JUST FOCUS PHOTOGRAPHY @justfocusphotography - Tumblr Blog

French Horn players are anything but dull!

What a pleasure to photograph Katy Woolley of the Philharmonia Orchestra recently. She's the coolest, craziest, funiest French Horn player I've met. Okay so she's the only French Horn player I've met but she's brill.

Oh and she's a brilliant horn player - The Philharmonia Orchestra don't come easy you know!

#london philharmonic orchestra #katy woolley #french horn

Military Wives Choir shoot

Earlier this year we were commissioned to photograph an extraordinary group of people. The Chivenor Military Wives Choir quickly became one of our most enjoyable shoots.

The group are a shining example of ordinary people doing amazing work. Yes they have all had a taste of fame and notoriety thanks to the original Gareth Malone TV series but these ladies are as happy performing a concert at Bampton Church Hall as they are The Albert Hall. Indeed they work tirelessly at raising money for charity and yet are unpaid themselves.

Within every Ladies portfolio I have favourites. Here's a very small taster from two of the shoots. I loved every minute of it although the Ladies Dinner in the Officers Mess was slightly scary!

#chivenor #military wives choir #gareth malone

Our studio is just 5 minutes from the beach on the gorgeous Devon Gold Coast. We're very lucky. Not quite this close though.

#devon coast #photographic studio #saunton beach #photoshop #twisty focus #just focus

View from the office - It's lovely sunny weather but we still need a big umbrella. Mike preps for a product shoot first thing in the morning. Good legs those - nineteen quid each from Ikea.

#photographic studio #studio for hire #large studio #devon coast

Whilst editing images last week Mike and I were commenting on the amount of times that we accidentally appear in the reflection of a window, mirror, chrome door handle or models sunglasses. We're going to publish a book of the best and worst. Meanwhile here's my latest effort - 30 degree heat, hard hat, high vis vest and safety boots. It's all glamour this job.

#devon photographer #just focus #property photography #commercial photography

What a difference an inch makes!

The things I like about photographing people are a) people are great fun. b) everyone comes in dreading it but leaves a more confident person. c) I can make them look like the person they really are or indeed want to be!

Here's a good example from a shoot earlier this week. The delightful Dawn and Neil Phillips wanted a pre-birth shoot to record the precious time before their next arrival. Like so many people Dawn doesn't really enjoy having her picture taken and looses confidence if she has to look straight at camera. The gauntlet was thrown down and amongst the many scenarios were these special pictures of guess what, Dawn looking straight at camera. But theres more. Look carefully at the images and see how she oozes confidence by being posed with her chin lifted a little. Like I say - what a difference an inch makes.

#pregnancy #pregnancy photo #pregnancy photographer #devon photographer #commercial photography

OLYMPUS PEN GEEKFEST!

On the way back from a shoot we were pondering about what would happen if we married our Nikon gear with and old Olympus Pen. The result must be the ultimate Olympus geekfest - assuming you like Olympus Pens or camera kit in general. Look away now if you don't like cool camera gear!

As professional photographers cameras become just tools of the trade after a while. Every so often however we tinker with the kit to see how far we can push it. The same goes for the day-to-day gear. We are a Nikon studio with several DSLR bodies one of which is the amazing D800 that we use for video work. DSLRs aren't really built for commercial film work and have to be adapted with all manner of bolt on bits to make them perform like a pro video film camera - just a whole lot cheaper!

So adapting an Olympus Pen E-P2 should be possible right? Well yes it is as the photos show.

Pen users often adapt the optics to more superior glass using an appropriate adaptor. Our lovely prime Nikkor 50mm 1.8 was mated to the Pen using a cheap adaptor - we don't need autofocus control anyway. BTW our Pen is a beaten up version that gets used for reference shots, behind the scenes footage and the like. You'll see from the images that the paint is peeling of and there are a few battle scars. We love it. Then we took the Zacuto viewfinder from the D800 and re-configured it to fit the Pen. It fits remarkably well.

The kit was then mounted onto an Edelkrone Pocket Rig (anything bigger would look silly yeah?!) to which we fitted an Edelkrone follow focus which if you've used one you'll know what a delight this makes pulling focus.

Of course the whole set up needed to be mounted on to a fluid head although we did experiment with using it handheld which was a whole lot easier than the bulkier and much heavier D800.

Then it all went a bit crazy and we mounted and plugged in a 7inch monitor and hotshoe mounted a Tascom sound recorder.

Okay it all looks pretty cool but does it work? We quickly realised that yes it does. Naturally if we were going to this much trouble we'd use the superior Nikon D800 so we looked at lightening the system to make it truly usable.

Two of the images show the results of this. Off came the Edelkrone bits and pieces and on went a Manfrotto Monopod head plus a six quid table top monopod/handle from Calumet. This configuration is so usable that we are taking it to Africa in December for an assignment in Uganda where its compact size and robust build we be perfect.

What started as a bit of fun turned out to be a practical set-up. We'll post some of the results shortly.

For the supergeeks out there the lighting set up was an Elenchrom Quadra Ranger on a big Rotalux softie with a simple white reflector to pop the shadows underneath. Shot on Nikon D800 with 24-70 Nikkor mounted on the studio FOBA rostrum stand (our second favourite bit of kit). Oh and the studio lights were switched off. Enough said?