Jonny Back Photography Blog

I Would Like To Say A Few Words…

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:00:40 +0000

Here are a few examples from one of the latest weddings of the speeches shots. I always skip the eating bit, after all, who wants somebody taking photos of themselves with food in their mouths. So after the meal I start snapping away again in time for the speeches.

It’s one of my favourite bits of the day for photographing because there is constantly people smiling and laughing, so it’s just a question of being a quick enough to get as many people as possible per punch line!

Anyway, here are a few photos…

Jonny’s Back To Blogging

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:45:28 +0000

Sorry for the lapse, things have been hectic this end.

Here are some shots from my latest wedding, same again on Saturday, here’s hoping for weather as nice as this…

A Bug’s Life

admin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:41:12 +0000

After a mad month of photographing school kids, a mansion, a charity do, weddings, a McDonalds football day and yet more school kids I decided to commission myself instead! I photographed in the garden trying to play with my weird and wonderful wide angle lens and tried a few shots of the world from the ground upwards. The world according to a bug, if you like. I must be going mad!

Early Birthday Present

admin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:12:44 +0000

This week saw the release of a new version of Lightroom, the programme that I do 95% of all my editing, the other 5% is done in Photoshop but as Lightroom gets better and better, it’s less often that I have to open files up individually in Photoshop.

Lightroom 3 may be a bit pricier than many photo organising and editing programmes but this new version, Lightroom 3, I reckon makes it a worthwhile investment for all photographers. The best thing I have found with it so far is its built noise reduction, which was fairly hopeless in the previous version, here is the before and after showing how much better the new Lightroom is…

It is saves all my shots at 4000 ISO, when even 2 years ago shooting at 400 ISO had its issues. Here is the whole image…

Three’s A Crowd!

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:41:42 +0000

I really love this shot by Dan Chung of Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown in London last week.

A quick round of golf, then off to get married!

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:28:41 +0000

That’s what Ben did before getting to the church in time to marry Laura. We were ultra lucky with the weather and managed to get all the shots we wanted outside in between a couple of showers…

Pet Portrait

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:30:29 +0000

This shoot gave me a chance to try out one of my favourite lenses again, this is the one lens I recommend to anyone who has recently got a SLR, a 50mm prime lens.

This one is a relatively cheap as chips, it’s the Canon 50mm f1.8 II Lens. You can pick one up new for £90 if you look around. On a small sensor camera it would become a 80mm lens which is perfect for portraits.

You can see below that I didn’t go as wide with the aperture as I could have, but I find that this lens is a bit soft at f1.8 anyway. Here, with a dog moving about it was hard enough to focus at this aperture let alone f1.8.

The Art Of Group Shots

admin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:42:39 +0000

Photographing groups is definitely is an art.

Finlay Mackay’s promo photograph for this year’s Royal Ascot race is a bit good!

Even more impressive when you see who he has arranged int the photo, to name but a few…
Ronnie Corbett, Cilla Black, The Duke of Devonshire, Lisa Snowdon, Bruce Forsyth and Frankie Dettori.

Finlay Mackay show that there is more to it than just bunching everyone together…

Philosopher Julian Baggini was quoted in the Guardian last week and summarises it well.

“…the gap between what you can do and what a professional can do has shrunk. Actually, though, what it has done is raise the level of mediocrity, while leading us into more mediocrity… Digital cameras are the perfect example, they enable us to do something much better than we once could – but we’re still not there. We still can’t take pictures like professional photographers.”

One day I hope I can take group shots as well as Finlay Mackay, I know it’s certainly not just about having the gear!

Wedding Show This Weekend

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:49:40 +0000

Just a quick note to say that we will be exhibiting Kensington Wedding Show at the Royal Garden Hotel this Sunday so do come along or send anyone who might be interested.

Further information can be found on the show website here.

Getting Back Into The Habit

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:51:04 +0000

Here are a few shots taken in Italy a couple of weekends ago, I would be interested to see how you might take them differently. Would you have gone for a different composition or different camera settings?

It’s been a while since I photographed out and about without being a ‘on a job’, so I was a bit rusty and found I took less shots than normal so I must have missed a lot of potential photographs.

My homework is to take more photographs!

Roof Tops – Bagni di Lucca

Bridge of the Devil – Borgo a Mozzano
This bridge is on the way to Bagni di Lucca, an amazingly thin footbridge with a railway passing through on the left hand side.

Number One – Bagni di Lucca

Abandoned House – Bagni di Lucca