Focus on Imaging is the largest photographic show in the UK & is held at the NEC in Birmingham. This is the third year I’ve attended.

Talk about being a kid in a chocolate shop, you can find everything at Focus. I bought my Elinchroms last year. This year I had to reign in the spedning as I’d only got the 1D MkIV a few weeks earlier, so major acquisitions were out of the question.

The other great thing about Focus is all the free talks & seminars. You can pick up so much info. I watched a couple on the Flash Centre’s stand, one by a guy on ‘Strobist’ type photography, basically, photography with flashguns. Then there was another by someone who is using a 5D MkII for video production. Another good talk was at the PhotoTraining4U stand on black & white portraiture & how to make money from it. I was quite impressed with their seminars that I later joined their training website.

Several stands give you the opportunity to photograph some models. Lastolite had the ever-gorgeous Katy Green. I popped by their stand in the morning & the afternoon & took my chance to grab a few shots. Looking at them I doubt you’d be able to tell I was just standing in the crowdline waiting for her to look into my lens. The shots are taken with the ambient light on my 1D MkIV with 70-200 f2.8 lens.

I walked away from the show with another Pocket Wizard, a white shoot-through umbrella & a Lastolite Ezybox & stand for my flashgun.

In needed to take my 600mm lens back to Canon in January as I’d lost the little nut which holds the collar on. The service centre is just down the road in Elstree.

On the way back I stopped off at Tyttenhangar Gravel Pits to make sure the lens was working OK. There wasn’t any wildlife about due to the snow, so I tested it on the local flora.

The little white dots you can see are snow flakes, not sensor dust!

In December I was tasked to cover a 5oth Birthday party. The brief was simply to take photos of the guests as they arrived & capture some shots during the evening.

I used the 5D MkII with the 24-105 f4 L lens & a Canon EF 580II flashgun. Additionally, as a light-softening measure I used a Gary Fong Lightsphere attached to the top of the flashgun.

The following were taken at the wider end of the lens with the camera held up in the air & poitning downwards, a bit hit & miss.

I took some shots hand-held but had to up the ISO levels, so you can see more noise in these shots.

New Year’s Eve saw a ‘blue moon’. The name has nothing to do with the colour of the moon but is the origin of the phrase ‘one in a blue moon’ to mean a rare event because the blue moon only occurs once every 2 to 3 years & is the 13th full moon in a twelve month period.

Usually there are 12 full moons a year, but as the calendar year includes an extra 11 days over & above the usual 28-day cycle for full moons, these accumulate & mean an extra blue moon every few years.

The following shots were taken around 2.30am on the First of January 2010 & were done on the 5D MkII with the 600mm prime, additionally I stuck on the 2x & the 1.4x converters for a total focal length of 1680mm. The shots were processed slightly differently but are only slightly cropped from the originals.

I’ve not taken any photos for about three weeks now. It’s the longest time this year that I’ve not done any photography. The reason is very simple; I’ve been too busy.

I’m currently sorting out a new shed. Since we started a family I’ve been shoved out to the bottom of the garden in an 8 by 6 shed. It’s served me well for about 18 years. I have my computer & do all my photo processing & documenting down there.

I decided the time was right for a new shed. One with much more space, so I had one twice the size of the old one delivered a couple of weeks ago. It will have more space & a larger desk which will be home to my Wacom A3 graphics tablet. I’m using all my spare time currently re-wiring it, painting, insulating & generally sorting it out.

I’ve also not had the time to post other work done this year which is sitting on my laptoip ready to be uploaded to the blog.

I hope it doesn’t take too much longer as I’m itching to get back out there with the camera.

Three weeks without shooting any pics is way too long.

You might be forgiven for thinking that all I do is take American Football shots. It’s just that the last few free weekends I’ve managed to get to some matches.

This isn’t the case, last weekend I took 4,500 photos at the Royal International Airshow Tattoo down in Fairford; more of that to follow.

Meanwhile, here’s some photos more in the reportage style. A few weeks ago I received a telephone call around midnight from the local police. They’d found my beloved old Ford Fiesta just up the road from us. Some youths had stolen it from the front of our house, driven it no more than a third of a mile & burned it out at the side of the road.

These are photos I’d much rather never have taken.

When I got there the fire brigade were still putting it out. I spoke to the police officer who was there who took some details & while we waited for the garage I popped home to grab the camera & flashgun.

I got the car from my father-in-law when he decided he was too old to drive. We ran it for a few years & it was just waiting for my daughter to pass her test so she could be the third generation in the family to take it on.

She passed her test the week after the car fire. We got £300 from the insurance.

Meet Tess, the new member of our family & latest photographic model.

Tess is our Border Collie pup. We got her from Heathlands Animal Sanctuary near Royston. They specialise in rescuing border collies from Ireland. We got her when she was 9 weeks old. She’s now 16 weeks.

As you can see from these shots, Tess presents a bit of a problem exposure-wise. With half her face in white & half in black it’s quite difficult to get a reasonable exposure which shows detail in both blacks & whites. This type of subject is often a photographer’s nightmare; if you expose for the blacks the whites are blown out & if you expose for the whites the detail is lost in the blacks. Add to this taking a picture of a mainly black dog in the snow we had a few weeks back & it’s enough to test any photographer.

We’re all enjoying the challenges & joys of owning a dog made better by the fact that Tess is so good; we’ve had very few accidents in the house, have not lost any furniture, shoes or other odds & ends to chewing & she is so obedient.

They say border collies are intelligent dogs & Tess is a fine example of that.

Sadly, due to a teenager-related incident, Tess currently has two broken bones in her front left foot & is now strapped up for a month. The day after she came back from the vets she learned how to walk on three legs holding her poorly leg in the air. The day after that she learned how to run on three legs.

I expect there will be quite a few shots of Tess over the next few years.

A good end to 2008 when the February issue of DSLR User Magazine dropped through my door on New Year’s Eve; I was featured in the User Profile section of the magazine!

This is a small, regular section of the mag which spotlights two of the regular magazine website users. It basically gives some info about the member & gets them to select one of their favourite photos which is published with the article. I chose one of the shots taken in Cambridge a couple of years ago of the four phoneboxes in the market square.

It’s a shame they managed to spell my name two different ways within two lines though.

So that’s the third time in 2008 I’ve been published in that particular magazine. Not bad, eh? Maybe I should make my New Year’s Resolution something to do with getting some shots published in some of the other mags too.

Exactly two weeks ago I suffered a problem with my neck/shoulder. I described it as a trapped nerve which sent pain from my neck into my shoulder & down my arm. I’m not sure how I did it but it may have had something to do with sitting awkwardly for prolonged periods at a time.

Being a bloke, I didn’t do anything about it for a week hoping it would get better on its own. It didn’t. I’ve now been to the osteopath 3 times and forked out the best part of £100 and it’s no better than it was two weeks ago. Apparently, it’s called apophysitis & it may take some time to clear up. Yesterday I had some acupuncture-type treatment.

To top it all I started to develop a cold-type cough yesterday & every single bloody time I cough it sends a shock of pain down out the side of my neck, down my shoulder & into my arm. Thanks a bunch!

What’s this got to do with photography. Well I’ve not been able to pick the camera up, much less take any photos with it which is so annoying since I actually have time right now & for the next few weeks to do as much photography as I want.

Talk about Sod’s Law!

Welcome to anyone who is visiting my blog as a result of all the business cards & free pens which I gave out this week! (you know who you are, and so do I!)

The least you can do – in return for the pens & cakes – is to add a comment or two to some of my posts!!

Now that I have some more time on my hands, I’ll be checking!