Scarlett

Every now and then, like I was able to here, I get to show you all my ‘real’ work.  That is, proper shoots, that are organised and paid for, rather than me dicking around with my camera knocking coconuts out of trees like I did last week.

Well, I am pleased to say, today’s post is one of those (no, not me dicking about).

While we were at home on holiday, my boss Gary called me and asked if I could do a shoot that he had organised.  Now, most people who are called in on their holiday may be a little annoyed, but when it means going out in the autumn colours with my beloved D800, some pocket wizards and two flash assistants…well, it’s hardly a problem.

Oh – and it turns out Scarlett is absolutely stunning.  Which always helps too.

Scarlett is currently applying to various universities and colleges to embark on her career in the drama world.  It seems like a lifetime ago that I too was doing the same thing, and as such I knew exactly what she was after, the holy grail for any budding actor: good head shots.

Now, a less experienced photographer may think that head shots are easy.  A less experienced photographer is very, very wrong.  I have sat with a lot of my good actor pals for hours whilst they deliberate over which of the fifty shots they have been given is ‘the best’.   As an actor, you are taught to be critical…and most of them are even better at being critical of themselves (seriously, it can get down right depressing).  So your job as the photog is to make sure you get everything right.  Flattering, soft light and eye contact with the model are the most important things.  Scarlett’s picture is about to hit a few dozen desks, and it may be the difference between her application being read or just dropped in the bin.  I (hope) you will all agree, Scarlett’s head shot is definitely going to grab the attention of her future teachers.

Once we had got this one in the bag…well, we had some fun 🙂

We were shooting in Leatherhead and started off in the local church.

And after that we headed over the road to a stream/rivery thing.  I was really lucky to have both Sian and Gary assisting with the flashes, which meant that we could bathe Scarlett in scrummy soft light through a 36″ umbrella, and hit her with a much harder bare bulb speedlight from behind.  This helps separate her from the background, and highlight her beautiful deep-red hair.

Scarlett was great fun and when I  suggested she shuffle out on this branch, precariously overhanging the rivery thing, she was more than happy to brave it.

And as light was fading, and to prove how much fun we are all when we are shooting, I share with you the final shot of the day.

Thanks for the gig Gary – was a blast as always, and good luck  with the upcoming auditions and interviews Scarlett – you will walk them all 🙂

Thanks for reading guys x

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A fly on the wall post

Well…not really.  If you had been a fly on our wall over the last few days, you would have seen Sian and I desperately trying to get on top of things…tidying the house;  building barbeques, catching up with holiday laundry, stressing a lot about work and generally getting a little tiddly at the excitement of my parents coming out to see us over Christmas.

But yesterday was fantastic.  We started the day with a cup of tea, looking out from our balcony and drinking in that wonderful view…when all of a sudden this little guy landed on the table by my laptop.  Ok, he’s not a fly on the wall, but ‘fly on the desk’ doesn’t sound right…does it?  He was ever so patient as I blinded him with two speedlights and intrusive macro lens and  the end result was definitely worth it.

Not even 9:30 am, and I had bagged an amazing image…things were shaping up nicely.

By about 10 our garden was teaming with the hit squad our landlady has bestowed upon us.  Over the next few hours the garden was transformed from the shaggy, overgrown jungle, to the well kept, primped and preened glory we know and love.  It is a lovely place to be.  And as we wandered around our newly reclaimed paradise, Sian spotted the coconuts in the tree, and asked me (for the 999999th time) if we could finally get that machete and cut them down…promises of coconut run punches, breads and cakes were made. So a trip to the hardware store was promptly arranged.

Now, as many readers of this blog will know, Barbados is not a cheap place to live. Far from it.  So imagine my surprise when I asked the nice lady behind the counter ‘how much that machete was – no, the huge one that looks like it could cut a tiger in two’, and she replied a mere ‘thirty bucks.’

Thirty Bucks?

