What a beautiful setting for a wedding!  This Victorian era building still has many original features like high ceilings with plaster mouldings, chandaliers hanging from rosettes in the ceiling, huge fire places and wood paneling. The extensive grounds have tennis courts and football pitches and 72 acres to roam in. A wedding here is a very special event.

front view of Sherfield School a beautiful venue for a wedding photographer in Basingstoke

Had a good day at Frencham Ponds Hotel on 24th Jan 2010, what a beautiful hotel for weddings and civil ceremonies. A huge lake out the front with a small stream and a bridge to cross over for feeding the water birds. There is also a nice area round the back for photographs, a nice rural venue for a wedding or civil ceremony.

photograph of Frencham Ponds Hotel front view

photograph of a great wedding venue

photograph of rear of venue for wedding photographs

As some of you may have heard the album manufacturer Spicer Hallfield has liqudated. Most of my albums were supplied by them so I have had to look for a new supplier. I am very pleased to announce that I have chosen the Italian handmade albums supplied by Mario Acerboni. Beautiful albums that come in 4 sizes and 4 colours. All these albums have a one inch border around the pages and take real photographs as either montage prints or with overlays. Sizes are (approximate inches) 10×10, 8×8,  A4  and 7×5 colours are iced diamond (silver grey), perl (cream), black and burgundy, the iced diamond colour is only available in the larger sizes. I shall also continue with the madison albums which do not have a border and come in black or white covers with a window on the front for a small photograph and 3 sizes, 12×12, 10×10 and 8×8 inches (approx). For the top end packages I shall be using the Australian Seldex albums, these have printed perspex covers or brushed aluminuim covers and are large albums (approx 11×14 inches ) with real photographs with overlays on them. Coming soon I shall put photographs of each album on my website so that you know what all the terms mean and what the albums look like.

What a super unusual venue! Milestones Museum in Basingstoke is open for wedding receptions and events. You can wander amung the exhibits to your hearts content. They even open the 1940’s pub so that you have access to beer and spirits during the evening festivities, unfortunately the prices aren’t 1940’s! There are some great places to have photographs taken, like this one outside the green grocers.

Panning is a technique used to give the idea of movment and to capture a fast moving object. It works best when the object to be photographed moves across in front of you from left to right or right to left. You focus on the object and follow it movement and at the appropriate point press the shutter to capture the object as sharp as you can whilst at the same time keeping the background blurred to give the idea of movement. It is very important that you follow the motion even after pressing the shutter button as with all sports the follow through is important. Getting the speed right is the hard part particularly with fast moving objects like sports cars. (also if you have Image Stabalisation on the lend with 2 types remember to turn off the horizontal stabilisation).

Below is a picture where the speed was just right the carriage driver is just sharp and the background is completely blurred.

correct panning

Below is a photograph with the speed too fast so nothing is sharp.

photograph too blurred

Below is a photograph where the panning motion was too slow (probably due to too fast a shutter speed) so the image is too sharp.

The above photographs were all taken at Farliegh House near Basingstoke during the carriage driving trials, the driver is Karen Bassett who was warming up before the cones part of the competition.

Dummer church is a lovely ancient church in the centre of Dummer village, it is small but perfectly formed, with a balcony from which to get a birds eye view of the proceedings.

photograph taken inside Dummer Church from the balcony

When taking portraits make sure that the person you are photographing has their head tilted very slightly to one side so that the eyes are not level. This helps to make them look more friendly and less austere. So below:

corporate portrait showing eye not level.

I have have made several trips to London and each time I take photographs they always look different. The last trip I got there about 20 minutes after sun rise and so had some amazing light (with clear blue skies). I managed to see the London Eye with the most beautiful soft organge light on it and took this photograph.

photograph of the London Eye 1st thing in morning

Something that people don’t often notice when they take photographs is how objects pick up the colours of things close to them. In the example below the 1st photograph is of a jug which is lit from the right hand side so the left side is in shadow with nothing close to it. The shadow is grey.

photograph of a jug with lights to one side showing grey shadows

The next photographs are of the same jug with same lighting except that a piece of card has been placed to the left of the jug. This results in the jug picking up the reflected light fromthe card and colouring the jug with the colour of the card.

photograph of jug with blue card showing red shadows

photograph of jug with blue card showing blue shadows

There is a little known phenomena about red and blue colours that effect the way we see things. Things that are close to us generally have stronger colours than things that are further away, in fact in landscapes things in the far distance often look very blue. So when we see two things together and one is coloured red and the other blue we tend to think that the blue item it further away than the red item. So you can give a feeling of distance or depth by putting red things closer to you and blue things further away. Take a look at the next 2 photographs. In the 1st one the 2 people are side by side, but it looks like the girl in red is closer. In the 2nd photograph the girl is actually about 3 paces behind but looks like she is level with the man. The further you are away from the photographs the more pronounced is the effect.

photograph of 2 people girl in red behind the man in blue

photograph of 2 people standing side by side