Photo Excursion.

Photo Excursion with fellow peers, 19th of March 2010.

When you go out on a photo excursion its paramount that you wear comfortable clothing and of course comfy shoes. Also think about to wear clothing that you don’t mind too much if they get a bit dirty so you wont miss that great image that are awaiting you if you stand with one knee on the ground or the one where you have to lay on your stomach to get it. You don’t want to come home and sit in front of your computer and look at your images and think if I had only taken that image from another angle! Why did I wear white trousers or a skirt?

Ok its not always like that but you will feel a lot more at ease and to be able to concentrate on what you love taking photographs! If you are not conscious about how you look whilst doing it. In Swedish we have a great word for what you should be wearing, Oömma kläder, that is clothes that as I mentioned above you are not too picky if they get dirty sort of like practical leisurewear. But there are no one single word explaining it in English, please let me know if you do find a great translation for it though, I am all ears.

Of course you also need to check that you have fully charged batteries, empty memory cards, tripods etc. and all the other photo gear that you think you will be needing. Leave nothing to chance but also do not bring too much so that it will wear you down in terms of too heavy for you to carry around if you plan to walk around a lot.

So, off we went the three of us to visit a local Bedouin camp that are not more than 10 minutes away from our house. Last time I visited a Bedouin camp was just over a year ago with some photographer friends that was here teaching at the PTO 2009 (Photo Training Overseas), http://www.pto-uk.com/pto2009.htm

Once we got there we decided against it… They had all received new houses (they had come up in the last month), which is very nice for them but not the kind of photography we had in mind to take. Before they all lived in small sheds so we were very pleased to see that they are getting more permanent housing to live in.  I do think that I will go back there soon though to take some people images, I love to capture people where you can see in their face that they have lived an active outdoor life, It brings so much more character to the person compared to the wrinkle free Hollywood faces everyone else are trying to copy… me included ;-)

So we turned around and headed towards a town called Nuweiba. First we checked so that we all had brought our passports! Otherwise we would not have been able to reach our destination, which we finally enough didn’t in the end anyway but only because we found so many other great places to take images of on the way there and we had the time constraint hanging over our heads as well. Because once the sun goes down behind the Sinai Mountains it gets dark very quickly and we had already decided where we wanted to be when the sun started to set.

Our first stop was an old Bedouin Camp that must have been an old diving camp because we saw loads of old BCD’s, masks and part of wet suits scattered around the place.

After spending some time there we headed back and stopped at a beach and took some more images, since it was still a bit too early for our sunset images we decided to go and get a coffee at Castle Zaman while we waited which was just behind the next bend from our current location.

When you are out taking photographs it will help you find the image you want if you already know what kind of image it is you are taking such as if it will be a great Black and White photograph or a colour one? Yesterday on our second stop I was thinking that these images will be great in Black and White, I still kept on shooting in colour so that I when I get home and start my post processing have more options rather than shooting directly in B&W. I also always shoot in RAW so I have full control of the colour balance as well afterwards to enhance the image mood.

All in all we all had a great day out and I personally feel I would like to do this again. It’s a great inspiration and also very fun to be out with fellow photographers on an excursion. When I lived in Dubai I used to do this regularly with fellow photographers there we ended up being quite a crowed at times, which was great.

It’s a great way to learn from each other and you will all very likely come back home with different images even though you all went to the same location its great!

I bet this would be great fun for our tourists here at the resort to go out on excursions with a ‘local’ guide (me being the local ;-) guide).

Something that could be done together with ‘our’ underwater photographer that comes here regularly to teach underwater photography I’m sure his students would also love to take images on land as well to fill in their time whilst here. Something to think about!.....

Our First Stop, we are standing on top of a mountain above the Rock Sea Camp, overlooking their surrounding camps.

Local Beduins on their camels.

Our Second Stop; a deserted Beduin Dive Camp.

Fishnet. 

A Padi Chart.

I guess who ever stayed here liked to drink wine....

In the same room as the image below.

Probably the social gathering place in the camp.

An old BCD.

Ceiling.

A fish head swinging about in the wind. Wonder how long its been there?

Sinai Mountains.

Castle Zaman. We can see this castle from our third stop and we're thinking that it will be nice with a break up there while we are waiting for the sun to set a bit lower in the sky.

