Margaret and Leslie’s wedding.

On Sunday 26th August I photographed the wedding of Margaret and Leslie in Sheffield. What great people they were – not only them but the whole lot of the guests – and what a lot there were – 300 of them. The small Seventh Day Adventist Church building was bursting with the congregation and life!

The Bride was over 45 minutes late but no one appeared to worry apart from me! It was a pity that she was late because guess who looses out once a Bride is late? – of course, she does. We had to cut an hour off the time when we should have been taking great stunning images of the couple and their friends in the park because the food couldn’t be served late.

I still managed to get a couple of “Snaps” – how I hate that word – as that was all time would allow.

The picture below is the Bride walking down the (packed) isle with the clock on the wall showing 20 to 3 – she should have arrived at 1.30!!!!!! The church was so full I had to sit on one of the minister’s feet almost!

Still, it really was fun and everyone made me feel really welcome even if I did stand out in the crowd.

(Click the Thumbs to see larger)

I did manage to get a couple of classic shots of this very classy lady.

I was invited to stay for food, which I would have loved but had to get back home so regrettably had to leave them to what was, I’m sure, a great night of partying in The Cuttlers Hall.

A long day and hard work with lots of running around and jumping on walls to get the height over 300 guests but enjoyed it as always and especially because the guests were so friendly.

Just a couple more images from Lightroom

Just messing with Lightroom 1.1 with raws from a Nikon D2x and the 18-200VR lens.

I have read that this lens isn’t sharp – it’s just as sharp as my 17-55 and 70-200 f2.8s. which are pinners!

Quiet Day

I’ve got a quiet day today so have been practicing more with Lightroom 1.1 and the more I use it the more I like it.

I’ve been doing some black and white conversions and this is one I’ve just finished that I quite like. (click for bigger image)

I quite like the tones but not sure about the sharpening on the full size file.  It’s certainly got the cloud detail that I wanted though.  The subject is not great, I know, but it was just a spare file that I loaded to practice the technique on really.

I would appreciate any comments.

Thomsonfly.com just cancelled all my moving plans!!

I had 4 flights booked for about 3 or 4 weeks now through Thomsonfly.com and I’ve just received 4 e mails telling me that every one of the flights are cancelled! Wow, thats given me some work to do rebooking the flights through British Airways who don’t go to Naples direct from Manchester. I can’t believe Thomson can just cancel 3 months worth of flights like that. Am I the only person who wanted to go to Naples between the end of December and March 2008?

The cats were supposed to be going out on the 28th December with my wife direct from Manchester which is only 3 hours. It now looks as though they will have to fly Manchester to Gatwick then Gatwick to Naples and is going to be about 5 hours. Poor cats stuck in the crates all that time. I hope Thomson feel as bad about it as I do!

I’m going to be flying back and forth to Naples quite a lot next year so have decided to joining the BA frequent flyer (now called Executive Club) to try to ease the way through the cue’s at check in. Has anyone else tried it – and does it work? I know carrying cameras through is a nightmare although not as bad with digital as at least we don’t have to worry about the x-rays damaging the films as we did in the past.

So much to do.

There are so many things to do getting ready for my move over to Italy from the UK.

One of the things, or should I say 4 (?), is getting the cats their passports. We have had them micro chipped last week and then vaccinated for rabies and we have to take them to the vets after 30 days to have blood samples taken so the anti rabies count is then logged in the passports. We got the vet to make a home visit to do the injecting and she almost ran out of the room when I brought in Wolfie.

He doesn’t look very big here but he weighs in at about 22lbs and is just a big softy really.

Evie is a bit smaller but more fluffy.

Daisy Lou is smaller still – but she’s only 2 years old where as Evie and Wolfie are four!

And then there’s Polly Pocket. (sorry if she’s breaking someones copyright – she didn’t know) Polly is just mad. She is a Ragdoll that was the runt of her litter but fortunately for her there was a nursing Maine Coon mum in the same room as her and she latched on to the Maine Coon mum. I guess that Maine Coon milk must be better than RagDoll milk as Polly grew to be a fine kitten after everyone giving up on her at first.

She never stops chasing things now. She carries table tennis balls AND full size tennis balls around the house, dropping them at your feet so you can throw them so she can fetch them like a dog!

MAD!

Well, they didn’t take too kindly to getting vaccinated so we have to take them to the vets soon for the blood samples to be taken. The vet didn’t want to risk coming to the house again!

New Camera

I’ve just bought a new camera. Professionally I use Nikon D2X and D2H but I’ve just got a little Ricoh GX100. It’s stunning! It’s really small, especially when you are used to using the D2X with the 70 to 200 F2.8 VR lens but the images you can get from it (the Ricoh) are very cool indeed

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I don’t normally do close up/macro type of things but just got a bit carried away with this camera.

Any slight vignetting that you see on this image is done post processing – don’t blame the camera!

Oliveto Citra

This is Oliveto Citra, only the locals don’t seem to use the word Citra at all! (click on the images for a bigger picture)

Of course the town is much more than just this castle but this is what people tend to focus on when they first arrive – and you can’t miss seeing it. This image is taken from the hotel that we use to run the photographic courses from. Have a look on the web site for more details about.

Hello world!

Hi and thank you for dropping in to look at our PhotoTraining in Italy site. As this is the first blog there isn’t much to see here yet BUT give us some time and we think you will find it worth while popping back to see what’s going on here. This is a new business and the blog is a diary about the moving of a home and business to Italy from the UK.

Phototraining in Italy offers you English speaking courses on photography at what ever level you are presently at to bring you up to a level that you want to achieve.

If you have a look at our static site at http://www.phototraininginitaly.eu you will see the full course details but for now I’ll quickly say that we are based in Oliveto Citra which is just over a hour hour drive south from Naples airport, Italy.

We’ll post some images over the next couple of weeks.