SarahLee & Adam's Wedding Pre-Shoot

As a Hull wedding photographer I had the great pleasure of meeting up with SarahLee and Adam over the Bank Holiday weekend to create a set of portraits before their upcoming wedding.

This short video shows the passion, romance and love that they share with each other. When I meet couples like Adam and SarahLee, I get so excited to photograph their wedding day as I just know they will be brilliant in front of the camera - they are doing the 'work' and I become more of a witness with my camera.

Adam and SarahLee will choose their favourite portrait from the session and we will create a signing board for their wedding day.

The pre-shoot is a great way of re-acquanting with my wedding couples as it can often be a year to 18 months since we have seen each other. It also puts my clients at ease about how natural their wedding photography will be, all I ask is that my couples allow their true nature to come to life!

Fitness Professional Portraits

Fitness Professional Portraits, originally uploaded by crozperium.

I was recently asked by one of my friends at the Village Hotel's Leisure Club if I could create some high impact profile pictures that she could use for a week's fitnes teaching workshop she was giving in St Lucia.

I did a little research on looks for fitness professionals and knew that some of my more creative lighting techniques would be just perfect. I have been a subscriber to a famous blog in photography circles called strobist.com for about 3 years now. It is a specialist lighting blog devoted to getting big results from little light sources such as the Nikon Speed Lights I use on an almost daily basis. The key to their use is getting the flashes off the camera, firing them remotely and starting to 'sculpt' with light.

So with speedlights in hand, we headed down to the Hessle Foreshore area of the River Humber, with a spinning bike and other fitness equipment to make some great pictures.

The pictures you see above were both shot in daylight at around 1pm in the afternoon, it was imperative that I was able to overpower the sunlight that was blaring down and to do that i had to rely on the great power output of my Nikon SB-800s and Quantum Q flashes.

Rugby, Rain, Rugby, Rain

Mother Nature decided to throw Insight some curve balls this weekend. We had 4 shoots planned, but 2 of them had to be cancelled due to bad weather which seemed to be the theme running through Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

We did manage to cover a 21st birthday bash for one of my very first clients who I had photographed exactly 3 years ago to the day for her 18th birthday, she decided to throw an exclusive marquee party in her back yard with a hog roast and dancing until early into the wee hours.

Insight were at Ionians Rugby Club on Sunday to cover their annual Juniors and Minis presentations, the rain came down and challenged our 60 person group shot but with a lot of help from the team managers, we were able to get the boys in front of the clubhouse to make a shot which will sit on their wall for the rest of the year.

The Nikon equipment that I use on a daily basis holds up really well in bad weather - even if the photographer doesn't!

Young Entrepreneurs in Hull

I spent all day Thursday working with young entrpreneurs in our region. I have supported youth enterprise intiatives ever since I came back from Canada. Over the past 9 months I have been working with Pocklington School's Young Enterprise program as a business advisor to a team called 'Fat Penguin' - a hilarious name I know, but it was all about their story and brand. It's been a fab time working with the achievers and although they didn't make it to the next adjudication stage, I was really proud of their achievements as they took the 'Best Sales Team Award' back in February at the Prince's Quay Trade show.

Yesterday morning I was over at the University of Hull's Business School working with David Tucker the Dean of the school on a 'Dragon's Den' for undergrads who had spent the last 2 semesters developing a business/enterprise plan. I was teamed with 3 other judges from opther businesses in the area and we heard the 3 qualifying teams business ideas. We then got a chance to question the teams on their business proposition and had to judge them on a criteria of about 6 different indicators. The winners were a group of students who put together a bespoke ladies tailoring proposition which was really excellent.

The winners and the other teams are above. Straight from the Dragons' Den I booted over to Doncaster Knights Rugby Ground for the Young Enterprise South Yorkshire Area Awards Ceremoney to photograph the event, present an award and give the keynote speech. The night was a great celebration for the participants from schools around the South Yorkshire area, but the board was swept by a team called 'Bloomin Elle' who took more than three quarters of the gongs up for grabs. I presented the award for 'Service Development' which went to Bloomin Elle.

Young Enterprise is such a great thing, I did it when I was 17 and looking at how the students are so much more sophisticated in their ideas then we were back then, it makes for a really exciting way to spend a few hours a week.

Spending the weekend with the camera, shooting a private stable visit up at Rowley Manor tomorrow and then a private birthday party tomorrow night. Sunday is Ionians Rugby Club in the morning for their 2009 presentations and then on to a family shoot in Bielby in the afternoon.