Betty Bhandari Photography Blog

A photographer's (little) assistant.

2012-01-29T12:44:00.000-08:00

Isabella helped me tidy my stuff before heading off to this year's first family shoot. Her favourite: the noisy Ikea plastic bag.

Happy Half Birthday - Baby Isabella is 6 months old.

2012-01-15T03:46:00.000-08:00

My little girl - today you are six months old. Happy Half Birthday!

1 month old
When you were about 4 weeks old you started looking at the world. You have not stopped since. When we hold you on our arms you always look around, turn your head in the opposite direction, scan the room, look out of the window. Always. Constantly. You either seem to think this world is darn interesting. Or you are just scared to miss anything.

2 months old
This is your German Opi. Him and Omi have come all the way from Germany four times since you were born and it's not long before they will be back. We have noticed that you are happiest when you have a selected group of adults around you, preferably your grandparents. You just look blissfully happy and are spoilt with love and attention. And you get very sad when everyone is gone.

3 months old
By the time you were about 5 weeks old you had lost a lot of your baby hair. You looked funny as it was mainly the hair at the front. Actually you looked a little bit like an old man. It started growing back when you were 7 or 8 weeks old and by the time you were three months old your whole head was covered in new hair. Now you didn't loose all the baby hair. The hair on your crown remained and kep growing. To this date you have some very long hair left up there that remind us how long ago you were born - 6 whole months ago.

4 months old
Your mummy is mad abouttaking pictures as you have extensively experienced. Mummy realised that sometimes you love being photographed, sometimes you love grabbing the camera of mummy and eating it and sometimes you utterly refuse being photographed.

5 months old
This is your granddad. Like your mummy he is not from this country, he is from North India. You have a quarter of his genes and we can see that. When we went to baby massage and you stripped naked, you weren't as pasty as the other babies. And when we had a late heat wave in October you seemed to tan straight away although your mummy smothered you in sun lotion. You are very lucky to have these genes. Not only does it make you wonderfully international but also a right stunner!

6 months old
Mummy tried to do her first professional photo shoot with you two days ago. It wasn't very successful. You must have had one of those days where you hated the camera and you didn't even want to eat it. As you are so super cute and get more beautiful by the week, your mother will not stop taking pictures of you though!

Minnie Mouse - the last 6 months were the most tiring, most educational and most challenging in our lives - but not one second did we want it any other way. We love you very much!

Your mummy & daddy xxx

Those eyes. - bath somerset baby portrait photographer

2012-01-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

I love Isabella's eyes. Her eye colour is totally different from mine (light brown) and Jay's (green), hers are chocolate brown. That is her quarter Indian heritage!
She has a way of looking at me that makes my heart stop. Sometimes when I breastfeed her, she stops, looks up, studies my face, then smiles, then reaches out with her little hand and touches my face. *sigh* I will forever cherish those moments.

Like mother like daughter.

2012-01-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

Getty Images selection on Flickr

2012-01-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

I love the little things that give you a boost. "Good shooting" Flickr said to me. "You've had 9 photos selected by the Getty Images team!" Actually it's 17 photos, I just haven't dealt with the last email Flickr sent me yet.

Now some people are strictly against giving their photos to stock agencies but I am not one of them. Of course I would never give them any of the photos that I consider my best images. Or images that I don't have model release forms for and will never seek them either. I only give them images that I never plan to use for a book or any other publication as you give up your publication rights when submitting images to Getty. Still I have managed to make a good amount of money with the images I have given them so far and hope to continue this.

I do feel proud though to have caught their eye and soon have a total of round 35 images with Getty. To see my images for sale with Getty click here.

Santa's Little Helpers. - bath somerset baby portrait photographer

2011-12-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

Isabella and I decided to make her daddy a very special Christmas card this year. So I asked around my mummy friends for some props and here is the finished result.

This photo was taken in one of my mummy friend's houses during a little pre Christmas get-together. While we were at it I took some Christmas pictures of some of the other babes.

