I’m firmly of the belief that it is critical for professional photographers to shoot personal photographic projects.

I’m not in anyway suggesting that they need to be charitable, life-changing, in South-America, only in Black-and-White, or using some vintage or toy camera. Just that they need to be divorced from an immediate or existing client, direct payment, and on the terms of the photographer within the reasonable constraints of the subject matter/sponsor.

Over 2012 I’m planning on shooting several personal projects, some of which will be an investment to develop skills which might turn into payable work, that I would look to prove or push some of my equipment, some of which will be good for my soul, and some are just interesting subjects I’d like to tackle over the next 12 months.

I’m not going to lay them out in detail in this post, some of them are just ideas at the moment, and there are always limited opportunities for everything. But I’m going to outline some of them them as a record of what we are planning – some/most/all of which will hopefully end up as more detail blog posts in later months once I have completed the personal project.

1. I’m looking to do some work around motorsport, not just on the trackside – I’m likely to be doing that anyway as I do every year but also behind the scenes and away from the actual race-day. I’d love to hear from anyone who owns or manages a motorsport team (I’m not necessarily looking for F1 BTW) or does their PR, club racing or the lower formulas would be great as would any of the powered water-sports – powerboats, jet skis, waterskiing, zap-cats.
2. I’m looking to shoot some work around horses. Stable owners, owner/riders, polo club, working horses are all candidates. I’m not talking about event photography here, definitely not on my agenda.
3. I’d like to take some experience I have in shooting performances and develop it, and also prove some newer equipment. Ideally a local theatre company or a national/international company performing in the Hampshire/West Sussex/Dorset counties in the first 8 months of 2012, a theatre itself would be great. Musicals, ballet, stand-up, drama, children’s theatre all considered.
4. I’d like to do something around the Olympics or Para-Olympics, it is such a massive event in 2012. Almost certainly focussed either on the athletes who live or train in the Portsmouth/Southampton area or a supplier to the Olympics from this area. Of course I’m highly unlikely to be unique in this personal photographic project…. and their will be other demands on their time.
5. I want to shoot some Hockey and some Beach Volleyball, local teams and events – both sports I have played competitively at either club or county level.
6. I’d like to do a project around fitness and well-being. It could be associated with a gym, a personal trainer, competition, manufacturer of equipment, clothing, or health products, healer, physio, or a combination of them all.

That’s a fair start. Of course those are all going to be balanced off against the portraiture and commercial work which we shoot for daily fees, and orders week in – week out.

If you have any responsibility for, or contacts in any of those organisations, and you’d be interested in some collaboration then please do get in contact or pass on my details. I’ll be reaching out to my own contacts in the new year to kick off some of these and I’ll likely add some as well as the year progresses.

It’s that time of year again, and whilst we are just finishing off the retouching of a newborn portrait session, and preparing a gallery for the family, it won’t be long before we close the studio for the holiday period.

The studio will be closed from Christmas Eve through to the 3rd January 2012 after which we will be open again for business. During this time we won’t be taking any appointments, callers, and it is likely that any phone calls will route to the answerphone. Please do leave a message !

We will be checking emails on an irregular basis, mainly to keep in touch with expectant parents so that we can schedule newborn portrait sessions for them for when we open and not miss those few perfect days – but if we don’t get back to you immediately please don’t worry.

We do have an magazine editorial shoot on the 27th, an album design to post out when deliveries start again after Christmas, and are expecting a courier delivery of one of our couples wedding albums – which is currently on it’s way over from Australia. So it won’t be a complete break for us.

It only remains for us all to wish previous clients, suppliers, friends, and clients-to-be a wonder Christmas and New Year and we look forward to hearing from you and working with you in 2012 !

We are conscious of the fact that it has been about a month since we last posted anything on the blog. That’s a pretty long time for Meonshore Studios to be quiet and we didn’t want you to be worried !

We are simply head down at the moment working through the usual pre-Christmas (yes it is pre-Christmas already) rush which has seen a larger than normal set of album designs to complete as well as portraits and commercial work. We have now completed shooting all of our weddings for 2011, and our last set of proofs will be out to our clients at the end of this week. We have a very limited number of family/childrens portrait sessions available although we will accommodate all of our newborn enquiries.

One of the casualties of this has been the update of the website to detail our 1:1 training which we have been running for existing clients this year and had planned to have available to new clients by now. I’m hopeful that this will be live by the end of November with pricing information and some example topics from “understanding your DSLR”, “processing and workflow”, and then specific tuition around types of photography. Please not we do not train wedding or portrait photographers – our training courses are for those wishing to improve their photography as beginners or enthusiastic amateurs.

This personal, bespoke training makes for a perfect Christmas present for a partner or loved one, or even as a prize (we often sell companies and organisations vouchers to place into prize draws at this time of year). If you are thinking of buying a DSLR for a first time user this could combine with it to make a treasured Christmas present.

More information will follow once we get the site updated – but if you are interested in finding out more please contact us for details.

Once we clear our current to-do-list we’ll also be updating the blog with everything we have been up to over the last few weeks.

Baby Hampshire magazine have used some of our images to illustrate an article on travel routines. Found in the summer issue, on sale from the 15th May for 3 months, the article is on pages 138 – 140.

