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Perseids Meteor Shower
Tonight I decided to do something a little different. I decided to wake up in the middle of the night armed with my GoPro Hero 4 Silver only to try and capture the Perseids Meteor Shower with the peak of the shower happening over the 11th/12th August 2016.
The Perseids /ˈpərsiːɪdz/ are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle. The Perseids are so called because the point from which they appear to come, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. The name derives in part from the word Perseides (Περσείδες), a term found in Greek mythology referring to the sons of Perseus.
I knew for this I would have to try try capturing the shower using the Night Time Lapse capturing every 30 seconds on the GoPro as I knew I would have to leave it running for a number of hours in order for it to take a large enough photos to create a long enough photos. I have chosen to do a Photo Night Time Lapse rather than a video one as this way I will be able to use the photos individually as well as creating the time lapse by stitching them together.
Below I have included a montage photograph with all the different shooting stars I managed to capture out of the 261 photographs. This left me with a 51 second time lapse which I have also included for you to view below.
Happy Star Gazing everyone.
Montage Photo of the Perseids Meteor Shower over Haslemere Surrey UK.
Christina & John's Engagement Shoot
After talking to both Christina & John about various possible locations to do the shoot, the couple decided to settle on Guildford Castle as they both live nearby and met in Guildford whilst studying at the University of Surrey.
I will be photographing the couples Wedding in May so this was a perfect time to catch up with them both having only met them at their initial meeting and to get some lovely photographs from it and for the couple to also see what I am like behind the camera and for me to see how they will react in front of it to.
Enjoy the slideshow below from their Engagement Shoot and I look forward to sharing with you the photos from their Wedding Day in May.
Photo slideshow of Christina & John's Engagement Shoot taken at Guilford Castle, Surrey, UK. www.studiogdphotography.co.uk
Haslemere Wedding Fair
At the beginning of the year I decided I was going to push the business further and try and focus more on the wedding side. So many other photographers I know simply won't photograph weddings as though it is a grey area of photography as it must be one of the most challenging areas there is in the field as you only have that one time to get it right and often there is a lot to get done when photographing weddings.
It's actually this challenge with wedding photography which I enjoy as no two weddings are the same. Wedding photography allows me to get creative and create lasting memories for my couples by telling the story of their day.
When I spoke with William one of the workers at Haslemere Community Center Haslewey he told me that they were going to be running a Wedding Fair at the center at the end of February and would I be interested in having a table. Normally I would say no to these kind of things as have read up how many photographs say wedding fairs are a waste of time. When he told me how much it was for a table I decided it was worth a try at boosting my wedding side so I decided to jump at the challenge by taking part in my first Wedding Fair.
As I had never done a wedding fair before there was actually a large amount of things I had to buy in for the fair but ultimately these were bits that once I have got them I shouldn't have to buy them again for sometime.
The day of the Wedding Fair came round on the 28th February and surprisingly it went smoothly. There was certainly a large number of couples who expressed their interested. With lots just browsing and seeing what was on show I will have to wait to see if it was worth my while or not.
I've decided to share some of the photographs from the Wedding Fair as I was also asked by the center if I could be their 'Official Photographer' and capture the event for them to get some photographs which I of course excepted.
Autumn Fashion Shoot
Photos from an Autumn Fashion Shoot with Stef Keogh in Arundel West Sussex.
Amethyst Designs Evening Wear
This was my second time shooting for Fashion Designer Linda Brown of Amethyst Designs. The aim of the shoot this time was to photograph some of her new evening wear which she had recently finished designing.
Once again I brought together my team of fellow creatives to help create some stunning images of her outfits for her to use on her website and other promotional material. For our model we managed to get hold of the lovely Mina Renoir a French model and actress who without a doubt is one of the best models I have had the privilege of working with so far. Every shot we took came out perfect.
We were also fortunate to have some jewellery pieces provided for the shoot by Alexander Davis who is also a good friend of Linda's which helped create that bit of sparkle to the shots.
