Well hello there, welcome to my website.
It’s part photography portfolio, part info about the photography training & books that i’ve written and part ramblings about photography related stuff in the blog……..As well as the odd random thing not connected with any of that!
So I’m a Brighton based photographer who focuses (get the pun?) on people and portraiture. I specialise in unique and quirky portraits, company profile images, corporate head shots, team portraits etc. I also do corporate work and event / PR photography. I’ll travel all over the world for the right client and brief, but especially like working in Brighton, Sussex and London.
I’ve got a very creative background and a degree in Fine Art, i’m obsessed about movies and pop culture and often include the odd subtle reference to both in my images. I’ve written books on photography, which have been published all around the world and I regularly contribute to professional photography magazines.
I shoot weddings in my own unique way under the name Viva Wedding Photography. Click here to have a look at the Viva Wedding Photography website.
I’m also well known for teaching photography training workshops and specialise in On and Off Camera lighting techniques as well as tailored 1-2-1 training sessions in anything from Basic DSLR introduction to photography, to Toy & Film Cameras, including Wedding Photography as well as Studio Lighting.
If you’d like to get in contact to find out more or to ask me a question, please use this link.
Find me on Google+
Latest from the blog:
I had a hard drive fail on me once. It was a total nightmare. I lost two years of digital photos and all of my music that i’d digitised.
NEVER AGAIN!
Thankfully this happened to me before I was a professional photographer and it was just my own images. Not a wedding clients. If you charge people for your photography, you need to be professional and have a proper bomb proof backup strategy.
There is a famous saying that ‘data doesn’t exist unless it’s in three different places and two different locations’. Read that again. It’s very important to get that into your head.
So sometime last year I took a good hard look at my back up strategy and decided that I wanted to improve it and future proof my workflow. I asked a load of people, I read articles, I did a lot of homework on this subject. Now following on from a conversation on Facebook, i’m gonna share with you how I back up. It may be overkill, but I’m pretty certain that i’m covered should something go wrong.
So lets start at the beginning:
Drobo
To put this simply without too much technical jargon, this is an external hard drive with a difference. Its the mother of all external hard drives. It’s basically a big black box, which is the housing, that can hold a number of hard drives.
The data in a Drobo is stored across all the hard drives in the housing (in a RAID system). So my Drobo houses five of them. If one hard drive in there fails, the drobo will move the data across the remaining four. This allows me to replace the failed one and when the new hard drive is placed in there, the data gets written back across all five again. This is a great backup strategy as the data is safer than if it were in a standalone hard drive which if that fails, its gone.
The other good thing is that as I need more storage space, I can swap out the hard drives in there for bigger ones. I think I have five X 2TB drives in there at the moment. But in a few years I may need to change them for 4TB drives, and I can easily do this.
The only downside of a Drobo is the expense, as you need to pay for the Drobo itself and also the hard drives separately. You are also limited to using Drobos in the future as I believe that it uses it’s own code thingy (i’m not that geeky) that isn’t compatible with other types of storage drives. But I didn’t mind these two downsides, as 1. I earn a living through photography and need to be covered and 2. I liked the Drobo system and it’s used by a lot of photographers, so I hope it’s gonna be the market leader for a long time.
http://www.drobo.co.uk/
External Hard drives
I also have separate external hard drives, which house back ups of the finished images, my documents etc.
The main two that I use, i’ve called HD3 & HD4 (when these get full, i’ll get two more and call them HD 5 & HD6). They both have duplicate backups on there of all my important information.
These are failsafes as my info is in three places in my office.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/external_harddrives
Time Machine
This is my Mac’s backup utility and is included with my Mac’s OS. Time Machine makes incremental backups of files that can be restored at a later date. It allows me to restore the whole system or specific files. If i’m honest I don’t totally understand Time Machine, but I know that it copies my Mac’s Hard Drive and if I need something that I’ve been working on there I can go back to where I store my Time Machine backups and retrieve something. I use my HD3 to store the Time Machine backups and this backs up every so often and writes over old backups, so it just does it in the background without me having to worry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(Mac_OS)
BackBlaze
So now we go into the off-site / online storage. What happens if (please let this never happen) my house burns down and the Drobo and other external hard drives are lost in the fire?
