5 Sept 2014

LOVING THIS LENS

In June I was sent to Italy to create three travel and food films for an Aussie company (not allowed to show them yet but soon). Inbetween filming I was playing around with a new lens I bought off Amazon which is the SLR Magic 26mm 1.4 toy lens  For only £66 or so I was stunned how good it was. Yes it is a bit of a toy but if you're after some cool effects this is great. And even at 1.4 it is surprisingly sharp. The bokah is all weird and swirly but some very useable shots.

Filmmaker Philip Bloom has been recently playing around with the Petzval lomography lens and, again, the results are very cool but I was surprised just how similar they were to the SLR magic toy lens. If you're on a budget you might want to consider the SLR Magic lens as I think the Petzval is selling for over £400.

Have a look at the results below then wander around the net and Philip Blooms feed to see more.







27 Jan 2014

THE HUMBLE ENGLISH BREAKFAST






























Todays food blog is about the humble English breakfast - that fry up that is envied the world over for having most major food groups covered on a single plate. Problem is from a food photographers perspective this dish has been photographed more times than most and getting an original shot of it is always going to be a challenge. So I thought I'd kill two birds and photograph it as I ate it and put together a little montage of that gastronomic act that was both pleasurable to the stomach and to my photographers eye.

THEY'RE GOOD FOR YOU....AREN'T THEY?


Me, I love a good sweet. Not only do I love eating them but I love photographing them. What is not to like about a good picture of some sticky, gooey, eye-inviting piece of candy that doesn't want to make you rush out a buy one? No much, why is why todays food blog is dedicated to the humble sweet and all those lovely pictures of them that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. Not forgetting the sugar rush as well.


IS FISH OIL SUPPLEMENTS DEPLETING FISH STOCKS?


It's kind of bizarre that being a food photographer I don't write many food blogs about the industry I work in. I'm around food all the time and see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes so I'm really well placed to get involved. But depleting fish stocks in the one area of my industry I care a lot about and would like to see the health of our oceans and fish improve.

A couple of months ago I read quite a controversial piece in the national press that most of the vitamin supplements we take are quite useless and do very little, if anything, to add to our overall health. Which led me to put two and two together, fish stocks and vitamin supplements, to wonder firstly, do we need take fish oil supplements and just how is this industry impacting on the level of fish in the ocean?

The subject seems a bit of a minefield. We all know fish oil is good for us but the levels certain fish like cod in our oceans is at a dangerously low level so it would make sense buying cold liver oil tablets isn't helping. On the other hand, a lot of the fish oil from these pills comes from sustainable sources like sardines, krill and the like.

It is also interesting to note that fish oil doesn't actually come from the fish naturally it originates from the fish eating marine microbes so farmed fish doesn't contain fish oil and has to be fed it via feed for it to have any. Told you this was a bit of a minefield. 

Although the bottom line is that continuing to over fish our oceans whether it be for fish oil or fish has got to be a bad thing for us and the planet.