Forever blowing bubbles...

Another set of pics from last months Marylebone Summer Fayre - this time of Lucas Wintercrane and his fabulous bubbles...

Lucas is a professional juggler, British champion unicyclist and lifelong all round circus performer who charmed the adults and children alike with his myriad of bubbles.

Blurring the Lines - Twisting with the X-T1

Dance is one of the most brilliant and yet most difficult things to photograph well.  It involves split second timing, precise technique and a deep understanding of your subject.

So sometimes it is much better to throw away all the rules and try something completely new...!

Shooting in the dark...

X-T1 / XF55-200 at 200mm / 1/40s at f/5 / ISO6400

Photographing Classical Music often involves shooting in low light levels - especially when the concert involves multimedia and projections - and just such an event took place at London's LSO St Luke's earlier this month when the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicolas Collon, performed "How Pure The Sky" with the countertenor Iestyn Davies and projections by Stanton Media.

LSO St Luke's is one of my favourite venues.  An 18th century Grade 1 listed Hawksmoor church, it has been beautifully restored to become a state-of-the-art concert hall and is a regular performance venue for the Aurora Orchestra - one of London's most innovative young chamber ensembles.

I have worked regularly with Aurora over the last 10 years and their events never fail to provide photographic opportunities - capoeira dancers, 3D printed miniature players, and Wallace & Gromit have shared the stage with them.  But on this occasion it was light - or lack of it - that gave the photographic challenge.

Zoë and Magpie show jumping

My 13 year old daughter Zoë is horse mad and every spare moment she has is spent at the Trent Park Equestrian Centre where she volunteers as a helper in return for rides and lessons.

She has several "favourite" horses there but top of the list at the moment is "Magpie" who she rides when ever allowed and this bank holiday Monday she did her first show jumping competition with him.

Now, Zoë is a headstrong girl and Magpie is a headstrong horse so you might think they are perfectly suited to one another - however that doesn't always make for successful or elegant jumping and clean rounds were not happening for them with Magpie refusing at several jumps.

Nonetheless much fun was had and many polo mints were consumed by Magpie - and rather a lot of photographs were taken by a very proud Dad.

These were all taken with the Fuji X-T1 and the XF 55-200 zoom.  The jumping arena was incredibly dark even though it was a bright day outside - to get the shutter speed up to 1/250 - high enough to freeze the motion - meant working at ISO 1600 to 3200 most of the time but the out of camera JPGs were crisp and clean.

Infrared Photography in Yellowstone National Park

I started 2014 leading a workshop in Yellowstone National Park for Chris Weston's safari company “Magic Is” – I am now working regularly with them as a group leader and instructor and am leading two further workshops in Yellowstone in Jan/Feb 2015.

Yellowstone in winter turned out to be an IR photographers paradise and my IR modified X-E1 with the 14mm did great service as the images below show. This camera blows me away every time I use it and there was a great deal of interest from the 12 photographers in the group – so much so that I ended up doing a full presentation on Infrared photography one evening while we were there. My X-Pro1 and the XF55-200 also did good service as shown in the two bison shots at the bottom of this post.

Anything Goes

Every summer I am part of a team that runs a week-long residential music/theatre workshop for FCMG: London's Children's Choir based at Sevenoaks School in Kent.

The 2013 show was Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" and for the first time I photographed the dress rehearsal and performance using only my Fujis - X-Pro1 with 18-55 and X-E1 with 55-200. With the latest firmware the auto focus worked fantastically even though much of the show was quite darkly lit.

All images were shot around f/4.0 in aperture priority with variable amounts of exposure compensation - the constantly changing lighting meant that much tweaking of the exposure was needed to keep the mood right in the images.  White balance was kept constant on Tungsten so changes of lighting colour were preserved and not white balanced out to neutral!  ISO was in the range of 800 to 1600 throughout.

The RAW files were developed and book designed in Adobe Lightroom 5.

You can see the results in a Blurb photobook - if you have a fast connection use the full screen preview bottom right:

Anything Goes (Hardback) by Simon Weir | Make Your Own Book

Red, White & Blue

On the 3rd June 2012 Great Britain turned out en-masse to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.

I spent the day on the bank of the river Thames in central London photographing the "Great British Public" in all their glory festooned in red, white and blue.

All I took with me was the Fuji X-Pro1 and the XF35mm f/1.4 prime lens - a perfect combination for fast moving street photography.  The compact size not only makes it easy to carry round all day but also means it is less threatening to those being photographed than a big SLR - everyone featured was happy to have their photo taken - such was the joyous atmosphere throughout the celebrations.

This sort of shoot is perfect material for a photo book - really as a keepsake to bring back happy memories and pass them on to the next generation...

Red White & Blue by Simon Weir | Make Your Own Book