Autumn Fitness Shoot in Hyde Park

A couple of weeks ago I got a call out of the blue from Hanan, a personal trainer working from central London.  We had a little chat about what she wanted (some shots in her home gym and maybe some shots in Hyde Park if the weather was good), and about how I worked.  The conversation ended with her saying she'd call me back to confirm.  Ten minutes later she called back, and the shoot was confirmed for that coming weekend.

I do like it when a shoot "just happens" so quickly.

We did half the shoot inside her gym, and the other half outside in the glorious late afternoon sun in Hyde Park.  The outside shots are both of our favourites.  The lighting, the autumn colours, were all just perfect.

I asked Hanan for a testimonial.  This is what she said.  "These are my thoughts on Michael as a photographer: reliable, friendly, chilled out, professional, serious about quality, genuinely cares about delivering the best service, and giving you the kind of photos you’re after.  Basically, I was really happy with the photos I ended up with.  Get in touch with him, you won’t regret it."

Hanan is currently working updating her website with her shiny new photos, when it's finished I'll update this post with a link. Until then, thank you Hanan for the great shoot, the cup of tea, the healthy biscuit and the salmon sandwich!

Walking night photoshoot in London

Something I've wanted to try for a long time is a night shoot, using available light (ie street lighting).  So while I was in London recently with some spare time in the evening I took the opportunity to invite a couple of my favourite models to shoot and made it happen.

After a long day of shooting at Hooks Gym in Royale Park I made my way over to the meeting point, the Park Plaza Westminster Hotel.  Silly me for thinking that traffic on a Sunday evening in London would be fairly light.  90 minutes and 10 miles later I finally arrived.  I hate being late, but on this occasion it worked out just fine, as both models were running later than I was.

My two models for the evening were Ina "talks alot" Gutowska (who I'd recently worked with on the Gaspari calendar shoot) and Emma Burrows, who I'd been shooting with 13 other girls at Hooks Gym for most of the day.  Just so you know who is who, Ina has dark hair, and Emma is the blonde.


Technical bit...  I used the Canon 5D Mark II with a 50mm f1.4 lens for the shoot.  I had it wide open the whole time at f1.4, and went from ISO 400 to 3200 throughout the shoot depending on the levels of light we could find.  As mentioned I only used available light "stolen" from street lamps, shop windows etc.

Trying to auto focus black on black was not easy, next time I think I'll bring along and use a torch to aim at the subject while I'm focussing the shot.  I tried this technique on my experimental self portraits a few days ago and it worked rather well.


I've never done a walking photoshoot of any kind before, but it was rather interesting.  We walked almost 3 miles and stopped to shoot at anywhere we found that we liked the look off, from alley ways, to a Christmas tree in Covent Garden. 

Ina & Emma were great, and thankfully it wasn't that cold (for a Novembers evening).


Most amusing part of the shoot was while we were shooting by the door that "James Bond" walks through on the film "Die Another Day".  He disappears down to an abandoned fictional underground station.  I'm not sure who got the bigger shock when the door opened, the guys coming out, or the girls!

London at night

If anyone suggests to me that I try and do day-time, and night-time photos of London in the same afternoon / evening again, I may have to hurt them.   Fatigue had very much set in by the time it was dark enough to do night photography, so the amount of effort put into these pictures was not nearly as much as it should have been.  Still some pleasing ish results.  It's a subject I plan on returning to throughout the winter months.

Things I learned from a London photowalk

Deciding to make the best of the fantastic late summers sun we had in England last week I booked a last minute bus ticket to London, so I could spend the day doing a photowalk.  I quickly became a we as my friend Jorge was to join me.

We ended up walking much further than either of us had planned, a total of just over 8 miles.  Our route took us from Victoria all the way to Westminster Abbey, via Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, St Pauls, and then across the Millennium Bridge back to Westminster via the South Bank.

During the day, after seeing a Facebook update that I was plodding the streets of London, another friend, Izuhbel joined us for a part of the walk.  Izuhbel tried to get us into and up 3 different buildings opposite "The Old Bailey" so we could have a better angle to photograph the "Lady Justice" statue on top, but maybe not surprisingly she failed in all 3 attempts.  We did all manage to get a mint humbug from the third building, so it wasn't a complete loss.