Amethyst Designs New Evening Wear Range:
Creative Team Designer & Clothes Designer: Linda Brown www.amethystbag.com Model: Mina Renoir www.minarenoir.com Hair: Jesska Fuego Henson Make Up: Mina Renoir Jewellery: Alexander Davis Jewellery www.alexanderdavisjewellery.com Photography: Studio GD Photography www.studiogdphotography.co.uk
Surrey Uni - Surrey Stingers American Football Shoot
Recently I contacted the University of Surrey's American Football team the Surrey Stingers, to see if I could come down and take some Commercial Portraits of some of the teams players at their training ground Surrey Sports Park in Guildford. This was somthing I have been wanting to shoot for a while as I wanted to mix my love of sports together with my love of photography.
I did some brainstorming for ideas and thought this would look great if it was shot outside. Then I forgot that this is January and I am in the UK. Therefore you can never predict what the weather is going to be like. Unfortunately in the build up to the day of the shoot it had been raining lots. Luckily we were able to shoot inside using one of the sports arenas. This gave me the idea of doing a composite shot. This is simply taking the portrait of the player in a studio environment and then finding a background to put behind the image afterwards.
Overall I was really pleased with the finished edits of the photos. I am definitely on the look out for doing similar sports portraits and already I am building up my ideas to do this.
Before and After Composite shots.
Images Copyright Gareth Davies/Studio GD Photography (2015) - Not To Be Used Without Permission
Femme Fatale Behind the Scenes Video
Here is a sneak peak video shot behind the scenes of our Femme Fatale Photo Shoot along with a selection of our favourite edited images from the shoot.
Model: Stef Keogh
Make Up & Hair: Sarah Stacey MUA
Photography: Studio GD Photography
Paigey T Model
Today I had a shoot with model UK Model Paige who has appeared in numerous magazines and videos across the world. The idea behind the photo shoot was to capture some new exciting photographs that were different than the ones Paige already had.
I have decided to display these a little differently by creating a quick slideshow of my favorite photographs from the shoot using Animoto, which is great for producing hassle free fast slideshows.
Happy watching.
Florence, Cinque Terra, Pisa & Tuscany Italy
As well as photography travelling is one of my other favourite things I love doing. I always enjoy visiting new countries and exploring new cultures along with it.
Italy is one of my favourite European countries to visit. This could be because my Mother was born in Sicily before she moved to Wales when she was young. The real reason is the culture, the food, the history and everything else Italian. When I was younger my family and I used to go to and spend part of our holidays in Italy. One area of Italy in particular I remember as we spent most of our holidays there was Tuscany, famous for his beautiful country side, wine and towns most notably Florence, Pisa, Siena and San Gimignano.
To mark our 1st Wedding Anniversary my wife Janette and I decided we wanted to visit another part of Italy having visited both Venice & Rome as part of our Honeymoon. We both decided that although I had been before that we both really wanted to visit Tuscany this time. As we were only going to be able to go away for a week we decided we would visit 3 main areas of Tuscany being Florence, Pisa and 5 small seaside towns on called the Cinque Terra which would only be able to visit by walking.
I have learned my lesson when it comes to both photography and travelling. On our honeymoon I decided to take my rather big and heavy Nikon D4. It proved to be rather heavy and I ended up not using half the lenses which I took with me. I decided at the beginning of the summer to invest in a smaller more compact camera. I ended up going for a Canon G15 (yes I know Im a Nikon user). This proved perfect for taking away on the trip as it has a single zoom lens of the 35mm equivalent of 24-200mm enabling me to take a wide range of shots with it.
Below I have included a selection of some of my favourite images during my trip. These were all taken with the Canon G15 with very basic editing done afterwards.
Enchanted Photo Shoot
I always enjoying working as part of a larger team on a photo shoot. There's something about a group of creatives working together to create some great images at the end, knowing that the day has been a huge success.
