Today, we went to the National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square to see the exhibition of photographs which were competing from Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010.  There are some amazing portraits including David Chancellor’s winning portrait titled “Huntress with Buck”.  Taken in South Africa, it depicts a young American women returning to camp on horse back with a dead buck straddled across the horse in front of her.

My personal favourite is the second prize winner, Panayiotis Lamprou for his portrait titled “Portrait of My British Wife”.  It shows a very informal and personal shot of my wife relaxing just outside their summer house on Schinousa Island in the Aegean Sea.  The subtle light is just amazing.

The exhibition runs until 20th February 2011 so if you are in London I would recommend going.

Saturday I was back in Gregory Brown’s studio again for a three hour photo session with a charming young lady to create some images for her portfolio … now I have to post process them.

It was good to have to work out all the lighting and directing the model by myself but definitely harder work that during the workshop the other week.  I remembered most of the stuff that Gregory had taught me and now it is just a matter of practice.

At the end of the session, I managed to take some self-portraits which this one (left) my favourite.  It is always tricky taking self-portraits because you cannot be behind the camera as well as in front of it.  In the studio, there is a mirror to the side of the photographer so the model can see themselves posing which made it much easier.  The results are definitely better than the ones have previously taken with flash.

I have been thinking about learning how to photography in a studio and learning about studio lighting for some time now.  It is an area of photography that I have never tried before and consequently thought it was complicated – I guess that is because if you don’t know how to do it then it seems like it will be difficult.

To build up my knowledge on studio lighting, I booked workshop with Gregory Brown at his studio in Battersea, London.  The day long workshop was with just one other photographer so there was plenty of opportunity to practice.  Gregory worked through various lighting scenarios from simple single light set-up to much more complex set-ups involving five lights explaining how the resultant effect is achieve.

Both Gregory’s enthusiasm and knowledge of photography clearly show through and make it very easy to learn a lot in a single day.  The professional model, Gemma, was also a pleasure to work with and made it easy to get good photographs whilst concentrating on understanding the studio light.

Many thanks to Gregory Brown for an excellent day and I recommend that you check out his web site Gregory Brown Photography for details about his photography, the tuition he offers or hiring his studio.

I have previously blogged about Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II that I hired over Christmas & New Year but now I have finished post processing the photographs that I took with this great lens.

The Tilt and Shift functions have interesting and quite marked results on the focus plane and depth of field which I found quite difficult to get my head around.  I think that I managed to but I am definitely going to have another go with this lens in the summer when the light will be much brighter.  I will also invest in a special focus screen for my camera to make the manual focusing easier.

The results of my efforts can be found in my Architecture, Cityscapes & Landscapes gallery.

Over New Year, I purchased a Kodak Pulse 10” digital photo frame so some of out photos can be on display in our flat lounge.  I picked this particular model because it can be connected to the Internet via a wireless network and you can invite other to email photos to your digital photo frame.  You can easily upload photos directly from your computer or connect it to Facebook or Kodak Gallery photo albums.  The other great thing is that you can configure the digital photo frame to switch itself on and off at specific times so you don’t even have to worry about it being on (or not).

If you are looking for a digital photo frame, then I would recommend you look at the Kodak Pulse.

Over Christmas and New Year I hired a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II lens from LensesForHire who had a great offer on.  This is a fantastic lens but not at all easy to use especially if you have got used to modern Digital SLRs.  I have never used a Tilt Shift lens before and it is just amazing the effect that it can have on an image.  The Shift aspect is much easier to deal with out the Tilt aspect affects the Depth of Field in some unusual ways that I didn’t fully expect.

The picture (left) is an example of the images I managed to take.

It was strange to use a lens that is a fully manual and modern DSLRs are not best equipped for manual focusing.  Before I hire this lens again (and I will), I am going to invest in a different Canon Focus Screen which will make manual focusing easier.  Old film SLRs had better focus screens than the standard ones on DSLR. 

I am really impressed with the service provide by LensesForHire and I would highly recommend using them.  They have wide range of both Canon and Nikon lenses, provide excellent hire prices which include a full week’s usage of the lens.  If you are think of buying a new lens then I would suggest that you hire it from LensesForHire to try it out before buying it.