Wedding Photography Workshop

Yesterday I ran a workshop for other photographers helping them to learn how to control and co-ordinate weddings so that couples can have the best possible images from their wedding day without too much impact on them or their guests. The workshop was a huge success, everyone enjoyed themselves and took something useful away with them. For more information on future photography workshops take a look at our training blog - www.dovecotetraining.blogspot.com

Here are a few of my images from the part of the day where I took the participants out and about to show them how to create amazing images in a short period of time.

BIPP / MPA North West Awards 2009

Every year the BIPP and the MPA (2 professional bodies for photographers) in the North West hold a highly competitive awards. This year there were more than 600 entries in total, and so I was really pleased to discover that out of a really strong field I have won 3 awards. The awards are Silver in Fashion, Gold in Fashion and Gold in Studio Portraiture. With the awards comes the title North West Fashion Photographer of the Year 2009 and North West Studio Portrait Photographer of the Year 2009.

These are the winning images:
Silver, Fashion
Gold, Fashion
Gold, Studio Portraiture
I also won Merit awards in Fashion, Studio Portrait and Environmental Portrait. This fabulous recognition from the judges comes on top of last year's Gold Award for Environmental Portrait Photographer of the year along with 7 merits.

A family portrait session at Knowsley

I love doing family portraits outdoors - and I have the perfect location for it too! It was great working with Denis and Mary and their two grown up children. And with us having a pretty good spring, we were able to get outside without feeling the cold too much. In fact, I think we've had colder days in the middle of summer!

Knowsley Hall Wedding Shoot

I don't normally upload so many images from one shoot, but I am seriously pleased with these images! So I guess I couldn't stop! Oh, well, I hope you enjoy looking through them as much as I have enjoyed working on them, from the pre-visualising stage, through taking them to processing them.

These photographs are all from a commercial shoot for Knowsley Hall last week - I worked with the Hall to create images that complement the location, whilst also showing how it can be used for wedding photography. We were really fortunate to be loaned some amazing props - the suits for Greg, our 'groom' were from Hugo Boss in the Met Quarter in Liverpool, the dresses were from Charlotte Balbier and The Liverpool Bridal House, and the amazing jewellery was from Boodles. You can't see them in any of these images, but we were also provided with a gorgeous bouquet from Earth Flowers in Heswall, and 2 cakes from Daisy Hill Cakes in Thornton Hough. A huge thanks goes out to all involved for their generosity.

And then there were the wonderful models, Greg Osborne, Amy Finnimore and Amanda Hamilton, who worked really hard on the 14 or 15 hours shoot, with their make-up done by Sian-Louise Auld and hair by Becci from Shush Hair Company in Southport.

Updating and Photography Training in Liverpool

OK, I know I said I would get back into updating the blog, but so much has been happening that I have just been too busy! I will endeavour to get some of my work from the last few months uploaded over Easter.

Some exciting stuff has been going on including photography training at our new base near Liverpool, and workshops have been filling up in April, May and June this year - follow this link to our Dovecote Training blog to read more about what's going on.

Turning Green - The Greener Photographer in the UK

At the end of last year I joined a group called Greener Photographer which is a place for photographers to consider the environment - surprisingly I am one of only two photographers to have put their name up on the list!

Looking for greener ways of working is something really important to me and so I have been reviewing the way that I work and looking for ways I can make a more positive impact on the environment. At home I already recycle and compost and so I already do the same thing in my business where I can. For example, I shred all the paperwork for the bin, but instead of putting it in the bin I add it to the compost heap.

New things I am doing - well, through Greener Photographer I discovered that not far from my base there is a place where I can recycle ink cartridges from Epson. I have also set up MobileMe which uses iDisk - this is a 'cloud' or cyberspace storage system. From later this week you will be able to contact me for information on my wedding, portrait or fashion photography, or photography workshops, and you will be given information for accessing the on-line brochures. This reduces the amount of printing and use of harmful inks in the production of brochures - and let's face it, more brochures find their way to the bin because things change before we have ever used up the whole supply.

I'm still looking for more ways I can become greener - for example, bulbs are being changed to energy saving bulbs as they blow, and I only put lights and the heating on when it's an absolute must! I switch off the computers at night, nothing is left on stand-by, and I no longer use studio lights, using natural light to create amazing photographs. Over the next few months I hope to find yet more ways of becoming greener and reducing the carbon footprint that Zoe Photography creates.

Some recent work

Well, still in that vein of trying to get back up to date here is a selection of photographs that I have taken recently at our new location at Stanley Grange on Knowsley Hall Park. More to come!

Keeping up to date

Keeping up to date is quite an appropriate title for this post! Firstly, I seem to be falling behind on my blogging, so this post is to start me on getting back up to date!!! And secondly, I think it's incredibly important as a photographer to keep pushing myself, improving my skills so that I am always fresh and able to deliver the highest possible standards of photography for my clients.

To that end, I went on a course recently, run by Annabel Williams at CPT in Stavely, Cumbria. Most of the course was focusing on business skills, but one day was devoted to photography. I tended to hang back a bit because there were a lot of people newer to photography than me who I thought might benefit from being able to capture some great shots, but I managed to get a few that I was really pleased with, as you'll see below.

I love shooting into the sun - the light on Tracey's hair here is just beautiful, and I love the mottled background effect created by the light.

I would have been really happy to take Eliza home - she was gorgeous, in personality as well as to photograph! You can see some of her personality coming through in these photographs of her.