Short Film and Personal Work

I like to keep my creativity topped up by taking on various personal projects with both stills and video and currently I'm working on a short film which I've written and I'm taking some stills at the lovely Hook Norton Brewery for my personal portfolio.

Me and Cat in action in my short film

Writing the film has been great fun and although I'm not Clint Eastwood I'm enjoying trying to act (I've only got a small part to play!) and direct it too.

I'm shooting the film in 1080 rather than 4K as I've decided to use my Canon C100 because it is such a lovely camera to shoot with. I can't see Amazon snapping it up to show on 4K TV's anyway!.

The Hook Norton Brewery project is great fun too and I'm hoping to head back next week to finish off photographing the brewing process and to capture the Drey horses delivering the beer to the local pub which is a lovely tradition.

I'll post a set of pictures from the Brewey once they have been signed off by the marketing team there but they are looking good so far.

On a more commercial note we are now offering a great value startup social media package which consists of a day shooting video and stills for the great all in price of £700 plus VAT and travel.

We will shoot some video interviews with the business owner, some nice clean headshot portraits and some pack shots of their products if needed. This will give the customer a set of professionally created content to populate their social media for a few weeks.

Please let know if this is of interest to you or to someone you know.

Have a great weekend!

Dave

Saturday studio time

Hi Everyone

After a busy week taking photographs and shooting video there's nothing I enjoy more at the weekend than...a fun photoshoot in the studio.

Studio Shot 

This might sound like a busman's holiday but it give me a chance to try different lighting set ups and fresh ideas in a non commercial environment. Without the pressure of a client brief it's much easier to relax and play with light and setups.

I shoot two or three personal projects each month too to make sure I keep my ideas to photography fresh and to remind myself why I became a photographer all those years ago - basically because I love taking pictures.

Aston Martin taken with film

For my weekend shoots I still use film and have a Pentax 67 outfit, a Rolleiflex T and some Canon FD and Olympus OM cameras. I also love to buy old cameras from junk shops and try to get some quirky pictures from them.

Screen grab from my short film

Today I've been shooting with an old 1970's Petri rangefinder camera with some Ilford XP2 film and I'm quite pleased with the results. I bought this camera for £25 from an antique shop in Bletchley.

Personal project shot with medium format film

I've also recently written a short film and I've started to shoot this too - I'll post it here once it's finished.

Thanks for checking in on my blog again and please do ask me if you have any questions about photography be it film or digital.

Extreme running at the Swanbourne Endeavour for a great cause!

We like to take on one charity shoot a month and every year we cover the fabulous Swanbourne Endeavour extreme running event which raises thousands of pounds for great causes like Help For Heroes.
David our running mad MD loves to photograph this and gets in very close to the action to the degree of getting into the water to capture the best images.
It's a tough ask for the camera kit but the Fuji system stands up well and delivers great results and doesn't suffer from the muddy water that soon covers it!.
If you would like an event like this photographed or captured on video then get in touch with us.

Food Glorious Food

We've been very busy with food photography lately and we have been taking pictures for British Bakels who make ingredients for many high street supermarket bakeries.

We love visiting their bakery centre as the smell of the bread is so lovely and we always get treated so well and have lots of samples to eat whilst we are there.

We also took some pictures for a new start up in Bicester called Mi Burger. These guys make super tasty burgers all using locally sourced meat and ingredients. The burgers are really delicious and I think these guys may well be onto a winning formula.

Here's a few pictures from these shoots

Competition Success and Photography Workshops

Screen grab from the Colour Awards

I usually enter two competitions each year - the Spider Awards for black and white photography and The International Colour Awards. I've had some good success with images being nominated and one honourable mention. The International Colour Awards have just listed the winners and this time both my pictures have received an honourable mention so I am really pleased.
Here's a link to the website https://www.colorawards.com/gallery/

A shot from the recent workshop of one of our students

The commercial photography work has been steady since Christmas even though this is usually a quiet time of year for us. As out work is 99% business to business we always have a slight down time in February and March as our clients are coming to the end of their financial year. Once the new marketing budgets are in place from April 1st we get very busy again.