That is how much Sian and I famously paid for a parsnip this time last year for Christmas…and here she was holding an 18inch blade, designed to last for years complete with rubberised grip and holster for the same price? This was surely the bargain of the century.

Before she could realise her obvious mistake and tell me the real price, I handed over the cash, strapped the holster to my belt, and drove home feeling like Crocodile Dundee…the coconuts had no idea what was going to hit them when I got back.

Or so I thought.

Turns out coconuts are incredibly hardy, and the guys at the side of the road who chop them up with the deftness of soft-handed masseus’ are clearly a very skilled bunch…I could not get the bloody things open.  I tried brute force, hacking, slashing, sawing…they would not play ball.  Even getting them out of the tree was stressful in itself…I developed a next level technique for this though. I call this photo ‘fat and clueless man swings hopelessly at nuts with a metal rod.’

When I finally knocked a few down, the frustration began…but after a few attacks, we discovered that if you did exactly the opposite to what the road-side vendors do, that is cut down the coconut, not across the top of it, they bust right open…and that water inside is soooo good when you’ve been swinging metal poles and a sword around in the 34 degree heat.

Victory.

And as I type this, the aches and pains in my shoulders, along with the callouses and blisters on my hands are utterly worth it.  Sian is currently dicing all the coconut flesh we were able to harvest meaning the spoils shall definitely be enjoyed! (perhaps a food blog next? Messages below if you would like to see?!)

In the evening we sat down at our newly built barbeque, congratulating each other on the days’ endeavours, and we were treated to one of Barbados’ hilarious blackouts.  Usually a problem for most people, but not us – not on this the day of dreams, far from it.  We wandered out into the front garden, slapped the camera on a tripod, and enjoyed Nature’s light show.

I never thought I would say it…but it’s good to be home 🙂

 

Thanks for reading guys x

 

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Weddings weddings weddings

To my dearest and adoring fan…or Mum for short.

Thanks so much for your patience at my complete lack of posting in nearly three weeks.  I am sure you expect the usual disclaimer: “Busy at work” etc. but, without even the slightest whiff of apology, this has not been the case.  Far from it.
Truth is, we have just had the most epic four week holiday and frankly have been having far too much fun playing with nephews, meeting old friends, making new ones, and hugging and squidging and loving every family member I have been able to get my hands on to be bothering myself with something as trivial as this blog.

It truly has been a wonderful month.

Two of our best friends got married, my brother and his Fiance FINALLY tied the knot, and between that we have been driving around the country – we met my dear old uni pals at Rachel‘s house,  went on a stag do, went to London, went to Chichester, visited Portsmouth, did a few photo shoots, did a few video shoots and much, much more…it was quite hectic!

And so now here I am, back in the ridiculous heat of Barbados, hammering this out on my dining room table with a beer by my side and full of a scrummy Indian dish Sian knocked up for us.  Life is good.

I figured the best place to start back up again was where it all began; our first appointment at home was our wonderful friends Krissy and Rich’s wedding…and here my blog begins….

This is one of those weddings that has been in the pipeline for a loooong time.  Just as all the best couples should (ahem) Rich and Krissy waited a cool ten years before they finally took the plunge and got hitched, and that always makes things a little more special.

What’s not special, however, is the feeling I get when I am a guest at a wedding. I never know what to do.  I am so used to being the photographer, that when I am at a wedding, I am looking at light, watching for lines and spaces, and it is even worse when I have my camera with me.  I cannot tell you how frustrating it is when you’re shooting a wedding and some gimp like me sticks his big lens in the way of yours and distracts the couple from the photographer they are paying for the day.  It is a horrible thing to do, and so I am adamant that I will never do it myself when at a wedding.

As such, for Krissy and Rich’s, I just took our small camera and fired a few snaps throughout the day.  Nothing major; just trying to capture the uber-awesome ‘country chic’ theme that Krissy pulled off oh-so well (Rich tried…but I think it’s a girl thing).

The weather was as stunning as Kriss was (well almost), and the happy couple left in the coolest wedding cars I have seen to date.

