New toys and some street photography

My Partner Antonella Muscat has recently been making a lot of investment in her photography. She is a great fan of prime lenses (a prime lens is one that doesn't zoom), prime lenses usually offer better image quality and often have a bigger aperture (they can let in more light when necessary which is good in dark Churches and the like)

Although they can be more of a challenge to use as you have to plan your shots more carefully

One of her most recent purchases from Warehouse Express in Norwich was a Nikon 20mm f2.8, after we left Warehouse Express and all the lovely tempting goodies they have in their huge showroom we decided to head out into Norwich for a bit of street photography and lunch

I thought I'd share just of a few of the images from our walk around Norwich with the new lens

The Sweetie stall in the amusingly named Gentlemans Walk was a very colourful start, I particularly find it difficult to start pointing a camera at complete strangers in the street especially with such a short focal length lens and always take a few minutes to "warm up" and allow the feelings of self conciousness fade

Just round the corner from John Lewis there is a very photogenic piece of metal sculpture which you may recognise from some Antonella's previous photoshoots

One of the characteristics of a lens like the 20mm f2.8 is it's ability to produce bokeh which is a Japanese word which means something like blur. In the image above the subject is the line of black flints with the background being nicely blured or bokeh'd

As we stood looking at the building with the Panasonic signs on it we noticed a stream of people coming up the a Big Issue seller. It appeared they were on some sort of treasure hunt type event as they all seemed to ask him a question and his answer gave them their next clue. They didn't know whether to look at us or their friend with her point & shoot so it made a change to be on the other side of the "uncle bob" situation we find at weddings where one of the guests tries to gatecrash our professional shots

We finished off in Norwich market which is the largest and one of the oldest in the country

Then we headed for home to get the batteries of her other purchase on charge - looks like I owe you another blog posting very soon

On assignment to photograph Gordon Brown as he opens extension to Great Yarmouth College in Norfolk

As well as the wedding photography side of my business that I do with Antonella Muscat as part of Davis & Co Photographers I also take on more journalistic photography assignments


It was this side of my business that led me to be in Great Yarmouth on Monday 14th February to photograph Gordon Brown as he opened an extension to Great Yarmouth College

The £8 million pound extension was officially opened at the end of a 45 minute tour of the college where Mr Brown met students and college staff.

He also met people working in start-up businesses in the new Alchemy 2 which alongside the Alchemy Centre encourages innovation and new businesses to help stimulate the local economy by providing office space and business support for fledgling enterprises. Alchemy 2 was funded by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA)


Mr Brown was accompanied by the local MP Tony Wright, College principle Robin Parkinson, chair of governors Mike Field, Deborah Cadman Chief Executive of the EEDA. He also met with with Councillor Tony Smith the Mayor of Great Yarmouth.

Cut off, it was like going back to the dark ages of the early 1990's

I was planning to continue posting about my time at the SWPP conference back in January but due to some idiot using his digger to break a whole lot of high capacity fibre near to J6 of the M1 on Tuesday I have been without broadband for nearly 3 days. You might have thought that there would have been resiliency in the network that linked many of the residents of Letchworth, Hitchin, Harpenden, Luton, Leagrave and Houghton Regis to the internet but there wasnt i.e. 10 seconds work in a JCB and we were all cut off.

I'm going to do some research now to see if other internet service providers (ISP's) have the same single points of failure in their networks and will be posting my findings here

Starbucks, coppers and the SWPP Conference

Picture the scene, there I was sat in Starbucks on one of the arm chairs trying to write this blog posting. A couple of men join me near the window and sit on the sofa next to my chair

I mostly ignored them but as soon as I glanced up from my note book & magazine I could tell that they were plain clothed cops - I dont know why really, maybe it was their size 12 feet. Then a few minutes later they were joined by 2 other groups of rather cold looking cops from a local operation. I was totally surrounded (but didnt feel the need to put my hands up), it felt like I was on the set of The Bill, I reckon the banter was very similar.

Good luck with the shoplifting gang folks

Back on Plan B, I mentioned in my last posting that I had attended the annual SWPP (Society of Wedding & Portrait Photographers) conference back in January. I came away after 6 days with a head & notebook full of information and have spent the last 6 weeks making sense of it all and trying to put some of it into practice within the business.

I'd signed up for the Business School sessions which formed the first 2 days of the conference which was held at the Novatel in a rather cold, wet & snowy Hammersmith

The 1st session I went to was by Michael Turner - Networking: It's good to talk. Michael covered all of the basic of using networking as a means of growing a business including the importance of developing a networking strategy as a part of the overall marketing plan. This is certainly a area I need to work on more as most of my networking seems to be happening online using social networking such as Facebook (both with Davis & Co Photographers and my own personal page) and twitter 

I've been exploring face to face networking "clubs" such as BNI, does anyone have any experience of them and their usefulness ?

Oh dear

It would almost look like I had fallen into that trap that so many bloggers & blogists succumb to - I seem to have stopped blogging, I was shocked when I realised it was only a couple of days short of 3 months since I last blogged which is dreadful, that's almost a quarter of a year.

A lot has happened since my last blog including the Yuletide season and more importantly the SWPP (Society of Wedding & Portrait Photographers) conference in London - I spent 6 days at the conference and came away with more ideas & inspiration than my mind could cope with quickly

So I must sit down now and start writing some new posts and also select some images to go with the posts

Watch this space

Christmas Special Offer

We are running a special offer in the run-up to Christmas

We are offering a family lifestyle portrait photoshoot in the location of your choice* such as your local park, woodland or maybe a gritty urban location for up to 45 minutes and will give you a 6" x 8" print all for £30 with additional prints and products such as canvas wall portraits also being available

Lifestyle photography dispenses with the 4 walls of a studio and heads outdoors with all the fantastic natural backdrops that are available. It also allows younger children to be themselves with their fun-filled characters showing in every image.

This is a limit time offer and we expect the available timeslots to fill up fast

Please can Paul on 07866 719730 to book an appointment or email on caterham@gmail.com

* within 25 miles of Hitchin

Barkston Heath 'The same but different'

Back at the begining of August Antonella and I went to RAF Barkston Heath to photograph a round of the Toyota Sprint Series for Andrew Cliffe as he'd found himself double booked.

Earlier this month I blogged about the images from the day that had been published by Banzai magazine and yesterday I heard that MR2 Only Magazine (subtitled No Scoobies, Evo's GTO's or FTO's... MR2s only) had published 5 of our images

The title Same But Different comes from the fact that the track is normally used clockwise but occasionally they spice things up a little by running the otherway around

For those of you that don't know of this hidden away venue it has an interesting history as it was home to part of the Bloodhound missile defence system after it was reployed from Germany in the early 1980's. The missiles remained at Barkston Heath until 1991 leaving only some rather odd concrete structures that formed the bases for the launch platforms.

They would certainly have given these MR2's a run for their money as apparently it was a rather rapid piece of kit

"By the time the missile has just cleared the launcher it is doing 400 mph. By the time the missile is 25 feet from the launcher it has reached the speed of sound (around 720 mph). Three seconds after launch, as the four boost rockets fall away, it has reached Mach 2.5 which is roughly 1800 mph"