I recently photographed the children performing for Kala The Arts at Fort Hill School Winklebury, Basingstoke, Hampshire. They had 1 day to learn the Indian dance moves and put them together into a dance routine. Then in the evening they all performed for their friends, family and parents in the school hall. They were very good considering they are not used to seeing this kind of dancing. Below are a coupld of photographs I took of the older children performing:

photograph of children performing Indian dance at Fort Hill School Basingstoke Hampshire

photograph of children performing Indian Dance at Fort Hill School, Basingstoke, Hampshire

This week I have had the pleasure of photographing Indian dancers at a local school in Burghclere, Berkshire. The dancers have spent the day teaching different classes from sseveral schools of varied ages to dance in the style of Indian traditional dance, which they then performed on stage infront of parents and fellow pupils. Inbetween the schools dancing were displays of what can be achieved with much hard work and dedication by some exceptionally beautiful and brilliant dancers. Some very special guest dancers were brought over from India toteach and dance in public, below are a couple of photographs of them.

Rajyashri Praharaj

Ratikant Mahapatra

Ratikant Mahapatra and Rajyashri Praharaj

I went to my mum’s 75th birthday party today had a very nice meal at the Angmering Maner hotel in Angmering Sussex. Below are a couple of photos of the birthday lady who hates having her photo taken hence the pursed lips!:

photograph of my mother on her 75th birthday

profile photograph of mum on her 75th birthday

I have managed to secure some albums at pre VAT increase prices so have managed to keep many of my album prices the same this year. Due to printer price reductions and other efficiencies I have managed to reduce the price of several albums so please do look at the prices of my wedding albums to see for your self.

Had a brilliant day in London last week photographing people on the outdoor ice rink outside Sumerset House and generally touring around the sites of London in particular Covent Garden. Below are a few photographs I took on the day.

photograph of ice skaters at Sumerset House London

photograph of a side street on the way to Covent Garden

photograph street performer covent garden

photograph of a street performer inside covent garden

On 5th December Bracknell held it’s now annual santa run in aid of a hospice. As part of the entry fee you get a santa suit to wear and at the end a mug and a bar of chocolate and a couple of other goodies. It was amazing to see so many people dressed in red in one place. First they let the ‘Reindeers’ go these are the people that can run and think they will do it in under 30 mins. The they let the ’snow men’ go these should run it in between 30-50 mins and the ‘puddings’ are let loose, these will take over the hour and were followed by 2 men dressed up as Christmas puddings on bikes (I guess they were rounding up the stragglers. Below are a couple of photos from the event for more please go to my facebook photos album at 600 santas running.

photograph of some of the 600 santa claus' running in Bracknell Forest Dec 10

photograph of the 2 'puddings' at the 600 santa run

photograph of some of the santas at the end of the run

Had one of the busiest wedding fairs all season on Sunday at the Trunkwell Mansion House, Mortimer Nr Reading. The weather was excellent which seems to bring everyone out. Trunkwell Mansion House is a wonderful venue for weddings with a small area of well kept gardens and some wonderful period features within the original mansion house which make great backgrounds for wedding photography, e.g. real fire places, wood paneling. A wonderful venue for your wedding ceremony/civil ceremony and/or wedding breakfast. Below are a couple of images from the venue.

Garden feature at Trunkwell Mansion House, Mortimer, near Reading

Trunkwell Mansion House view from the garden

Trunkwell Mansion House civil ceremony room

Had a good wedding fair at the Village Hotel in Farnborough on 31.10.10. Really busy, busiest one of the year so far. Quite a nice modern hotel, though like most modern hotel not much in the way of places to get nice photographs. Here are a coupld of photographs of the outside the inside is very dark and has few windows to allow in natural light.

photograph of the outside of Village Hotel Farnborough

photograph of patio area outside the front of Village Hotel Farnborough

There was a brilliant networking event last week at Charwell House in Alton. The Mayor of Alton opened the event with a brief speech about business in Alton, this was followed by a very entertaining Bee Varga with large hoops (the guys were swarming around her stall after the starting speeches), poor Kathy had to follow that with a brief introductory speech about Charwell House, and finally a quick introduction to Alton’s online magazine for business and residents in Alton. There were about 25 stands with people displaying their services or goods, with free food supplied by the Indian Balti restaurant, free tea, coffee and dougnuts supplied by Catering 4 occasions and free cake supplied by a lady whose name I forget (sorry!). I was there to offer a special service of 3 photographs of website size taken with portable studio lighting for £25.00 plus I was taking photographs of the event. An excellent evening and below are a couple of photos from that night.

photograph of the Mayor during the opening speech with some of the attendees in the background

photograph of hoopla entertainment

photograph of hoopla entertainment

photograph of Kathy welcoming speech and a few of the attendees in the background

photograph of one of the trade stands

I am pleased to say that I won the digital Image of the year competition at Basingstoke Camera club last night (16th September 2010) with theimage shown below. DI of the year is always the first competition of the new club year and to enter you must have been a member of the club in the previous year and entered the images in at least one competition in the previous year. Up to 2 images can be enteredin the competition of the year and the judge chooses 1st,2nd and 3rd and a few highly commended images. There are usually 2 photographic competitions one for the digial images and one for prints. I only enetered the DI competition as I did not enter any print competitions last year. And my photograph called spray won 1st prize.

photograph of a horse cantering through water creating a lot of spray.

Nothing in the photograph is sharp (deliberatly) in order to give a sense of movement and show the amount of spray created. Not everyones taste but the judge last night obviously liked it! Yippee!!!