I need some kind of off-site / online storage solution and after asking around quite a few professional photographers, I settled on BackBlaze.
“Backblaze is an online backup tool that allows Windows and Mac OS X users to backup their data to an offsite data center. The service is designed for end-users, providing unlimited storage space and supporting unlimited file sizes. It allows the user to backup data continuously, manually, when the computer is idle, or on an hourly schedule.”
How good is that. A total off-site / online storage solution and it only costs around $5 a month. This works in the background as well and I don’t really notice it.
There was only one time in the last six months that i’ve needed to retrieve a file and I ended up going to BackBlaze and it was easy to get it back. This service just gives me peace of mind.
http://www.backblaze.com
My Online Client Gallery
For my wedding clients I use an online gallery service called Zenfolio. Others are available, but this is who I use. I upload all the high res images to the gallery, for clients to view and print should they need to.
This also gives me a belt and braces option, as I can always download the images from there myself and I take comfort knowing that my final files are stored in two places off-site / online.
http://vivaweddingphotography.zenfolio.com
My Contracts
To cover myself yet again. In my contacts it states that, it is the clients responsibility for ensuring that the high-resolution digital files are safely stored upon delivery and that I’m under no obligation to store them and that I recommend that the client stores them in at least two different places.
That may be a bit harsh, but I’m covered for all eventualities and I will always try to keep copies of clients files, but you never know what may happen.
—–
So thats about it in regards to different storage solutions. It may seem like a lot of hassle and work, but as a professional photographer it’s just part of the job. I think this is what clients are paying me for and it’s what sets me apart from the weekender / hobbyist photographer who charges next to nothing for their work. Making sure your files are safe, is all part of the job.
Workflow
I suppose that I should talk though workflow really, so that you get how all this goes together.
Ok so I’ve done my shoot. My camera has two card slots, one for the Compact Flash card and one for a Secure Digital card. I had a couple of cards fail on me once after shooting a wedding. I’ll probably write a blog post about that and what to do when that happens (it will happen to you) at some point.
I use the Compact Flash card to write the RAW files in camera and the Secure Digital card to write high quality back up JPEG files. I love that I’m already backing up in camera as I shoot.
So when I upload the RAW files from the cards to Lightroom, they go straight to a folder on my Drobo and I check the box to make a second copy of the RAW’s to my external hard drive HD4 (when I have the finished images, i’ll delete the second copy of the RAWs on HD4 when I remember). This way the RAW files are in two places in my office and still on the Compact Flash cards. Sometimes I won’t erase the cards until i’ve worked on the final images. Sometimes I have a shoot the next day and I have to use the cards, but at least I know that I have two copies of the RAW files, at this point.
Once I’ve finished editing and exported the final JPEGs to the final folder on my Drobo. I’ll make a copy of them to HD3 & HD4. BackBlaze is also working its magic in the background and in the case of wedding photography I’ll upload the images to my Online gallery. As well as burning a disc for the client.
So the final images are stored in three places in my office. One of them on the Drobo that will write the data across different hard drives should one fail. They are also stored in two different off site / online places as well. So that’s five different places and two different locations.
Can you say that your data is that safe?
Find me on Google+
So as you know I LOVE portraits.
Well one of my favorite photographers is a chap called Platon.
I’ve spent many an hour just looking at his work. In books, on his website, individual images, his whole portfolio. They guys a magician. Really.
I came across this video of him the other day, talking about some of the images that he’s taken that involve power. It’s around 30 minutes long, but I really really really recommend that you make the time to watch a master talk about his work. You won’t be disappointed.
