My Blog bio picture
  • Welcome to my Blog!

    A very warm welcome to my new blog.  I am a retired, professional, photographer living in the Algarve, Portugal with my wife Chris.  I was born in the UK and prior to moving to Portugal, my wife and I ran a very successful portrait and wedding studio in Sunninghill, Berkshire.  

    Portugal is a wonderful country to photograph. With it's warm climate and sunny days, I am now finding time to capture it's beautiful landscape as well as it's people.

    2011 looks like becoming another very active year.  I have a number of projects I hope to undertake as well as running my photographic workshops.  

    The past year has seen a real growth with the Algarve Photographers Group. The group comprises members, from a number of countries, who all have an interest in photography. We meet every other Thursday at the Amigos do Museu in S. Bras De Alportal.  If anyone is interested in joining us, we would welcome your visit. Members recently held our very first exhibition of photographs and this has been very well received. Exhibitions are due to take place, on a regular basis, throughout the year.

    For those of you who are interested, I shoot with a Canon EOS 1DS MK2 and a recently acquired Canon EOS 5D MK2 .  I have a comprehensive selection of Canon lenses, flash guns and other accessories.  I edit my images on my 24" iMac which I love.  Currently, I am using Photoshop CS4 with quite a nice selection of plugins to assist me with enhancing my images.

    It is my intention to add to this blog on a regular basis as time permits and, as it is my very first blog and I am new to all this, I hope to improve on it's appearance in time.

    Please do comment on anything you wish and a very big thank you for taking time to stop by.

Strawberries and Cream

Strawberries and Cream

With a little bit of relaxing time over the Christmas period, I decided to have a go at “Splash Photography.”  However, I wanted to try something a bit different from water droplet shots. So, with the help of my friend Paulo Viegas, we set about having some fun with these three strawberries and yoghurt.

We used three off camera flash guns with the power settings set quite low so as to provide us with a very short flash duration of about 1/10,000th of a second.  The secret is to fire the flash, via a radio trigger, at just the right time.  Paulo threw the yoghurt and I fired the flash guns.  It took about 50 attempts to get this one image.

Sunset in Blue

Sometimes an image just seems to have all the elements required for something a little special.  It is not often that one of my images brings that extra special feeling of satisfaction to me.  With this image, I have tried to create what I wanted to show.  That is a “magical” almost “mystical” scene from my original image.  I see nothing wrong with manipulating or, as I like to put it, editing an image to create the effect you are looking for.  My good friend and wonderful photographer, Alain Briot, spends many hours, in fact weeks sometimes, going over an image to produce his amazing photographs.  He taught me not to be put off by what other people think of your images or how you produced them but to create images that you are happy and proud of.  This is one of them.  I hope you enjoy too and, please, do leave a comment.

Upper Antelope Canyon

In my last blog you will see one of my images from Lower Antelope Canyon.  Upper Antelope Canyon is approximately a quarter of a mile away and is another “slot” canyon.  However, this canyon was entered after a four wheeled drive through the sandy river bed to the small entrance slot.  It was very dusty inside the canyon with minute particles of sand always giving me concern when taking off my lens cap or changing a lens.

Once again the reflected light entering the canyon produced some wonderful tones of color throughout the canyon.  I am not certain whether these fallen branches were by nature or placed there for us photographers!

Fallen Branches

Fallen Branches

The Day I met George Washington & Abraham Lincoln

It is not often you get the chance to meet two great American presidents in one day.  As you can see, I was in “canyon country” and heading down to Monument Valley.  I stopped to take what I thought were some interesting shots when three very nice Irish ladies drove up and got out of their car.  As often happens, I had all my gear set up on my triopd and must have looked as though I was “doing the business”. They asked me to take some shots of them with their cameras and we were all chatting about our trips and things in general when up drove a large truck and out got a genuine Navajao Indian with a great grin over his face.  He introduced himself and told us that his grandparents owned all the land both sides of the road.

“Have you seen George Washington and Abraham Lincoln?” he asked.  We all said, “No”.  ”Turn around then” he said.  And there was the image we had all missed.

I learnt a very valuable thing that day – look behind you there may be an amazing shot to be had.

Exhibition in Fuzeta

I am thrilled to have been invited to exhibit at a small gallery in Fuzeta (near Olhao).  It opens tomorrow, 29th June 2011 at 8pm, for a couple of months.  The Gallery Ladora is in Rua Tenente 14 and there are five photographers with some very lovely images.  Do try to make it if you can soon and give Doris, the owner, your support.  Thanks