Merry Christmas to you all! xx

How to ... create a black & white portrait.

2011-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

I have been asked a few times how I edit my images. This one was done in Lightroom.

Turn saturation to -100 which takes all colour out.

Increase the exposure, contrast and blacks.

Crop to remove black edge in the top left corner.

Use the adjustment brush to:

1) create a blur on the text on her shoulder straps (the text distracts from the subject)

2) lighten the light background around the face

3) sharpen the eyes

Voila. It took me less than 5 minutes to edit this image.

Capturing the moment.

2011-11-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

As the autumn rain and darkness has set in, I am reminiscing and thinking about this summer. The following is one of my favourite photographs. Not because it is arty or beautiful but because it captured a lot of things that were great one particular day.

It was beginning of October and we were about to be surprised by a late summer heat wave. Just a few days before I found this beautiful red and blue stripey baby suit and as it was only £2.50 I bought it hoping I'd get a chance for Bella to wear it. BAM ... four days of extraordinary heat arrived in the UK and Bella lived in her cute suit!

So Bella and I ventured out to enjoy the much appreciated heat and went for a walk through our local neighbourhood. Instead of her baby bag I took my new epiphanie Lola camera bag with me (I will review this another time, it's a beautiful camera bag!) and the polaroid landcamera with a Fuji colour film. Not easy to snap a wiggly baby with a slow, slightly inaccurate camera but hey, it was all about the fun. And fun we girls had on this lovely afternoon!

The adventures of little Isabella (2)

2011-10-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

Little Isabella aka The Babe always has things to do, places to go and people to see. Well, at least that is what we jokingly interpret into her always curious little persona. In real life we try to give her a good balance of play and stimulation versus relaxation and calm time Not always easy as she is extremely excitable, but what would life be without a challenge?

Me and her go out every day to explore. The local park, foraging, coffee shops and playing with baby mates are our favourites! Bella decided to borrow daddy's sunglasses but Shhhhhhh don't tell him! ;)

Isabella is very physical, she loves to stand. If she niggles or moans you just need to stand her onto her little legs and she is immediately happy. Maybe it is the raised view in comparison to laying on your back, because she always looks around and scans her surrounding area.

We only have pne photograph of the three of us and that was taken on the first day in hospital. Here is a long overdue family portrait.

Until soon for more adventures!

Dad and daughter. - polaroid chocolate in 340 landcamera

2011-10-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Taken with the Polaroid Landcamera 340 and the beautiful Polaroid Chocolate film.

Handmade with Love.

2011-10-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Isabella has been flooded with gifts since her birth and I am stunned how many of the gifts were handmade! I thought I'd capture and share some of them.

This first gift isn't handmade but never the less very creative. My dad got us these timber letters with Isabella's name.

Isabella has lots of little friends sitting in the cot with her. The little creature to the left was given to us by Kath from Nottingham. Although I think it is a hippo, my mother-in-law said it looks like a donkey and as it's got a big nose, we named it Dave - after my brother-in-law. ;) The other two are a cat called Betsy and a dog called Harold. They are Bobby Dazzlers and you can see more of them here.

This beautiful patchwork was given to us by Janet & Pete, the parents of my brother-in-law. The pictures is supposed to combine something Indian with something German - can you guess which Grimm's Tale this is?

When I was little I had a mobile of the pidepiper with lots of rats (I was born and bread in Hameln, the town where the story of the pidepiper comes from). I asked my dad if we still had the mobile and learnt that it was only lent to me and returned to ots owner when I was about nine years old. I had planned to make Bella a mobile but of course I never have time for these things. When my parents came to visit my dad surprised us with this handmade pidepiper mobile which he made himself!

This was one of the first gifts we received, long before Isabella was born: some beautiful bunting we got from our local friend Katie!

I have an aunty who is a pro in patchwork making! She made us the most beautiful patchwork for our wedding! Now she made Isabella this soft teddy quilt which we use every day.