As I've had time I have started a photography workshop side to the business and we had the first workshop a couple of weeks ago. I base these at the lovely Devere Horwood Estate and we have a mix of theory and practical photography out in the gardens. The workshop went really well and all the students gave me really good feedback which was fab.

I have two more planned in the coming couple of months and you can book in here :-

https://www.davidthrowerphotography.co.uk/book-online

Another shot from the recent workshop of one of our students

Please do spread the word about the workshops as they do offer great value for money at £95 each for the basics of photography course which includes a hot three course lunch and is limited to just 4 people. This means I can spend time with everyone and tailor the course to each person.

The studio basics course is £125 and the extra fee is to cover the cost of a model.

Medical Detection Dogs

It was a lovely clear but cold day yesterday and perfect winter light for some drone shots. I had promised my friends at the Medical Detection Dogs (a wonderful charity that I volunteer for as a photographer) some drone shots of the work in progress of their new building so I popped along with the Phantom 4 Pro and took some shots.

Medical Detection Dogs HQ

 After the drone shots we took each of the wonderful dogs out into the garden for a quick portrait shoot so there is a good stock of images for when each dog wins the "dog of the week" competition!.

All the dogs have loving foster homes and are dropped off to the centre each day (3-4 days per week so days off too) to do their amazing work of sniffing out cancer in urine samples.

Please visit the website for more information on this really great charity - https://www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk/

Bumper 

I love all the dogs but I do have a big soft spot for Bumper - he is a big cuddly Golden Retriever and apparently his deep gold colour if the original colouring for the breed although the light gold is the modern favourite and the most common.

Charity Work and Aerial Photography

Tony and Jane Henman

It's always good to put something back and we represent several charities here at Redshift Photography and this month I have been busy with three of them. I did a shoot for the Freemasons to promote their grant giving work last week when I photographed two senior guys from the Bucks Province at Willen Hospice alongside one of the lovely nurses that work there. The Masons had donated £3,000 to buy a special chair which enables the patients so lay back or sit upright via a motor in the chair itself.

Ride High and the Freemasons

Willen Hospice Chair Donation

Later in the week I took some pictures at Ride High in Milton Keynes which is a splendid charity that helps young people with confidence issues due to bullying or learning difficulties to build their self esteem by learning to ride. Many of the young people make a very close bond with the horses and they gain a tremendous amount from the time they spend at the centre.



Finally today I photographed Tim Henman's Mum and Dad at Medical Detection Dogs in Gt Horwood as they were visiting the centre and had helped to organise a donation of tennis balls for the dogs to play with from the ATP tennis circuit.

Tomorrow I have a shoot with some Chinese diplomats and next week I'm shooting food at a gourmet burger bar - plenty of variety!.

Food Photography and Trains in Norwich

British Bakels

We had a very enjoyable day photographing cakes and bread at the British Bakels baking center in Bicester. I used three Godox AD180 flashes with a special high speed flash trigger to capture the action as the flour and chocolate toppings were added. Toni my colleague kept a keen eye on the compositions spotting any background clutter that I might have missed through the viewfinder and helped to move the lighting around. The shoot lasted around 6 hours with a break for a lovely lunch kindly supplied by the guys from Bakels and the day was a great success. We are currently post processing the final selected images but I have dropped in a couple of my personal favourites here.

Crown Point Depot

I also photographed Crown Point railway depot this week which was a treat for me as I love trains (I am not a spotter by the way!) and the focus of the shoot was the new LED lighting supplied by UK lighting manufacturer Carbon8 http://carbon8lighting.co.uk/ who manufacture a range of industrial lighting products. The shoot was great fun and I even managed to get a shot on top of a scaffolding overlooking the engines in the repair shed.

Nest week we have some street lighting to photograph in Oxford and we are doing a food shoot for an artisan bakery so more nice food shots to come!.

Bicester Scramble Car Meet

We are very luck to have had quite a few bookings for photography and video sincec we came back after the Christmas break so the new few weeks are looking very busy. I might have a couple of bookings for the drone too.

