So here they are, although not in any order in particular, other than chronological.

First up is an image I made in Spinningfields, Manchester that I submitted in the Urban View category of the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 competition, which was subsequently shortlisted.

The Avenue, Manchester - Shortlisted for Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011

Also in January I made the image below with Charlie in Castlefield with one of my favourite modifiers, the Lastolite Ezybox. Details here

Charlie, Castlefield

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale car park before the security guards came along. Blog post here

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale Car Park, Manchester

Maltese street scene – First trip to Malta this year. Blog post here.

Typical street scene in Victoria on the Island of Gozo, Malta

Kayleigh, Trafford Park with the moon. Blog post  here

Kayleigh

Second trip to Malta this year. Blog posts here and here

Doorway, Zejtun, Malta

Anna – “Waiting for a bus?” with some very carefully placed SB900s – blog post here

Waiting for a bus?

Lighthouse, Vilamoura, Portgual. Blog post here and on variable neutral density filters here

View of the breakwater at Vilamoura, Portugal with a lighthouse at the end

Manchester Central Library – post here

Manchester Central Library at sunset

Jenson Button in his McLaren Mercedes tears up Deansgate, Manchester. Post here

Jenson Button

The Lake District. Post here

View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning

Derwent Valley. Post here

Tree in the Derwent Valley, High Peaks

And finally a shoot I did with Sophie and Pat in mid December that I haven’t yet blogged about. Post to follow in the New Year.

Pat & Sophie

So in retrospect I’m more than happy with the quality of what I’ve produced this year, though I do feel that I need to up the quantity next year. And in upping the quantity I’m pretty certain that this will also see an improvement in the quality too. I ought to write a post on my plans for 2012 too. For one, it’ll give me something to be held to, and it’ll also help me to thrash out my thoughts and plans for the next year of my business and where I want to take it. So you can look forward to this in the coming weeks.

Finally, for 2012 I’ll be releasing desktop wallpapers for your personal use. You can download January’s here in 3 separate sizes. There’s 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1200 & 1440 x 900. Simply click the appropriate link and right click to save to your desktop.

NeilAlexander_JanuaryDesktop - 1440x900

As this’ll be my final post for 2011, I’ll sign off by saying that it’s been a fantastic year for me photographically speaking and I hope that 2012 is even better.
Enjoy the celebrations, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Wishing you a prosperous 2012.
Neil

Anna by Neil Alexander (Click to view larger)

My original plan had been to place a light stand either side of the open windows and light Anna in through the open windows with a close crop showing only the edges of the structure. Alas one of the ends has been filled in, presumably to provide a little welcome shelter to any occupants, but foiling my initial plan. Plan B involved simply placing an SB900 in either corner on the floor inside the shelter at the front directed up and back towards the ceiling, but this looked bloody awful. It made Anna look like some horrendous green vampire as it cast a horrible green glow from the ceiling and the bench everywhere. Plan C took a little more effort, but worked a treat. I rigged two SB900s with Pocket Wizard MultiMaxs and bungeed them to the middle rafter on the ceiling either side of Anna.

SB900 and Pocket Wizard bungeed to the rafters

I had to use the Pocket Wizards because with the flash units being hidden up in the rafters, I no longer had line of sight from across the road rendering Nikon’s iTTL useless. The only way to trigger the strobes was using these radio triggers. Unfortunately for my legs though, these lil’ fella’s are certainly not the new all singing all dancing TTL units that Pocket Wizard are currently flogging around. It’s all manual with these babies. Which meant lots of to-ing and fro-ing across the road to get my levels just where I wanted them. The final image was shot at 1/125 sec F2.8 at ISO200 – it was a bright day, but I found that at this point I could avoid blowing out the background around the shelter and still have enough control over the ambient inside to avoid showing the back wall too much. Angling the strobes forwards slightly, so that they were aimed directly at either side of Anna and slightly towards the camera also helped here. Had I placed them on the front most rafter I would have had too much spill onto the background and I feel the direction of the light on the model would have been much less dramatic. I then applied a little dodging and burning in Silver Efex Pro 2 in post.

Anna by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

We met up around 11am and headed down to a spot on the edge of Ashley in Cheshire by the banks of the River Bollin. It’s an area that I’m quite familiar with having shot many landscape images there before – this one being my favourite. Knowing the area helps hugely when I’m trying to pre-visualise the final image, and this in turn aids me with composition and lighting at the time of making the image as I already have quite a clear vision in my mind’s eye of how I want the finished product to appear.

I had Anna turn sideways on to me with her back to the tree and then lay her arms along the branch behind her to provide a leading line into the frame. I then lit her with a Nikon SB900 flash inside a 76cm Lastolite Ezybox HotShoe softbox camera left and a grided SB900 camera right. It was one of those days when the sun was constantly in and out of the clouds, so the purpose of the softbox was to provide a soft controllable light on Anna, but it meant that I only shot when the sun was behind the clouds. It gave me more control over the amount and direction of light that fell on Anna, though to be honest most of the time the sun was behind the clouds it diffused the light so much and so smoothly that this light didn’t really effect the final image very much. It was only when the sun went behind really thick cloud that I noticed the light visibly decrease and then the Lastolite came into play. The other light behind Anna did generally make much more of an appearance. To this light I applied a small home-made grid which focused the beam coming from the unit and allowed me to direct it squarely at the back of Anna’s head. This gave me sufficient light to bring out her hair and to separate her head from the tree more. All shot TTL and the above was made using the 70-200 at 1/250 sec, F2.8 ISO 400. The final images was then imported into Lightroom and processed in Nik’s SilverEfex Pro2.

