I’ve put the shots from the fund-raising photoshoot for the Breastfeeding Network on my old photo website at: www.neesam.com/photography

Only those who have the password will be able to view the photos, so if you want access, you’ll need to email me for the password. You can do so via the email address on my business card or via the website, an email address is on the front page of the site.

When you get to the above website, you’ll see a link under the main index links on the left side of the page "BfN Baby Photoshoot".

Any problems, please email me or ring Jane

I spent the afternoon photographing babies today.

My wife ran her fund-raising afternoon at her favourite beauty salon locally. She raises funds for the Breastfeeding Network to assist with her voluntary work as a breastfeeding supporter assisting local mums. The idea was that women who have used Jane’s breastfeeding drop-in could turn up & have a beauty treatment & spend some money on items for sale some of which would boost funds. Most people attending brought their children who ranged from 10 weeks to about 7 or 8 years old.

I set up my studio equipment in one corner of the room. I ended up taking nearly 600 shots, mostly of babies. It was fun but blimey, it was tiring!

I took the shots, loaded them onto a laptop via Lightroom & let the mums view the shots & order any copies they wanted. All money raised from the event goes straight to the BfN. I could really have done with an assistant to load the shots off the memory cards & then show people how to view them, & take orders, something to bare in mind the next time I do something similar. By the end of the day I was shattered, but it was great fun.

Several mums asked whether the shots would be available online, so I agreed to put them on a website for them to view. If you are one of the mums hoping to see your photos, please check back for instructions on how to access them, as soon as I can load them onto the website, I’ll put the link on this blog but you will need to email me for password details as most shots will be available to the parents only. I will put a few select ones up on this blog later.

It was really great to hear some of the comments whilst the mums were reviewing the photos on the laptop & even better to get a couple of enquiries for further work (which I’m happy to undertake where possible!!)

I posted previously about contacting my MP regarding rights of photographers in public. 

I got a reply last week, well not exactly from my MP but from his secretary.

Basically, I wrote regarding the fact that there appears to be a current of attitude against photographers being allowed to take photos in public places & cases of us being stopped, detained, searched, even having memory cards seized or being told to delete shots. I’m concerned about us having our right to take photos infringed & also about the fact that some police officers do not know the law on photography.

My MP’s secretary says that she has immediately taken up the points I’ve raised with the Home Office & my MP will be in touch with me as soon has he has received a ministerial response. She also kindly enclosed several copies of documents sourced by a parliamentary researcher on the subject. These included details of Austin Mitchell’s Early Day Motion, details of the e-petition on the government’s website & details on the law of photography in public places.

I’ll await his full response with interest.

Watch this space!

I got volunteered by my wife to take some baby photos. She is a volunteer with the Breastfeeding Network & was holding a fund-raising day. I got tasked to set up a studio & photograph babies.

By way of practise we arranged for a neighbour’s daughter to bring her 8-month old round to the house where I set up my studio equipment in the front room.

My system consists of a background setup which includes a stand set which holds a 3 metre pole from which you can hang backgrounds. It came with 3M x 6M sheets in black & white. I have two 150 watt studio lights & they were rigged with softboxes. Exposure measurements were taken with my Sekonic Flash Meter.

Baby Lara was a star performer & managed to pose for 45 minutes before getting fed up, which gave me a great opportunity to practice. I was quite pleased with the results.

I currently have the Sigma EF-500 DG Super flashgun. For diffusing I bought one of the Stofen Omnibounce flash difffusers which is a small white plastic cup which fits over the front of the flashgun. Unfortunately, last time I used it out & about at a music festival it appears to have slipped off the flashgun & I’ve not seen it since.

I tried to get a new one at my local photography shop, they said they’d ring me when one came in, but they never did.

I had a ‘flash’ of inspiration & decided to make my own.

In order to make a diffuser like this you’ll need the following:

• 2 pint plastic milk bottle
• 8-10 inches of velcro
• small piece of stiff card
• 8" sq tin foil 

This is what I used to make my diffuser, a 2 pint milk bottle. I don’t drink milk so I don’t know whether it’s the same for all milk bottles but this one came from Morrisons, it has a handy ridge around the handle end which I’ve outlined in black pen in the picture. Using this ridge as a guide I cut around the ridge with a scalpel & discarded the lid/handle end. This leaves a scoop-type end to the plastic which is the end that goes over the flash head.

In order to fix the diffuser to the flashgun I’ve fixed some velcro around the carton. I bought 1M strips of sticky-backed velcro in my local branch of Wilkinsons. It cost 99p.

I’ve used one longer strip of the hook side of velcro & stuck that the the outside of the carton. I then used 2 shorter strips of the eye side of velcro & stuck those to each end of the hook sections, fixing them to the inside of the carton. 

As an addition to the diffuser I have an optional reflector which I can fit inside the diffuser if I want some extra light. I fix this with an additional piece of velcro just inside the main part of the carton, you can see it in this next shot, it’s white velcro in this shot.

Next I made the reflector which fits inside the diffuser for extra oomph. I made this with some cut offs of mounting board, but any card will do. I measured out the rough area inside the diffuser. I made the back plate & top plate which are the same width & then added two side panels which are about an inch wide. I stuck them together with tape to form the shape you can see in the photo & then covered it with tin foil from the kitchen, fixing it down with double-sided selotape. I added some Velcro to the back of it to hold it in place when it’s inside the diffuser.

Here you can see the refelctor & how it fits inside.

Once the build is finsihed you can then fit it to the flashgun:

This is the completed article. It gives a nice height above the camera. You can use it in either portrait or landscape mode, but if you use it in portrait mode the diffuser has to be fitted to the thinner edge of the flashgun to enable the flashgun to be swivelled. The downside is that the light then comes from slightly off centre unlike in normal landscape mode.