My husband's aunty Sue and her family are very crafty. Sue made us this beautiful knitted and cotton lined pram blanket which has received many compliments to date!

Aunty Sue has three daughters. Two of the three run a stall on the Christmas market every year and sell a lot of baby things. They gave me numerous amazing handmade gifts (a changemat, bibs, baby grows, a snuggler), amongst others these beautiful little shoes!

Speaking of shoes, of course I must not forget my friend Stella's knitted booties! Isabella wears them almost daily to keep her little tootsies snug and warm.

Just yesterday this embroidery arrived by post from Germany from an old friend of mine. How beautiful and unique!

And finally a picture of Isabella's box of memorabilia in which we have all the cards we got send, the original positive pregnancy test as well as a few other bits and bobs. The box is not handmade, but made with love!

Twelve weeks in pictures.

2011-10-07T04:12:00.000-07:00

Today Isabella is 12 weeks old. To celebrate this milestone I have pulled together 13 photos, one for each week (including week 0). Enjoy!

week 0 (3 minutes old)

week 1

week 2

week 3

week 4

week 5

week 6

week 7

week 8

week 9

week 10

week 11

week 12

Ich liebe Dich von Herzen, mein Schatz!!
Mummy xxxx

Isabella, my muse. Or maybe not?

2011-10-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as I was taking pictures of my cute baby daughter, Jason asked me if she is my muse. Well ...yes and no.

Yes because I love taking pictures of her. She is, in my humble opinion, very cute and it is easy to take good pictures of her.

You must not forget why it is easy for me to take pictures of her though (any photographic skills left to the side). There are two reasons. Firstly, I am her mummy. She always looks straight at me. Actually most times she won't leave me out of her sight. Secondly, I can make her smile at any given time. Both of these are essential elements for an amazing baby portrait.
I have done quite a few portrait shots with other people's babies and it's always a challenge to get the little one to look at me/the camera. Too often the baby/toddler will only have eyes for the parents and as cute as pictures of the baby are, they always upgrade from good to better and are more intriguing when the model looks straight at the camera. It makes the person looking at the picture feel like the baby is laughing at him.

Back to my muse. She certainly inspires me, makes me look at things in a different way, makes me want to document every step of her way as good as I can as a mother and a photographer. In that way she really is my muse.

The sweetest thing in the world! - bath somerset baby portrait photographer

2011-10-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

Isabella is a curious little creature. She likes sitting upright because then she can have a good look at everything and anyone.

The other day Jay I pointed my camera at her while she was having a nosy. Normally she is just a bit stunned by the big black Nikon monster but this time she smiles at the mother behind the lens and I fired away. Here is the result - my favourite picture series of Isabella to date!

The adventures of little Isabella (1) - bath somerset baby portrait photographer

2011-09-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

Our little poppit is growing so fast! We are having a fabulous time (apart from some very short nights of course) and adore her!

She snuggles in her cosy pram and looks at the world.

She LOVES the elephant in her play gym.

She knows how to dress well... :)

... and watches her mummy taking care of her washing.

Snuggles with daddy.

And practices good beauty sleep....

... to be at her best and this cute during the day.

With eternal love from her mummy xxx

Layla's lashes. - bath somerset baby portrait photographer

2011-09-09T02:27:00.000-07:00

I did a little shoot with Tasha and little Layla yesterday, this is one of the shots. I love the dreaminess.

Isabella Rose. - bath somerset newborn portrait photographer

2011-08-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

The day after the pregnant polaroid selfportrait was taken, our daughter Isabella Rose was born. She was three days early which was good as her due date was on my birthday. Now we both have our own birthdays. :)

Sadly the birth was a lot more dramatic than anticipated as Isabella had been breech (for many weeks) and no one had noticed until well into the labour. So we ended up with a very rushed emergency caesarian section. Luckily we are all well and healthy with no complications and Isabella thrives beautifully! She looks alot like her Daddy, has my smile (I think), very strong legs she loves kicking about with and is in love with a toy donkey that is made from socks.

