It's been a really busy week and I love that feeling you get on a Friday when you get home and feel like you've earned a good rest because you've put in a good solid week's work.

This was the busiest week I've had for a while and I spent Monday in the office doing a solid day's post shoot processing followed by a shoot at a lovely care home in Wimbledon on Tuesday. Wednesday's shoot was at another beautiful care home - this one near Devizies in Wiltshire. The drive there and back was stunning as the sun was out and I took a back road route both ways. Then yesterday I spent the day shooting some video to show the operation of a high tech lighting control system for a lighting manufacturer which was great fun and got the old brain cells working flat out as we had a storyboard to follow

Today I left home at 6am for a shoot at a large distribution warehouse in West Thurrock where we had a 7.30am start. The shoot went well and I left Thurrock at 12.30pm and headed off to Luton for my monthly radio show on BBC Three Counties radio where I do an expert hour on the Lorna Milton show. I had to be there at 2.30pm for a 2.45pm start so basically I had 2 hours to do about 30 miles. I made it into the studio with literally 30 seconds to spare before I went on thanks to a massive jam on the M25.

I've had some very kind comments on the blog from some of the readers (thanks for the feedback - it's always good to get comments on the blog) about the high dynamic range (HDR) pictures that I sometimes post. I do use HDR techniques and mainly use Photomatix to layer the various images to together but I always then open them in Photoshop and work on the pictures extensively to ensure they don't look too artificial. I've attached an example of an HDR picture to today's blog which was taken at the Wyndhams Theatre. A standard picture showing this scene would have the highlights blown out and the light fittings and chandelier would not be clearly visible.

I've just got back home from a shoot in Wimbledon where I photographed a very smart retirement home for a brochure. It was an interesting old building right on the edge of the Common and apparently a lady once lived there who had an affair with King Edward 3rd so it's a very old and grand place as you can imagine. The drive home was pretty hot and stuffy though as the aircon on my Volvo V50 has broken again!.


Tomorrow I've got a shoot down in Devizies in Wiltshire which is a lovely part of the world and I always love driving in that direction (even without aircon) then I'm shooting a video in Milton Keynes on Thursday and on Friday I've got a warehouse and supermarket interior to shoot in Thurrock starting at 7.30am and then I'm on BBC Three Counties Radio in the afternoon from 2.30pm so all in all a very busy week.


I was thinking today that I haven't bought any camera kit for a couple of years now and I'm still blown away by the quality of image I'm getting from the EOS 5D MK2 and the original 5D too. I've got four L series lenses too which I've owned for a few years and I think we're arriving at a point right now where the need to continually upgrade to the latest camera is now over. I can't see me buying the next generation Canon Pro DSLR now unless something goes wrong with my existing kit or something groundbreaking comes out with say high dynamic range imaging built in but I can't see this happening for a few years yet. I think the resolution of the 5D MK2 (22MP) is enough for anyone unless you're routinely shooting full size billboard images, and for that reason I'm happy to stay with the kit I've got.


I get asked a lot by enthusiasts as to which camera to buy and my advice is always the same - buy a used DLSR body from a camera dealer with a guarantee and spend the bulk of the money on top quality second hand lenses as these really make the difference. A great lens on an 8MP camera will give a better picture than a cheap lens on a 20MP camera!.


I've attached a picture from a shoot I did at the excellent All Star Lanes boutique bowling alley in London - I'm lucky to have been commissioned by the owners to photograph all three of their venues in London and they are well worth a visit if you fancy a great night out in stylish surroundings. Here's a link to their website - http://www.allstarlanes.co.uk/
I took the pictures without people in on their site (the pictures with people aren't mine!!)

OK so another good day today as I finished off all the outstanding post shoot processing including yesterday's shoot in Milton Keynes which was an interior shoot for a large private healthcare client. Then I had a meeting with a new client in Aylesbury who have now commissioned me to shoot three locations for them over the next few weeks and they are also interested in my new Redshift Media company through which I'm offering video production and also Internet marketing via Twitter, Blogger and Flickr etc.

Tomorrow I'm off to Newbury for another healthcare shoot then on Friday I'm down in Bristol photographing a new academy school so all in all a really good week.

I get the feeling that our economy is very delicately balanced at the moment and I really fear for the next couple of years and beyond because of all the cuts the government are making. I only hope I'm being paranoid and that I'm proven to be wrong but so many of my clients - both architects and manufacturers - rely on education and healthcare projects to keep going.

That's why I think we as photographers need to offer more services and therefore more value to our clients to help keep busy.

Having said that I'm very pleased that the next two months look very busy so I'm going to focus on that and keep as optimistic as possible!.

