Studio diary of Hampshire photographer - Mike French
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It’s that time of year again where the warning signs go up on the surrounding roads, the weather gets colder, and the Stubbington 10k is held. It is also the time if year when I take the opportunity to test out some of my kit with thoughts to the year ahead.
Well I just got back from the Hampshire Baby & Toddler Show in Southampton. The show started very busily, and the large cruise centre terminal filled with prams, toddlers, expectant woman and friends, dads, husbands, partners and parents. Our stand drew lots of admiring glances, and wonderful comments and we spoke to lots of people...
The second annual Hampshire Baby and Toddler Exhibition takes place this weekend on the 2nd Octovber at the City Cruise Terminal. It runs from 10am to 3:30pm and should, based on last year, be an amazing event. We will of course be attending again and will be in our regular position at stand B12, close to the refreshments area.
Yesterday I made the short journey up to Guildford to the Surrey Sports Park where I was shooting two competitive matches between British Colleges Sport’s netball team and Surrey Storm NTL and LSE Regional Academy on behalf of the BCS Netball team.
Pat Cash returned to Lee-on-the-Solent for the tennis club’s centenary open day. Joined this year by Dan Lobb from ITV’s Daybreak and recently Loose Women, Dan was previously a UK top 20 professional tennis player, and played country tennis with the club’s Director of Tennis Chris Wilkinson.
The Stubbington 10k was raced today around the villages of Stubbington, Titchfield and Hill Head. This was my second year of taking images at the event, I used the area around the Hill Head sailing club and the Tichfield Haven visitors centre for these images. They are probably the most scenic of the Stubbington 10k, and provide some good backgrounds and dynamic composition with the curves in the road, harbour and pavement marker posts.
Saturday saw our 5th year as the official photographers at the Portsmouth Hospital Trust Ball held in the Guildhall, Portsmouth. In excess of 400 guests attended an evening of food, music and dancing and we took formal portraits during the evening with printing on-site for the guests to purchase
We have just returned from the Botley Park Hotel following the Southampton Wedding Exhibition organised by De Mellow Promotions – occupying our usual feature stand position in the atrium.
Just back from Queens Club in London for the 2010 Aegon Championships and day two of the tournament. On a changeable day the tennis, and practice, was interrupted by several rain showers but the evening cleared and produced some excellent doubles and beautiful light.
Today I covered the PR for the Lee-on-the-Solent Tennis Club on their annual Open Day.
This year both Pat Cash and Andrew Castle visited the tennis club to be part of this well prepared, and executed event.As with last year my brief was fairly straightforward. Capture the day, photograph some PR images of the celebrities with the sponsors and their families, and then shoot the tennis matches.
Once again I will be the official photographer for the Lee-on-the-Solent Tennis Club open day, commissioned by the club to cover the day and to photograph a series of images for them. This year the club has Pat Cash, and Andrew Castle returning to do battle in some exhibition tennis with Chris Wilkinson, the club’s Director of Tennis, and commenter/umpire Matt Chilton also there – it promises to be bigger and better than last years amazing event.
I spent today in the fresh air at the very lovely Fair Oak at Rogate working with equestrian photographer Martin Lewis who asked me to shoot with him today at the Wey Valley Riding Club one day event. The dressage, show-jumping and cross country overlapped some significantly and so I lent an extra pair of hands, some camera equipment, and of course my eye.
On Friday afternoon I went up to Somerset House for London Fashion Weekend to shoot the catwalk shows. I once again had an accredited pass to the catwalk shows and was looking to get some great images of the clothes and of course the models. Each catwalk show was divided into four set of clothing – three different looks, and the entire Betty Jackson collection and the show was repeated in it’s entirety.
We spent today at 1000 Lakeside in North Harbour, Portsmouth at an AQ Networking – connecting for business event. We were working for the organiser Laura Swetman capturing some PR images for her business and also had our own exhibitor stand in one of the offices which we had transformed into a studio space
Coming soon…. images from the PHT 2009 winter ball held at the Portsmouth Guildhall.