Enjoy.
Find me on Google+
This is something that I posted a long time ago on Flickr, but every time I have a Full English breakfast I always think about it. So seeing as i’ve had a couple of these recently I thought I’d share my Full English rules with you:
1. DRINKS – I like a glass of OJ or a hot chocolate before a Full English (while i’m waiting) and a cup of tea or coffee after to wash it down (it only gets cold during); as being a man i can only eat or drink, never two things at the same time. A glass of iced water is also a must.
2. BREAD – three main assortments (fried, toast and normal),
Fried is great, although only as a treat.
Toast is best, this has to be warm and is to be eaten with the breakfast (can be dipped) although if there is no fried bread, toast must be used in conjunction with egg instead (see 3) see its multipurpose thats why its the best.
Normal bread, only good before and after breakfast. Before as a warm up to breakfast, while you wait; and after to mop up the remaining jucies. (see 4, 3 and 5)
3. EGGS – poached or fried (i’m opting for poached now days as it means a runnier yoke), and the yoke MUST be runny, and they have to be on some bread type thing (see 2).
4. TOMATOES – I actually prefer the tinned plum variety, as they hold a lot of liquid and mix very well with the bread type thing (see 2) and the runny egg (see 3) and the beans (see 5).
5. BEANS – Heinz
6. BACON – must be more than one slice, not too crispy that you can’t get it on your fork, and preferably without any fat, or little fat. never stringy fat, yuck.
7. SAUSAGES – as best as you can get, minimum length 8cm. I like it when the skin is a little crispy and the inside is all nice and has a good texture of meat. Not too herby either or too experimental.
8. MUSHROOMS – preferably fresh and not too watery, i’m not a big fan of the tinned type.
9. BLACK PUDDING – now this is a real treat, and should only be had once or twice a year, as having it too often puts you off it.
10. READING MATERIAL – this should reflect the surroundings. So if it is a proper greasy spoon its the Sun, the Star at a push the Mirror. If its a posh place, the Guardian, the Observer or the Sunday times. The daily Mail should never be read no matter where you are.
11. NEVER NEVERS, AND NEVER SAY NEVERS – a big no to chips and roast potatoes Hash browns are OK as is a bit of bubble and squeak. An even bigger no to a burger (i’ve seen it done). No No No to sauce’s (ketchup, brown sauce, and mayo – you know who you are) there should be enough sauce stuff with the beans (see 5) the egg (see 3) and the tomatoes (see 4). A bit of greenery is OK (depending on the establishment) although this should never be eaten. A beer is only good while on holiday or at an airport.
12. YOU CAN’T GET BETTER THAN – a home cooked fry up. No contest.
13. EATING – believe it or not there are high status and low status food items in a Full English. These must be combined to make the perfect combination on the fork and also have to be eaten in the right order. Stick with me here. Sausage = high status. and the last bit of a sausage must alway be saved until last to mop up sauce stuff and has the highest status. The egg yoke is the joint highest status, and should be started on first, so that it bursts and covers the bread type thing appropriately. All other items can be eaten in any order so long as the egg yoke is burst first and the last end of the sausage is eaten last.
Right that is order dealt with. Now onto combinations. as mentioned sausage, bacon and egg yoke = high status. tin toms, beans, bread type thing, egg white and mushrooms = low status. However tin toms, mushrooms, bread type thing and a bit of egg white combined on the fork = high status. get me? Low status food items can be combined (in any order) to make a high status food items. The holy grail of combinations is a high status food item with two or more low status items. for example, bacon (high status) combined with mushroom and beans (low status ) = holy grail. I hope that makes sense and you don’t think worse of me for being that strange. But once you gain this knowledge life with never be the same.
As a note this high and low status plus the holy grail theory can also be applied to a roast dinner, to great effect.
——
So there you have it. Next time you eat a Full English, contemplate these rules and you’ll go far.
Find me on Google+