So that’s it, total time to make is under half an hour & the total cost was about 30p.

So what results does it give?

Well, the idea of any diffuser is to diffuse the sharp harsh light of the flashgun to give a more pleasing effect, this is especially important for people & portrait shots. We don’t generally want harsh shadows on skin.

Unfortunately, as I lost my Stofen, I can’t do some test shots to compare them like for like but I think it would probably compare quite favourably, considering I could make 50 milk bottle diffusers for the same price as a Stofen.

 Here are the test shots I did. All shots were taken on manual settings in RAW. They have not had any enhancements other than slight sharpening in Lightroom, the exposure & colours were not changed at all.

In each set the first shot is straight flash, second is with the diffuser without the reflector fitted & the third is with the reflector fitted. All taken with Canon 20D & Canon 50mm 1.8 Mk II

1/250 f5

1/125 f5

1/125 f2

Well, I hope you’ll agree the 30p Milk Carton Diffuser seems to make a pretty good job as a flash attachment.

If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements, please let me know.

I mentioned on my post about going to the Focus on Imaging show in Birmingham, that I bought a mount cutter for framing prints. It arrived a week or so after the show & I’ve used to to make help frame 4 prints.

Given the tens of thousands of photographs I’ve taken, it’s something of a surprise that I have very few on display in the house. There is one of the kids walking in the woods, taken about 5 years ago which has been in the hallway for a few years. There are one or 2 holiday snaps in small frames dotted about the house but nothing else on the wall.

I did have some military aircraft shots at the bottom of the stairs but a burst water tank leaking through the ceiling onto them ruined them, they were never replaced.

I bought the cutter in an effort to make sure I framed some shots to put them on the wall. And maybe to prepare some other shots for display elsewhere, should the opportunity arise.

So I bought the Longridge Duo Plus system bevel mount cutter. It’s a bit of a mouthful for a system which basically cuts out holes in mounting board. So this is the kit, it’s quite large as you can see on my kitchen table. I went for the Duo Plus - there are several sizes, this is a medium, you can get smaller, this one should take A0 card.

The kit comes with everything you need to make perfect beveled cuts in mounting board. And consists of: 

• The cutting plate & rail
• straight cutter
• beveled cutter (which can be used left or right-handed)
• spare blades
• spare blade holder for beveled cutter
• screwdriver
• pencil & marking out tool
• tape measure
• tutorial DVD

My project was to take some portrait photos of my daughters, print them out & frame them for display on the wall. I took the shots a few weeks ago & selected 3 between us which we liked. I printed them at A4 on the home printer, although I’ll probably get Photobox to print out more permanent prints & replace them later.

I got some frames from the hobby superstore down the A1M & found some 300mm by 400mm which happened to be in a sale. The next shot shows what I was working with.

Using the cutter didn’t take long getting used to at all. I’d seen the demo at the Focus show as one of the sales team gave me a personal run-through of how to use it. I also watched the DVD which gives you the techniques required to get perfect square beveled cuts. 

I got some mounting card from the local art shop in town, I think it cost about £2.95 for a sheet & they have a wide selection of colours. I bought 3 colours to run my first tests.

I measured out a 400mm section from 2 contrasting coloured card sheets & cut them with the straight cutter, it’s just like running a guilotine up the silver guide rail & performs a perfect sharp cut, I then trimmed them down so I had 2 sheets each 400mm by 300mm to fit the frames I’d bought.

You then turn the card over, coloured face down, and mark out your frame using the supplied marking tool. You then slide the card under the rail & butt it up against a stop so it doesn’t slide off away from you. Then you put the bevelled cutter on the rail and slide it to the exact position where your line meets the cut out ‘V’, fix a plastic stop, move the cutter to the other end of the line & fix the other stop.

The blade is on a swivel, you push it down into the card & slide it from one stop to the other, thus getting a perfectly bevelled & straight cut. You then switch the card round 180 degrees and do the same for the other side. You then have to adjust the stops to do the last 2 sides. Provided the blade is set to the correct depth, you get a perfect cut-out every time. Marvellous!

So after doing both mattes, making sure the inner one has a smaller aperture than the outer one, you’re ready to mount your photo.

This is the finished product after cutting.

I’m really pleased with my new mount-cutter. They’re not cheap but they do a brilliant job. I just need to get more prints sorted out. The problem will be finding the wall-space now that I can produce nice bevelled frames.

You can find more information about the Longridge Bevel Cutters at their website: http://www.longridge.co.uk

There appears to be a lot of confusion about the rights of photographers when taking pictures in public places.

If you’ve wondered about this, you might want to take a look at the following video.

A few weeks ago I popped up to Radwell Church.

As it happened it was a Sunday afternoon and I was working on the computer when we had a power cut. It turned out there were workmen up the road & the power was going to be off for a couple of hours. I took the opportunity to grab the camera & drive up to Radwell. I’ve visited Radwell Lake many times over the years, mostly with the kids to feed the ducks. This time I went on my own specifically to grab some shots.

I ended up at the church. I’d taken the tripod specifically to do some HDR shots.

HDR shots involve taking several different shots at varying exposures & then combining them later on the computer using special software. In this case the software is Photomatix.

For all shots on this entry I took 5 photographs which varied from 2 stops under-exposed to 2 stops over-exposed. I then saved them as JPGs in Lightroom. I then imported them into Photomatix 2.4 & the software more or less does the rest. here are a few settings & tweaks which you adjust to your taste and in the end it spits out a finished scene which has a High Dynamic range of tones.

You can download a trial copy of Photomatix at: www.hdrsoft.com