Back in the loop!

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Ooh crikey, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been a little out of the loop for the past month or so as most of my spare time has been eaten up by my mum being poorly and she’d spent the last six weeks in hospital. Thankfully she’s well on the mend now and home again so it’s time to catch up a bit and get some quality photography time in!

Autumn is upon us now so it’s time to get out and capture those amazing colours. I’ll be heading out for some park shots soon I think, plus maybe another little Somerset tour and maybe it’s time for a trip to Westonbirt..

I’ll catch up with some posts about my recent trip to Paris too, plus plans for a couple more trips out there next year, and also some of my recent training clients.

As they say, watch this space..!

Sensor Cleaning for Training Clients

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I’ve had a couple of comments from recent clients who’ve discovered the scourge of the Digital SLR, dust on the sensor. This can manifest itself as dark splodges on your images, and will be particularly noticeable on smaller apertures.

Here’s an example of a blank image (just a piece of paper up against the window):
SensorCleaning-2317
(It’s on flickr so click to biggify!)

Pretty grim eh? Imagine all the spotting and cloning you’d be doing in Photoshop if all your images were overlaid with that?
I realise that for many people the thought of cleaning the sensor in a thousand pounds worth of SLR can be rather daunting but it’s really not as scary as you might think as long as you’re careful.

Sensor Cleaning – £25

If you’re not confident in cleaning the sensor yourself then you’ll find most camera shops will offer it as a service in store, or now as an added service for my training clients I’ll clean your sensor for you on your training day for the discounted price of £25 (normally £40).. If you’re interested, please let me know in advance so I can ensure I have the right size swabs for your camera.

Here’s an ‘after’ shot..

SensorCleaning-2499

If you’re interested, the system I use is made by Photographic Solutions. I use their Sensor Swabs and their ‘Eclipse’ soution. It pretty expensive as the swabs are single-use only but if you’re serious about keeping your sensor clean it’s a first class product.

I also have the option available for a full optics clean of your lenses too, where I’ll clean/degrease all the external elements of your lenses using professional cleaning solutions and special non-abrasive wipes. For a full optics clean, up to 5 lenses it’s just £25 (client price only), or if I do it at the same time as your sensor the full service is just £40.

Paris in the Summertime…

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I spent the last week in August in the beautiful city of Paris, where I was very busy with some interesting photographic projects!

The main purpose of the trip was to visit my friend Ian who lives there and to help him run a workshop on portrait photography. One of his specialties is engagement/celebration shoots for couples. They’re mostly visiting tourists who want a tour of Paris to see some of the most picturesque parts of the city and obviously to get some memorable photos of them along the way. Ian had a couple of shoots planned while I was there, so I was happy to tag along and help out..

Here’s one of Anna and Larry:



The workshop itself went really well, with four photographers attending, Beata and Kasia were two Polish girls from Hull, my friend Gareth came down from Dundee and then the very talented Buffy who’d flown in from the United States. We had two excellent models for the day, Kevin and Céline who were very professional and an absolute pleasure to work with.







Hopefully Ian will be running a similar workshop next year, so watch this space for news of that and a potential Parisian photographic trip I’ll be organising in the springtime too.

The Severn Bridge by Mike Lowe

Another happy customer..

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Had a nice email from one of my recent training clients Mike earlier today which included a very kind testimonial about his training day with me last month. Here’s what he had to say..

[frame_right src=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/MikeLowe-0578-200×300.jpg” href=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/MikeLowe-0578.jpg” rel=’gallery’]Mike Lowe[/frame_right]
[quote]Thanks for the one-to-one training that we did. Although I’ve been around photography a while I decided to do a one-to-one training session after recently purchasing my first DSLR.

I really enjoyed the training I received. Crucially you listened to me and understood my experience and aspirations immediately and then tailored the training toward that. I can’t express how important that was in making me feel valued and that I’m getting the most out of the training. Your passion about photography energised me throughout the day and still does now.

You clearly showed me technical aspects of photography and my camera in a way that I would understand. You also set me fun and challenging exercises to enhance the things you were teaching me.

I think we went over our agreed end time while you continued to show me some post processing techniques. I came away from our training with greater understanding, creatively inspired and proud of the shots I took. So much so that a couple of weeks later when walking to work I saw a scene on Bristol docs that to me begged to me shot. But I didn’t have my camera on me all I had was my phone. I had you words echoing in my ears ‘sometimes you don’t have time to set up you just got to get the shot with what you got’. Previously I would have walked on by, but this time without any prep I took several shots on my phone. Now, although they didn’t come out fantastic they caught the mood of the moment that I was looking for and a few days later my photograph was published as Picture of The day in the local paper. I’m a published photographer! LOL

– Thanks Richard!
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