I’ve been taking some catalogue shots for an online retailer that is expanding the range of clothes that it sells. After a couple of practice shoots it was clear I wasn’t getting the depth and dimension in the clothes that was needed to make them stand out. The problem, after moving the lights, adjusting the lights, increasing them, decreasing them, feathering them and directing them, was, that they were too big. I gradually moved from a 135cm Octabox down to Portalite softboxes, and then removing the diffusing material from the front of the softbox and using a silver deflector disc to bounce the light back into the bar silver softbox interior.

Using this harder light gives the contours and folds of the clothes shadows, that give the clothes depth. Moving away from the thought that the clothes had to be lit evenly and all over to show the viewer all of the details was the key. I was trying to give the best view of every part of the garment. Nicely, evenly lit. Clothes don’t look good like this.

Glyn had set the task of “Best Bike Shot” for the Oxford, UK competition entry. I was actually quite disappointed when Glyn announced this. I studied photography in Oxford and my lecturer had two rules for all photography assignments, no graveyards and no bike shots. I honestly don’t think that much else stuck with me from this course, but the no bike shots rule did. It’s just too clichéd when you live in Oxford. What I did think I could do was turn it into a “Best Bike Shop” photo and see if this would impress Glyn. Oxford has a lot of bikes and a lot of bike shops, but, there’s a brand new shop just opened in the centre of town and it’s a big hit with the cyclists.

The shop has taken up the space of the old bookbinder’s workshop that has sat empty in St. Michael Street for years. It’s also looked like a great building and The Bike Zone have made a great job of it. I wandered up to the Cafe upstairs and it was packed full of yellow jerseyed, Lycra clad people with calves of steel sipping on cappuccinos before continuing their Saturday cycling.

It’s perhaps fortunate I couldn’t get a seat. I wandered back out into the street and immediately thought of the coffee craving Lycra clad cyclists dashing on their way, which made think of the slower shutter shot I could take. A motion blur panning shot of all the cyclists that dart about Oxford. I took a couple of test shots of the first cyclists that passed and then headed for sunnier spot with a better background. I made my way to Broad Street which is almost pedestrianised and would allow me to sit pretty much in the middle of the road. It is, as its name suggest very broad and was guaranteed to have a lot of sun one side or the other, and, I would probably be able to get some part of Balliol College in the background.

I sat myself in the road outside Castell & Sons, the Varsity Shop, which is just at the end of the public road and were the pedestrianised part of Broad Street begins, and made sure I was as close as possible to the people that cycled by. My motor drive would get 3 or 4 shots as they passed through a particularly sunny part of the road. My shots were taken at f16, 1/20 sec, ISO 100. I was using a 10-22mm EF-S lens and zooming a little depending on how far away the cyclists kept from me while I was practically lying in the road to get a low angle for the shot.

It was fun. More fun than I had first thought a “Best Bike Shot” task would be. And, a week or so later, the walk organiser choose my photo as the day’s winner. You can see his blog post announcing his selection on his blog here. This means my photo goes through as the regional winner as an entry in the main competition.

FYI, you can see some of the many other shots I took trying to work out the right angle, the right position in the frame and right focal length for this shot.

The mountain has two summits, the Grande Aiguille du Dru (or the Grand Dru) 3,754m, and the Petite Aiguille du Dru (or the Petit Dru) 3,733m.

Read more about this and see more of my shots on Google+

The main shot here was taken directly into the sunlight and you can see almost a complete circle of flare from the setting sun. The HDR treatment allows me to put some of the detail back into the tree trunk and the grass and nettles (yes, I was standing in a patch of nettle to take this shot) in the foreground of the shot.

The tree looked great from all angles and these are some of the other shots I took.

Philippa, an Oxfordshire based Alpaca breeder has managed to raise her profile by appearing in a Channel 4 documentary, in a short film created by W+K , Wieden + Kennedy London, and sponsored by Honda. It will be shown during the Cutting Edge documentary that starts on 2nd June 2011.

