Summer is on it's way

Despite the cool showery weather we're having at the moment the weathermen have been studying their pine cones and are promising us a warm dry summer. Here's hoping! Now is the time to be thinking about a family lifestyle photoshoot over the school holidays. This could be at home, in the park or woods, on a beach or at your holiday home. Anywhere special that you and your children like to go to in fact.

The children will love it!

Paris in the Spring

Last week Janet and I spent a few days in Paris with friends. We took the opportunity to be inspired in some of the major art galleries, notably the Louvre, L'Orangerie and my favourite (for the huge collection of Impressionist paintings), the Musee D'Orsay. Needless to say we had our cameras with us! Avoiding the obvious touristy views, these are some of my favourite shots from the week. Shopping and Paris go hand in hand. This fashion store window made an interesting backdrop, and a busy passer by on her mobile phone completed the scene.... People taking photographs of each other make great subject for candid photography...... here we're in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. In the Louvre. The tourist paparazzi ?

And who was the celebrity they were desperate to capture? Yes, that famous lady, the Mona Lisa. I'm fascinated to know what all these people are going to do with their own snap of Leonardo da Vinci's painting...hang a print of it on the wall? Or is it simply a case of proving to family back home that they've seen the real thing? Another tourist 'must-do' ticked off the list. Quite amusing really...I wonder whether Leonardo could have ever imagined these scenes when he set out to paint his iconic portrait way back in 1504....

Scenes reminiscent of Lowry paintings, shot through the upstairs windows of the Louvre. I avoided reflections from the windows by pressing my lens close up to the glass.....

Back outside, and a heavy shower on it's way helped to create this moody lighting in the Jardin des Tuileries and on the roof of L'Orangerie in the background.....

The view from the Arc de Triomphe, looking back towards La Defense and the commercial district on another showery evening.

Looking upwards in the spiral staircase that takes you to the top of the Arc. It reminds me of a snail shell.

Nervous drivers should look away now.......this isn't a picture of a car park, but the circular road that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe. Traffic comes in from all directions and each vehicle has to battle across the roundabout to exit by one of the twelve avenues that converge on this point. An amazing sight for the spectator, and every motor insurance company's worst nightmare!

And finally.......I couldn't resist this candid shot of a headless man reading one of the descriptive labels in the Louvre........

A Successful Night

Janet and I had a great night at the North West Professional Photography Awards dinner last night. As well as catching up with lots of our photography friends I was thrillled to pick up awards in three different catogories, including a Gold......

No apologies for posting this image of Keirin racing at the Manchester Velodrome again - it gained me the Gold Award and the title North West Professional Press and Events Photographer of the Year (try saying that after a celebratory glass of champagne!) :

Pipped at the post - the Silver Award in the Environmental Portrait Category for this shot entitled 'Lost In Thought'. I captured this moment during a family photoshoot on a blustery Formby beach : And finally, a merit award in the Under 5s Portrait category :

Highlight of the evening was a moving presentation by our good friend David Williams from Melbourne, Down Under, on the importance of family photographs and why we often don't appreciate the significance of them until many years later. More on this subject and my own thoughts at a later date.

Over and Underground in the Dales

I regularly go walking with a group of friends, often in one of the spectacularly beautiful National Parks that we have within a couple of hours drive from our homes in Greater Manchester. As well as fresh air and exercise it gives me the opportunity to shoot a few landscapes and detail pictures just for fun.

April's walk was around (and up) Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales. No sooner had we set off from Clapham village when this disused tunnel presented the first 'Close Encounters' photo-opportunity of the day. There is no posing and my friends didn't even know I was taking the shot - I had to quickly get my camera ready before they disappeared into the distance.

It was windy today! These dry grasses caught in a fence reminded of photographs I've seen of Tibetan Prayer Flags (mostly in Himalayan mountaineering books by Chris Bonington, Doug Scott and Co.). I believe it can be a bit breezy in the Himalayas too!. Although the day was bright and dry, the effect of shooting into the Spring sun (trying it's best to peep through the clouds) created some brooding black and white Yorkshire Dales landscapes.

