 20th – Stacey and Norman at the Marcliffe :: Formal, Informal

August 20th – Kim and Gary at the Old Mill Inn (Formal)

August 20th – Joanne and Lau at The Pittodrie House :: Formal, Informal

August 21st – Jill and Alan at Maryculter House Hotel :: Formal, Informal

August 26th – Vanessa and Jeff at Palm Court (Formal)

August 27th – Pauline and Scott at the Hliton Double Tree (Formal)

Karly and Ally at the Holiday inn, Westhill

The last wedding I photographed before being off ill was Karly and Ally’s. I photographed Karly’s Mum and Dad’s wedding over 24 years ago when Karly was three and cried the whole day. This time round Karly looked beautiful and was very easy to photograph. We took the photographs at the park across from the hotel and were fortunate that the weather forecast was so accurate. The forecast was for rain at 4.00pm which was when we had scheduled to complete the photography outside. We had just finished and were back under the canopy (for the confetti photograph) at 4.00pm when the rain started.

The park at Westhill does not have a lot of features but we got some nice shots. May favourite shot of the day was the walking shot above. I set Karly and Ally up on a path with and asked them to walk towards me and had them looking towards me and at each other. The 70-200 lens and a shallow depth of field work well but it is the great expressions that make this my favourite.

As we were booked to stay until the dancing, I also photographed Karly and Ally at dusk as  they had seen dusk shots, I had taken of the hotel for their website which we designed and produced for them (click here to see the website). They had Chinese Lanterns for this which you can see in the shots above.

While waiting to do this shot, I prepared a small selection of shots as a slideshow on my laptop which I showed to the top table and some of the guests. You can view all my images from the wedding here, and the link to David’s set here.

I got very nice emails from Karly and both Mum’s – see below

"Hi Neil
Huge thank you to both you & David for the fantastic photos to both took (formal & informal) and also for putting every one at ease. It will be really hard to choose, there is not one bad one.
Yes!!!! Neil bet you never thought 24 years after you took our wedding photos you would be taking our daughter Karly,s. That says something in its self.
Thanks again. Fiona & Graham King"

"Hi Neil,
I am Allys mum Janis from the Holiday Inn on Sat, the pictures are amazing, is it possible to have an album made up for myself? …..
Many thanks, Janis

"Hi Neil
Just catching up on all my emails now as back from our honeymoon.
The picture all look great, we are really pleased with them. We both had a fantastic day and couldn’t have wished for a better day.
Kind regards, Karly"

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
 

Julie and deBroy on 19th February 2011

Saturday was very wet, windy, and almost all Julie and deBroy’s photographs had to be taken inside at Norwood Hall. Fortunately this Victorian mansion has lots of character and is a good venue for photography, both inside and out. de Broy got photographed with his son, Damien, his Best Man, at the front door and at the bottom of the stairs. David was upstairs photographing Julie getting ready while I photographed all the guests, also at the bottom of the stairs, before Julie came down and got photographed with her flowergirls and Kenny (who was giving her away) before going through to the service.

After the service, Julie and deBroy received their guests in the new bar area in Norwood while I set up my lighting in the library. I was using a Quantum T5DR on a stand with an umbrella triggered by an on camera Quantum Trio which has the built in radio transmitter. Setting the camera exposure to use some of the warm available light, and throwing newspaper on the fire just before the exposure creates good warmth combined with the  "studio quality" lighting. more…