"July" by Kumarachi...

Released yesterday  Sleep Less Records-Liverpool, available from Beatport

EP photographic design by Spencer Cameron Photography Limited

"July" by Kumarachi

Busy weekend!

It's certainly been a busy weekend. We have been working on post-production of a recent wedding shoot, and on Saturday morning Ian travelled down to Hare Lane in Chester to grab some shots of the Chester Rugby Union Football Club pre-season training, which should soon be appearing on their website as a taster of what's to come!

More to follow!

So it's been a while...but we are back!

So...it's been a busy couple of weeks! We have upgraded our main post-production system to Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6. Both are absolutely fantastic tools, and the Lightroom especially is a massive improvement on the Version 3 we previously used. Good to see CS6 utilising some of the improvements too, and the two programs sit very well together.

Curt (AKA MC SAS) at Sleep Less Studio, Liverpool

On the creative front, we have been working with Curt and Dan at Sleep Less Studios/ Sleep Less Records on some promotional work for their website. This is a set up going places and making waves on the music production front, and definitely a name to watch out for.

We are also working on some promotional work for The Akalites, another name that is currently on everyone's lips at the moment. Their new track is out soon, and Ian attended the video shoot to grab some stills for promo/ press purposes. It was hard work, massive fun and the talent and team spirit on show was brilliant to watch and be a part of. Already making waves on the music scene, The Akalites are destined for a MASSIVE 2013!  The images (and video) are currently in post-production, so here's a taster of their first video release for the track "Philosophy". We will update with some images in the near future.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that we will be the official photographers for Chester Rugby Union Football Club for the 2012/2013 season. Watch out for updates, images and match reports coming soon!

Chester Rugby Union Football Club

Sleep Less Studios
The Akalites
Chester RUFC

The blog is back from its travels after a nice holiday away, and ready for business again. Starting tomorrow we will be charting our adventures in the world of photography and business.
Watch this space!

Ami Shoot 13/10/10

 Decided to make the last of the warm autumn weather to do a very impromptu photoshoot with Ami. This was spur of the moment, minimal preparation stuff, with just the walkaround lens on the Eos 50D and a monopod for company. We ended up down at the Boat Museum again, with the industrial skyscape of Shells Stanlow Oil Refinery and The Manchester Ship Canal as backdrops. The late-ish afternoon light proved to be quite tricky in terms of a balanced exposure, but with literally about twenty minutes, it was a case of shoot and see. I wanted quite a warm look to the shots, as Ami's skin is very pale and can wash out, but in the end came to like the cross-processed look of the images once they had been balanced up and corrected in lightroom. Curves in Photoshop proved to be perfect for this. Ami made life easy for me as she always seems  to photograph well in a variety of conditions, and her recently coloured hair provided the impact I was looking for in the shots. It was good just to jump in the car and shoot with the bare minimum of kit and planning!

Bee still for a second...!



 I was just messing round with high shutter speeds on the 50D when I shot these two shots. Except it wasn't two shots, it was more like fifty! The 50D only has nine focus points (compared to 51 on the equivalent Nikon digital SLRS) and the focussing tends to be more reliable when only the centre point is selected. Great for a landscape or if your subject is large in the viewfinder. Not so great when your subject is an inch long at best and flits from flower to flower seemingly at random, and at surprisingly high speed. The bees were collecting nectar (the sacs are just visible on one of the shots) and their work rate would put the South Koreans to shame (they have the longest and toughest working weeks in the industralised world apparently). Fortunately I had all the time in the world, being on holiday, and just sat with the camera on a monopod and waited and shot. After a while, I noticed some patterns in the way the bees flew, and realised that indeed they had "favourite" flowers that they visited, and their flights became more predictable.The hit rate for keepers improved. Wildlife photography is as much understanding the subject as technique or kit, probably more so. I had hoped to see something more suggestive of Scotland whilst on holiday, a golden eagle, a whale perhaps, even a stag. On this occasion my luck deserted me. But somehow I found the bees just as evocative and fascinating. I just don't like getting too close to them...!

The Obsession With Sharpness

or "pixel peeping". Quite frankly I think the digital era has been a two-edged sword, giving the photographer unprecedented flexibility and scope for expression, but at the same time sweeping them up in a seemingly never-ending obsession with resolution, pixel counts and sharpness. Canon in particular seem hell bent on squeezing as many pixels as possible onto unsuitably small CMOS chips. The trade off is of course increased picture noise, something I noticed when one of our EOS 40D's was upgraded to a 50D. With their announcement of a 120 megapixel CMOS recently, you have to wonder where the race will end.

© Spencer Cameron Photography 2010

It seems to be a brave photographer nowadays who chooses to ignore the "rules" and deliberately de-focusses or unsharpens for artistic effect. The end result of such an image stands out amongst the sea of pin-sharp and undoubtedly digital images, and oned wonders whether this is one of the factors in a small resurgence in traditional film for fine art photography. It is telling that one looks at the work of masters like Cartier-Bresson, Capa or McCullen and sees past the image blur, less than perfect exposure and lack of sharpness in certain images. And yet such images shot on a digital SLR would be subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism for their apparent technical "failings". Maybe it's time to go back to basics, stop worrying about the technology and concentrate again on making images that are appreciated because of the imperfections and not inspite of them...