When I came across Millinery Jayne Elizabeth Millinery and her fabulous range of different hats I knew I had to contact her to see if we could work together on a shoot. After talking and working out ideas for a shoot we both combined our thoughts and decided we wanted to create some sort of Dark Fashion Fairy Tale inspired photo shoot, as Jayne is a big fan of the work seen in Dark Beauty Magazine.
Now we had an idea for shoot the next steps were to source outfits and model for the shoot.
This proved to be easier than we had thought. We have both worked with a number of different models before and when we saw that Chloe Burton, who Jayne had worked with previously on a shoot was not too far away from myself we decided to make contact with Chloe who was instantly interested in the ideas we had for the shoot.
Next up were outfits, which we decided we would choose 3 to create 3 different looks to the photographs. Fortunately for me I have a Bridal shop below me called The Bridal Boutique Haslemere, who for some time I have spoken to the owner Sarah Allam about using some of her dresses for some photo shoots which she was ok about doing. We didn't want to use a wedding dress but instead decided to use one of Sarah's bridesmaids dresses. We chose a lovely purple dress as one of the hats we knew we wanted to use of Jaynes was a lovely purple flower one. For the rest of the outfits Chloe used her own dresses. We chose a red big dress and all black styled one.
For Hair and Make Up we needed it to be dark colours, blacks, purples, dark blue. I found a local Make Up Artist (MUA) Viktoria Kohl who was able to help us even at short notice. For the hair we didn't want to do too much to it as the focus would be on the make up itself.
Location wise we wanted to shoot this outside so headed off to Frensham Little Pond which had lovely purple heather out, which would fit nicely with the purple theme we wanted to create along with plenty of woodland for creating a fairy tale feel to the images.
From there we managed to capture some great images showing 3 different styles of Dark Fashion. Overall we were really pleased with the photos and how they came out. Below are just a small selection of the 3 different styles we shot.
Model: Chloe Burton
Millinery: Jayne Elizabeth Millinery
Purple Dress: The Bridal Boutique Haslemere
MUA & Hair: Viktoria Kohl MUA
Photography: Studio GD Photography
Life In Haslemere Magazine
Chosen Front Cover of Life In Haslemere Magazine
Image Copyright Gareth Davies/StudioGD Photography
After seeing my twitter page @studiogdphoto, I got contacted by my local magazine Life In Haslemere to see if I wanted to take some photographs for the front cover of their Valentines issue to come out in February.
Meeting with Henry Ascoli from the magazine we discussed some ideas for what they wanted and decided that we would find a couple and get some photographs of them taken around the Haslemere area.
I knew both Sarah and Gareth and when I asked them about being in the photographs they both agreed without any question. There are so many different locations we could choose around Haslemere, the Devils Punchbowl being the most popular location. Instead I chose to take the photographs at Blackdown the other side of Haslemere.
I was going to treat the shoot just like I would with an engagement shoot and get some shots of both Sarah and Gareth together. Ultimately it would come down to Henry and his team to decide which image they wanted to use for the front cover of the magazine though.
60's Mods Photo Shoot
A fun day out in old Portsmouth with the Portsmouth 60's Mods and Scooters club. Thank you so much for everyone who turned out to watch.
Model: Hannah Cave (Hughes Models)
Make Up & Hair: Miriam King Make Up Artist
Photography: Gareth Davies / Studio GD Photography
Emily & Matthew
Today I photographed Emily and Matthew's Wedding in Ware in Hertfordshire.
The Ceremony itself was a small church not far from our reception venue of the magnificent Fanhams Hall. A grand building by any means and perfect for a wedding of this size.
As with so many of the weddings I cover I was asked by both Emily and Matthew to photograph their whole day starting with Emily getting ready at Fanhams Hall, moving on to the ceremony and then on to the reception afterwards where I would be there to capture the rest of their day.
The weather held off and we were able to capture some great images of their day which I'm sure both of them will look back and cherish for years to come.
