Hi All
As a professional corporate, event photographer working around Edinburgh and throughout Scotland, it is always good to get the opportunity to visits different places. I paid a visit to Glasgow on friday, to add to my infrared photography Scotland collection and also to get some urban photography images of this great city. I thought this would be a good time to do a few Tips for the Urban Photographer, so here they are as follows:
1. Try low angles, making the best of puddles, objects on the ground and the dramatic perspective.
2. If you can try and include people in the photos, to give the images a sense of reality and buzz through movement, more difficult just now, I know due to the lockdown restrictions and the lack of people in urban offices.
3. Try to include famous landmarks in the city ie buildings, statues and bridges, or famous streets.
4. Be careful, you are in a city. Be aware if you have a £2000 camera on a tripod in the middle of a busy location, or even more so, in a quiet area at night time.
5. Take loads of photos and try different things, with regard to the angle, composition etc. Get creative also at home with software ie conversions to black and white, increase the dynamic range and structure in your editing. You could also try a little HDR, or focus stacking.
Hope that helps.
Until next time.
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk
www.edinburghphotographer.com
Hi Everyone
One of the things I have missed during this awful pandemic has been sport and event photography in Scotland. As a professional sports, event and conference photographer working around Scotland, I have really missed this aspect of my work. Some of the events cancelled included, motor sport, football, rugby, bungee jumping and golf. So when i went a walk with my daughter last week, I jumped (pardon the pun) at the chance to photograph her jumping from some old fallen trees along the East Lothian coast at the John Muir Walk. I thought I would make it interesting and I fitted a manual focus fish-eye lens onto my Fuji XT2 and fired a few shots of at a very low angle, while Gina jumped onto the sand. The results were pretty good, with the low angle giving the impression of extreme height. Of course, it helps that Gina is really up for this kind of thing and her athletic movements also resulted in some dramatic images. I have always been a fan of low angled shooting at ground level and in previous corporate positions, I have included some arty dramatic ground level urban and architectural images. I also completed a project on puddle photos taken in Edinburgh and Glasgow and I also try to incorporate this technique in my sports photography commissions and infrared photography work where appropriate. So enjoy the photos, more are on the website.
Until next time.
Kind Regards
Colin
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk
www.edinburghphotographer.com
Hi All
One of the subjects that comes up constantly for me as professional event and corporate photographer working in Scotland, I am often asked how much editing I do and what my opinion is to manipulating or editing in photography. My general attitude is that I want to be spending as much time taking photos and less time in front of a pc. Photography is all about composition and light. Of course you would be mad not to take advantage of the capabilities of digital software and infrared photography requires some digital editing to achieve the final product. When it comes to corporate event photography, you may be processing hundreds of photographs from a conference photography commission in Edinburgh and you simply don’t have the time to do much editing, except for a few special photos. The other thing I have an issue with is replacing skies in photos. Photography is about capturing a special moment in time, showing the fantastic landscape for what it is and if you have to replace the sky with one that you took last week, well then I am sorry, this is not a photograph and nothing more than a digital creation. For portrait and wedding images, a certain amount of editing is acceptable but in my opinion, and I stress this is just my point of view, if you are altering the body shape or changing the face considerably, again I have a problem with this and it is not what photography is all about. This is not an anti technology or editing rant, but more of a keep it real message, to prevent what is essentially a form of cheating if taken too far. The good news is, you can always tell a good photo from an overly manipulated one.
I will leave you with an older photo rom the air show at East Fortune, which like a lot of events has sadly been cancelled this year due to Covid 19.
Until next time.
Kind Regards
Colin
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk
www.edinburghphotographer.com
Hi All
I thought as we are approaching an ease in the lockdown regulations that this would be a good moment to talk about the benefits of having more time to concentrate on personal photographic projects. As a professional fine art and corporate event photographer working in Edinburgh and around Scotland, my event photography work has been a bit non-existant recently, although there are signs things are starting to pick up.
One of the advantages of this situation is that you are forced to concentrate on something fairly local and this restriction can be a good thing, as you have to think in a more micro way, concetrating on the small details of the place you live. How many of us dont visit what is around us. I think I visited Edinburgh Castle once in my lifetime, yet it is the first thing a visitor to the city would do. My infrared work has been a saviour during this time and I have had the luxury of being able to concetrate on small photography projects. I have visited a lot of harbours recently and each harbour is different and has its own individual challenges and cretive possiblities. On a recent visit to Eyemouth Harbour, I noticed reflections onteh watter, casued by a combination of light and oil in the water, I wondered how this would look in infrared and the results are shown on my website, with a photo attached to this blog. Photography has proved good for my mental health during this time and also forced me to stop thinking of getting new equipment, as I have no money anyway, I have been aiming to use my existing gear even more effectively. I have a wedding photography commission due next month and some motor sport event photography in Scotland, but all this is still in a bit of doublt at the moment, so we shall wait and see. Until then, there will be plenty of time for infrared photography and special projects.
Until next time, stay safe.
Colin
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk
www.edinburghphotogrpaher.com
Hi All
One of the challenging things for professional corporate event photographers in Edinburgh and around Scotland during this lockdown has been how to best utilise our time without travelling as much as we would like. The irony is that with more time we would tend to travel to photograph different destinations but the lockdown has forced most of us to concentrate on the subjects close to home and try to see things from a different perspective. I managed to re-visit a few of my favourite local subjects, such as waves, the kittiwake chicks in Dunbar, bees and other local landmarks, but this time I tried to do it from a different perpective and often photographed subjects in infrared that I had previously never tackled before ie with the birds and insects for instance. There is also an opportunity to perfect a particular subject through repitition and to experiment when you wouldn't otherwise have the time, just keeping your eye in is good enough, so that when you return to some professional event or coprorate photography work, you are not rusty and you will be raring to go. I have also tried out a lot of new tricks and techniques with my software. given that we probably only use about 20% of the capability of our software, especially with a programme as extensive as Photoshop, we sould at least try new things to offer a different perspective to our clients. So keep the creative juices flowing and dont let this situation get you down. I know its easier said than done but we will hopefully come out of this as better photographers. I for one know I will have a more extensive library of fine art photography images once this is all over.
So, until next time.
Kind Regards
Colin
www.colinwrightphotography.co.uk
www.edinburghphotographer.com