The line up were 3 comedians I’d never heard of, Windsor, Chris Norton Walker (who whispered in my ear “do you know any good jokes” seconds before going on stage!), with the headline act Dave Fulton.  Dave was in the headlines himself after saying the word “wanker” on BBC Breakfast the day before while sitting on the sofa with uptight hosts Bill Turnbull & Sian Williams.  I’ve seen the clip on Youtube and all I can say is “urgh really?”  Tis but a very sad world we live in if we find a simple little word like that so mortally offensive.  Add in a little bit of Jan Jack, and a compere, Phil Dinsdale, who I remember taking the piss out of me and my beard as part of his act at a previous Laughter House and we had our evenings entertainment…  the git!

Oh, and yes before anyone asks, I did get lost trying to find my way out of Boringstoke.

Anyway, my favourite photo of each of the acts…

Inside there were demonstration areas set aside for all sorts of things, from gymnastics, trampolines to a zumba stage and much more.  Add to that several theatre style presentation rooms, a demonstration kitchen  and more.  Clearly lots of time, effort and money had been spent on making B-Fit look the part.  Things did seem to be rather quiet, not nearly as many people walking around as I’d have expected.  Although this made things easier for me, the stands and expo hosts would obviously have preferred more people.

Still, it’s only year one for B-Fit and as the expo hosts have proven through Bodypower (which they also run), they have what it takes to make expo’s bigger and bigger each year.

I also counted at least 4 “Gladiators” (3 new, 1 old) in the house!

For me, the Excel Centre is a bit of a pain to get to, and everything is all rather expensive.  The main Excel car park only caters to cars under 190cms in height, and has a ban on “Transit size vans”, so that was me screwed straight away.  I managed to squeeze into the Novotel car park, and later that day they managed to squeeze £24 parking costs out of me.

Meh.

I also object to paying £2 for a small cup of over-brewed tea…  and one of the stand holders told me that Excel wanted £200 for a single plug socket for the weekend.  Needless to say they made do without.

But enough of my moaning, the day was good, I got to speak to a couple of magazine owners who are hopefully interested in using my work in the near future, and I even got a slice of cake and a hug from quite a few pretty girls.

Oh and a big thank you to the owner of the bottle of water I drank while slowly (but quite loudly) choking on a piece of chicken!

Fire is not the easiest of subjects to photograph well, add in a bitterly cold gale force wind (that would eventually beat us into an early submission) and it was that little bit harder.

This was the first of hopefully several “just for fun” fire shoots this year with a fire performer friend, Thomas Johansson, and fellow photographers Spencer & Karl.

I’ve photographed fire performers quite a few times, but always as part of a show, and never as part of a controlled shoot.  Here we had some control over what the “crazy German” Thomas would do.  Also to make our lives that little bit harder we had a couple of flash units stuck on tripods either side of Thomas.

With three of us shooting at the same time fancy remote flash triggers sadly weren’t an option, so we used the best accessory that money can’t buy, namely Spencer, running from his camera to press the button on the master flash unit manually.

With our cameras set on 10 second self timer mode, we’d do a 3-2-1 countdown and press the shutter buttons, with that Spencer would run across the pitch black field, wait for the cameras to “click” into action, and then trigger the master flash (which would in turn trigger the slave flash unit).

From the moment the shutters opened Thomas then had anything from half to 3 seconds to do his fire stuff, during which time the flash was fired and in theory would freeze Thomas.  Confused much?  Just look at the photos and it should make more sense.

Okay so it’s not the best technique, with probably over a 50% failure rate due to timing it wrongly.  However if we just played the numbers game and kept going until we got a few keepers.

I even got in on the action myself, with one of my favourites posted below..

Oh, no photoshop has been used in any of these photos.

We met at the Lyndhurst Park Hotel and then walked over the road and up the hill to the Lyndhurst Cemetery and Chapel where the the photography started.  We walked around there and the surrounding area for the best part of 2 hours.  As we made our way back to the hotel via Boltons Bench the grey skies cleared and we were bathed in sunshine.

After lunch the second part of the day was walking up Lyndhurst High Street.  I’ve driven down it dozens of times, but never have I properly explored on foot.

First stop was Meridien Modena, the Ferrari / Maserati dealership who kindly & somewhat surprisingly didn’t mind letting us inside to take photos of their cars.  Cheers for that Meridien! 