And instead of Pimms or champagne or whatever else ‘tradition states’, the pair opted for a much more cool, much more original, much more ‘them’ high tea.  With cakes and cakes and cakes…it was awesome.

As I hid in the shadows and let the photog get on with his thing, I was lucky enough to snap a cheeky shot of Rich carrying Kriss down the garden.

We then enjoyed a glorious dinner with three of Krissy’s most beautiful friends in the world ever…if you are reading Claire, Howard and Charlie, seeing you all was really fantastic 🙂

And as if the day wasn’t perfect enough, imagine our delight when we saw how Krissy and Rich looked after their artistes:

Thanks for the invite guys, we wouldn’t have missed it for the world 😉

x

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A Happy Anniversary!

For those of you who frequent this blog regularly, you will know I have an adoring wife who I love to smitherines.

Well, tomorrow, it’s our two year wedding anniversary (we’ve been together for 12) and we are getting ready to go back to Blighty for an AWESOME 4 week holiday…with a little bit of work thrown in for good measure.

And so this evening, I did what any good husband would do on the eve of their wedding anniversary.  I brought home a massive, metre-wide umbrella.  It’s huge.  I was clearing out our cupboards at work, and came across this monster and just know I had to shoot through it.

Photog readers of mine will be nodding their heads.  Non photogs wondering why the hell I am talking about keep-dry-apparatus having anything to do with photography – or indeed our anniversary…well let me show you:

A freaking huge umbrella makes my normal little flash much bigger – a metre bigger in fact.  This in turn gives you a crazy soft light, and that means that when I take photos of Sian in our bedroom, she looks as gorgeous as ever.

But enough of the photo nerdary, it is late and I need to get packing and off to work early doors…so I will leave you with yet more stonking pictures of my gorgeous wife, and take this opportunity to say: thank you Sianie, for the best years of my life.  I have now known you longer than I haven’t, and not a day goes by that I do not laugh and blush and get cross and smile and get embarrassed and get protective and get proud and get happy and giggle and get ALL that good stuff…and every day I do,  I just end up loving you a little more.

You truly are the best 🙂

Thanks for reading guys – we are on holiday as of Thursday, so lots of piccies of the UK and our adventures to come!!

 

x

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Some very nice friends

A few weeks back, we were approached by Almond to re-shoot their brochure and web material.

Which is always very exciting.

We had some kids lined up, but budget meant that affordable models were going to be hard to find…luckily Sian and I have some very good looking friends.

Ally and Billy are our two best friends here on the island.  Ally is from Manitoba in Canada, and Billy is a good old Brit from Devon.  They are a wonderful couple, and I always enjoy stoking the fire over various pronunciation arguments (tomato and potato are regularly visited).

They also happen to be crazy hot, which made our job a whole lot easier

A while back, Billy introduced us to his brother Johnathan and his partner Monique.  They, also, happen to be a crazy hot couple, and the day was made even easier with them there too.

In all, we had a great day.  The guys were really patient, really professional, and we got some beautiful shots for the new brochure.  I don’t think they realised just how hard a job modelling all day was going to be, and by lunch I could feel they were flagging.  Contrary to popular belief, modelling is very hard.  You are normally stood all day, grinning, scowling, laughing or jumping at a photographer’s whim.  In amongst all of this, you also have to make each pose look like it is the first time you have done it and keep it natural.   You can spot a stiff model from a million miles away.

I am happy to say that all four of our new models delivered these qualities in spades.  They were awesome. Monique was so good, she even managed to squeeze in a cheeky nap on a lilo whilst the rest of us worked 😉

After lunch, we hid from the sun for a few shots up in one of the (beautiful) state rooms we had organised for the shoot.

And after these beauties, we headed back down for some beach fun, tennis, sailing and dinner…in all a very long day.

But oh-so-very-worth it.

You can see all of the photos on our Colorbox Facebook Page – and the rest of the shoot will be up on there soon.

All that is left to say, is another final HUGE thanks to Billy, Ally, Jonathan and Monique.  You guys really were amazing.  You were patient, professional and the pictures are just stunning.