So here are a few shots I took over the last weeks. The necklace was a late birthday gift. You can get them here.

xx Mummy B

Polaroid self-portrait. - bath somerset maternity portrait photographer

2011-07-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

39 and a half weeks pregnant.

A girl can never have too many (camera) bags!

2011-07-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

So my husband thinks that I am obsessed with bags.

He is not complely right as I don't have tons and tons of bags but he is not wrong either as I LOVE bags! Particulalry versatile bags.

Amongst others camera bags! And since it is my birthday next week and I have a wonderful ~~practical~~ girly ~~synthetic~~ leather ~~hand~~ camera bag on my wish list, I thought a share a few thoughts on the camera bags I have and the one that is soon to join me.

I don't even want to go into any old off the shelf typical boring camera bags I may have had in the past, I just want to talk about three camera bags.

The *emera Tote.

The Crumpler Backpack.

And Epiphanie's Lola.

Two years ago for my birthday my husband got me the cicle *emera tote.

The *emera totes were brand new back then and it was the company's first release of a camera bag. I love my *emera bag but the fun was relatively short lived as the leather part that connects the strap to the bag was faulty. The guys at *emera already knew about this problem and provided me with first class service, replacing my bag with the newer quilted bag.

This bag is just AWESOME! It's much more enhanced than the first generation bags. It's extremely well made, strong, has a laptop pouch and a zipper at the top. I can fit my Nikon D700 with the 24-70mm lens as well as another three lenses and small bits and bobs like business cards. In addition the outside material is water repellant and keeps your camera nice and safe. I am certainly well pleased with this sexy number.

BUT. There is always a but. I am a very active girl and am out and about on my bike a lot (before I got pregnant). Of course a shoulder bag is no good for biking.

So I went on the search for a sporty alternative. I was after a rucksack. Also I thought if the rucksack was side loading, then I could grab my camera without having to completely take the rucksack off. I didn't think such a camera bag existed but was soon proven wrong when I discovered this Crumpler rucksack.

It is very light, very stirdy (I think my camera could survive undamaged if I dropped this rucksack but I haven't tried for obvious reasons) and nicely spreads the weight of the equipment over the back. Idea if you are out and about all day. It fits my D700 and three lenses, it also has a lot of space for small things. The only thing I'd criticize is that it doesn't have an external net to stick a tripot or rainjacket into. Also it could do with a small external pouch for keys. Then it would be perfect. But hey, nobody's perfect.

So one might ask what kind of camera bag does this girl need now?

Well, I have had my eye on the Lola bag from epiphanie.

All the epiphanie bags look like pretty leather hand bags but are actually camera bags. They have adjustable dividers inside (like the *emera tote), a shoulder strap and come in funky colours. This bag made it's way onto my wish list as I'd love a good looking girly bag that I can carry with me at all times (when I'm not cycling of course) so I have my beloved camera with me to shoot baby when and where ever I want. Sadly the epiphanie bags are out of stock at the moment and I will have to wait until September (can you hear me cry?). I'm sure it'll be worth the wait though and I have the feeling I might be rather busy until then with my little baby girl .... :)

Late pregnancy shoot. - bath somerset maternity portrait photographer

2011-07-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

Even being 39 weeks pregnant cannot stop me from taking photos! I did a lovely shoot with my fellow pregnant friend Sara yesterday - here is a little behind the scenes shot taken by Sara's husband Kim, right before he had the task of lifting me back up again.

I will post some photos of that shoot during the next couple of days (unless I go into early labour).

After our official shoot we got a bit carried away, the faces as well as the photo are again courtesy of Kim.

I'm so happy we had some fun painting on our bellies. It's something I wanted to do for a long time and now I feel one step closer to saying 'I've done all I wanted while being pregnant - baby, you can come out now!'