I learned quite a few new things during the day, including...

• the queens guards are all about 12
• the queens guards appear to have no apparent height standards
• ice cream vans have been banned around St Paul's Cathedral
• Trafalgar Square has no lighting (at all) at night
• walking 8 miles around London really makes my feet hurt
• there is a scarecrow alive and well in the centre of London
• a quarter of the lights on the London Eye are not working
• Waterloo foot bridge moves and is unsuitable for taking long exposure images
• London police officers, even the ones with semi automatic weapons, are quite happy for you to take their photo
• its possible for someone to identify a National Express coach type from a poorly taken photo of the interior at night
• scaffolding is a good business to be in right now
• taking a long exposure night photo of the houses of parliament that includes any detail in the clock face is extremely difficult
• the 15 seconds maximum exposure time of the canon g12 is not nearly long enough
• National Express coaches have an uncomfortably little amount of leg room

And now for a few of my favourite photos from the day time part of our trek.  Night photos to follow later in the week.

5 minutes of The London Eye

Just a short, kind of pointless video of The London Eye.   In real time 5 minutes went by...

London from up high

Other than the London Eye and maybe the Monument (although compared to the new buildings around it its really not so high), I've never seen a view of London from "up high".

So when Lisa Carrodus offered to take me the Hilton on Park Lane and their bar on the 28th floor after our shoot I jumped at the chance.

Sadly due to stupid health and safety regulations you're no longer allowed out onto the open air balcony, which meant I had to shoot through the windows.

Tech Info: All photos taken with a Canon G12.



 

Business Portraits in London

On my recent trip up to London I had the pleasure of photographing businessman Sohail Khan.

This is my favourite photo of him.

For more information and to book a session on my next London Business Portrait day please follow this link - http://businessphotos2.eventbrite.com/

Shooting an Italian business woman in London

The other day while I was in London I asked my Italian friend Francesca if she'd be interested in shooting some "sexy business photos".  She was.  The following afternoon we found ourselves at a cold Canary Wharf.  It was just a couple of days after the attempted car bomb in New York's Time Square so they had stepped up security and we had to stop the car twice for them to look in the boot.

Canary Wharf is a perfect place for a modern business shoot - its clean and clinical, and at weekends fairly quiet.  My only concern had been that technically it's all private property so unlike shooting on a street in the City of London which is public land, I was aware of the fact that we might be asked to stop and move on.

As it happened, asides from a couple of curious Docklands Light Railway staff nobody appeared to give a damn, and we were left alone to do battle with the cold and the wind.

Francescas Italian style was great, and if that's how the average Italian business woman dresses then I think I want to do business in Italy!

I want to revisit this shoot in the near future and try it again under nicer conditions.  It was just a little too cold, a little too windy, and quite a lot too dark to get really optimal "stock library business images".

Night shots in London

It was a bitterly cold May evening in London.

Nothing much else to say about these photos, so I'm going to let them do the talking for me.

Enjoy.

Greenwich - the place where time begins

I've not been to Greenwich in years, until the other day that is.

I found a free parking spot at the top of the hill, waited for my friend Jorge to turn up and walked across the park and took a little look around The Greenwich Observatory which was also free.  Bonus!

I don't really have much to say about the photos, other than the fact I've thrown a couple of HDR ones into the mix.

Enjoy.

Business Portraits in the City of London

Meet my latest client, Suraj Sodha.  He's also currently my favourite client because he bought a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the shoot with him.

We did the photoshoot on a Sunday next to the the Majors building by Tower Bridge.   Ws had to fight our way through the hundreds of tourists, but it was better than shooting on a week day and having to contend with the business people as well.

A client that knows what they want is good, makes my job so much easier.  The shoot was done in 20 minutes, and my doughnut eating client was so happy he had this to say...

"I highly recommend Michel Palmer for any professional photos that you need, whether it be business portraits or wedding photography. I recently had some business portraits done by Michael and am very pleased with the results. Michael was able to deliver exactly what I wanted from of the pictures using his unique style of photography which is fantastic. I will definitely be using Michael Palmer Photography again in the future, and encourage anyone to have a look at his portfolio of great pictures."