E Type Jaguar Rolleiflex T

In the meantime I've been out every day shooting medium format film with my Hasselblad 500C and Rolleiflex T cameras. I love Ilford HP5 Plus and FP4 for medium format and I process this at home. I don't have a full darkroom so develop the film using a darkbag to get it onto the spirals and then once the film is dry I photograph the negatives on a light box and use Photoshop to convert them to positive images. I find this to be a good compromise and a lot faster than using a flatbed scanner.

Porsche 911 Hasselblad 500C

I also have a Pentax 67 which I tend to use for studio work as it's so big and heavy but it is a lovely camera too. The Hasselblad is lovely but a little temperamental at times and occasionally jams and you have to remember to shoot it carefully and to follow a routine of winding on, darkslide out and firing the shutter without trying to remove the lens or back if the darkslide isn't in place and the shutter is wound on. Of them all the Rolleiflex is the easiest to use. It's light and easy to load and unload and the fixed 75mm Zeiss lens provides beautiful images.

I urge you all to shoot film. If you don't have a film camera you can still get bargains online (especially 35mm kit) but prices are on the increase as film makes a comeback.

I'm running another photography workshop in March (max 6 places) and I still have three places left so please get in touch if you would like to come along.

Jaguar XJ220 Rolleiflex T

Ferrari Dino Hasselblad 500C

The Bicester car scramble is a fab event which happens every 3 months at the very cool Bicester Heritage Aerodrome. It's only a few quid to get in and the cars on show are fab. There were literally hundreds of classic cars there and I took my own lovely Jaguar XJ6 along too. It's a great opportunity to photograph some very rare cars and there are plenty of great food and coffee stalls there too.

Here's a link to the website - http://bicesterheritage.co.uk/tickets/sunday-scramble-tickets/

Welcome back after Christmas!

Christmas flew past and here we are back at work again!.
We've already got a busy January with several booking in the diary and quite a few jobs about to be added too. A lot of our work comes in at the last minute but we have already got some dates in for February, March and April which is great news.

 We also had a busy December and I've included a couple of shots from one of my favourite shoots of the month - 111 Buckingham Palace Road in London. I photographed this same interior a few years ago and it was interesting to go back and photograph it again after an extensive refurbishment. The lighting has been very skillfully designed by Hoare Lea Lighting and the colour temperature over the escalators is a warm 3000K whilst the lighting in the main reception area is a cooler 4000K to accentuate the different areas.

I always think shots like these need a careful mix of balance and perspective. When we photography interiors we use tilt shift lenses to keep the walls of the buildings straight and vertical. I often see wide angle interior shots where the camera has been tilted up resulting in converging verticals which makes the space look distorted. I like to include blurred people movement too if at all possible to give a sense of scale to the interior and a human element to the pictures. It's a fact that we are all attracted to images that have people in rather than empty spaces.

It's time for me to power up the drone again too as I haven't flown it for a few weeks. We have a booking in February for aerial photography so I need to get all the firmware updated and spend a couple of days taking some new portfolio shots. We have had a steadily increasing demand for the drone which is great news as I haven't really promoted that heavily.

Merry Christmas!

Hi Everyone

Fallen Tree Stockgrove Park

It's Christmas Eve and I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas!.

I've had a couple of days off already and took the opportunity to take my Hasselblad 500C out for a walk with my Son Harry at Stockgrove Park. I used Ilford HP5 Plus film which is rated at 400 ASA but can be pushed to 800 ASA if the light is poor.

I'll be shooting my Polaroid SLR 680 over the break too along with all my other film cameras. It's great to give the digital kit a break and have fun with film. I develop the film myself but I don't print as I don't have a darkroom. Instead I photograph the negatives with my Fuji XT-1 and 60mm Macro on a lightbox. This is much quicker than using a flatbed scanner and I think the quality is just as good.

I've got a busy January with the first commercial shoot in Manchester on 3rd and I think next year is going to be a busy one. I've also got an expedition to India to photograph in April which I am really looking forward to.

If you know anyone who has been given a digital camera for Christmas and who might like to learn the basics of photography then please let them know that my first workshop of 2018 is booked for Tuesday March 6th. It's a full day at the lovely De Vere Horwood Estate in Buckinghamshire and is great value at £95 inc breakfast and a full three course lunch. We'll cover all the basics of shutter speed and aperture and get everyone using their cameras in manual mode. This enables people to understand how their cameras work and helps them to get the most out of them. You can book online here - https://www.facebook.com/events/144948706161867/

Have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!.

