Last weekend I had a brilliant time photographing Minni, she is a lovely dog and clearly loved having her picture taken!

She's got a few tricks and even has a bit of a name for herself as a skateboarding dog so we brought along a few props to show some of what she can do. The weather was absolutely perfect and the shoot couldn't have gone better.

The owner ended up with a strong selection of colour photos and as always I converted them to black and white so they had the option to print those as well.

We had a lot of fun with all of the props and Minni's getting prepped for dog shows so she is very well trained and was very happy to run about on demand. It took a couple of runs to get the running shots right but I'm happy with how they turned out.

We changed location half way through to bring a bit of variety and although the bluebells have gone, we found a little patch of blue flowers and some buttercups.

I think that I would have liked a denser patch of buttercups but they turned out well, and at the end of this shoot I was really happy with almost every photo taken!

We wandered to the woods near West Stoke last weekend and had a great time taking a few shots of the wee ones. The old adage about not working with children or animals rang true once or twice but they were (mostly) fantastic and we managed some good shots.

 I didn't take much equipment beyond the camera and a few spare lenses, I really couldn't see the camera staying on a tripod! Some extra light could have helped and I'll think about an wireless flash next time. It'd help fill the shadows a little.

 It's true, actual sun in the uk! We did take a few props such as the balloons and chair etc.

 These two turned out really well :) Just having a few clicks after we thought we'd finished and they turned out to be really nice shots.

 The Sony alpha 77 and tamron 17-50 are turning out to be a solid partnership, I don't think that lens has left the camera in a long time now. Fast autofocus, very reliable and great IQ at all f-stops.

As always, I'm finishing with a personal favourite!

Who'd believe that it's already March! It's been so busy with house moves, Christmas and all sorts going on that the blog's been somewhat neglected. But anyway, here are a few pictures of two lovely (and pretty lively) Labradoodles shot a short while ago.

It was a busy shoot as they were very enthusiastic dogs, but we found a dark bit of curtain to shoot against and lots of doggy treats to distract them. Getting the lighting right was the hard bit as they were so mobile but with the flash on remote and off to the side pointing at the ceiling it worked fairly well.

As always, I was using the Sony Alpha 77 matched with a Tamron 17-50 and it's performed a sterling job, you need a fast and reliable auto-focus with animals and I have to say that it performed very well!

These last few images are my favourites, the lighter wall works really well with the dogs and gives them a great colour.

On a freezing day in October we all went for a play in Hillsborough Park in Sheffield, the weather was perfect for a good stomp through the leaves and once the wee man had chosen a few good leaves to march about with we took the chance to get a few Autumnal pictures.

 The Sony A77 proved itself again and we even managed to get a half decent video of him walking about in the leaves. I've invested in a new lens excitingly; the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 which is turning out to be brilliant, and here it is on Amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/Tamron-17-50mm-Vibration-Compensation-Digital/dp/B002LVUIXA
It's sharp right from the get-go and the 17mm wide end is more than enough for a good landscape when it's called for, I find 50mm isn't quite enough length at times but the quality more than makes up for it.

 I was keen to capture the colours of Autumn in the leaves and the dry weather helped a great deal.  Wet or mouldy leaves would have been a bit sad looking and a lot less fun for him.  We could have put him in brighter colours to contrast against the leaves; and next time, or if I shoot this with other children then that would be a proper consideration.

 On the whole, I'm really happy with these.  He was beginning to get a little tired (might be better to do this on the way to the swings next time!) and didn't want to walk about very much but he pulled out some lovely smiles for us.

On a sunny day in August we wandered over to the Arundel Wetland Centre for a day out with some friends and the wee one.  It's a great place with a huge variety of bird life and if you're in to twitching there are some pretty rare species to be found there. 

http://www.wwt.org.uk/visit/arundel/

 This was an accidental shot of a bird (small, enjoyed eating nuts) at a bird feeder.  The light was pretty poor under the trees and as I had the camera on aperture priority it chose a really slow shutter speed.  I normally have the camera on manual but the clouds were moving fast and the light was changing a lot so I popped it on aperture for convenience. The bird feeder's blurred a little but the movement of the bird has really been picked up!

 There were a lot of swans there and clearly used to being fed, we made sure the little one was out of reach while they wandered over.

 The Minolta beercan (70-210) wasn't quite long enough to capture anything too far away so I distracted myself by trying some insect shots.  The autofocus struggled a little here but the depth of field is really tight and we're venturing into macro territory so I'm not surprised.  The Sony A77 has a funky 'focus peaking' function for manual focus though which is brilliant.

 As long as you're fairly quick and the bee/wasp/insect of sorts is content to hang around it can give better results when you use the manual focus than rely on the auto focus.  The focus peaking highlights in red the areas of the image in focus so you can see the focus plane move around the image.  Really handy for these shots.

 I think the last one here is my favourite insect shot.  If you view it large you can see the pollen that's already been picked up.  Click on the picture to view a slideshow.

It's always pretty cute when they follow their mother around, there were a few ducklings and similar (no idea of the species, sorry) and I managed to get close enough to photograph a few.

 I liked this little fellow bobbing around on his own, he looked like he had a plan of action.

It's worth a visit if you're near Arundel, we even saw a watervole having a nibble but they're really shy and he vanished before I could get anything like a decent picture.

Lordington Lavender

During a twenty minute lull in the summer's rain we piled into the car, grabbed a few props and joined friends already at Lordington Lavender...

http://www.lordingtonlavender.co.uk/

Due to the fairly miserable weather we've had this summer the lavender wasn't as thoroughly in bloom as it has been in previous years but we were very keen to take a few nice pictures of the wee one.

We had a vintage suitcase, a home-made quilt and a few balloons from a party as props; so it would be a little bit staged but a great opportunity to try out some family portrait ideas.

We had time to take a few for our friends as well, the balloon worked very well as a fun prop to play around with and both of the boys really enjoyed themselves.

It was lots of fun and although they both insisted on eating a fair bit of lavender I took a good few photos that I'm happy with.

 After a short while it really turned into an 'eat the lavender' competition and although no one is looking at me I like the two pictures above.  It's relaxed and almost looks like a sunny day!

 I contemplated a speedy lens-swap as the girls went for a walk but shot this with the sigma 24-70 and cropped in a bit.  The Sony Alpha 77 has such a loopy resolution (24mp) it allows me to crop in a fair bit before loosing resolution.

 It was all very relaxed and we managed to get a fair few pictures shot before the clouds began to threaten again.

 The suitcase worked very well, he could almost be about to catch the train and head of on his holidays here :)

 When they weren't industriously munching on lavender flowers (he's also pretty fond of clover) they both pulled out the smiles and generally made it all lovely and easy. 

 There was a little hedgerow of wild flowers next to the field so for variety we took a few of our props (and a child) of for a few pictures.

It was a brilliant afternoon and well worth re-visiting next year.  There are already a few families booking similar shoots so drop me a line and we'll book in a day!  www.edwardbryan.co.uk