Bury St Edmunds RFC

I am lucky enough to be off to Twickenham this weekend to watch Premiership Rugby's opening weekend Double Header. With the new season starting I thought I'd post some photos of my local club Bury St Edmunds RFC. These were taken at the last game of the season. Bury were losing heavily. They then had a man sent off. Bad news. However, Bury staged a remarkable comeback to pull ahead, only for the opposition to score a last-minute try and draw the game. What a great end to the season. Good luck for this season Bury Wolfpack.

WET WEATHER SHOOT

Quite often, as an editorial portrait photographer I can't pick and choose my location or the weather conditions. One of the fun challenges is making the most of the conditions in front of me.

Yesterday I had a shoot booked in with the lovely Katie Bedford who represents England at over 50s hockey. Fortunately, the all-day rain stopped for the 30 minutes when we had the shoot booked. But conditions were very dark due to the heavy cloud and overcast sky. Therefore, I decided to go for a more dramatic portrait look.

Most of the time when I use lighting, I want it to be subtle and almost unnoticeable as in the three examples below.

However, when I'm looking for a dramatic feel to the portrait I aim for the lighting to be obvious. It makes the subject stand out from the background, as with these photos...

The photos of Katie, who heads off to Holland tomorrow for the Masters European Championships, certainly fit into the latter category.

Golden Hour Engagement Shoot

The weather so far this summer in the UK has been fantastic. We've been blessed with bright, clear evenings and rich sunsets. It was on one of these beautiful evenings that I went out with Rachel and Sam for their engagement shoot. The weather was perfect and the location provided lovely fields of golden crops and areas with long wild grass.

The shoot was a great chance to get to know Rachel and Sam before I shoot their wedding next year. We spent about 90 minutes wondering around chatting and stopping here and there for some photos.

The golden hour is such a great time to shoot. When we arrived at the location the sun was still a little high. But as it started to set the countryside came alive with colour and the air around us softened.

I remember when I was young I was told never to photograph into the sun. However, with modern cameras and a little bit of work in Adobe Lightroom I think you can achieve some lovely results shooting directly into the lovely soft setting sun.