Photography Workshop, Singing for Syria and Winslow Livestock Market

https://www.facebook.com/HandsUpFoundation/videos/1959626130978344/I ran my first photography workshop last week with a very keen and friendly group of aspiring photographers. I'll be running these regularly from next March and the first workshop is all based around teaching people to use their digital cameras in full manual mode. We run through all the basics of photography from ISO, aperture and shutter speed to white balance and composition.

I started my career 30 years ago working with manual film cameras and I still believe that learning these basics was a great starting point for me and I'm always happy to pass on this knowledge to people who are keen to learn how to work their DSLR without relying on the auto modes.

Getting ready for the judging

During the workshop I took a few snaps with my Pentax 67 medium format film camera and developed the film that evening. I'm still a big lover of film and developing you own is very easy and doesn't cost much at all!.

Winslow Livestock Market

On Monday I photographed the local livestock market in Winslow which I do every year and I give the pictures to the Winslow Facebook group and also to The Bell Hotel who sponsor the event. It's great to see the town so busy and vibrant. I took some shots this year with the Hasselblad and black and white film but most of them I took with my Fuji XT-1 with the superb Fuji 35mm f1.4 lens and also some with an old Canon fd 50mm lens adapted to my fuji.

We had a great time last Friday where the team and I filmed a flashmob at Marylebone Station for the Hands Up Foundation and Singing for Syria. We made the film for free as we thought it was a great cause and the film has been shared online thousands of times already. Here's the link to the film on Facebook :-
https://www.facebook.com/HandsUpFoundation/videos/1959626130978344/
It's always good to help out good causes and to put something back!.

Steelcase and Milwaukee

Last week was almost a record for Redshift in terms of work!. Toni my colleague photographed the Leeds Art Gallery, an office development called Thorpe Park in Yorkshire and also the Spire Hosptial in Nottingham. All three were interior shoots and then to round off her week Toni went to London on Friday to photograph a round table talk for Wildwood PR.

Blade product shot

Moody banner imge

Meanwhile I had a shoot for Steelcase at their showroom in Farringdon where I took some shots of their furniture, some pictures at an event and also some portraits of their guests which was great fun. I took over 30 portraits with my Godox two flash setup and left one camera there set up ready to shoot and used my second camera to photograph the event as it unfolded.

Range shot 

I had an early start on Thursday morning and caught the 7am train from Kings Cross to Newcastle for a two day shoot with Milwaukee Power Tools up on a site on the coast about an hour north of Newcastle. I love these shoots as we get through lots of different tools and the guys at Milwaukee are great to work with as I get a lot of creative license with the setups and lighting. Our model Stephen was cool to and easy to work with.

I shot some pictures directly into the bright winter sun using high speed flash with my Fuji and the results right out of the camera looked very moody as I overpowered the sun and filled in the model with the flash. This is a technique that I really enjoy using and the Godox flashes are great for this as they are light and portable with a compact rechargeable battery pack for each head making them easy to carry around on site. They also have enough power to overcome the sunlight when in HSS (high speed flash) mode when fired at 1/4000th of a second.

Hasselblad 500C

Even though I've spent most of my life in this business I still love cameras, particularly film cameras, and I added a Hasselblad 500C to my collection this week which I will be shooting with next week. It's a beautiful camera and I'm looking forward to running some Ilford FP-4 and HP-5 though it asap.

I still have my two Canon F1 cameras and some FD lenses too along with an EOS 50 which I bought from a junk shop with a lens for £12!. My Pentax 67 kit also gets used as much as possible and I've just acquired a Polaroid SLR 680 too which is great fun and the instant film packs are readily available again now.

