Sneaky Peek & working Purple...

Celebrating in style below are images from a birthday party I photographed at the weekend at the boutique hotel, The Bermondsey Square in London. Purple Grape provided the delicious food and did an amazing job, I understand plates came back licked clean which can never be a bad sign! 

 So here is a sneak preview and Happy Birthday Tim!

56% spam, 44% after party...

Who would have believed just 4 days out of the office & I am literally swimming in emails, admittedly at least 56% (rough estimation of course) are spam or newsletters or various info I am signed up to but the others must be answered.  Therefore anybody still waiting for a reply I apologise and promise I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can.  

Being busy is fab, I will never complain and its when I perform best.  Eating Snack a Jacks and Snickers in the car, reaching insane sugar levels with Lucozade energy tablets every time I manage to return to my camera bag and grabbing 5 hours sleep before up to do it again.  It fills me with a little dread before I have a mad run like this but I love it when I am there and the time flies by.  Clearly, hence the increasing back log I am now faced with.  When its quiet it suddenly becomes very difficult to focus on whats important and all those really vital business running things that I should be doing fade from memory & I find interesting industry articles to read, new blogs to code (another excellent procrastination tool, I am learning HTML) and of course editing.  This week, editing is the name of the game and the laptop is suffering as much as me with a corrupt hard drive and yet another full external drive already.

On the picture front, which I suppose is why you are really here; as promised below are some of the Bryce Aime After Party images.  Hope you enjoy.  To follow.....A test shoot and me playing with various effects on some events photography.

 

Bryce Aime @ LFW and making friends with the enemy...

Being ill sucks.  It does. Not only does the drone of Jeremy Kyle, Loose Woman and 60 minute makeover offer a torture only known by those sitting long enough to endure them but you also, as I have found out, miss out on some great opportunities....so far for me these have included the Venue and Event show in London, lunch with a lovely friend / client and a job offer.  This is where knowing other quality photographers that you would be proud to recommend are vital.  Knowing your business competition not only helps you in terms of your marketing and general business planning but it helps your business, I tend to get the feeling that some freelancers avoid their peers...I say get up close and personal!  Know them, love them and build alliances!

On a different note before the cold managed to produce a sea of tissues in my otherwise tidy bedroom, I had the pleasure of attending the After Party for Bryce Aime this London Fashion Week.....Pics to follow and for the moment, some of his lovely designs!

Extending the exclusive...

Besides the obvious cakes and sweet goodies, exclusive viewing galleries are an addition to my services I have really enjoyed offering recently.  They offer a fantastic way to showcase your event or project within a bespoke designed website, giving your guests, delegates or employee's am opportunity to remember their event in style.  Its a great way to spread the love and of course the PR.  

For those of you that don't want the world and its mother to know about your event, your not alone and its not a problem.  The galleries can be designed without any SEO or optimisation making them darn near impossible to find unless you have the web address.

This was a service I originally offered to Toyota Lexus when I covered their Hybrid Sport launch in August and have had the pleasure of extending the fun to Ernst & Young, Jalouse and Competitive Events.    

Want to see a site?  Want to see my experiences last night at the Jalouse club in Mayfair?  Check it out: HERE 

OK, who blinked....

Hands up who likes having their picture taken?  OK, no one, anyone?  Thats because very few people do, I am not even sure pro models like it they just aren't too bothered.  This of course always make corporate portraiture a little bit tricky and something I have had a little bout of recently.  (Not like about of holiday tummy, this is a purely positive thing.)

I was asked to provide some advise to my sitters and I always tell them to think about what they wear and exactly what they want to say about themselves and the company, the rest in all honesty is my job.  I need to make the person sitting in front of me usually sweating and laughing uncomfortably, less so.  I tried memorising jokes for this purpose which went horribly wrong & dancing like a fool is not an option while trying to take pictures so I now stick to two key rules.....always meet the sitter before the shoot.  I know its extra time out of my day but its important to me and I feel its important to my clients. It just takes the edge of and they can then ask you face to face anything they may be worrying about.  The second, have someone else in the room with you from the office.  This could be the receptionist, the person who made the booking or a fellow colleague but if the sitter is ok with it then so far, it seems to have worked.  Portraits are more relaxed, natural and ultimately honest which can only be positive things for the person or company representing themselves through the images.

I am certainly no expert at this so if you have any more tips or advise regarding corporate portraits or a niggle or treasure you want to share...please feel free!

Feeling mobile? How much time do you spend on yours...

Yes its almost midnight (23:56 to be exact) and I am awake working having just got in from an event in Bloomsbury with Hotel Russell and Genie.  Pictures are required for PR first thing so typically, my card reader is taking its time & stopping at Bognor Regis for a holiday before completing its upload.

On another note though I sat there on the train on the way home & started thinking about just how much I used my mobile phone, so were talking 85% of my life really.  Text, call, internet, photos, maps, whatever. if I can find an excuse to use it I will.  It got me thinking as to if I used it more to view the web than my actual computer which lead me to thinking my new website (coming soon!) really should be mobile optimised.  I-phones of course fail miserably as they cant read flash (I hope that decision maker was fired in the world of shiny silver Apples) but otherwise were all good & I have for once been relatively sensible and have a html only version of my site available.  Yay for old school.  

So the post was leading somewhere...oh yeah...this rather interesting article & some scary facts such as we spend almost 7 hours a day on our phones or using media content!