Time for a revamp - Betty Bhandari Photography.

2011-07-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have used my pre-baby maternity leave time to revamp my photography website, my blog as well as my business cards.

Here is a peek at the new business cards. Pretty eh?

To top things off I got some pretty awesome MOO stickers printed.

Hope you like it!

A new life. - bath somerset maternity portrait photographer

2011-06-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

A lot has changed in the last 6 months!

I am nine months pregnant now. I stopped working and am enjoying maternity leave and a months go we left London for good and moved to Bath in Somerset. We set up a new home and are ready for the arrival of our baby girl. As she is due on my birthday I hope she comes a few days early so she can be my birthday present. :)

Being a photographer and heavily pegnant at the same time can be frustrating. I have many ideas for great maternity photographs but I find it difficult to take these pictures of myself. I took this quite classic bump shots of myself a few days ago:

Don't get me wrong, I love classic shots and good use of lighting. But it's so hard to get lighting and focus right when you can't see yourself through the viewfinder and you have to rely on an external remote or interval shooting.

Here is a client shoot I took a few weeks ago.

Alice was 38 weeks pregnant at the time so a little further than I am now. I will try and take a similar shot of myself in our local woods during the next week. Now that I live so close to the most beautiful countryside I'll have to make use of it!

Away for a while.

2011-01-24T13:11:00.000-08:00

I've been rather quiet on flickr recently. Sorry 'bout that. Here is the reason why. I'm pregnant!

So I've spent a lot of time being sick, nauseous and extremely tired. All that left me a bit over a week ago and I now feel great!

15 weeks tomorrow. :)

A lot can change in one hour - a new look.

2010-11-15T05:50:00.000-08:00

On Friday my friend Katie went through ... lets call it a bit of a change. She decided to chop off ALL her hair and I was there! Not to hold her hand, she didn't need that, she knew exactly what she wanted and had this planned for many weeks.

I always dream about chopping off my hair and changing hair styles on a regular basis, but I never do it, I think I lack a bit of courage in that department. Not so Katie!

Almost there, cousin IT. ;)

And here the finished result.

Doesn't she looks beautiful? Well done Katie.

Oh you delicious world!

2010-10-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

When Jay and I were on holiday in Yorkshire the other week, we spent a lot of our time sourcing food, preparing it, cooking, eating and planning the next dinner. We are both completely in love with food (and each other, but that's not what this post is about :) so this was lots of fun. After my last food photography post I tried hard to get some photos it before eating it all.

This post is as much about as it is about the photographs. I shot most of the pictures in the same lit location in the kitchen to ensure I get optimum light and detail. I experimented with both depth of field and crop. I like a shallow depth of field, it focuses on the detail and leaves the rest to the imagination. Here are the results:

In the UK we have a (celebrity) chef called Hugh Fearnley Wittingshall. He is currently doing a TV programme called River Cottage where he is cooking amazing food with simple. The week before we went away he cooked with smooked kippers (see above). You flake them, fry them in butter, add chives & lemon juice, and then mix with crushed potatoes. You find the recipe here.

And if you have leftovers, you make patties and fry them. Even tastier in my humble opinion.

As a starter we shallow fried some scallops with garlic. Beauty.

What next?

Jay had done some homework and put a list with addresses of local farmshops, butchers and gastro pubs together. On our firt day in Yorkshire it rained so much we could have swam to it. So we decided to hide inside the car and drive to one of the farm shops where we bought a lamb shoulder with local (freshly picked) veggies.

The prepared meat before cooking.

If you want to do it right, you slow cook this baby for 3-4 hours. We didn't have 3-4 hours for different reasons mainly hunger and cooked it for 1 3/4 hours.

For desert Jay made Gordon Ramsay's apple pudding which is a great winter dish.

Last but by no means least come our (Jay's) first attempt of a home made pie including pastry and all. Although we were missing some ingredients like the carrots, the pie was tasty and got smothered in yummy gravy.

