Recently I have had quite a few people asking about my wedding prices so have put a more complete starting point on the website here. You can also download a PDF of all the information here – Second Capture Price Guide 2013
As the weather improves I have set out to remind the stable and livery yard owners of Kent to remember that we live in a beautiful part of the world and their horses need to be photographed in it. Going out tomorrow is this gentle reminder. 
I do offer discounts for groups of owners who want to book a session together. Please contact me for details and prices.
The thing that scares most photographers most seems to be light, more particularly the sort we create ourselves from the myriad of portable studio and hot-shoe flashes available. Ask an inexperience photographer to but together a simple lighting set up and they usually end up confused and more than a little frustrated. The gear can be pernickety and the control systems not always brilliantly explained by the manufacturers. Nikon themselves seem keen to conceal just how good the CLS (‘Nikon Creative Lighting System’) included with their cameras and flashes is. A look in the D700 manual barely gives a clue as to the cleverness of the system at the photographers fingertips.
Controlling flash tubes of all sorts is complicated because you only see the light hit your subject for about 1/1000th of a second – not the ideal amount of time to craft the perfect ball of photons. It takes a while to ‘understand’ flash lighting to the point where you can get close straight away. I was contemplating these frustration yesterday evening when I spotted this little chap on the coffee table.
I liked his shadow a lot but thought his little face could do with a little warming. However, not wanting to lose that shadow meant only the gentlest of warm glow would do the trick. A gelled flash with a snoot might have done it but that felt like overkill. Even a zoomed flash (with no modelling light) will be almost impossible to focus on such a small area. Besides this this is just a little grab shot that caught my eye so I wasn’t in the mood for digging stands out.
With a light source picked out I had another go.
This one picks out the little fellas features without killing the shadow or doing anything odd to the warmth from the tungsten lamp behind him.
The source of all this warm happiness is below.
Perhaps in future I will look for alternate sources of light rather than going straight for the complicated. The moral is lighting doesn’t have to be complicated if you know what you want to achieve from it.
Now I hate to complain about the weather, cold biting winds and overcast, thundery skies are normally an advantage when you enjoy landscape photography by the sea. However, just for a day or two what I would really like for Christmas is to be able to feel whats left of my hands and not have to constantly walk into a strong wind (Don’t want to seem pessimistic but it always changes when I start walking the other way). The ageing terrier who accompanies me on these seaside rambles is also getting a little bored with it. I think I can vaguely remember what a blue sky looks like but just a quick live show would be nice. I went to Rye Harbour earlier in the week to see if I could sneak up on Spring and drag it inland – without much luck. Here is one of the results.
Rye Harbour
Incidentally, this was taken by the Mary Stanford Lifeboat House. That story itself is worth reading here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stanford_Lifeboat
Welcome to the all singing and dancing new version of www.secondcapturephotoraphy.com . I felt it was about time the site had a revamp with some new content and it marks the start of me actually starting to advertise the photography side of the business. So here goes with the new venture. Posted below is a copy of the print advert which goes out locally on 1st March 2013.
Marc
© Marc Henry 2013