Lux Live 2017

LED Rope at Lux Live

We've just spent the past three days working at Lux Live 2017 at the eXcel centre in London. Lux Live is a two day exhibition of commercial lighting manufacturers and features a range of guest speakers and seminars too. We started early on Wednesday and worked through the day covering the show for the organisers providing both video and stills photography. Thursday was a very long day as we left the hotel at 6.30am and started work at 8am and finished at the exhibition at 4pm then went straight to the Intercontinental Hotel at Docklands to cover the awards evening too. We finally wrapped at 1am and arrived back at our hotel at 2am this morning.

Architectural wall lights

 Quite a couple of days but we got to meet lots of our valued customers in the lighting industry and we love working for Ray, Miriam and the team from Lux Live as they are lovely people to work with and we get looked after really well.

We arrived back at HQ in Bletchley at midday and spent the afternoon backing up the pictures and video files and issuing the pictures via Dropbox.

Winners!

I'm doing a charity shoot tomorrow for the Soldiers of Oxford museum in Woodstock near Oxford and I'm looking forward to looking around and photographing the displays. I'll post a few pictures on the blog as soon as I get them processed.

Chloe Pentax 67 120 Roll Film

Fallen down barn Polaroid

I love to buy vintage cameras and classic cameras and I picked up a bargain last week on eBay where I scooped a Polaroid SLR 680 instant camera from the late 1980's. I love shooting all kinds of film from 35mm with my Canon F1's and medium format with my Pentax 67 system and now I get to shoot instant Polaroid film too!. The Polaroid brand has just been relaunched and the film packs are readily available in Jessops and other camera retailers in colour and black and white. It's not cheap at £19 for 8 sheets of film but the results are good and the cost makes you think about making each picture count. The same can be said for the big Pentax 67 camera that I use as a roll of 120 film is £6.99 and it costs £6 to develop each roll too. The 67 format only gives 8 pictures per roll so again you have to be thoughtful and not waste the shots - good practice I think in the days of digital were many photographers shoot hundreds of pictures on each job.

Pride in the Job Events

My shoot for the NHBC on Friday went very well and was the last in a series of regional events that cover the length and breadth of the UK. I am very lucky to get to cover these events every year and it's great to work with the events team at the NHBC and the guys at Lodestar who provide all the staging, AV and events services. Each year I photograph 11 regional awards every Friday from August to November and we have the grand finale in London in January to look forward to as well.

Regional winner from London on Friday

Toni and I am heading to London tomorrow for another two day event - this one the prestigious Lux Live exhibition and awards evening which is a bit like the Oscars for the lighting industry. It's great for me as I get to meet lots of ex colleagues from my days of working within commercial lighting and current customers too.

The event is at the eXcel centre in London which is a venue that I like too as there are plenty of good coffee outlets on site!.

I took my first two bookings for a photography workshop today which I'm running on November 20th and I will post some shots and a video from that to show you what we got up to - it should be great fun and I'm hoping the two attendees will learn a lot and have some fun too. I'm also planning a weekend workshop for January at the stunning Horwood House conference centre and hotel in Buckinghamshire. There will be 8 places available so please do let me know if this is of interest.

In London tonight ahead of my last NHBC Pride in the Job regional awards job tomorrow.
I love London and always take the opportunity to walk around the West End with my Fuji X Pro 1 and 35mm f1.4 lens - a great combination for low light street photography.

Here's a few of the snaps from the wander around.

Centre Point from Museum Street

The Camera Cafe and Museum - Museum Street London

The Camera Cafe again - very tempting!

 I've photographed Centre Point many times over the years including a commissioned shoot inside. I love the 1960's architecture.

It's a great landmark and I use it as a guide for finding my way through London on foot.

Street Performer Covent Garden

Hat Shop Covent Garden

The Camera Cafe and Museum on Museum Street is my favourite spot in London. They sell really great coffee, good food, have a meeting space and toilet, have a free camera museum AND they sell Hasselblads and film. What more could any photographer want.
If you pop in say Hi to Adrian from me!.
https://www.cameramuseum.uk/



















There are some great street performers in London and this guy was really top notch. He even lit himself with a Maglite torch on top of his metal case in the foreground.








As well as a love of all things photography I love a hat too. I nearly fell for a green felt Fedora but managed to resist. The £90 price tag did put me off a bit and the thought of explaining the cost to my Wife was the final blow.

We're back on Blogger!