To finish off this post I show you the beautiful food menue in one of the gastro pubs we went to. Click on the image to see it large. I had prawn cocktail and cooked mussles for main. We did not leave disappointed!

Are you hungry yet?

My Morning Dream.

2010-10-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

Here is a shot I took while we were on holiday in Yorkshire last week.

Here is the before version to show you how much you can achieve by adjusting curves, exposure, contrast, colours and crop.

I used Lightroom 2 to make all of these adjustments, I find it much easier than Photoshop. Plus you can create your own presets and repeat anything you have done to one picture whenever you wish.

The ups and downs of food photography.

2010-10-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

Because I not only love eating food, but also photographing it!

Mind you I may have missed out on an opportunity or two: I am not very patient when hungry. ;)

We had these Tapas (and more) in a fabulous Spanish restaurant called 'Flamenco Tapas' in Eastbourne a few months back. They were by far the best Tapas I've ever had!

I will try and write a blog post on food photography during the next week. But first and need to work on getting more sample pictures.

Six friends.

2010-09-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I met up with Sarah, Naomi, Laura, Katy, Anna and Sorrel. They have been best friend for many years and whenever they all get together (which I believe is not that often) they have the tradition to take a 'belly shot' as one of them will most likely be pregnant. This time it was my pleasure to do that job (to take the shot, not being pregnant).

As you can see from the next shot two of the ladies are sporting respectable baby bellies! The absolute nicest thing is that the lady in the purple skirt gave birth to a healthy baby boy 24 hours after I took these pictures. Congratulations to them! (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

As always you don't get all the shots you hope to get. The little girl didn't like to be photographed (fair enough) and I so wanted her to look around her mum's belly. So you see the next two shots that I used to create the third one in Photoshop to get the shot I was after. Call it a bluff, I now have a wonderful shot that is exactly as I had imagined it.

Maternity Shoot in the Hackney Marshes

2010-09-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I met with Katy and her husband Chris for a maternity shot in the vast and scenic Hackney Marshed. Katy was 34 weeks pregnant at the time (meaning the little one is due any minute now!) and proudly showed off the bump!

It was very windy but also beautifully sunny, perfect weather really!

Not only is Katy very photogenic in my humble opinion, but she was also up for much fun!

And this one:

So Katy & Chris - thanks for being such great sports and I can't wait to meet Junior! xx

I made it myself.

2010-09-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I took part in a cupcake decorating class. The course was run and given to me by Laura and Sangeeta from I made it myself as a thank you gift for taking most of the images on their website. Look at their website and if you are based in London you should take a class as it's a lot of fun!

Polaroid 340 Landcamera

2010-09-10T01:39:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of my lovely father-in-law, I am now the proud owner of a Polaroid 340 Landcamera.

These cameras were made between 1969 and 1971. Lucky for me my parents-in-law haven't used theirs in about two decades, therefore it is in mint condition.

You can load it with Fuji FP 100 film which places like 7dayshop(dot)com sell cheap. Fuji FP 100 is a pack film. This means the individual photos are packed into a stack in a cassette. FP-100C is colour film and FP-100B is black & white film. Both can be used in this camera.

Loading the camera is easy: you open the back, insert the cassette (the right way round of course), ensure the white paper ends clearly and cleanly look over the edge of the camera side. Close the camera and pull out the black paper strip that you can see laying on top of the white strips. Voila.

Once you have taken a picture, you have pull on the white paper strip on the side (they are numbered). This will expose the grey edge of the photo sheet. Before pulling on this ensure you have gripped the paper strip thoroughly to pull it out in one go as otherwise (if you stop half way) you get nasty stripes on your photo. This is what the photo looks like once you have pulled it out.

The back of the photo tells you how long you have to let it develop, depending on the type of film and the room temperature. This is the label on the back of the FP 100-C (colour film):

So once you have waited your 90-120 second you can peel of the photo from the chemical sheet. I find this the most satisfying and exciting part (and sometimes very frustrating if the pictures hasn't turned out so well).

