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When I was at the Photographers’ Get Together in London my fellow wedding and portrait photographer and good friend Hayley Oats of Hayley Ruth Photography asked me to take some headshots of her. So during a brief lunch break we dashed out onto the London streets and found a nice backdrop.
Last week I travelled down from the Scottish Borders to meet with 30+ wedding and portrait photographers from the Randall Network in London for our annual (or is it biannual!?) get together. After the huge success of the brilliant get together in Blackpool last September, expectations were high and we were far from disappointed – it was brilliant, the biggest get together yet with many new friends made. Thanks so much to those who made it and for being such great and inspiring friends. Sorry to those who couldn’t make it and I hope to see you next time. Thank you to Hayley for doing such an amazing job organising the event, to Stewart for the amazing contribution he made (and for creating the finest albums in the world!) and last but not least thanks to 3B Media for their superb introductory seminar about off-camera flash photography.
Onto some photographs… after a quick drink and introductions in a bar near Waterloo Train Station we set off in groups for a ‘fun photo challenge’. There were some rules and guidelines to follow, but nearly everyone abandoned them in favour of shooting whatever we wanted! The goal of the challenge was to get people out with their cameras and shoot things that might be outside their usual field. Everyone agreed that it was a great challenge and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The best images from everyone were put into a slideshow and shown on a projector screen the following day. Here are some of mine from the challenge, all taken with the Canon EOS 5D MKII, 24-70L and processed in Lightroom 3 Beta:
Pete Lawson is uncompromising when it comes to getting the shot he wants 
Simon Fazackarley wanted a shot of our shoes (as you do) so I took one from an alternative angle
Pigeons are fun to shoot
Back at the bar for a few drinks and to submit our images
I was demonstrating my shoot-from-the-hip “technique” which shocked Abby a little as she thought I was shooting something dodgy!!
Day two and we’re in the ‘boardroom’ for some serious discussions, coffee and Krispy Kremes!!
Phill Allen and Simon discuss their topic:
Stewart gives his ‘The Power of Social Networking’ talk
Then here’s me on the quiet train heading back to the Scottish Borders after a brilliant couple of days in London – thanks again everyone; you’re amazing people to know!
Here are a couple of superb blog posts of the get together with great photos from fellow Randall Network family members:
At the end of October we had our second photographers get together, this time in sunny Blackpool. This was a combination of the [b] school members (most of the great folks who met last time) and the photographers’ network set up by Stewart Randall. It was a brilliant couple of days; the first day involved hours of great chat about photography and business in the pub, a shoot down the beach, Chinese and dodgy bars in the evening. The next morning we had lots more chat over coffee and compared our sample albums.
Skip this paragraph if you’re not interested in photography techy stuff! I decided to process the images in the Lightroom 3 Beta to give it a try. I’m currently using Lightroom 1.4 and doing most of the processing in Photoshop. Lightroom 3 is brilliant, I can do pretty much all of the processing I need in there, which is much quicker than going into Photoshop. The new film grain feature is absolutely wonderful and it really enhances the noise from the ISO 6400+ images that were taken at the night shoot. The colour noise reduction is amazing too and makes ISO 12800 and ISO 25600 really, really useable and that’s without any luminance noise reduction (which is currently disabled in the Beta version). Adding film grain to an image with heavy digital noise absolutely transforms it into a lovely image. Who needs noise reduction!?
Here we are congregating outside the hotel ready for the evening shooting in the dark:
Stewart Randall brought a very cool box of lighting to try some off-camera flash:
We head down to the beach, Olivia volunteered to be our model since the one we organised had to cancel. In the photo; Laura Lawson, Susie Lawrence, Hayley Ruth, Rebecca Honeywell, Olivia Brabbs and Pete Lawson
A typical retaliation from a photographer about to have his photo taken is to return fire, here’s Pete Lawson:
Heading towards the beach; Stewart, Barnaby Aldrick, Mark Lenik, Neil Matthews, Chris MacKenzie, Phil Barber and Rob Booker
The 3B Media guys did their off camera flash thing down on the beach:
As well as being excellent photographers, Rebecca and Hayley make very good light stands!
Mark Lenik, an amazing film maker (the only videographer in the group of photographers) put together a superb video from the two days.
Olivia Brabbs volunteered to be on the other side of the camera and model for us and did a fantastic job:
Susie Lawrence decided to have a go and was an excellent model too:
Pete likes what he sees:
It was getting really dark at this point, but the 5D MKII low light capabilities are AMAZING. This shot of Laura Lawson standing in the dark was taken at ISO 25600, 1/25s, f/2.8 – I think the colour rendition is amazing considering the high ISO (and the mixture of light sources – it was Blackpool after all!)
Here’s Susie Lawrence and Mark Byrne practicing a bit of POINT and SHOOT:
Here’s Mark again creating his video masterpiece with two of the stars: Laura and Pete
Phil Barber and a bit of chimping:
A dodgy pair in the back streets of Blackpool
The next morning, I tried out Laura and Pete’s 50mm 1.2 lens, Chris MacKenzie was one of my victims.
I think Rebecca spotted me…
Hayley tried out Laura’s Lens Baby:
Then I gave Laura’s 85mm 1.8 a go, this time Susie Lawrence was the test subject:
Here are a few of us in a deep discussion about the photography business and album manufacturers… or maybe we were just trying to decide whether to stay for another coffee
It was brilliant to see everyone again and meet a whole bunch of new people too. Can’t wait for the next one!
Here are a few more excellent posts from the trip:
The Lawson’s Blackpool Write-up
Phil Barber (you need to scroll down a bit)