Catriona In The Studio

A recent shot of Catriona in the studio. Her hair and look is awesome in this one.

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Holly came for a visit.

Our friend Holly came back to Glasgow for a few days and she paid us a visit. Was great to see her. Cat and myself spent many a night with Holly and her boyfriend Martin in the pubs when we all lived in Aberdeen, we had some really good nights. I miss having them around but we do see them every once in a while. We are in Glasgow and they are in Bournemouth so its a fair distance, can't just nip down the road and meet up anymore.

Anyway like I was saying, Holly came into Glasgow City Centre last week and we went to the pub, of course. Cat was working the next day and I had been out photographing all day so was pretty shattered, so we didn't stay out late but was good fun all the same.

These are a few shots I took on the night, they are mostly out of focus as the corner we were sitting in was almost pitch black, The Canon 5D MK2 did a good job, I think I was at very high ISO's 4000 and above (think some were at 12800 or something like that, whatever the extra high settings are). I didn't take much but I thought they were pretty cool and will help us remember the night.

Wish I took a photo of Holly's new tattoo on her right arm, it is pretty damn cool.

Really like this profile shot of Holly.

Holly giving Cat a new and rather ridiculous hairstyle.

Cat just chillin.

Not sure whats going on here.

Two thumbs up man.

I love this one, my favourite of the bunch. 

Catriona Portrait (Testing Zuiko 100mm f2.8 on 5D mk 2)

Catriona shot in my small home studio using a Canon 5d mark 2 and a 100mm f2.8 Olympus Zuiko lens.

I have this olympus lens that I use on my old film camera the Olympus OM2n which gives some great quality and I have shot a lot of portraits with it on film in the past. I recently started to look into some portrait lenses for my digital set up (5D mark 2). I looked into the Canon ef 100mm f2.8 macro and the Canon ef 100mm f2. They are relatively inexpensive when it comes to good quality portrait primes and I would use either of them no problem and know that they would give great quality. Then I remembered I had this 100mm Zuiko lens so I bought a cheap adapter to get this on the 5D, I bought it from ebay for about £10. This is the first real test shots from it in a portraiture setting and from this image it looks like it works really well. This image is shot at 2.8 so the depth of field is pretty shallow and focused on her right eye (our left) and I really like how it rendered the image and I would be happy to use this in a professional setting. The only problem is though that it isn't that easy to hit focus spot on but I am going to buy an adapter with an autofocus conformation so that will resolve that problem. 

After this surprising experience I think I will look into trying out a zuiko 24mm f2.8 to see what the results from that are like as I would love an extremely compact wide angle that could fit in my pocket while out on a shoot rather than the very large 16-35 f2.8L which can get annoying having to carry around all day and I prefer primes anyway.  I may possibly sell my 16-35 f2.8 II L as I do really prefer primes for size and i've never really been a zoom guy but the 16-35mm image quality is great so I am caught in two minds. 

I'll keep updating the 100mm f2.8's images as I get through them, I want to really give it a good test before using it on a pro job. And possibly a zuiko 24mm f2.8 on a 5d mk 2 review soon. 

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Quick Banana Ice Cream Recipe

Cat making some quick banana ice cream as we had a spare minute and some spare bananas.

It tastes awesome by the way.

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Nick Oliveri and Cat

Nick Oliveri and Cat.

In Nice N Sleazy's after the Kyuss gig last night in Glasgow.

So good to see one of my all time favourite bands live.


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Painting Collaboration

Cat and I were bored a few nights ago and we decided to collaborate on a large painting rather than moan about being bored.

Cat has not done much painting before but I knew she would get into it once we got started. It was good fun and filled a whole night until about 4 in the morning. I think it came out quite good in the end. It ended up being like an abstract seascape scene so thats what we call it now. 'abstract seascape thingy'

I think this will be the first of many.

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Good Old Film

Catriona in the garden. This was taken about 2 years ago now. This was one of the last times I shot colour film. Even though this is slightly out of focus I just love the clarity and detail film gives you without any messing around on the computer. Film is getting so expensive to buy and develop which is why I have been shooting almost exclusively digital over the last year. Nowadays though with the 5d mk 2 and some time on the computer I can get files that are pretty damn close to this. I still love colour film and I will use it again, it just isn't really practical right now.

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Locum Pharmacist Business Card

I just finished a business card design for a Locum Pharmacist.

This was quite a tricky project as there is not much research that can be found on pharmacy related business cards and any that I did find were extremely bad and very uninspiring. So I had to approach this with a fresh mind.

The client wanted something that was visually attractive but got her details across effectively.

We came to the conclusion that incorporating a few pills or medical symbols would not be the way to go as it is very dull and very cliche. We instead decided to go for an abstract background design that wouldn't over power the text and a elegant soft colour that would make it stand out from the other generic pharmacy locum cards, so that when that company needed a locum they would reach for her card first.

This card is the outcome. It has the bold white text that can easily be read which is primary, It is attractive and eye catching yet elegant without being over powering. Subtlety was the most important aspect when designing this card as it would have been really easy to go for a bright saturated purple and high contrast background design that would loose the texts readability.

Both the client and I are very happy with the final outcome which is all you can ask for.

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Eye

A newish photograph I thought I would share. very different from most of my photos and a style I would like to explore in the future.



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Stories From The Underground

Photographs(usually portraits)I have taken on the London underground. Shots that look like they could be part of a story, movie, short movie e.t.c. Thats the general idea.

This is a new ongoing project that i hope to continue for at least a year.

I like having some direction when taking photographs. I feel that it helps me get better if I'm thinking about what I'm doing rather than just going around photographing everything I see. I like to have a focus that i can concentrate on and I recommend every photographer or keen snapshooter to try this as it can be a lot of fun and you have a cool project to look back on in the future. I have done this a few times before using different topics which are still ongoing just now. 'Bargain Basement Hotel Series' is a photographic project that i started a year ago, which is my documentation of all the cheap crappy hotel rooms that i have stayed in while traveling to see gigs throughout Europe. I will post up this project here at a later date when i find some time.

Anyway this is the beginning of a long project for me that i look forward to continuing throughout the year. Why not give something like this a go yourself, think you'll be pleasantly surprised how fun and rewarding it can be.

Cheers!

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andrew@drewportfolio.com