It's all part of Honda's ongoing sponsorship of Channel 4 documentaries, which we all know as Documentaries on 4, sponsored by Honda. W+K are creating a series of short films that show off Honda's products and the way that their customers use them. Philippa uses her Honda ATV quad-bike to get around her Oxfordshire fields and to herd her Alpacas. Other stories planned include a Cycle Race Escort Rider who uses his Honda Transalp motorbike to keep ahead of the riders and make sure the road is clear, and a Sheep Farmer who uses his Honda generator to power sheep scanners, used at an early stage in pregnancy to tell whether a ewe is in lamb or not. All of these stories can be seen at Honda's Online Hub where the Honda-owners themselves are the quirky stars of the shows. If you own anything Honday, you could be the next subject of a Honda short film as they want to hear from you! Have a look at the Take Part section, where Honda-owners can upload stories and photographs, documenting the unusual ways in which they use their Honda products. The favourite – chosen by Wieden + Kennedy – will be turned into the final mini-documentary. The quirkier and funnier your story the better. Have you turned your Civic into an ice cream van? Or perhaps you use your hedge trimmer to create outlandish creatures? Whatever your story, if it’s unexpected, and just a little bit silly, they want to hear it. — Sponsored Post

Viral video by ebuzzing

And really good clothes product photography is really hard. I have been shooting and editing some clothing products for an ecommerce web site and it has been a long learning process. Achieving the product shot above required the research, understanding and practice of a whole bunch of techniques in photography, photoshop and product dressing/styling.

The site wanted to achieve what I discovered is mostly referred to as a Ghosted Mannequin style of product shot for the clothes on their site. We were all calling it the invisible man technique. Show the clothes in 3D as if they are being worn by a person, but, erase any view of the person and show the insides of the clothing where the person would have been.

At first, although I thought that this technique looked great, I thought it was overkill. For an ecommerce site with lots of products for sale, surely the time taken to make these 3D Ghosted Mannequin style images would be excessive. Why not lay the clothing flat and photograph it like that. It would be much faster and much easier, wouldn’t it?

I started researching this flat product photography. Laying a garment on a white background and photographing it from above sounds easy enough, and it is, but, the difference between what I can do, and what a clothes stylist can do when laying a garment flat is amazing. You immediately recognise that the eye and the patience required to make a flat garment look good is either something you dedicate a lot of time to learning, or you find another way of doing it.

Putting the item on a mannequin immediately gives the product the shape that it was meant to have and significantly improves the look of the goods. Mannequin shots can look good and if a consistent style is adopted for every shot on a site that shows the mannequins in the product shot, it can certainly look good. I’m not keen on it though, and the site I was shooting for wanted something more. The Ghosted Mannequin technique solved our problems and produced good looking product shots that grab the eye.

At this meeting I concentrated on the horses during the race. This was one of my very first outings with the Canon EOS 7D which has a plethora of focusing modes and a gattling gun style rapid shoot mode that took pictures faster than my original memory cards cope with. All future cards bought have been at the fastest read/write rates I could find as I can see that these cameras are certainly not going to get any slower.

Access to the best shooting positions may be reserved for authorised photographers, but at the majority of UK courses there is not a great distance between the spot that an official pass gets you, and the spot that any member of the publics entry fee will achieve. Usually, you’ll be 6 inches behind them as they are literally just on the other side of the fence.

The official photographers are also like beacons or markers for the best shooting spots. If they are hanging around at a particular fence or corner then make sure you check that fence or corner out as it can be almost guarnateed to give the best action in the best light.

I also love shooting the people as they wander from room to room or as they stop to consider a piece on display. Today, in the spectacular Natural History Museum in Oxford, I spotted this artis making an ink sketch of the Dinosaur skeleton in the centre of the museum. All around was noise and movement as the Museum has its family activities on Sunday’s and the place was packed with kids, but he had found himself a chair and quietly made his sketch.

This shot was taken with a 70-200mm f2.8 Sigma Zoom lens at 200mm and f2.8. I borrowed the lens from a friend for the weekend to see what it was like.

We were in Brugge well after the end of the tourist season but still managed to get some fabulous weather. Skies were enhanced as the weather fluctuated from rain, to bright sunshine, leaving the large white fluffy rain-clouds hanging in a superbly bright blue sunshine filled sky.

Even when it did rain, every street in Brugge is cobbled and the wet only made the cobbles and the streets shine even more.

It’s also hard not to love a place that doesn’t just have chocolate shops on every corner, but has two or three on the street between each and every corner too!