Once you have peeled of the photo from the chemicals, it stops developing, but it still slightly increases in contrast before it's completely done. Be very careful with the new photo for the next few minutes, the photo surface is still a tad wet and therefore extremely scratch prone. Here are a few pictures I have taken recently:

And here is one where it went slightly wrong...

Oh well, can't always be perfect. :)

Instant Photography - Fuji, Polaroid and a mixture of old and new

2010-09-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I talk to people about certain elements of photography and realise that I take some knowledge for granted. For example instant photography, I sometimes (wrongly) assume that people know what options are out there other than the stereotypical Polaroid 600.

If you are one of the people who thinks 'polaroid' when thinking about instant photography, please keep reading because you might find this interesting.

I used to have a Polaroid 600 that looked like this:

Here is a picture I took with it.

To be honest I never quite liked this camera. The pictures never came out particulalry nice, the one above is probably one of the best ones (sad but true).

So in my frustration and despair to find film, the following thought shot into my mind: surely there must be another company producing instant photography cameras!

After just a few minutes of research I found out about the Fuji Instax. Here is their large model (not my camera and photo):

And here the smaller model, the Fuji Instax Mini:

The pictures of the smaller Fuji Instax Mini are the size of a standard business card (46 x 62 mm), the ones of the larger Fuji Instax are exactly twice the size (99 x 62 mm).

I decided to get the little white Instax Mini, for different reasons. One is that the large Instax really is large and therefore difficult to carry around. Also the Instax Mini photos have the total cute factor. You just want to stick them in your wallet or pin them on the computer screen at work or post them to friends as gifts (anyone?). I bought my camera and film from Ebay and have never looked back. Everyone I show this camera instantly loves it and it has proven to be the best toy ever for weddings!

Here are a few of my Instax Mini photos:

Now .... that's not all I have to say about instant photography!

There is another option I have explored recently: use an old landcamera and fill it with modern packfilm.

Ehh? I hear you say?

Tomorrow (or the day after) I will tell you about my Polaroid 340 Landcamera and how to use it. Stay tuned.

Camping in West Sussex

2010-08-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Our friends temporarily live in West Sussex (an hour and a half south of London) and we visited them for a night camping under the trees. Someone pretended to be a little camera shy.

Please say hi to Bingo. She is a Hungarian Vizsla and one of the sweetest dogs I know!

Bingo is very affectionate and loves getting cuddles.

We made a roaring fire, ate loads of German sausages (Oh motherland be blessed!) and roasted marshmallows (not my cup of tea at all, no surprise I have never done that before).

I hope summer is not yet coming to an end and we'll have another chance for sleeping outside. I'm not putting my hope up high though, considering it has been raining a lot over the last fortnight. And you might not believe it - but it doesn't rain that much in the UK despite the cliche!

The Touch.

2010-08-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

Today's shot was inspired by the lovely Rosie Hardy who I had the pleasure to meet a few weeks ago.

Recently I have been experimenting with a particular type of photo manipulation which you can see here and here.

Of course I have been asked how I created these shots. I thought I might just tell you.

It is terribly simple to be honest! You just need a series of pictures that align and that you can overlay. For the above picture I have used these 4 shots:

The camera sits on a tripod and shutter/aperture are set to manual so each shot looks exactly the same.
You have to use a photo editing programme like photoshop for this. You choose which one will be your background picture and then you copy one of the other pictures into this main picture. You align it with the main picture and start erasing the image with your eraser tool until only the hand is left. You do the same with all the other picture and you end up with three additional hands copied into your main shot. Voila!

Once you have done all this, merge the levels together, adjust colour/contrast/white balance, clone out any other items you dislike (like the neighbours yellow hose pipe outside) and you're done.

