A trip to Scotland

As I mentioned in my last post I was heading up to Scotland and what a weekend to choose, glorious sunshine! While the trip was largely about seeing friends and family I did manage to squeeze in a photo shoot with two very cute Border Terriers!

It was a great shoot with a combination of studio and location and while the young pup was a bit boisterous some great images were captured! You can see a couple more of the images on my Facebook page as well as taking advantage of a great special offer (details on the page if you're not aware of it already).

Along with this I made it to a horse event to watch my younger brother compete, was a really good fun day out.

The glorious weather also gave me a chance to relax in the sun and recharge after a busy time, but with the world in bloom it was hard to put the camera down!

The rest of the week is going to be busy with some web work to do and a shoot with a pair of Basset Hounds.

A weekend in Herefordshire

My self and Katy (my wife, occasional assistant and photographic guinea pig) decided to have a weekend away in lovely rural Herefordshire for her birthday. On the Friday we had a great night out and enjoyed a superb part open mic night organised by the remarkable guitarist and musician Tom Richardson. The second half of the night was a 45 minute set by Sarah Jones, if you haven't heard Sarah play I would highly recommend doing so, she'll blow your mind, in fact, here's a short video done during the night.

On the Saturday I managed to squeeze in some portrait and pet photography which was a lot of fun!

I'm no landscape photographer, although I have been known to dip in to it from time to time for personal enjoyment, but with landscapes as stunning as Herefordshire it would have been wrong to come away without a few shots.

Next weekend is another trip away, this time to sunny Scotland! But I'm going to be photographing a pair of Border Terriers while I'm up, so stay tuned for images, here, on Facebook and at DeviantDog. There are also some offers up on Facebook, get them while they're still on!

It's summer!

Yes summer is finally here and I find my self sitting in side looking at code! So what better way to get out and about than offer an exclusive offer to those living in Leicestershire and who follow me on Facebook, a better than half price offer!

For £30 you will get a 1-2 hour photo session a complimentary A4 sized print and your images at a web friendly size on DVD. All you need to do to take advantage of this is Like my Facebook page and email me at david@deviantdog.co.uk with the subject 'Facebook offer'. I don't know how long the offer will run, maybe till the next time it rains! But it won't last long so hurry up!

A new Blog post! Hazzah!

So, I've been neglecting my blog, big surprise! Unfortunately this tends to happen when I start one and promises to keep it going, life and work have a habit of getting in the way so no promises to keep it going, but I will do my best!

Recently I've been working away on a few web projects which I'll bring you some news on in the next month or so once they're done along with completing my degree (yay!) and now I can push on with the business. I also finally got round to sorting out both Facebook and Twitter and even found time to make a profile on People Per Hour.

Facebook and Twitter are going to be great for keeping people quickly up to date with what's going on with the business and offering special offers to those following. People Per Hour on the other hand will also bring some exciting limited time offers for the more commercial e-commerce and fashion aspects of my work. I'm still looking for a good place to sell my artistic prints so any suggestions would be welcome.

The next update here won't be another year... Honest!

Album art and portraits

A couple of months ago I started working on album art for an upcoming folk album for Sarah Jones. The album has officially gone on pre order for a 1st of September release and is available from Sarah's Topspin store.

The album has a strong personal, social and political message and as such we had to come up with a concept that would represent this while having an instant impact. So the base of the picture was made black and white with little elements made colour which draws the eye into each of the elements.

Each of these colour parts represent something of Sarah and the album with the pin-board representing more of a journey and thought process than being representative of a real pin-board. A preview of a couple of tracks from the album can be found on Sarah's you tube channel and is well worth viewing as the songs are simply superb.

Along with finalising this project I've also been working on a couple of web sites and a portraiture project about the people of a small Herefordshire village. Although I'm not ready to display any of these photographs yet I can reveal that it will be the subject of my first exhibition which I will be putting on in the village either in November or at the start of Spring next year so keep an eye out for more information on this in the future.

Stock Photography

Well it's been an interesting week, I've just completed my first product photography commission for a medical supply company. I had bought a new light tent and constant lamps for the job and must admit that it exceded my expectations in terms of quality and results, PhotoSEL PPC146 for those interested, however I do have two gripes with it, firstly there is not a chance that I'm ever going to managed to work out how to make an 80cm cube fit inside a 10cm x 2cm bag!

My second gripe was that the backdrops crease far to easily. The white backdrop was easy to get around this problem as I fired a diffused flash through the back of it however it got harder when I was working on the blue drop, it all worked out well in the end, although I'm going to try and find some 80cm wide seamless paper rolls for future jobs, well here are some examples of the 350 products I shot!

F1 and product photography

The title of the post sums up my next week really, this weekend Katy and I are going to the F1 at Silverstone! I've been following F1 for a long time but this will be the first race I've attended and while I'm going as a spectator I will be taking my camera along so expect a few photos in an upcoming blog! To say I'm excited is somewhat of an understatement!

I will be taking Monday off to recover, sort of, but from Tuesday I'm going to be producing stock photographs for a medical supply company so I've ordered a new light tent and 55w constant 5400K lamps.