Here’s the set up shot:

Model shoot set up (Click for larger)

Finally as a little Brucey Bonus as it’s the end of the month, here’s a few links that have caught my eye over the last month. Worth a few mins if you’ve got the time……:

• 29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE
• Nicholas Alan Cope Photography
• 21 Photographs And Lighting Setups For Every Occasion | DIYPhotography.net
• JONATHAN CHRITCHLEY – FINE ART OCEAN PHOTOGRAPHY
• Photopreneur’s Big List of Stock Photography Sites (categorized)
• BRIANGRECH studio | photography & design | Award Winning Maltese fashion and advertising photographer
• 15 Misc Portrait tips

And FINALLY…….
If you’ve visited the site lately, you’ll undoubtedly have noticed a wee change…… I’ve moved over from my previous theme to a Graph Paper Press theme and will shortly be incorporating this into a new PhotoShelter site (It’s all part of my grand plan…). However in the meantime, things are liable to change, shuffle about, fall off, go back on and generally get tweaked here, there any everywhere, so apologies in advance. Obviously as many of the changes as possible will be done offline, but sometimes the only way to change bits and pieces is whilst stuff is running live.

TTFN

Jay and Vicky (Click for larger)

The morning of that fateful night at Wembley for the Champions League final I shot Jay and Vicky just round the corner from their home for their engagement. Time was very tight for all of us to say the least, but within around 30 minutes of dropping a light stand, we were wrapping up and I was heading off down to London. Jay, using his local knowledge, provided a couple of options for location and we opted for this one which was a little public footpath over a stream. Fortunately no-ones managed to invent smello-prints yet because the stream absolutely stank. Like really badly! I used just the one SB900 in a large Lastolite Ezybox and triggered this with the pop-up flash using Nikon’s iTTL system. Both images were shot at 1/125 sec at F2.8, the top image using an ISO of 800 because of the decreased ambient light under the trees and the bottom one at 200 as the couple were more out in the open.

Jay and Vicky (Click for larger)

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

A couple more images from a recent shoot with Lena in Old Trafford. Another manic week so another brief post…..

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Both images using natural light only. Have a great weekend
TTFN…..

Kayleigh by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

I was working on some fresh head shots with Kayleigh on location in Trafford Park, Manchester last week and shortly before we started to wrap up, I spotted the moon high up in the sky with a cloudless sky around it. I figured it would make quite a cool image if I could get enough light on Kayleigh yet still get a clear moon in the background. Using the 105mm F2.8 I stopped it down to F16, mainly in an attempt to get something vaguely resembling a moon shape rather than just a white blur, ran up my ISO to 400 and made this exposure at 1/60 second. I used one SB900 in my large trusty Lastolite Ezybox at zero compensation using TTL. The wind was whipping around, and anchoring the sail-like Ezybox whilst lying on the floor shooting up at Kayleigh wasn’t exactly a pretty site, but after a dozen frames or so I think we nailed it.

Charlie by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Inspired by Zack Arias’s amazing 3 day “Foundations of a working photographer” course on Creative Live, I felt inspired to try some fresh head shots and incorporate some of his techniques. Both of these images are shot with 100% ambient light. No artificial light was thrown into the mix whatsoever. The top photograph of the lovely Charlie was shot in her front room. The sun had just appeared after a torrential downpour, and with just a couple of hours until it was due to set, it’s tones were beginning to take on a nice colour. It was quite a strong light, and not particularly flattering, so I threw a white sheet up over the curtain rail in the window which gave me a lovely soft complimentary light with which to shoot. I used a gold reflector camera left just to throw a little light back into the shadows on the right hand side of her face and to pick out her beautiful red hair a little more.

Charlie by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

After that we decided to head over to Walton Hall to try and catch the last light. It was a bit of a mad dash – it was fading fast. I spotted this huge bush with masses of pink flowers. I’d hazard a guess it was a hydrangea, but I’m ignorant as heck when it comes to things that grow in the ground (grass and daffodils are about my limit!). I figured it would make a nice backdrop if I could throw it completely out of focus. The last light was just managing to make it through the trees behind me, so we found a spot where it was unobstructed and their Charlie knelt. It wasn’t quite reaching the flowers and it’s kinda falling off on the bottom of her chin and hair, but I like the way it’s caught her eyes and cheek bones. Once again, all ambient. No energy cells were killed in making these images. Shot with D300 and Nikkor 105mm F2.8 Macro – which is my new favourite portrait lens.

Top image was 1/250 sec at F3 ISO800 and bottom was 1/60 F3 ISO 800. As always comments welcomed. TTFN….

