New Freeze Frame Images Site

I finally got round to completing a new website  design for Freeze Frame Images Ltd, my company that supplies corporate and private photography services in the Thames Valley and south east. You can visit it by clicking here. I must say that I am quite pleased with the simple look and I hope that people (and potential clients!) will find it easy to navigate and showcase my work well. To reiterate, Freeze Frame Images provides commisioned photographic and imaging services to both the commercial and private sectors of the market to include property and architectural, portraiture, reportage, sports and events and product and advertising.

February Images

February proved to be a very frustrating month from a weather perspective. Much of the time the south of the country was covered in a blanket of low, unbroken dull cloud making for extremely flat lighting conditions. At times like these it is important to make the most of every opportunity that comes along, not easy when you are juggling commitments to commissioned work and a young family! I did however, manage to add some images to the River Thames project, most notably of the area around Cricklade in Wiltshire not far from the source including a stunning sunset panorama and some nice images of the church at Castle Eaton on the banks of the river. Closer to home, I also made the most of the snow drops that were starting to make their appearance and have added some images of the church at Kintbury in Berkshire and chapel at neighbouring Avington, in addition to some photographs long the Kennet and Avon Canal. The River Kennet at Newbury also makes an appearance with some lovely light around the West Mills area of the town and I managed a really nice panoramic of Market Place at dusk.

The best image of the month was taken on a day trip into the Brecon Beacons which is close on a 3 hour drive from my house. I left early in the morning to get a full day in and arrived to very indifferent weather - it was raining! I never discount these conditions as a break in the cloud can lead to some dramatic lighting and so I set off up the slope to the ridge that leads to Corn Du from the car park on the main road to Brecon. After an hours slog uphill, I arrived on the top of Corn Du, my aim being to photograph the neighbouring peak of Pen y Fan for my County Highs project. The tops were not only covered in snow but with low cloud as well with visibility down to a few feet. After three hours of rain, sleet, snow and biting winds I had to admit defeat and headed for the calmer lower slopes out of the force of the weather. It was at the lower levels that the weather started to break and I managed a cracking shot looking across the valley to the peak of Fan Fawr, this made the day's effort worthwhile and just goes to prove it is always wise to remain optomistic and take your chances when they present themselves.

As I write this, the weather has finally taken a turn for the better and the daffodils are starting to appear, so here's hoping for a more fruitful March with some excellent light.

Latest Images

Well January was a tough month weather wise but did provide some good snow scene opportunities if you were prepared to take on the tough conditions and difficult travelling. The heaviest snowfalls in twenty years in the Thames Valley area looked beautiful on those odd occasions that the sun came out, and it was just one such time that provided me with the opportunity for the best image of the month taken from the Chiltern Hills above Mapledurham near Reading. After struggling to Pangbourne on the train and then on foot through deep snow for miles, the sky cleared in the late afternoon and allowed the most fantastic sunset as you will see opposite. For the rest of the photographs including photos from the source of the River Thames near Kemble in Gloucestershire and some early snowdrop images take a look at my recent images gallery.
These photographs are a welcome addition to my growing library of high resolution River Thames images and should prove ideal for all sorts of stock uses including magazines, newspapers, books, greetings cards, posters and postcards. Please contact me should you wish to order prints or other merchandise with these images.

Snow pictures

Well, Christmas came and went and now a new year is again upon us and with it more snow has arrived. I'm in two minds on the stuff myself, on the one hand if you get some nice sunny weather following snowfall (rarer than you might think) then this does offer me some great potential to capture some truley unique and very saleable photographs. On the other hand, it does make getting around very difficult and trust me it's very frustrating to have a number of cracking locations up your sleeve for just these conditions but be uable to get to them because the road is like a skating rink. I am hoping that there will be an opportunity for capturing some more images like those I managed of the Kennet valley last month if the sky clears and I can dig the car out of the foot of snow that is currently blocking it in. Take a look at the photos in my recent images gallery by clicking this link -

http://archive.visionsofbritain.com/c/visionsofbritain/gallery/Recent-Images/G0000PxAz9xOCF.g

As I promised in my first blog, I will share with you a few hints and tips that I hope will improve some of your own picture taking. Seeing as the theme for this blog is snow, I thought that some advice on photographing snow scenes would be appropriate. Snow requires a little more care and thought about exposure settings before you just set the camera to automatic and fire away. How many of you have done just this before and (particularly in the days of film where no instant feedback was available) been disappointed by the results as the pictures all seem to be underexposed and dark? Well, that's because the camera's in built light metering system is misleading to you when it takes a light reading and sets the exposure value for you. You see, the camera is looking to employ settings that will ensure that whatever subject you have pointed at, and asked the camera to meter the light reflected off of that spot, is rendered as a mid-tone, ie, a tone in the mid range of the colour spectrum such as a mid grey or red. When you point the camera at your nice bright white snow scene, the metering system sees the snow as a mid-tone and therefore employs settings that will under expose the image. But how do you go about compensating for this? For those of you that have a DSLR or an advanced compact camera that allows some maunual control over exposure settings, then you can look for the exposure compensation function (or allow some compensation manually if shooting in the manual mode) As a rule, I would experiment with settings that allow +1 to +2 stops of light (this is how it will be displayed in your camera settings menu) but remember that this assumes that you will be taking readings from the snow. If you piont the camera ata mid-tone such as a red jacket, then your shot will likely come out over exposed. For those of you with no manual control over your cameras, then look for some thing that is a mid-tone in your scene and point your camera at that and lock the exposure settings by depressing the shutter button halfway, then re-compose your shot and press the button all the way to capture the image (remember that by locking the exposure values in this way you will also set the point of focus) For a more in depth explanation of exposure, you may find that the following link is useful -

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-metering.htm

I hope to share some more of my own (correctly exposed!) snow pictures from this current bout of cold weather with you next time.

My first blog

Hi, and welcome to my first blog on Visions of Britain. This website is all about my imagery taken from around the United Kingdom, and the trials and tribulations of creating the photographs that are available on this site. If you are a budding photographer, it is my aim that by sharing some of my experiences, it may seek to inspire some of your own photography, be it by visiting some of the locations that I have done, or improving your own photography through a few of the insights I hope to provide. If you are an editor or picture buyer, then I hope that you will find this site a useful resource and download plenty of files!

Let me start by pointing you towards my ever expanding gallery of images on the River Thames and Thames Valley. I have been working on this particular project over the last twelve months, the aim being to photograph the landscapes of the river from the source to the sea. At over 200 miles long, there is plenty of country to cover and the river winds it's way through some truly amazing and diverse countryside in addition to many picturesque towns and villages. To tell the story of the river in all seasons is a project that will no doubt span more than a year or two, but let me know how you think I am getting on.

Well, for now I hope that you will enjoy browsing the imagery available. Please look back in shortly and I will start to share some hints and tips, together with my exploits in the coming posts.