Website News Update!

Erk, my blog has been a bit neglected as of late! A few things have changed since I last wrote. I've been working hard in college (I got a 1st in my last essay!), thinking up article ideas for Light Stalking, arranging test shoots and recently I've been pouring over my website and getting that done.

I've come to realise that I really, really need my little bit of the web, and with my fairly basic knowledge of html and css, trial and error, lots of googling for tutorials and code snippets and picking the brains of my web dev friends, I'm finally nearing the end of this project. I have a few finishing touches to apply, and then I can give the entire site the new template I've designed. I'm also going to change the name I use from 'Emma Brabrook Photography' to 'Emma Grace Photography'. I think it sounds a lot nicer and rolls off the tongue much easier! It's also easier to spell. So, with very little else left to do to it, I will have the site up at the earliest this Sunday (tomorrow!) or towards the start of next week (more likely). It's all very exciting and I can't wait to have it done! Here's a preview of the website at present:

As previously mentioned, it'll change a bit in the next couple of days.

In other news, here's some recent photos I've taken of two gorgeous models, Rachel and Jordann:

You can find more images of Rachel and Jordann over at my Flickr page.

As a side note, some of you may be interested to hear that I've joined Google+, and so far my experiences of it are very positive! You can find me here. Add me to one of your circles!

Finally, to end this post, I'll leave you all with a photo of our adorable new puppy, Hudson. He's a chocolate lab/malamute cross, and he's loved to bits and pieces.

Wedding Bells

I'm really happy as I write this as I've received my first two jobs to shoot weddings! The first is a wedding evening-do that takes place next week and the other is a ceremony in September. I'm so excited! I'm also a little nervous, but I know I'll be ok. They're all very lovely people and I can't wait to meet them.

I'm really looking forwards to building a big portfolio of beautiful wedding photographs and visiting wedding fares and the like, I've reached an exciting time in my life. I really love weddings and relish the idea of being given the opportunity to take beautiful photographs of a couple's big day. It's an honour to be asked to capture something that they'll cherish forever.

My website will be worked on some more once I have a bit more free time (my workload has exploded since I started my second year in uni) and I'll have to include a new section for weddings - I'll be adding a separate gallery exclusively for wedding orientated photographs I've taken along with package descriptions and prices.

I've not turned my back on fashion photography and self portraits though! As much as I adore weddings, portraits and fashion are my first love. I was skimming through my ideas book recently for inspiration and happened across an old idea I had for the "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" proverb. I couldn't help but laugh as it's such a silly one and I can't wait to do it once I've completed my cinematic brief. It involves a forest clearing, a map and a tree - and that's all I'm saying about that!

All's well that ends well

Today has made me pretty happy! First of all, I got a brand new external HDD for a very reasonable price, and it's now blinking red and blue lights at me to tell me it's busy backing up all my work. It's very quiet too. And fast!

I was rather desperate to get an external HDD since recently my internal HDD had announced it had problems and needed to be repaired. Alas, I couldn't do anything with peace of mind until I had all 250GB backed up somewhere. So, this was the final push that got me looking for a new HDD. After everything was backed up, I safely managed to get the internal drive repaired, and then could re-partition my shiny new 1TB drive. It even matches my silver macbook and silver speakers with a blue light. Perfect :D

Something else that's making me happy is the progress on my website. I've been threatening to make it for ages and today I finally got around to it. It's something I've put off since I've never really been one for coding - as much as I might want to be - so I found it rather daunting. Thankfully I found a really easy to follow website with stuff to copy and paste. It told me what everything did and where to put it in relation to everything else. After creating their example, I figured out my own more modern design. My method was slightly trial and error and a bit of logic and common sense, since I'm learning as I go along. All in all though it's not as hard as I thought it would be, and the site is coming along very nicely. I'm pretty chuffed with it since it's my first ever website. At the rate I'm currently working at, I should have it finished by tomorrow. Then I just have to find somewhere to host it. Excitement!

Here's a sneak preview of the current state. It's still a WIP, so things may change:

That's all for now, folks!

My new lens! And life in general to date :)

This post is later than planned due to me forgetting I was helping out at youth yesterday. I was in college all day and then youth shortly after that and I got back pretty late, so I didn't really have the energy for writing it out. I was really tired from having a late night the night before and then waking up during it repeatedly. My sleeping patterns haven't been the best lately. Last night I had a nightmare too, so hopefully tonight will be more restful.

Anyway, I'm not going to write loads about the lens, there's loads of really good reviews on the net already so I'd just end up copying them.

So, the Nikkor 50mm f1.8 is in a word, brilliant. I've been messing around with it and I've found it's quite fun to focus it manually and watch the really narrow line of focus move on the live view. It gives me pictures that are similar to the kind you get with a tilt shift lens and it's pretty impressive. It's very easy to use and has gives a high image quality which is nothing less of expected since it's a prime lens. No moving parts usually means better optics due to not having to compromise for other focal lengths. That's why the bigger macro lenses cost an arm and a leg. Here's a couple of pictures I've taken with the lens so far at f1.8. I've not done any shoots with it yet so they're just things (and dogs) around the house:

The lens is really light, compact and sturdy. Some people complain that it's made of plastic and is pretty tight fitting on the camera body compared to other lenses, but I don't see what the fuss is all about. Lenses are delicate bits of equipment at the best of times even if they're encased in steel, so anybody in their right mind isn't going to throw it around and will be careful to not drop it. It's very tough plastic, when I'm not really thinking about it I sometimes mistake it for metal. I quite like how tight it is on the body, and after taking it on and off a few times it doesn't seem to be as bad. I see it as a sign of good workmanship and I rest assured in the knowledge that it isn't going anywhere once it's on. It's not going to damage anything so I don't worry about it since it's made by Nikon for Nikon cameras. I'm fairly sure they know what they're doing ;)

Here's a couple of pictures I took of the lens:

Overall, it's a very good lens, probably worth twice as much as I paid for it due to its usefulness and quality. I paid just over £100 for mine on Amazon, and I've seen it go down in price since. Kinda gutting to see something you've just bought suddenly become cheaper, but oh well :) To echo what others have said, it's probably difficult to find such a good lens at such a low price. I was tempted to get the f1.4 but deep down I just couldn't justify spending around £300 on a lens that opened 2/3 of a stop wider, was built out of metal and had weird distortion going on that the f1.8 doesn't have. It was only fractionally sharper at f2.8 than mine at f2.8 and just didn't seem worth it. I find f1.8 soft enough for most photos where I want a shallow depth of focus, f1.4 would probably be exceptionally difficult to tackle.

So, that's my new lens. I got teased about it in college by the tutors - I think they think I'm in love with it or something. Well, I am pretty pleased about it :D

In other news, the photos I ordered on Asda arrived this morning in a big brown parcel. Wasn't expecting that, I thought it'd be much smaller! I also got a letter from college telling me I'd been awarded a bursary/scholarship fee of just over £300 to help with the costs of everything on my course. I applied for it back in September/October and forgot all about it so it was a nice surprise to wake up to. I'll get it at the start of March.

I've also done something I've been threatening to do for a while - posted my provisional license application! I can't wait to start having driving lessons. That's something else I've been saving money for. I hope I pass my test this year! Something else I'm finding exciting is thinking up locations for photoshoots I can do in the very near future. Like in the next month. I've got a pretty big list so far of places to use in the local area thanks to a brainstorming session with my mum :) I was feeling pretty uninspired by the surrounding area so she helped to open my mind and my imagination to new ideas and other ways of looking at things. She's great! ^^

One of the things I could well be doing is a fireman calendar for charity. It'd sell like hot cakes :P