We have a good working relationship with the team at Little Media who publish the Baby Hampshire magazine, and are advertisers in the magazine and online directory for our newborn portrait photography. They loved the images when they saw them, and after getting additional approval from our clients featured in the images, selected some to go with the words.

Our client is delighted with the article, as are we, and it is a pleasure to be a contributing photographer to the magazine.

Baby Hampshire magazine is published by Little Media, and is a premium title. It can be found across the county or is available on subscription.

Our advert is prominately placed on page 13 opposite the “Your Letters” feature and shows one of our well loved fine art newborn images.

Baby Hampshire have kindly allowed me to show the pages, and our images from the magazine.

We are half way through April, and it is now time for an update on our wedding photography.

On the 1st April we covered our first wedding of the year at the lovely Rhinefield House, where will will be returning later on in the summer. We are well into our season of pre-wedding shoots and meeting up with our booked couples to talk through the details of their day, some practice and posing tips, as well as creating some fun images for them to use at their wedding and to keep as a memento.

This year we are fortunate to be working at some great venues and as always we have a wonderful selection of couples who have asked us to spend time with them on their wedding day, including a booking which came in this week for Marwell Hall another of our regular and favoured venues.

This booking is significant because it marks the last wedding collection we will book for 2011 that has an album associated with it. In order to ensure that we deliver a high quality service to all of our wedding clients, and our portrait and commercial clients we limit the number of wedding albums we produce every year, and therefore the number of weddings we take on. On average the design, preparation and delivery of an album takes 30 hours of our time over a longer elapsed period driven mainly by our couples.

We now have a very limited number of available spaces for weddings in 2011 on a digital files only collection at £2000 for full day coverage and the hi-resolution images. Do contact us without delay if you have been considering us for your wedding photography as it is likely we will close our books for 2011 weddings in the next 3-4 weeks.

And finally do expect a pre-wedding shoot from the breathtaking St Cross Church, and New Place on this blog over the next few days featuring another of our couples for this year.

This afternoon was spent at the Hasselblad Studio in Hoxton, London for a seminar on image capture and processing workflow.

At 2000 square feet the Hasselblad owned and operated studio is seriously impressive, and an ideal location to run a seminar on workflow using their proprietary software Phocus. Over a period of about 2 hours David Grover from Hasselblad took us through the software, tips, techniques and then hooked up a camera and demonstrated remotely using the camera from both a laptop, and via Phocus Mobile through an iPad.

I have been using the software now for about a month but this was an excellent way to refine and extend my knowledge and I’ll be going through my notes when we put it all together in the studio over the next couple of days.

Just a quick iPhone shot from the exterior of the studio….

We are pleased to announce that we will be showcasing our  wedding photography at Marwell Hall during their wedding fair this coming Sunday.

As a recommended photographer we will be showing our display album, also used by Marwell Hall themselves, containing three beautiful weddings in the Hall and photographs from around the hall, grounds, and with the animal feeds. We will also be showing contemporary albums from Rhinefield House, and Hayling Island and many of our favourite images from the last couple of years, canvas wraps, framed prints, parents albums and some of our pre-wedding shoot products.

The weather forecast looks good, and so we are looking forward to meeting couples who have already booked their wedding at Marwell Hall, but not yet their photographer and those of you considering this lovely, and unique venue, for your wedding.

Feedback from the team suggests this is a favourite image from our display album (taken in the marquee during the speeches). Do come and see the rest of it.

Our most popular childrens portraits product is the wall mounted triptych frame. Shown here in an oak finish is is able to show three different images of one child, or a combination of children. With the long panoramic shape it fits perfectly over furniture or equally sits well on a wall on its own.

Our options allow for a mixture of portrait and landscape images giving you the most choice and flexibility when selecting the photographs.

This product photograph showcases a triptych of images from a recent session with a brother and sister and includes a close-up portrait of each and then a view of the both of them together. Given as a birthday gift.

Well the title says it all really. Florist Zoe Rowlands from The Flower Company had one of her moss baskets selected by The Wedding Community Blog as product of the week, and we used on of the images taken from Katy and Rob’s Esher wedding to illustrate the article.

As I type the blog entry is at the top of their site. But for reference here is the image of the moss basket in the hands of one of Katy’s flower girls.

As we reach the end of 2010 we start looking forward to 2011, particularly our wedding bookings for the coming year – many of which have been in place for much of 2010. We have never been a high volume wedding studio ensuring that we can dedicate the right amount of attention for each of our couples, with each wedding taking in excess of 40 hours of work from initial meeting through to the presentation of the album.

With our current level of bookings as of 23rd December we are now in the position of having limited availability for weddings in 2011. If you would like to be one of our beautiful brides or fantastic couples then we recommend that you contact us as soon as possible to enquire if your date is currently available. Our expectation is that we will close our books for 2011 weddings by the end of February 2011.

We are also expecting a price increase from our album suppliers which should be confirmed in the first two weeks of January, and this along with the VAT increase will see a price increase in our wedding package fees on or around 15th January; as unfortunately we will need to pass on these increases. All enquiries prior to this date will be entitled to book at our current prices, again early enquiry is recommended.