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I am lucky to have a few photographer friends so when we want to update our own images online we spend a day messing about like little kids in the studio, experimenting and playing around. Thanks Jack what a work out but worth it, I think we got some good ones of each other. This was me trying to look like a corporate animal(which I am not naturally) and ending up dissolving  into pulling faces and relaxing into this pose.

I love taking pics with natural light of tiny babies, it’s just so soft and natural. Welcome to the world little ‘India’ she was so chilled having her pictures taken I think it helped that mum and dad were pretty relaxed. I am looking forward to taking pictures of her as she grows bigger…

Click here for more info on family photography.

Years ago we used to have rescue dog, her name was ‘Zena’ (her name at the rescue I didn’t have the heart to change it) she was a black lab mix, a big softie, sweetest nature and the best ever companion. We still miss her today she was very much part of our family and I have always wanted to give something back to the rescue to say thank you for our lovely furry friend. So I approached the National Animal Welfare Trust and asked them if I could take pics of some of their rescue dogs for a 2018 Calendar to help raise funds for the rescue which is in Clacton, Essex. They do such an amazing job of looking after and rehoming dogs, cats and other animals if you are interested in ordering a Calendar and supporting this great cause please contact them or drop me a line. All funds go to the NAWT rescue centre in Clacton.

Here is Arthur one of the rescue dogs who has now found his forever home.

I know it’s been a while since I added a blog post, after a busy summer I took some time off and lost myself on a boat on the Norfolk Broads and loved a week away on Rhodes cycling to deserted beaches and eating lots of greek salad. Now I’m back having switched one of my labels from being a ‘smoker’ to being a ‘vaper’ I have also had my haircut and am seriously reconsidering the gym!

So a little piece of news ( which I am really chuffed about) is Nicholas McCarthy (Pianist) has chosen to use one of my images to use on his new album cover Echoes which is out now he is also on tour see more info here.

Here are few examples from a recent flat lay ( also known as over head or knolling) shoot I recently did for Sand and Salt a local company who sells beautiful towels and bags.

Metallic Elephant are an amazing local engineering company who build and supply foil printing machines to companies like Jaguar, Radley of London and The Cambridge Satchel Company  (which btw sells gorgeous leather Satchels and bags). They are having a new website designed and needed some new images for their website so as well as spending a day at their factory photographing various processes I also did a range of studio shots for them.  

The three main issues for me were 1) How do I photograph welding and metal grinding without making myself blind?? 2) Would the welding damage my camera sensor? 3) What settings would I need the camera on to get the dramatic shots I am after?

Looking online I couldn’t find too much clear info on taking shots of Welding, there were lots of conflicting views but the strong message was protect your eyes looking directly at the welding would cause damage to your sight. From what I could find out it seemed that my camera sensor would be okay, so shooting remotely seemed like the best option. I often use tethered shooting for shots in my studio but hadn’t had experience of using software to control the camera setting from my laptop. My Canon 5DmkIII came with a disc which I have never used as I just thought it was mostly stuff which I didn’t need but it provides a utility to shoot remotely. So after a little rummaging about in my messy cupboard I found the box which still had the disc in and loaded it onto my laptop.  

I won’t go into detail about using the EOS Utility 2 as it is very self explanatory, if you have got a canon camera its well worth having a play with. In a nutshell it means I could set my camera up on a tripod in front of the welding (not too close as I didn’t want my camera to get damaged by any flying hot sparks) use a tether lead one end which plugs into the camera and the other has a USB to plug into the laptop and I can control most of the camera settings on my laptop and keep my eyes safe behind a partition and take the pics by viewing what my camera sees on my laptop screen.

I needed to find a light source to experiment with and decided Sparklers would do the job. Tesco sells small party Sparklers in it’s party section so I thought that would give me a good idea on a smaller scale. So the night before the shoot I took some time to set my camera up on a tripod, plug in the tether lead and start up the EOS Utility2 on my laptop before lighting the Sparklers. 

The first image above was when I began shooting before the sparkler had really got going. I set my camera to 1/5th of a second F11 and decided to put the ISO on 500, I was going to have the ISO adjust automatically so I had once less thing to worry about but soon realised the camera automatically bumped it up high and I ended up with noisy images.

The second image I tried a radial filter only because I have never used it and wondered what results it would give me but felt the glow was two strong in the middle of the image I liked how it softened the background but not right for the shot I had in my mind.

The third image was using a adjustable gradient filter to darken the image and I was also thinking it might provide some protection for my lens eek!

So a few hours later I felt happy, having used the remote EOS Utility 2 I found I could focus in on what I wanted to using my laptop screen, I could control my speed, aperture and ISO from my laptop and I could do this from a few metres away with my back to the camera!

On the day of the shoot I started with taking my shots with my camera set up on a tripod using my 24-70mm lens with an adjustable gradient filter on which I twisted a few stops to darken the scene. I set my camera to 1/5th of a second F11 and would adjust if I needed to once I had taken few shots. I shot the first round of images and stopped to see what we had which was useful as my client and the Welder could also look which helped them to understand what we needed to adjust to get the composition right. It did feel a bit like magic taking pics from my laptop and I was surprised at how well it worked.

The downside of shooting this way means you cannot move around your subject and you can’t zoom in and out or change the camera angle, you have to stop to adjust the camera. I also found there is a few second delay on the images uploading so I wanted to shoot a zillion shots whist all the action was happening but you do have to go by the speed of your camera, the tether and your laptop uploading the images. Here are a couple of shots taken on the day…

Wow that was a busy summer of photography, I am not complaining I have loved every minute of it. My work is so varied it never gets boring one day I am shooting a tiny little newborn only a few days old the next I am taking a portrait of a CEO of a London legal firm. Even the product photography can become absorbing and all consuming, in my work I am a perfectionist so the devil really is in the detail.

Take the Wedding flowers I shoot, its not all about he composition and getting the lighting right, its about every leaf and every petal looking the best it can look.

Life is pretty messy when you look at it close up on your PC screen, leaves and petals have nibbles, holes, growths, fungus, bugs, rips, colour variations all have to spotted,studied and corrected as part of my editing process. I don’t really like gardening but I do love nature and its beautiful patterns and design.

Here’s a few shots from my most recent Wedding Flowers & Accessories Magazine shoot.

Thanks for looking, for more info on my product photography please go to my website which tells you more about my commercial assignments Lindsay Wakelin Photography.

Tim Andrews- Fragile 1

I first photographed Tim a few years ago for his Over The Hill project , I was delighted when he agreed to another shoot last week. Tim who has Parkinsons Disease started ‘Over the hill’ in 2008 and over the last 8 years he has been Photographed by over 400 Photographers. When I received an email to say that he was wrapping up the project I emailed him straight back and asked if he would be interested in posing for me again.

Tim Andrews- Fragile 2

It’s rare as a Photographer to have the opportunity of someone offering to pose to be completely open minded and flexible, Tim is such a great sport an artist in his own right he is such a charming interesting person to spend time with. I wanted to explore my ideas around visually framing images of fragility and vulnerability he soon wrote back, “Dark, moody, feathers, eggs, naked, bubble wrap??? Are you kidding? Of course l am up for it!!!”

Tim Andrews- Fragile 3