Lippy Lady Project - Denise

A very cold and foggy Saturday saw me in Kirkbymoorside to meet up with another Lippy Lady this weekend.

I arranged to meet Denise at the bike shop he runs with her partner Jon. 
Between them Denise and Jon have around 13 bikes, mostly ones Jon has built for racing in amateur flat track/speedway racing.

For the shoot I used my Canon 5D2's with 70-200 f4 L, 85mm f2.8 USM and 20mm f2.8 USM lenses.

Processed in Lr CC.

Canon 5D2, Canon 20mm f2.8 USM

Canon 5D2, Canon 70-200mm f4 L USM

Canon 5D2, Canon 85mm f1.8 USM

Fuji X-Pro1 Fuji XF56mm f1.2

Lippy Ladies project Canon 5D2

The Lippy Ladies project is still ongoing.

Today I met up with my second Lippy Lady, Jane. 
Jane rode, in dreadfully wet and windy conditions, to meet me in Willingham Woods outside Market Rasen in Lincolnshire.

We spent over an hour sheltering from rain under the catering booth awning waiting for it to stop. 
Finally there was a gap in the rain and we had maybe 15 minutes to get some shots off before it started again.
A big thank you to Jane for doing this on such a crappy day.

I used my Canon 5D2, one with the Canon 24-70 f2.8 L and the other with the 70-200 F4 L.

Here are some images, processed in Lr CC as usual.

Hasselblad portrait - 503 CWD on film

Recently my good friend and photographer Simon asked if I could take a portrait of him. I said "sure, come over to the house and we'll do it".

"Lets do it on my Hasselblad using film" replied Simon.

So that weekend Simon turned up at my house with his Hasselblad kit and a film back with 6 exposures remaining.

Whilst familiar with the newer digital Hasselblad I've not used the Hasselblad 500 series of bodies; winding on the film after each exposure, something once so familiar felt so alien after 10 yrs of digital.

We set up the lighting, balancing natural light with my Neewer studio strobes and, with Topsy sitting in using a digital back fired off some exposures to check the lighting.

Hasselblad 503CWD, Carl Zeiss 150mm f/4 Sonnar CFi 1/125s f/8 photo by Simon Hill

 Satisfied with the lighting we put the film back on the 'blad loaded with Ilford FP4 and I fired off the 6 exposures. 
The film was processed by Ilford Labs then Simon scanned the negatives on a Fuji Frontier SP 3000 Pro. 
Post production was in Ps and Silver EFX Pro

Hasselblad 503CWD, Carl Zeiss 150mm f/4 Sonnar CFi 1/125s f/8 photo by stereodesign

I really enjoyed the afternoon using the 503 and I think the result speaks for itself, however I've no desire to go back to film, I much prefer digital.

iPhone 6 HDR

This Lovely old Kawasaki 900 was taken at Squires Cafe in Sherburn in Elmet on my iPhone 6 in HDR mode.

I'm really impressed with the quality.

iPhone 6 camera in HDR mode

Artist Jake Attree in his Dean Clough studio

We called in on Jake today at his studio in Dean Clough in Halifax.

He was working on a Northumbria seascape and the Bronte country landscapes.

I had my Fuji X-Pro1 with me so took a few images of Jake in front of these works in progress.

I don't normally do colour portraits for personal photos but for an artist with such a superb eye for colour I felt this was the correct treatment for them.

Very little processing done in Lr just a touch of Exposure and Clarity.

Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4

Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4

Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon XF 56mm f1.2

Lippy Ladies Motorcycle club - project started

Last weekend I was up in Nidderdale for the first shoot of the Lippy Ladies Motorcycle Club project.

This is a personal project to shoot environmental portraits of members of the Lippy Ladies Motorcycle Club.

First to volunteer was Sarah. I met with Sarah and fellow Lippy Lady Helen a few days before the shoot to discuss ideas. From this meeting it was evident that biking to Sarah was a form of freedom, a means to get away to the countryside and forget the trappings of modern life. Sarah said her ideal location would be in Scotland with a Loch and the Highlands as a backdrop. This wasn't going to be possible so she suggested a location in Nidderdale in the Yorkshire Dales.

Fortunately the weather was good for the weekend planned for the shoot and we met up just after 7am on Sunday morning on location, Sarah had ridden her Triumph there and brought her tent to set up camp.

We found a suitable place just off a track and got to work. Over the next 2 hours we took over 400 images.

I processed some of the best images in Lr using my preset.
I used my Canon 5D2 with Canon 20mm f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8, 70-200mm f4, and 85mm f1.8 lenses.

Nidderdale - Canon 5D2

I was up in Nidderdale last weekend to start Lippy Ladies project (more in a later post) and took a few scenics with the 5D2.

Processed in Lr as usual.

London - Fuji X-Pro1

I popped down to London recently to meet my brother who was over from the U.S. on business.

Unfortunately the day was rather wet so we were not really able to get the cameras out and do any serious photography.

I did manage to get a few images though.

All shot using X-Pro1 and Fujinon 18-55mm XF.

Environmental portrait - Canon 5D2

I was up in the Lakes District recently to shoot some video for a project in Fewston. While I was there I took the opportunity to shoot some environmental portraits of Phil Bradley an artisan basket weaver.

It was a wet overcast day and Phil's workshop is lit by a small window so I shot at ISO3200 f2.8 with my Canon 24-70 L.

Phil's website

iPhone rainy night in York

I was waiting to give my daughter a lift home last night and it poured down, I took some images through the wet windows of the car, I rather like the abstract effect.
All images iPhone 6 processed in Apple Photos.

After Stieglitz

We were watching a BBC Imagine program on the artist Georgia O'Keefe and of course her famous nude photos, taken by her lover and later husband Alfred Stieglitz, were shown.

We thought we'd have a go at reproducing two of the more famous ones.

I used a Neewer studio strobe head with a shoot-through umbrella, and my Fuji X-Pro1 with the Fuji 56mm f1.2 lens.

PP was in Lr and Ps CC.

I'm very pleased with the results.

So, the second pose was a bit easier to reproduce.

For this image I again used the Fuji X-Pro1 and the Fuji 56mm f1.2, but used natural light, diffused with a window blind.

Saltaire Inspired follow up.

I was really pleased that one of the portraits of the artists I took at Saltaire Inspired 2016 was used on the artist's blog site.

Thanks to Paul for crediting me, his website is worth a look, especially if you like chemical based and polaroid photography.

I also had a play with Adobe Spark, I used the Saltaire portraits view the result here, I think its pretty impressive tool.

Magazine shoot

Autumn 2015 I shot some images for a magazine article.

The article appeared in the Feb 2016 edition of Babel Magazine.

I used my Canon 5D2 on this shoot, the double spread used a Canon 100mm f2.8 USM Macro, the insert image a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L.

A Canon selection

Back out to the same hayfield this evening in an attempt to catch the really long shadows as the sun sets.
Unfortunately there are some trees on the very edge of the field that diffuse the shadows and then block them altogether.

Images all looked a bit flat when I took them off the 5D2. However a bit of tweaking in Lr with my usual preset resulted in some images I was pleased with.

Canon 5D2, Canon 100mm f2.8 USM

Canon 5D2, Canon 20mm f2.8 USM

Canon 5D2, Canon 20mm f2.8 USM

Canon 5D2, Canon 70-200mm f4 L