I've attached a picture to today's blog from a shoot a while back where I took a series of 6 shots from the Clifton Suspension Bridge to show a motorway section lit with street lights made by my client. I stitched the pictures together in Photoshop to create a panoramic image.

Post shoot processing was the order of the day today (after a visit to the dentist!) and I finished processing all the pictures from the Talk Talk shoot and made a start on the Homebase shoot from Friday. The Talk Talk pictures look good and I'm pleased with them so hopefully the client will be pleased too. I need to keep up to date now as I'm out every day this week and next week is full too so I don't want to fall behind with the post processing. I always get a bit stressed when I know I've got a big backlog of work to catch up on so I'll be working late tonight and tomorrow to keep on schedule.

I've attached another two pictures from the Talk Talk shoot to the blog today. I noticed the reflection of the light fittings in the glass cabinet and used that to create a more interesting shot that a straight forward picture of the open plan office. I always like to use reflections when possible to add a bit of extra visual interest to the shots. I also love to use blurred people in the pictures to add a sense of scale as in the shot of the reception -to achieve this effect you need to have the camera fixed onto a sturdy tripod and use a shutter speed of around half a second. I like the blurred effect from an artistic point of view but it also means that people in the pictures aren't recognisable and therefore there isn't any hassle in terms of getting permission from them to take their photograph!.

It's been a really quiet week since my last blog entry but things have just picked up again big time!. I had a shoot today in London at the new HQ of Talk Talk (broadband suppliers) who are based in Notting Hill. I made the mistake of trusting Google Maps on my Blackberry and ended up walking bloody miles around West London before realising that the stupid phone didn't have a clue as to where I was supposed to be going. Having wasted an hour walking around London W11 I gave up and got in a cab and the cabbie then got lost too and had to resort to his A-Z!.

Once I got there the shoot went really well and I took some good shots of the interior of the building for my client who supplied all the interior lighting to the building.

Tomorrow I've got two jobs - one in Esher and another in Crawley. It's going to be a long day and I've got to leave home at 6.45am but it's great to be so busy again after a quiet couple of weeks. Then for the next two weeks the diary is pretty full so happy days!.

I had another two video commissions in today which is very exciting. The video clip work seems to be really taking off and I think this will soon account for 25% of my turnover. I saw this coming with the advent of search engine optimisation whereby Google promotes web sites further up the rankings if the site contains video content. I've just finished a video for one of my best clients and I'll post it in the blog as soon as they sign it off.

Next week I'm hoping to do some more training on the video editing software called Final Cut Pro which is the hottest editing program around. At the moment I pay to have all my footage edited and I will probably carry on doing this as my workload is high enough as it is but I am keen to learn the basics in case I need to edit something quickly for a client. The files from the Canon EOS 5D MK2 that I use are very big as it records in full 1080p HD so I'd need a powerful Mac system to be able to edit these but I think it would be a worthwhile investment.

I've attached a picture from today's shoot at Talk Talk showing the linear fluorescent lighting system in the canteen - the food was great by the way!.

First LEED Platinum Home in Virginia

This modern, award-winning abode is the first LEED Platinum home in Virginia. Located at 5803 16th Street North in Arlington, the home was built by Metro Green and designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects (the firm that also designed the popular net-zero energy Bright Built Barn). Although it's a little bigger than the ones we tend to mention -- 3,825 square feet with a tight footprint -- I think the home is worth mentioning for a number of reasons. First, annual heating and cooling costs are $180 and $125 respectively! In addition, 5803 has the following green elements:

• A Liveroof green roof;
• 1 kW array of photovoltaics;
• Geothermal wells and heat pump;
• Efficient SIPs walls and roof;
• Efficient spray foam insulation;
• High efficiency appliances;
• Energy recovery ventilation system;
• Low-VOC finishes and paints;
• 540 gallons of rainwater cisterns;
• Custom nanogel curtain wall glazing;
• Double-glazed, argon-filled windows; and
• Pervious paving and drought-tolerant landscaping.

5803 was designed to be efficient from the beginning. It received a HERS score of 51, Energy Star rating of 5+ Stars, and Energy Star certification for exceptional indoor air quality. Moreover, the site design features zero site runoff for a one-inch rain event. And in case you're in the market for a green home, check these links.

[+] Metro Green LEED Platinum home
[$] 5803 16th St North is for sale for $1.175k at Redfin.

Photo credits and copyright: Parker Daniell.