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Shot with Ukranian model Lena at sunset on a cool location I’d scouted in Trafford Park a couple of weeks ago. I was looking for a setting along an industrial theme and must have driven round the whole area 4 or 5 times, before I discovered this setting. It’s West facing and I returned a couple of times to make sure that the late evening light would hit as I’d expected.

Location for model shoot in Trafford Park

Both these images of Lena are shot with 100% ambient, no artificial or supplemental light was used. On a few of the other images we made I used a reflector to fill in the shadows a little, but the light that evening was so lovely and warm that I really had little to do. Still wading through the editing at the moment, but will post more soon….

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Alex by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

These are a couple of simple portraits I did on Monday. The location was a city centre flat, which had a lot of reflected sunlight coming in through a very large floor to ceiling window. There was no direct sunlight, so the result was a lovely soft and diffused light source. A great start from which to work. We did a few poses with just ambient but I was really looking for something a little more “high key”. The natural light was great on Alex’s face (camera right), but left a bit of a grey-ish background. To counter this I set up the large Ezybox softbox camera left and feathered it, a lot. That is to say that only the very right hand edge of the light was set to fall on Alex and the rest on the wall behind her. This accomplished two things – it gave me a much cleaner background and it produced a little fill on what would have been the darker side of Alex’s face. The processing was just a little Dynamic Skin Softening with Nik’s Colour Efex Pro and a small curves contrast tweek.

Alex by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

For the image above, we moved outside into the grounds of a church opposite which still had lots of lovely pink blossom around, though mostly on the floor. Initially I envisaged shooting full length with Alex’s feet amongst the fallen petals. But by this time, the direct sunlight was harsh and as we were in amongst a bunch of trees, harsh and speckled. Not good. In the end, I decided waist up was the way to go. This way I could keep nearly all of Alex in the shade, and use a simple reflector camera right to throw a little fill back into the shadows and give me some catch lights in her eyes. Job done in a very short space of time – I surprised myself at how quickly I got the lighting down

Pat by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

A couple of weeks ago, an image that I’d like to make took shape in my mind. One of numerous on a daily basis. This one in particular was of a musician seated on a wooden chair playing a guitar with a cityscape in the background. I spent a little time working on the details and figured that the best way to do this was to shoot from the top of a multi storey car park in Manchester with one of the city’s iconic landmarks in the background, either the Beetham Tower, Arndale Tower or MEN wheel or similar, ideally with a lovely coloured dawn sky to accompany it. I was looking for a dramatically lit image as seems to be my style of late. So I got in touch with Pat and we agreed to meet on the roof the Arndale Car Park at 6am. –

Meeting at 6 would give us an hour to caffeine up, prepare and commence shooting before the sun crested the horizon. The previous morning had produced some amazing colours in the sky just prior to sunrise, and so I had my fingers crossed for the same, although it looked from quite early on that it was just going to be a typical grey overcast Manchester morning.

I paced around for quite some time trying to work the location to get the best out of the situation. It had slipped my memory that the roof of this particular car park was surrounded by a very large bright yellow crash barrier right around knee to waist height. It proved problematic to position the subject in the right position relative to a suitable background so that this yellow monstrosity didn’t appear in the frame. We tried a few different set-ups close to the edge of the car park, keeping out of sight of all the security cameras. I knew full well that as soon as we were spotted on the monitors, the walkie talkies would appear. I had tried to get through to NCP to gain the relevant permission, but it had proved a fruitless exercise. The initial shots were just ok, but I knew that they were going to have to be converted to black and white to try and diffuse the garishness of the barrier. I was fine with this, as I had already pre-visualised the outcome of this shoot as predominantly monochrome anyway. It was only after a couple of different set ups and the failure of the sun to appear from behind the grey cloud, that I decided to throw caution to the wind and move our set-up thirty yards into the middle of the car park where I had a much better chance of avoiding the barrier in the frame, but a very high chance of being descended upon by security guards.

Sure enough, within about 5 or 10 minutes of moving they arrived, and just as I was beginning to get something along the lines of what I was looking for. Graciously, after a little persuasion, they allowed me to get a couple more frames, and the outcome is what you see above.

I used just one SB900 on a stand with one of my little home made grids to provide a crisp directional light onto Pat without spilling all around. I rotated the body of the flash on the stand so that the little infra-red sensor pointed directly to where I would be shooting from and triggered this with the pop-up flash on the D300. Shot from around 20 to 30 feet away with the 70-200 @ F2.8 to compress the scene and provide a nice tight crop. Camera on manual at 1/500 sec and flash on TTL dialed down a full stop.

The top image was processed in Silver Efex Pro 2 (for which Nik Software kindly sent me a free upgrade). If you haven’t already trialled this product or have the original version, then I strongly suggest you give this upgrade a whirl – it was already a fantastic tool and a huge time-saver, but the improvement’s they’ve made have blown me away. In fact, so much so, that I splurged on the Nik Complete Collection at Focus on Imaging earlier in the week. More on this to follow in a later post.

Pat by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)