Fellow enthusiasts, Yepp we are about to go for coffee at the Castle now.

Our Coffee Break at Castle Zaman.

While at the Castle we all took advantage and took a few snaps as well cant have a too long of a break now can we.

The entrance to the Castle.

Katie in action the sun is setting behind her.

If you want to see more images from our Photo Excursion please visit my FaceBook Fan Page. 

http://www.facebook.com/shippeyphotography

New website design on its way!

I have for a while now been thinking of changing the design of my webpage and I have now decided that I will do it. I must stay that it is a bit daunting a lot to sink my teeth into. Both in regards to choosing images for the galleries, deciding gallery categories, writing the text and the actual design, Think User Friendly. I myself do not stay long on a website that is difficult to understand and navigate.

I have decided I will make it very different from what is up and running at the moment and that is a big step in itself because I have made that design from scratch and I actually like it but I still feel that my clients that is You will get more out of a webpage with more images on so that you can see more of what I have done in the past and get a proper feel for my capabilities behind the lens. I will also be adding my design side to the website as well since I also do a lot of copywriting/press releases, proof reading and designing advertisements for companies. I have so far not advertised that side of my work and have therefore only gotten work through word of mouth which is the best way to get work to be honest also the easiest and most cost effective since you do not have to spend a penny on advertising it.

Well that is a bit of what I will be working on in the foreseen future. I know I have also promised to upload more of my images that I have recently taken. I will I promise. I believe a clever person once said: “Patience is a virtue”.

I  have loads to do so I better get started…. so Over and out for now.

-Helen

Recent trip to Petra Jordan

Here is a sneak preview of some images from my recent trip to Petra Jordan. More to come shortly as soon as I have time to upload them.

These are all from the walk down towards the entrance gate so we have not yet arrived at the Entrance when I took these images.

If you don't want to walk you can hire a horse that will take you down and up again.

This piece of rock I thought looked very much like a scull.

Busy times due to rain storm

Wow, I have just experienced my first rain flood in Egypt. We woke up 06.00 to that is was raining into our house through every A/C unit. Before I understood what was really going on and able to react and put buckets everywhere where needed and move furniture so that the water could freely poor down into the buckets... Once that was all done we were quite excited that it was raining and very awake. I took my camera and the car keys and went out to see if there might be any interesting images waiting outside!
Its not very often that we have that much rain in the same time so you have to take the opportunities when they come.

After only a few hours if even that the sun was out shining again. Then at 16.30 the wind picked up and it started to rain again but this time it came in horizontally so it rained straight in through all our windows on the house. Not a nice experience. The power kept on going on and off as well all day. We had no internet connection or mobile phone network working so we all did feel slightly isolated from the outside world.
But not to worry everything is all back to normal now at the resort the rain have dried up and the sun is shining again and it looks like nothing ever happened.

Portrait Photo Shoot, Egypt

I have been traveling a bit lately, one of my travels took me to explore Petra in Jordan. It was amazing and definitively worth a visit if you have not been yet. I will show you some images from that trip a bit later not today. 
I have also taken quite a few event photographs of golf presentations but none that are very interesting to publish here so I will spare you that.

Today I will show you a few images from my portrait shoot I did yesterday with a family. We did an afternoon photo shoot at the resort which means that it is more calm and tranquil around us than if we had done it a bit earlier also the light has a very pleasing effect for portraits in the afternoon. The calmness of course suited us very well since a child's attention is very easily distracted if there are a lot of things going on around them. We had a few on lookers at times but we managed great even with that.
Even though we were outside and there was plenty of available light at least in the beginning of our shoot the sun did drop behind the Sinai Mountains quite quickly in the end. But as I was saying we had plenty of natural light but I still used a flash to get those nice catch lights in the eyes. I had the flash positioned straight up and used only the little white plastic card to direct the light towards the person I was photographing. When you are photographing outdoors make sure that you position your subject on the edge of the shade if possible also make sure that you do not get any dappled light in their faces, from tree leaves etc. Dapples in the face or hair can easily ruin any portrait so try to stay away from it unless you are trying to do something creative and work it in. But in general for portraits stay away from dapples in your objects faces the images will turn out a lot better and you will be able to sell your client more prints which is probably what you are after -Sales!