Well after nearly a year off trying out different blogging platforms we are back on Blogger again. It's without doubt my favourite blogging platform and I find the interface really easy to use.
2017 has been a really busy one for me and for Redshift Media Production. We've made some really cool films, photographed lots of superb venues and taken hundreds of portraits and product shots. I've also now launched my own personal website www.davidthrowerphotography.co.uk where I'm offering one to one and group workshops. I'm really looking forward to running these and to passing on my knowledge of photography.

Instead of trying to review a missing 11 months I'm going to start again!.

Yesterday Toni and I photographed the new Lexicon shopping centre in Bracknell for our fab client Hoare Lea Lighting. We photographed the shopping centre in daylight and then again at dusk to capture the lit effect of the malls. Unfortunately we got a good soaking at the end but that did enable me to grab the shot below which I quite like.

Rainy night in Bracknell

Tomorrow I'm off to London to see some prospective clients and hopefully to pop in the the fabulous Camera Cafe in Museum Street - my favourite venue in London. I'm also going to pop into the Photographers Gallery just off Oxford Street for a look around. They also make a great cup of coffee there too.

Last time I visited there I did some street photography around the West End and I took my personal favourite photograph of the year of a homeless man and his dog.

Man with Dog Oxford Street London

I had a good chat with him and bought him a cup of Tea as a thank you for letting me take his picture.

I had some good news last week as I was awarded an honourable mention for my entry into the International Spider Awards for black and white photography. The picture as shown here was taken on a commercial shoot for AEG Powertools in the summer. Hopefully next year I'll go one better and win the thing outright!.

AEG Chainsaw

Please follow my blog for regular weekly updates from my world of commercial photography. Although like anything this career isn't always easy and certainly has it's ups and downs I wouldn't want to do anything else for a living!.

Wow there ends another year of photography and video production. It was another record year again for us and a big Thank You to all our clients!.

Among the many highlights of the year we filmed our first TV series for Canis TV, traveled to Sweden and Abu Dhabi to shoot some video's and photographed the super new Design Museum in London. We also made a lovely short film for Historic Royal Palaces at Kensington Palace.

Please follow us into 2017 and keep in touch!.

Where did the time go!

I thought I was keeping up with the blogging then before I knew what had happened 4 months have just flown past..

We have been very busy all summer including throughout the summer holiday which is traditionally a quiet time for us.

I can't list all the jobs we have had since the big gap as there are loads but we here's a breakdown of the best bits!.

We shot our first TV series for Showbiz TV on Sky 266 in the superb Price Studio's in Battersea which was a very busy but really enjoyable session. The show airs in October and when we get the date for the first showing we'll share it here on the blog.

David launched his print sales website and took part in an exhibition with some of his personal work which was a great success. He shot a series of documentary photographs on a local Asparagus farm showing the manual process of harvesting the crop.

Here's a link to the full set of pictures on our Flickr page - https://www.flickr.com/photos/redshiftphoto/albums/72157658400893623

Our video created for Historic Royal Palaces at Kensington Palace was signed off and has been very well received. It's one of our favourite video's to date and covers a one off experiment where period candles were made specially by hand to compare to modern day LED candle lamps. Here's the link to the video on our Vimeo channel - https://vimeo.com/182372902

We've had a couple of very enjoyable studio shoots with Dhaler Rowney who make lots of art supplies and we has great fun photographing vibrant paint swatches and brightly coloured tubes of paint.


We have also created some product instruction video's in the studio in Milton Keynes for Holophane Lighting and a new product promo video for DW Windsor at Price Studio's in London.


 Another shoot we really enjoyed was for AEG power tools on a large building site in London with art direction by The Canopy Co - a very exciting young creative agency who we love to work with.

Last week we did a fun photoshoot for a local HR company called Russell HR who have looked after our HR on a freelance basis for a few years (they are excellent!) and we took a selection of formal portraits and fun group shots as well as shooting some video content for their website and Youtube channel. If you need good HR advice check the website for some great tips - https://russellhrconsulting.co.uk/

Overall we are very lucky to be so busy and we would like to thank all our clients for their valued support and the continued business that comes our way.