On the slopes of Ingleborough, close to Alum Pot, we came across the entrance to Long Churn Caves...and ventured in. We hadn't expected this cave system to be so accessible, but even though it was pitch black and had a stream running through it (half a metre deep in places), we manged to navigate quite a way down the caves with just one small torch between us.

It's worth mentioning that people have died in these caves in wet weather as recently as 2007 -these tunnels are prone to flash floods. The weather today, and for the previous few days, had been bone dry and with no prospect of rain for the rest of the day we were perfectly safe. We wouldn't have gone down if it had been raining and I would recommend extreme caution when exploring any of the pots and caves in the Dales.

From a photographic point of view I'd been expecting an overground walk today, not an underground one, so I was totally unprepared for photgraphing such a difficult subject. Once inside the caves it was totally dark so I had to manually set the focus by the light of a pencil torch and had no option but to use the pop-up flash on my Nikon D200. The results are a good record of the experience but I doubt I'll be entering them for any awards!

This area of the Yorkshire Dales is famous for it's limestone pavement scenery. I spotted this formation that looked almost as though it could have been carved out by ancient civilisations in times past.

The general views around Ingleborough in the afternoon were very hazy, but later in the day as we descended back towards Clapham we were treated to beautiful evening light catching the tops of these limestone cliffs.

And finally.....a wide angle lens isn't the most flattering for portraits but this little pony was very inquisitive and I couldn't resist capturing this whimsical viewpoint.

Baby Folios Relaunch

This week we're pleased to announce the relaunch of our amazingly popular baby photography folio scheme. In a series of photoshoots over your baby's first year we capture the changes as baby grows and develops, presenting you with a complimentary triple folio at the end of the year. All for a one-off registration fee of just £25.00 (which makes it makes a brilliant gift to give to new parents......). More details are available on the Master Photographers Association Cherubs website at http://www.cherubs.uk.com/

It's a few years now since we ran the Cherubs scheme in the studio. After winning the UK Millenium Baby Photographer of the Year Award we were overwhelmed with demand and I had to call a halt for a while to give my back and knees time to recover! Things have moved on since then and I now shoot a great deal of family and children's photography outdoors and on location, including recently (and here's a scary thought) teenagers that I photographed in the studio when they were tiny babies. Photographing babies is great fun though (well, most of the time), so I'm looking forward to the challenge once again. I might need to investigate some knee pads....

More pictures from Spain

Olive trees everywhere...typical landscape scenery from Andalucia.... Our accommodation for the second part of out trip was a country bed and breakfast , Casa de Sueno, miles from anywhere. We awoke every morning to the sound of hoopoes 'hooping' on the cables outside the apartment window...

The nearest town was Priego de Cordoba in the heart of olive country. I particularly liked these two evening shots on the Balcon de Aldarve...

The amazing Moorish architecture of the Mezquita in Cordoba. Highly recommended...

More typical Andalucian scenery, this time from the 'Spanish Lake District' just outside Malaga...

The Alhambra

First of all I'd like to wish everyone a peaceful and happy Easter holiday.

Just before Easter Janet and I spent a few days in Southern Spain - the Easter break has given me the chance to catch up with the blog and to post some of my favourite images from the trip.

Our first couple of days were spent in Granada. The Spring weather was very pleasant and we found a great Tapas bar just down the hill from the Alhambra for when the temperatures dipped in the evening.

The first shot though is of the classic daytime view of the Alhambra from the Albacin, with the snowy slopes of the Sierra Nevada just visible in the background. Our hotel (Hotel America) was situated in the grounds of the Alhambra, so we spent the early part of each evening wandering the grounds. Palacio del Portal, Alhambra...

An evening view from the Alhambra across to the Albacin..... The archways of the Palacio Carlos V (I usually try to include people in photographs for interest and scale)....

I love to photograph tourists, especially when they are busy taking photographs.......... And finally....tourism can be very tiring - I couldn't resist photographing this sleeping couple in the Casa Reales. I can't blame them....the stonework radiates so much heat from the daytime sun that anyone would fall asleep on that bench.