After narrowly avoiding being murdered by some old school bikers, it was time to see how many of us could fit inside the rather small “The Lyndhurst Sweet Shop” at the same time.  The answer was most of us!  We continued walking up to “St Michaels and All Angels Church” at the end of the High Street.  Leaving the church well and truly ‘papped’ and learning that “Alice in Wonderland” is buried there, we made our way back to the hotel and the end of our day.

I really enjoyed the day, and I hope everyone did as well.

I watched a video recently of a guy calling himself a Photographer / Retoucher, who in the video said that 99% of the images you see in certain magazines are photoshopped.

This is a link to the video. http://youtu.be/YP31r70_QNM   (link will open in a new window)

If you’ve watched the video you’ll probably agree that the girl featured is slim and beautiful.  With a little bit of make up she wouldn’t need any post production work done.

Take for example my latest published work, the Gaspari calendar.  Other than converting to black and white, none of the girls have been photoshopped in any way.   With the girls posing correctly, some decent lighting and a good make up artist in the shape of Laura Forrest, nothing extra needed doing.

The Gaspari calendar is just one example, but the same applies to the rest of my work.  Asides from a few simple corrections for exposure, colour balance etc, none of the images you see on my website have had any airbrushing done to them.  I’m really rather proud of this fact, and over the years I’ve had hundreds of photos published.

You could argue that most of the models I work with are gym rats, and hence look better than average, and of course you’d be right.  However isn’t that all part of it.  If you want to look great in pictures then you have to put a bit of work in yourself and not leave everything up to the “photoshop artist”?

My work isn’t perfect, and no model is perfect, but at least the pictures I take show models with an obtainable and not impossible look.

Should I change my attitude, I mean if you watch the video the photographer featured appears to own a large and rather sexy studio.  From the one picture we see his work seems to be average at best, yet he appears to be rather successful.  I’m probably reading too much into what we see in the video, for all I  know he could be an actor paid to play the part, but you get my point.

Would I be more successful if I photoshopped my images to death?

I’d appreciate your feedback, so please leave your comments below…

Finally I get to tick something off my vision board.

For years I’ve wanted to have a calendar properly published featuring exclusively my work.  This year, or should that be 2012, it’s happened twice.

The first calendar, Bikini Gold, features photos from my archives of several trips and shoots across the USA and Canada.  The second however is a much bigger deal for me.

I had the privilege of photographing the Gaspari Girls 2012 calendar, all new photos shot exclusively for the calendar, and working with a major supplement company – probably my biggest job in fitness to date.

If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of either / both of the calendars;

Bikini Gold 2012 is available for purchase from my website – prices are cheap, include postage and delivery is direct from myself.

and

Gaspari Girls Calendar 2012 is actually available for FREE direct from their website.

I do like it when a shoot “just happens” so quickly.

We did half the shoot inside her gym, and the other half outside in the glorious late afternoon sun in Hyde Park.  The outside shots are both of our favourites.  The lighting, the autumn colours, were all just perfect.

I asked Hanan for a testimonial.  This is what she said.  “These are my thoughts on Michael as a photographer: reliable, friendly, chilled out, professional, serious about quality, genuinely cares about delivering the best service, and giving you the kind of photos you’re after.  Basically, I was really happy with the photos I ended up with.  Get in touch with him, you won’t regret it.”

Hanan is currently working updating her website with her shiny new photos, when it’s finished I’ll update this post with a link. Until then, thank you Hanan for the great shoot, the cup of tea, the healthy biscuit and the salmon sandwich!

Oh, and before anyone says, yes I’m well aware there are 12 months in the year, but one month features two of the models!

The shoots took place in Vancouver, one on the beach, and if memory serves the second one was half way up a mountain.

Congrats on the publication Jen!

Please excuse the rubbish quality mobile phone taken photo of the magazine.

So off we trotted one cold mid Novembers evening to one of the darkest places I know in Southampton that has a view, Mayflower Park.

The exposure time for all of the photos was 30 seconds, which for those of you who know Paul is rather a long time for him to stand still and not talk.  The lighting came from me, walking quickly around Paul with a torch, and because I kept moving with little or no light falling on me, I don’t show up in the photos.

Now I’m sure a Photoshop expert could probably create a better end result, probably without the need to get so cold, but I’m a bit of a purist where these things are concerned and I like doing it “for real”.  Anything else for me is cheating.

My approach is a bit hit and miss, all of the photos were lit differently, but after taking around 50 images we got a couple that we both really like.  A happy client and a happy photographer, what more could you ask for?  I think the final image of the three is my favourite.