Ludovico Einaudi

I've just got home from the most incredible concert by Ludovico Einaudi at the Barbican in London - Ludo is an Italian composer and classical pianist. It's difficult to describe his type of music, though on his website it's described as 'minimalist, classical, ambient, contemporary'. I listen to a lot of Ludo when I'm editing images, it helps put me in the right frame of mind - I also like to use his music to image slide shows. The concert was mainly themed around his new album Nightbook, he also played several of his older/popular compositions. I didn't take a camera with me but as we were in the front row I could not resist trying to get some images with my iPhone. There was just enough ambient light to get a couple of acceptable shots - the colour shots were particularly grainy so I've black and whited and heavily vignetted to get the image below of Mauro (the guy sat on the cushion) and Ludo sat at his piano. If you're not familiar with his music you're really missing out. If you try it and like it, he's performing 5 more dates in the UK next week and at the Albert Hall on 2nd March next year.

Time for Change

After 6 years of using the same logo / branding it's time for a change. Ok, so I'm still David Long and I'm still doing Photography so the change isn't really that radical! However, working with designer Michelle Fiedler (I've added a link to her web site on the right side nav bar) we've come up with a new logo and new branding for business cards, stationary and anything else I put my moniker to! My website has changed to incorporate the new logo and updating of the whole blog will follow suit very soon...

Southbank

On a sunny day with three kids to look after (Claire had gone on an all day 'birthday shopping' extravaganza with friends) I had the choice of beach or city and on this occasion the city won. The kids love the human statues and street entertainers so we loaded up with pennies and headed up to London's Southbank. It's a great part of London with loads going on from the cultured side of Festival Hall and the National Theatre to the tourist traps of the London Eye and County Hall - and also tucked away amongst it all the sub-culture of urban sports and graffiti, which is where I focussed my camera.

Image 1 - This guy was doing all kinds of tricks. The image stands out as the guy is flying through the air passing the text 'A Bird'. Image 2 - I had to have some connection to wedding photography! This looked to be a set-up not an actual wedding - no groom and guests gave this away! I like the idea of the contrast (watch this space) though this image stands out in it's own right as a good photo-journalistic image with the wedding shoot, graffiti and the skateboarder passing by. Image 3 - Again, had to throw one of the kids in. This was Mollie copying and attempting Parkour - the art of displacement (look it up on Wikipedia). Image 4 - Skateboard action...

This Week

I finished editing a wedding yesterday evening which always gives me a great sense of satisfaction. There's great reward in seeing the final set of images having worked so hard to capture them, edit, and in this instance produce a slide show of 90 of the images to music - when photographing a wedding you need to throw your heart and soul into capturing the emotion of the day. This image caught my eye, the combination of location, sky and cute bridesmaids! More images to follow....

This should be a good week with a wedding on Friday at Buxted House in West Sussex and then off to Manchester on Saturday afternoon for an early start on Sunday morning with Jeff Ascough and George Weir - two of the greatest wedding photo journalists on the planet. The quality of Jeff's seminars are always superb, this will be my third! Blend it with George's (Scottish!)  Stateside slant and it has the makings of a very informative day - review to follow.

Kit.....

I arrived back from Liverpool yesterday evening to find a box waiting for me in the lounge. In the box was a Canon EOS 5D MKII, though not a suprise I was delighted to see that it had arrived before a busy weekend. There's a great debate raging in the photography world regarding the importance of kit, digital v film, post processing etc. The underlying argument being that a good photographer can use any photography equipement as the skill is capturing 'the decisive moment' (Henri Cartier-Bresson) and composing the images correctly. For me creating great images is absolutely about capturing the decisive moment and composing brilliantly but I don't dismiss the argument that kit can help. I hate using flash and will avoid using it unless I really, really have to. Shooting weddings with 'standard' camera bodies and lenses without using flash would be virtually imposible - having fast lenses that can shoot f1.2 / f1.4 immediatley gives the photographer benefit in low light situations. Couple that with ISO 6400 that the 5D MK II delivers, I'm hoping that I'll never need to use flash again!! The MKII also comes with 21m pixels and video which though not the most important feature will be fun to try out.

Blue Eye...

This image of the London Eye was taken on a night shoot around the South Bank and Westminster. Through a post processing adjustment called 'invert' a black night is transformed to a strong blue backdrop to make a striking image . On first view it looks like a misty dawn in London.

Inspirations...

Robert Capa is one of my photography hero's, he was responsible for capturing some of the greatest images of the the last century.

The 6th of June 1944 saw possibly the most significant event of the 20th century - D Day, the allies landing on the Normandy beaches. The most memorable images from that day were taken by Robert Capa - the greatest ever war photographer and one of my sources of inspiration. At 22 Capa photographed the Spanish Civil War and captured on of the most iconic and controversial images in photographic history 'The Falling Soldier'. Capa's story is remarkable and best told through his memoir of Wold War II 'Slightly out of Focus'. On the 6th June 1944 he landed on Omaha Beach with the first wave of American soldiers, camera not gun in hand. In 'Slightly out of Focus' he commented prior to boarding the landing craft:

"What is the difference between the war correspondent and any other man in uniform. The war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay and greater freedom than the soldier, but that at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture."

Yet with that choice he still went where no other photographer did, and documented the memorable images of that day. Seven days after the invasion Capa found out that whilst drying the negatives an over exited dark room assistant had turned on too much heat and the emulsion had melted. Out of one hundred and six images taken that day only eight images were salvaged.

Capa was killed on 25th may 1954 in China, stepping on a land mine in what was to become the Vietnam War.

These two images are striking and show Capa at the heart of the action living his own adage that "If the pictures are not good enough, it's because you're not close enough'

Busy Week Ahead...

I like being busy, which is just as well as the next few weeks promise to be pretty hectic! In fact this is the first time I've published a blog post remotely, taking the opportunity to do it whilst on the 21:07 from London to Liverpool Lime Street - the glamour! This weekend is full, it starts on Friday with an 8.30pm KO for 7-a-side football in Henley on Thames. An early start on Saturday morning (7am) for Emma & Ben's wedding at Maison Tallbooth and Le Tallbooth in Dedham, Essex. Sunday and Monday are spent in the company of Jeff Ascough, widely accepted as the UK's finest wedding photographer and in 2008 voted one of the top 10 in the world by American Photo magazine for his stunning photo journalistic style.  It's the second time I've been to one of Jeff's workshops, the previous session was with Australian photographer Marcus Bell. This time the focus is on Jeff's workflow, so pretty much everything to do with post editing once the images have been captured. To be the best you have to learn from the best so i think it will be a fascinating couple of days. I hope to see the family on Tuesday...!