March 2021

Nicola Benedetti with the RSNO at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

What an amazing trip out for my new silent Canon R5 camera this month. I had to be as quiet as a mouse to photograph award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti as she performed Polish master Karol Szymanowski’s dazzling First Violin Concerto, part of the new RSNO Digital Season, which starts streaming from Friday 16th of  April. The concert was conducted by Thomas Søndergård. I have often said on this blog that I have really missed live music and to be back in one of my favourite venues the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was great. You get into the music even more when you are taking pictures. Following expressions and hand positions on the instrument really adds to the experience and the photographs.

Red Sky at Night

I am always watching the sky. It changes all the time, clouds, light and colour. One evening while washing the dishes I noticed the sky getting redder and redder. I grabbed my camera and popped outside. This is the picture as I took it with no increase of saturation or photoshop tricks to make it look more red than it was. The thing with a good sky picture is to get something in the foreground to give a shape against the colour. I only had this big tree. I would have loved to have one of Glasgow’s old buildings as my shape. My favourite would have to be the towers of Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum.

Portraits For Business

I met an interesting young entrepreneur who runs Repairel CIC,  a social enterprise that aims to set up a shoe repair lab in the North West of Glasgow to test various shoe-waste reducing solutions & facilitate change. Glasgow based social entrepreneur Petra Baiba Olehno who founded Repairel was in her workshop at home when I did the photos for The Herald Business pages. It was a lovely big windowed room which was so easy to light up. Mind you we had to close the curtains as it was so bright outside, the sun shining in was dazzling. I always like to take my subjects outside away from their place of work too and I really liked the two types of pictures that came out of the assignment. I love the west end tenements in the background of the outside shots.

Head Shots

I often find with smartphones and selfies all the rage just now, people often forget about getting goods quality headshots portraits done. They are so good for business CV’s, LinkedIn profiles and even for Facebook and Twitter. My son Mark was needing some done and as a photographer himself he knows the value of a good picture and getting appropriately dressed for it.  A good contact sheet lets the subject see all the pictures on the one page and it allows them to compare the images side by side.