To be honest the processing bit is the easy part, to take four pictures where the hands do not overlap is the hard part. I think I took about 30 pictures to get these four the way I wanted them.

Right, I hope this makes sense and you enjoyed the insight! Happy weekend!!

Tree hug on a Saturday morning

2010-07-31T06:26:00.000-07:00

I wish you all a great weekend! This is what I was up to this morning. :)

Mummy Tummies

2010-07-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

In May of this year I was lucky enough to do two maternity shoots and two newborn shoots. One of the two newborns was the bump of one of two the mummy tummies. Confused? Great. I'll show the newborn shots later.

One of the things that is really important is to be very sensitive with the pregnant lady and try everything possible to make her feel comfortable. No way can you stress out someone who is just about to give birth! Actually the first of my two mum's shocked me when greeting me with a chirpy: "I think I'm in the beginning stages of labour, it started last night." What to do? Take it as it comes, make a nice time out of the time you have, make her feel special and beautiful and keen to document the belly that soon will be gone.

So here you have a few of the shots. I hope you like them.

Last Sunday in London Fields

2010-07-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Neither the weather forecast nor the sky in the morning showed what a glorious day we would have. Not a bad day for a birthday! :)

Before & After

2010-07-16T01:52:00.000-07:00

I have been asked quite a few times about processing techniques. Should one process images or should the taken picture be good enough to speak for itself? Is there too little / too much processing? What processing techniques are there?

I think it is essential to create an image that you are comfortable with and proud of. There is no particular look of an image that should be achieved. I personally always process my images to an extend. I NEVER (almost never) publish pictures straight out of the camera (also called SOOC). I always tweak my pictures in one form or another. It's like going out without makeup. I don't wear a lot of makeup but I would never go to work not wearing any. Neither would I go to work having a face full of paint and lippy on. It is essential to strike a balance between the subject of the image and a processing level that underlines the subject rather than overload or overpower it.

The processing goes hand in hand with the technique used to take the picture. I usually go through phases of trying different shooting and processing techniques. There was a time when I photoshopped textures into all my images. Or I experiment with Lightroom presets. And recently I tried to create high contrast black & white images like this one. This image was taken with natural light from the window.

There is a huge difference between these two pictures but it is what I wanted. I didn't want a creamy coloured image, I was after a high contrast black & white of myself, with nothing distracting from the face. So I removed the drawer and stuff in the background in photoshop, adjusted the white balance (the above picture is very blue which can be corrected with the white balance). Then I converted it into a black & white by desaturating it. This is usually when it gets interesting. The desaturated image looks bland and flat. To change that you crank up the contrast a lot. Then I used the dodge/burn tools in CS3 and adjusted the highlights, midtones and darks until I achieved the final image.

I will try and go into more processing techniques in the future as well as shooting techniques.
I hope this helps. Any questions are welcome!

New blog!

2010-07-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Now I am still very unfamiliar with blogspot so you have to excuse the slightly rouch looking blog. I will ask my lovely husband and blogger to give me a helping hand for the first few weeks.

So, a blog. Me and a blog, never throught that would happen. So why did I start this blog? Because I seem to be doing many interesting photography projects recently that I think could be very interesting writing about.

For example the cupcake project. Well, it's not only cupcakes. I took pictures for a fabulous new company called 'I made it myself' who offer classes on cupcake decoration, jewellery making, Tshirt decoration and all sorts of other creative things.

And then there is another food project. A friend who also lives in Hackney is starting a new underground restaurant with three other people. Their first event is end of this month in Dalston (East London) and I will take all the pictures of the venue, the food and the actual event. And I'll try the food of course.

And then there is the 'new' old Polaroid 340 I got fully working today. I am so excited! I managed to get a new battery as well as suitable film and the result is very exciting. The picture below is the second ever picture I have taken with it. Yes, it's a bit dark and smudged on the right. It can only get better.

I will write more on all of the above and other exciting photography related things on this blog so stay tuned.