Anyway, I didn’t have my camera gear with me, so took the following shots using my iPhone using the “hipstamatic” camera app :-

Above - Here is the rolling chassis for the £120K Morgan Aero Supersports

Above - Notice the Ash Wood in the arches.

The Morgan Motor Company is a British motor car manufacturer, founded in 1909 by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan and was run by him until he died, aged 77, in 1959. His son, Peter Morgan ran the company until a few years before his death in 2003. The company is now run by his son, Charles Morgan

The waiting list for a car is approximately one year, although it has been as high as ten years in the past.

Above - Main body in place on the Morgan Aero Supersports

Above - Some of the Morgan Classics in bare metal

Amazingly enough 70% of Morgans are built left hand drive, ready for overseas customers. Morgans are only built to order, so in theory you should never see a brand new one for sale on the open market.

Morgan Aero Supersports being driven to paint shop

Morgan Aero Supersports - The finished article

More info on Morgan Motor Company Factory Tours

By the way that’s about £10K’s + worth of gear just ruined

This was a 2 day event, with races taking place from Port Solent, Portsmouth, across to Cowes, Isle of White. An excellent couple of days, with some great guys from Niu & IBM making up the crews.

On to portrait one as an example. Here you can see the eyes are on the top 1/3 horizontal, whilst the nose is on the right 1/3 vertical. This provides a very “pleasing” composition, whilst the tight crop provides some impact

Here we find a portrait where the face is more central, but you find the eyes both hit the intersections of the top horizontal 1/3 & both verticals. The mouth is on the lower horizontal 1/3

Now don’t feel you have to be spot on the 1/3. Instead try to use it as a general framework. In this portrait you can see the hand is pretty close to the bottom right intersection of 1/3′s, whilst the eyes are somewhere near the top 1/3 horizontal. In the end it produces a nicely balanced portrait

Hope this has been of some use & don’t forget, rules are there to be broken, so don’t get too hung up on it

Notice anything different about this Portrait ? What if I was to say I took it upside down !

No, I’m not going mad. Remember those big square cameras, called medium format ? Well one of the traits of shooting with some medium format cameras used to be the fact you would see the image upside down in the view finder. Now you might see that as a disadvantage. But there is a flip side to it (sorry for pun). Landscape photographers found that by viewing the image upside down, they no longer concentrated on the small detail, but found their eye drawn to the overall composition of the shot. They used to this their advantage & produced beautifully composed photographs.

Try it for yourself. Take any photograph & turn it upside down. Look how your eye is now drawn to the composition of the photo, rather than the detail.

Well back to the subject in hand, this is how I actually took the photo :-

By taking the photo from this angle it provided 3 bonuses :-

1. The eye was drawn to the composition of the arms, hands & hair
2. The models eyes were forced to look upwards at the camera, producing a more flattering look
3. I didn’t invade the models space. Shooting the other way would mean standing over the model. A bit intimidating for some.

Anyway, hope you found that of some use. As for me, I still can’t decide which way up I like the photo !!

Ever noticed that just after the sun has disappeared for the day, that you get beautiful reflections on your car ? The whole sky is acting as a huge lightbox & providing wonderful light to photograph by. The alternative is to find an overcast day, where the clouds are acting like huge diffusers & once again providing wonderful light. Especially perfect for Mono photography.

So next time you look out the window & find the sun is hidden, don’t despair…… get out there & take some photos

Happy Podding

This latest one is a simple 1 step process to take any existing photo, or take one there & then, & convert it into a cartoon.

The iPhone application in question is ToonPaint

So a quick play produced the following examples from some of my portraits :-

& then with a quick bit of painting within the App you can get this effect :-

iPhone Apps

All good fun

If you have a favourite please feel free to add a comment at the end. 

So here goes  ……….

#1 – Isobel

#2 – Ashleigh

#3 – Mum & Daughter

#4 – Remembrance Sunday

#5 -Witley Court

#6 – Mark

#7 – Suzi

#8 – Ger

Cheltenham Portrait Photographer

#9 – Karl

#10 – Hannah

#11 – Sensual

Here are the results played back at 1/5th speed (warning HD so you need decent bandwidth or just hit “pause” for a while).
I have to say I’m impressed with the results.