 

Thanks again for reading guys – keep on snapping.

 

x

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I (think I) Love Miami

As I mentioned a few days back, Sian and I have had a mental week.  Between welcoming guests, being attacked by bees, hounded by nesting bats, and having two team members off for a few weeks, life has been pretty hectic.

Oh – and amidst all this, we flew out to Miami for 5 days on business with our awesome boss Gary.

We were in Fort Lauderdale for a couple of days, and then we popped down to South Beach to soak up some of that awesome ‘Sobe’ atmosphere.  Sian had organised our digs in the awesome Catalina Hotel.  It is one block up from Lincoln Avenue, which is without a doubt the heart and soul of South Beach.  A million bars, and you just pick the one that looks the most comfy, sit down, order some beers, and let Miami walk past you.  And it is made up of all sorts.  If you like people watching, you have to visit South Beach.

On the first night, we wandered down the boardwalk towards the cafes and bars along the front.  Gary had planted the idea of nachos in my head, and as we wandered we were bombarded with deals and offers, happy hours and bargains…we carried on down the front until we found ‘the bar’.

Eventually impatience got the better of us, and we just started asking the waitresses attacking us with flyers “Do you have nachos?” “Yes.”  “Are you running a happy hour?” “Yes, buy one round, get the next on free”.

Perfect.

So there we sat, on the front of South Beach as the Ferraris and custom choppers drove by.  There are all sorts of people here; there are also all sorts of vehicles.

Now, this is where the story gets messy.  All the way down South Beach, we had seen these idiots with the most enormous cocktail glasses.  Seriously.  Put your hand out, spread your fingers as wide as they will go and you would still be able to put your hand in one of these glasses.  Easily.  We had quietly mocked these fools for their inability to order a correct sized drink along the South Coast…so imagine our utter dismay when our Mojitos arrived – the size of an arctic truck, and Gary’s beer arrived in the most enormous glass boot I have ever seen.

Buffoons.

I would not normally dream of posting a photo on this blog from our little Nikon point and shoot, but I feel it’s important for you to see what we were up against here…

And the Mojitos were good. I mean, really good. So after we had a good chuckle at how ridiculous we had been, getting suckered into the obvious tourist trap, we felt even more stupid when we asked the price of the behemoth drinks we had been served.

Fifty.

Five.

Dollars.

Fifty five US Dollars. EACH.  No wonder it was buy one get one round free – no one could possibly finish one of these drinks, and be capable of drinking another.  The bar was running a pretty awesome scam here.  But The Britishness in me kicked in, and I was damned if I wasn’t going to get my money’s worth.

I was in bed by 9pm.

And as I woke up again at 7am, I was amazed at just how fresh I felt.  I left Sian in bed and had a wander around this amazing city.  It was a ghost town.   Miami is, without a doubt, alive at night.  And as I wandered around the streets, baffled as to how I had avoided a hangover that I most definitely deserved, I felt like I was in some kind of post-apocalyptic film.  No one.  Anywhere.  It was really quite special.

Grabbing some breakfast for Sian, I managed to pull her from her sleep, and we wandered around the streets together; but by now, that magic loneliness had been replaced with hungover tourists looking for their coffee, skaters, joggers, muscle men, dog walkers, big groups of blonde girls shopping together, big groups of flamboyant men shopping together,  and I felt that Sian had been cheated from the site that I had enjoyed only a few hours ago.

But all the same, we had a blast.  Thanks Miami, you were very gentle with me.

Thanks for reading guys xxx

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Busy Busy Bumblebees

First of all, please accept my apologies for complete lack of posts in the last ten days…Sian and I have been very busy bees.  We were out in Miami last week for some meetings with suppliers and partners etc. and we have not stopped since we got back  I will do a proper post about that soon.

We flew back home on Sunday after nearly missing our flight, crashed for a few hours, and got straight back to work on Monday.   A day in the office after being away for 5 days is never fun, and it was made all the worse by the knowledge that our awesome friends Josh and Lyds were coming out to visit us.  They are now here and it is awesome.

