Upon a visit to London I went to Covent Garden where the street entertainers are varied and interesting. This is a photograph of one of them, he had some very witty lines and made several people jump by barking at them.
photograph of a street entertainer in Covent Garden
At the carnival in Venice the 2 ‘ladies’ below appeared on at least 2 occasions dressed in the most beautiful ball gowns. Each time I saw them they were wearing different dresses. They were both loving the attention and loved being photographed.
photograph of man in drag at Venice carnival
photograph of man in drag at Venice carnival
Tylney Hall is always one of my favourite venues for photographing weddings, there are so many different areas that can give different backdrops and surroundings are beautiful. Not only that the staff are very attentive and the decorations are in keeping with the style of the property. At night it is lit and the water on the fountain at the front glows.
photograph of Tylney Hall front at night
I exhibited at a wedding fair at Donnington Valley Hotel Near Newbury yesterday and for a modern hotel it is very picturesque. The front is not very interesting but round the back are a couple of ponds with a bridge over it, a fountain and it backs onto the golf course so there are lots of shrubs and tress for shade in the event of bright sunshine and the inside is fairly light in the event of rain. Whilst there they kept coming round with canapes which were very nice, so if they are anything to go by the food will be good as well. Below is a shot of the pond area at the rear, it was not a particularly bright day so it is not the best shot in the world but it gives you an idea of the place.
photograph of the rear pond area at Donnington Valley Hotel
I was so impressed with the inside of Windsor Guild Hall that I thought I would put another photograph of it on my website for viewing. It is quite a stunning venue and the registrar was fantstic really made it fun and interesting.
photograph of Windsor Guild Hall inside the main ceremony room
A beautiful venue in a wonderful setting is the Tithe Barn and Ufton Court at Ufton Nervert between Reading and Tadley in Berkshire. The venue is not a hotel, it is in fact a centre for education for under previlidged children but at other times it turns into a aplace where civil ceremonies and weddings can be performed along with the reception into the evening in a most beautiful setting. They can take up to 140 people sat down in the tithe barn and 75 in the ceremony room. A beautiful historic building with many of the originak features still in place.
photograph of Ufton Court frontage
Another great Venue for weddings is Silchester House, they only do one wedding per day and you get the whole house for the day, There are about 14 bedrooms for you and your guests with a 4 poster in the main bedroom. The grounds out the back are large and shaded for those sunny days and there are lots of nice spots inside the house for beautiful wedding photographs. Below are photographs of the front and back of the house.
photograph of Silchester House front aspect
photograph of Silchester House rear aspect
One of the major problems with taking photographs inside is that you usually need a flash to illuminate the subject and if that subject is a person wearing glasses and you use an on board (the camera) flash then you often end up with reflections of the flash in the glasses which can obliterate the eyes of the subject. There are a couple of things you can do to reduce the affect:
1/ get the person to lift the arms of their glasses so that the lens are no longer parrallel to the camera, so reflected light goes in another direction rather than directly back to the camera.
2/ take the picture from a slightly different angle so that you are not firing the flash directly at the lens.
3/ tweak it in photoshop afterwards (last resort)
Number 3 really is the last resort but if you are careful and have a little bit of eye that you can clone from you can clone out the flash and then smooth it over with the healing brush. The 2 pictures below show the sort of nasty reflection you can get and how some of it can be removed in photoshop afterwards.
photograph of 2 people with flash reflections in their glasses
Then after a little work in photoshop they look like this:
photograph of people with glare on glasses reduced.
One of the main rules of photography (as always rules are meant to be broken) is that things (and people) should come in odd numbers. 1,3,5 etc. This is particularly true of objects and items but does apply to people as well. Groups of odd numbers of people always look better than even numbers, the only possible exception here is 2 people as they are so close to each other they become 1 item. Take a look at the following images and see what you think about the odd number rule.
2 people in a photograph breaks the rule of odd numbers but works here because they become 1
3 people here looks better than the next image where there are 4 people
4 people here not as good as with an odd number