I was originally invited my Rikki James from SSVC after meeting him on the Ninove Cruise earlier in the year. Paul from T2D also suggested that I sell some posters from their stand (muchio apprecio for the trade space Paul).

As the van was staying in the Paddock area in Sandown Sat & Sun so I booked a room at the Ship Hotel in Weybridge. I was given the disabled room bizarrely, but it turned out to be rather palatial, perfect as I had 35 posters to wrap up and needed the floor space.

Saturday was an early start, the van was filthy so I was washing it in the car park at 6:15 in the morning! Then finished off some more poster wrapping. No time for breakfast, off to the Sandown gates for 7:45am.

The Paddock

Was great lining up next to Shep from Boss Dog who arrived with the awesome graphic wrapped split screen. Some amazing vans inside and out of the paddock. The weather was great for HDR’s. Good cloud coverage making for some moody pics.

Met up with Tom Wheatley on the Sunday. We sent a few hours checking out some of the rides in the paddock and talked HDR photography (yawn I hear you say). But its great to speak to a fellow photo geek.

Some pics of the weekend

Congratulations to Matt Ballz from the T2D who won a Top 20 with project Goof

Poster Sales

The posters were really well received. We sold over half the stock we took with us which was amazing. The landscape ones sold on the Saturday and we could have sold them 10 times over! Others didn’t sell quiet so well, but it was more of a test the water thing.

Buy posters online here

Finally, thanks to everyone who bought a poster. Means a lot knowing that my photography is appreciated by more than just me!

Those people that asked about photo sessions for their buses. I’m chuffed to be asked to do that for you. I’d be well up for it, just get in contact and hopefully we can get a date set and get shooting. I will be attending some more events during the summer. I’ll be posting events we’ll be attending on our new page imaginatively named… Events.

Also cheers to T2D for the trade space. Cheers fellas.

When you get a bus this low you know its going to be a painful photo shoot. Not only will it involve a lot of lying on the floor getting those dramatic angles but I knackered my knee the day before so was cringing everytime I got down on the floor, ouch.

The brief from VW Camper & Bus was to show off the slammed patina bay in all its glory with some low grungy shots. This is the first time I’ve shot for a magazine and I had to think a little differently about how I frame the subject. Making sure there is plenty of space in the frame allowing for cropping and text.

The light was dull which is preferable to full on sun. But this was almost too dull. The location was only a few miles from T2D HQ on the other side of Reach. There are several large black grain stores there which made for a large blank canvas in which to place the bus in front of.

I ended up shoot mainly multiple bracketed exposures which would then allow me to either use a single frame exposure to produce high tonal HDR pics. Ideally I could have done with some high powered strobes but the final images came out pretty good after the HDR treatment.

These images will hopefully make it into a VW Camper & Bus issue soon. I’ll be sure to post some more news when I hear something.

Lastly I would like to talk Paul at T2D for getting me the photo gig. Hopefully they’ll be some more

Had a great road trip around the west coast of Ireland during the end part of the Summer in 2009.

The weather was appalling, typical Irish summer I was told on may occasions. But the overcast weather made for some very dramatic skies and really rich vibrant images, luminous greens and heavy dramatic skies.

It gave me an excuse to take mostly HDR pictures of the landscapes to capture the heavy atmosphere. All pictures taken in large RAW format enabling me the best pictures for processing once we returned to England.

‘Splity’ was the main feature in most of the pictures. The off white colour of the VW camper made some stark contrsts with the usual black seas menacing skies in the background.

I decided to use a ultra wide angle lens, tripod and take multiple exposures and generate subtle HDR compositions. The light was difficult to tame as there was both natural light falling in through the windows as well as cold tungsten light from the lights inside the church.