But Monday night wasn’t.

We got back to the house at about 7pm, only to find a massive warning sign on our door. “Fergus and Sian – DO NOT ENTER – BEES SWARMING”

 

Bugger.

 

You know when you just want to go to bed, in your own bed, after staying in hotels and running around like madmen (women) for days?  So we wandered down to the apartment below to ask Anne – our landlady – what was going on.  She said she had seen a few hundred bees swarming around our front door, and they would no doubt wake up again first thing in the morning.  The bee man couldn’t come until tomorrow (of course) and that if we didn’t want to be stung to death in our slumber, we had better sort out other accommodation.

So off we popped back to the hotel, who were wonderfully accommodating and let Lyd and Josh stay with us for the night.  We returned the next evening to utter bee-carnage.  We were quite sad – Sian and I love bees, but the guy had found two nests under our house, and he needed to fumigate the place to get rid of them all.

I whipped out the macro lens and asked Josh to help me with Flash.  These pictures are a homage to our late friends of the bee kingdom.

They’re not as pretty as my usual stuff – but I felt we needed to do something productive with something so very sad 🙁

So after we swept up the death and cleared off the leaves, chased out the spiders and the millipedes and all the other wildlife that had moved into our house whilst we were away, we settled down for a quick beer.  And as we sat and supped, our peace was quickly interrupted by an eerie scratching and rustling from the roof.  A few tell tale whimpers and we concluded that we now had a bat stuck in the extraordinarily thin cavity between our ceiling and the aluminium flashing above.

It’s like bloody London Zoo here at times…

But as I write this, we are now (I hope) Bee and Bat free…and hopefully Lyd and Josh can start getting on with their holiday without Mother Nature’s annoying interruptions.  And if you’re reading, Mother Nature, take heed; we don’t want to have any more scenes like this in our lovely new home:

It’s far too depressing 😉

 

Thanks for reading guys -keep on snapping

xxx

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Made in Chelsea. In Barbados. In The Caribbean. In My Blog

A few months back Sian got a call from Virgin (the airline/holiday/everything else group, not immaculate concepulate of the late Jesus Christ…although that would have been cool too).

They asked Sian if the company could shoot a couple of ‘celebrities’ that were out here in Barbados here with us for some promotional stuff.  Our friends got excited.  My toes curled up.

I hate this nonsense.  I hate the very word ‘celebrity’.  It makes me think of all the god awful Hello guff that seems to plague our shelves incessently these days.  Not only has journalism suffered for it, but so too has entertainment.  Remember when we watched shows that were written and performed by skilled, talented, devoted craftsmen?…I do.  I got a Theatre Degree.  And my heart physically hurts every time another ‘I’m a Celebrity – Shit on you’ show comes out.

So, when Sian told me we were shooting Ollie, Jamie and Francis from the ‘Made in Chelsea’ TV show, I was dreading it.  I assumed to meet a bunch of jumped up, attention seeking socialites with little or nothing to say.

And boy was I wrong. Very very wrong.  Because these three lads were utterly, utterly lovely.

And I don’t mean lovely in the kind of ‘we’re working together, so let’s all get on’ kind of way,  I mean it from the very real, very rare, ‘I want to invite those guys to our house for dinner’ way.  They really were great.

The first thing Jamie said to me was ‘ we just needed a break – well, to be honest, we don’t really do anything, but we wanted to get away for a bit…I guess that sounds awful’ and I adored his honesty.

I also loved the fact that nothing was too much for the boys – jump in the sea?  Sure.  Play cricket with this guy? No worries.

And they refused to let Sian carry anything. Ever.  Which was very sweet and really very rare in people these days.  They were polite, courteous, funny, and ridiculously good looking…it made our job a breeze.

