Whitby wonders

They say weddings can be good for networking. Well the wedding I shot back in March certainly lead to one payoff that I certainly hadn't been expecting.

The bride put me into contact with another photographer she was friends with who attends a club in the Nottingham area. Now I have been looking for a decent club for a while, the first one I had attempted to join  was a bit of a disaster and the only other club nearby well if I joined that I'm certain I would have lowered the average age by about 30 years or so.

So this photographer was running a trip to the Whitby Goth weekend, now although this would be a bit different for me as I didn't know anyone from this club and I haven't really done any street photography before I couldn't resist the temptation as it would give me a chance to network and also get some rather different shots for my portfolio.

Mind you there were some bad sides. Firstly it was a long trip to whitby made longer by multiple roadworks and secondly it was a early start. A Very early start. In fact so early my first thought on waking was " Shouldn't it be illegal for this time to exist on a Saturday morning?"

Still arriving into whitby we moved down into the town centre seeing in the distance the church and the abbey where we felt fairly certain we would find some attendee's of the weekend. Now for those who don't know the weekend is held twice a year and has become a major draw for photographers. However this is somewhat of a double edged sword as a lot of people complain about the swarms of rude photographers sticking lenses in their face! So we were all determined not to be one of these sets of people. 

However we were quickly taught why these complaints are somewhat justified as when we stopped and had our first bash at politely asking people ( a whole family in steampunk costumes) we were stunned to suddenly find ourselves surrounded by at least half a dozen photographers who had appeared out of nowhere, swooped in and promptly disappeared without saying a word to the subjects. In fact one of the firls from our group got smacked over the head by someone else's lense, who was then promptly more concerned about his gear as opposed to her head!

Now the swarms of other photographers really, really got to each of us at somepoint because it was just getting well stupid. See this is a photo I took of the church, what you can't see is the young girl posing in the door. What you can see is the dozen or so photographers all trying to take pictures at the same time!

I even saw one photographer massively overstep someone's personal space and had his lense almost touching the poor girls Face!

Still as always it's the bad things that people complain about, or bad photographers in this case and not the good ones. I'll admit I was a little nervous at first about trying to go up and ask people for shots myself and used one of the girls from the club as a "in" until I had built my own confidence up.

 Initially I thought we had a lot of time in Whitby but it seemed to just shoot by. We didn't even really stop for lunch. We just grabbed a quick drink and some rather yummy homemade gooey cake that really gave us a needed sugar boost for the afternoon.

We found most people were up by the church which is famous for having a staircase with 199 steps that you have to climb to get to the top which doesn't sound like a lot and it didn't seem like a lot until my 4th or 5th time heading up there when my legs suddenly decided to protest. Which although bad then was nothing to the next morning when I ended up walking like a complete and total zombie.

Still no pain no gain as it was this last trip up the stairs that gave me the last three shots which I consider to be my "shots of the day"

Now the next weekend is in November which I seriously want to attend as I am now much more confident in my skills in street photography and I really want to get some more shots for my portfolio, as short of several sgteampunk and goth obsessed people joined my work or church, there's nowhere else I'm going to be able to get shots like that! 

Revamp, renew, reschedule

After my fun trip to Whitby I realised that it was time that my portfolio needed a serious revamp, which would in turn enable me to finally "launch" for want of a better term my website.

However this is not as quite as easy as it sounds because I have a lot of photos.

And when I say a lot, I mean a almost full external harddrive packed with pictures.

So it's taking sometime.

However it has also taught me something interesting. That my skills have seriously progressed since I got my 500d, which I'll admit doesn't seem like that much of a revelation really as it's kind of the level of look the grass is green or the sky is blue! But even though I knew that it took me actually comparing some of my first portraits with what I've taken recently to realise just how far I have come on.

The short list I have come up with my new portfolio is suffering from two problems mind you, the first is that for a short list it's not so short. The second is that I have no idea what format to present it in. 

Of course I have the website but it's the actual physical presentation of the portfolio that is stumping me a little bit right now. Now I was leaning towards a photobook format but then of course the problem there is in order to update it you would need to get a whole new book printed.

So I was thinking about a folder but looking at some prices it would cost more then getting a photobook .

Of course the last option would be to use a ipad or other tablet but then again I don't know if that would really work showing photos in a electronic format.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll solve it eventually.

In time for the next revamp, he, he, he, 

Learning curve

It has been a busy few weeks for me photography wise.

Mainly due to three reasons, firstly a wedding where I was the lead photographer for the 1st time, however I suppose that's technically not true. It would be more correct to say I was the main photographer. Secondly I visited the whitby goth weekend which provided a whole host of photography opportunities (As well as material for a forthcoming blog post) and thirdly and by no means least I have joined a photography club which has a outdoors model shoot at the end of the month in the same place, they filmed the manor scenes for the batman films.

So what have I learned?

Well firstly I still have a lot to learn about photography. However not to sound totally immodest, despite finding my skills severely tested and being pushed further then I have done before, I feel that I have rather successfully risen to the challenge.

Secondly it can take time to edit a lot of pictures. I have to admit with the wedding photos I was rather behind target in getting the last of them finished because mainly I filled two 16gb cards of pictures and even shooting in raw that is a lot of pictures and I was rather foolishly optimistic with how long it would take me to edit them.

Thirdly, my people skills are good, but they need to get better in the sense of being more pro active in direction. The whitby weekend was a fantastic learning experience especially in this area but more on that later.

Lastly, my porfolio and by extension my website is in serious need of a revamp

So keep your eyes peeled as there will be more on that soon.