Oregon Shift House Seeks Passive House

Last week, Willamette Week Online published an article called "Futurehaus," which we linked to in our Saturday Week in Review. The article describes an Oregon Passive House project in the works by Root Design Build. The house is referred to as the Shift House, which, awkwardly enough, is not to be confused with the other Shift Home that we covered recently. But that's not to take anything away from it. With construction set to begin next month, upon completion in September, it'll be one of only a few certified Passive Houses in the United States.

Of course, the media has been giving attention to Passive Houses, and the broader public is becoming more and more aware of the standard. Passive Houses require three main things: an airtight envelope, little to no heating and cooling energy, and minimal overall energy use. You can read about the more technical standards on the Passive House website.

Root Design Build's Shift House maintains a somewhat traditional design, and the necessary energy efficiency goals will be sought by eliminating thermal bridges and using super insulation, roof overhangs, triple-pane windows, south-facing windows, concrete floors for thermal mass, and waste heat, etc. And with the tight envelope, the home requires a heat recovery ventilator to keep the air fresh.

Shift House will be just over 1,700 square feet, and Root Design Build has $300,000 budgeted for construction. Although the home will have solar panels, not counting energy from the panels, the estimated yearly heating cost should be under $200, if all goes as planned. Very interesting. We'll keep you posted as the Shift House moves forward ...

As a side note ... it seems popular to couch LEED criticism in praise for Passive House. Most certainly, LEED could be more rigorous in terms of energy performance, although it should be remembered that the goal of the program is market transformation. But as has been said by others, LEED and Passive House don't necessarily need to be mutually exclusive. Moreover, while Passive House zeros in on energy efficiency and tightness, LEED has a broader focus on other important environmental aspects, such as site issues, construction activity, materials and waste, water efficiency, and environmental air quality, etc. The goals and programs are slightly different. In any event, you know we'll be the first to tell you if we see a LEED Platinum Passive House.

Modern Green Affordable Shift Home

Inspired by the likes of Dwell and the 100k House, Deezine.ca and Shift Development came together with an idea. They thought it would be interesting to have a modern, green, and affordable home designed by an entire community online. Ideas are posted online and the community can make suggestions for changes. Their idea became the Shift Home. You can see how the design has changed in the past few months, but to be clear, this home is not just a thought experiment. Shift Development breaks ground in late-May, or thereabouts.

The Shift Home will be located in Riversdale in Saskatchewan, roughly three blocks from the redevelopment of River Landing. If all goes as planned, the home will be the first LEED Canada for Homes Certified home in Saskatchewan.

The goal is to be affordable to a household income of less than $40k a year.

In addition, the philosophy for green design is to conserve first and use green technology after everything else has been done. Standard green features include a super-insulated envelope, rainwater catchment, heat recovery, triple-glazed windows, a recycling center, dual-flush toilets, and low-flow fixtures. Green upgrades include a green roof, solar thermal, and LED lighting, etc.

The final design for the envelope will be released tomorrow, but help is still needed. The Shift Home needs community insight as to interior and product selections. So get involved ...

We've had quite a few new jobs in this week for July and August which is great news as July can be a quiet month for us. Looking back over the past few years June and July have always been quiet so it would be good to buck the trend and keep really busy.

This week has been pretty quiet in terms of getting out and about although I did the shoot on Monday in Peterborough and also did a small local shoot on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the week post shoot processing a lot of pictures and I'm now up to date which always feels good.

Does anyone remember the Canon FD series?. I've still got a Canon F1, A1 and T90 with a few really nice lenses but these can't be used on the newer Canon EOS cameras including the digital bodies. They can however be fitted to the Panasonic G1, GH1 and G2 cameras via a cheap adaptor and I've been using my 30+ year old lenses with my new G1 body and they are fantastic. If anyone is looking to get a small digital camera with the ability to change lenses then the G1 is a great piece of kit and it's now down to around £400 including the kit lens.

Here's the good bit - the old Canon FD lenses are dirt cheap on ebay right now and offer serious quality when compared to brand new lenses so I would recommend anyone to buy a couple of old FD lenses and put them onto one of these G1 cameras. A really clean 50mm standard lens can be found for around £20-£30 on ebay and this would work beautifully on the G1.

I'm going to shoot some pictures over the weekend on my old A1 with black and white film as I always find it liberating to shoot film and not rely too heavily on LCD screens and auto focus / auto everything digital cameras.

I've attached a picture in today's blog that I took last month at a gig in Wolverton where my nephew played drums in a band called Lower than Atlantis. I took this shot on my G1 with a lens made in 1976 (Canon FD 35mm F2) with the lens wide open at F2 and the camera ISO set at 1600. OK there is some grain but the picture is pretty sharp considering how poor the lighting was so I reckon these old Canon lenses are well worth buying while they're still cheap!.