Because Sian and I live here in Barbados, and because we both despise the ‘Celebrity Big Brother – give me a final chance to be famous’ kind of shows, we had no idea what Made in Chelsea was about.  But the boys didn’t mind – in fact, I think they kind of liked the fact that they were working with apparantly the only two Brits on the island who had not recognised them.  Even while we were shooting, people were smiling, and waving and cooing and asking for autographs…but they didn’t mind, they took it in their stride, they let us do our thing, and we got some great shots.

So, if you’re reading this boys, thanks a lot, you have restored some faith in this old fart’s appreciation of the ‘celebrity’…now excuse me, I believe I have Made in Chelsea on Channel 4 On Demand…

You can see the article in the Daily Mail here: Daily Mail Article. Please note that the Copyright is FIRMLY held with Colorbox, the company I work for – and all of the shots on here link back to our Facebook page.  Please like away, and you can see the full shoot on there too 🙂

Thanks for reading guys, keep on snapping x

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Room with a view

You may have noticed that I have been a little quiet lately.  This is mainly due to the normal reasons – work crazy, loads of shoots, team members on holiday etc.  However, this time there is a new reason/excuse for my tardiness.

An excellent reason in fact.

After nearly six years of living in ships and hotels, from the sublime to the down right ridiculous, we finally thought ‘enough is enough’, and we bit the bullet and got a small cottage way out in the sticks where no one can find us.

It is beautiful.


For the first time in six years, Sian and I have a little piece that is ours.  We don’t have to share anything, we don’t have to abide by rules imposed by the powers that be…we can just ‘live’.

I know this sounds ridiculous and I feel almost callous as I write this.  We have been so, so lucky to have the opportunities and lifestyle that we have had for so long.  We wouldn’t change a thing.  And we aren’t really – we will be staying at the hotel at least four times a week, because that is what our job demands and there is no way that we could keep things going if we were based out here.

Seriously, we’re in the sticks.

But for those long weekends, for that time when we just want to lock the door and get away from sun burnt tourists, the taxi vendors desperate for some business, and the questions and questions and questions you get every time some one hears you live here. “What, in the Hotel?…How lucky you are!”

Yes, yes, yes…

Like I say, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – and I am not.  We have a fabulous room in our hotel, the staff look after us, and as I mentioned, our operation would not run If Sian and I were not there 24/7.

I’m just hoping it will if we’re there 24/5.

Because with a view like this to come home for, the weekend just cannot come quick enough.

Thanks for reading guys – here’s to a new, super chilled out Ferg in the future 🙂

x

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Puppies again!

Before you read any further, I have to let you know that this blog comes with disclaimer.   I cannot be held responsible for any damage, injury or harm either you or your computer may suffer from dribbling, cooing, or general hugging of the screen in front of you.

Because these pups are ridiculously cute.

Some of you may remember this post a few weeks back; we met Rob and Penny and their beautiful puppies.  But we had all the wrong kit.  A wide lens and no flash diffuser, the pictures were alright, but I organised a re-shoot with the pooches with the appropriate gear.

And I am oh-so-glad we did.

It has taken me an age to write this blog, so apologies if I am a little sketchy on the details.  Rob and Penny bought their beautiful Bichon Frise ‘Bo’ with them over from the UK when they moved here a few years back.  They had her bred, and she blessed Barbados with seven of these crazy-cute-canines.  They are gorgeous.

Sian and I popped over to Rob and Penny’s a while back to do this shoot, and since then, the pups have all moved on to their own homes.  But we got them, all together for about an hour.  It was an interesting shoot to say the least.

They say never to work with animals or children.  Now, I love working with kids.  In fact, it’s one of my favourite parts of the job.  I love it when we get a family with nippers.  I find children are a lot more natural in front of a camera, and there is nothing better than a natural shot of a child full on belly-laughing in the Bajan sun.

Puppies are, clearly, very different.  It is hard to get them where you want them to be – hard to get them to look where you want to, and try as I might, I couldn’t make them laugh.

 

But they look gorgeous all the same 🙂

 

Thanks for reading guys.  Keep on snapping.

x

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