Sam Spurgeon Freelance Photographer London » Photography Blog

Frocking Fabulous Photoshoot

Sam — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:15:43 +0000

Some photos from a fun shoot for vintage clothing store Frocking Fabulous. More pics after the jump.

This shoot was to showcase Frocking Fabulous’ summer stock of vintage clothing. We found an amazing location in South London, no-one there, loads of parking and all the spots we shot at were in about 100 metres of each other plus a nice pub for after. Right to left in the bottom photo is me, Sofia who modelled the outfits, Helen, stylist and owner of Frocking Fabulous, Karen who assisted on the shoot, Charlotte our make up artist and the other model Emma.

Pocket Dolly Test at Epping Forest

Sam — Mon, 31 May 2010 11:46:27 +0000

For best results view the original Vimeo video here: http://vimeo.com/12158461. Shot using a Canon 5D mk2 and Kessler Crane’s Pocket Dolly Traveller on a recent trip to Epping Forest, I made this video as a test for an upcoming Discovery Channel documentary I’m shooting about the BFI’s restoration of a film made by Herbert Ponting when he accompanied Captain Scott’s Antarctic expedition in 1911.

Stephen Hawking Photoshoot

Sam — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:38:31 +0000

Commissioned to shoot at a speech from Stephen Hawking at the Royal Society, I had a very short amount of time for some portraits.Using a large screen CGI video clip of the sun as a background, I set up a Canon Speedlight on a light stand with improvised snoot to keep the light off the projected background screen, focussing it on Stephen.

Balancing Lifestyle Photoshoot

Sam — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:23:56 +0000

Mimicking the recent John Lewis campaign, the brief was to shoot an image that represented the target audience of an upcoming European TV channel.This was very simply lit using two Alien Bee 800 strobes with grids. The first was used to create the spot on the background and the second was used high to create the hard shadow on the products. The shoe, bag and baby bottle were shot like that in camera and the other objects were hung with thread in the shoot and retouched into precariously balanced positions.

Canon 50mm 1.4 Prime Lens

Sam — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:16:34 +0000

Looking forward to shooting more with the Canon 50mm 1.4 prime I bought last week. The wide f1.4 maximum aperture gives the nice blurred background and shallow depth of field in the photograph above, perfect for picking out subjects in the foreground.

Canon 5d mkii firmware update 2.0.4

Sam — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:02:10 +0000

Moments after Canon released their much-anticipated 24/25 frames per second firmware update for the 5D mkii, it was taken down again because of a problem with manual sound level control in the camera’s C modes. They have now released a newer update (version 2.0.4) that addresses this. The update is available on their site at http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/firm-e/eos5dmk2/firmware.html

Trawlermen – Day Two

Sam — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:02:18 +0000

The second day of my shoot in Penzance with the trawlermen. Click on the more link for some sample photographs…

A lot sunnier than yesterday so I brought the Alien bee 1600 which shoots at 640 watts/second, just about enough to be able to combat the sunshine and underexpose a little.

Trawlermen – Day One

Sam — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:37:29 +0000

The first day of a two day shoot making portraits of trawlermen based in south west England. Having left Somerset at 5.30am I arrived in Newlyn for about 9.00am. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing I had a short amount of time to photograph Don, the skipper of the Filadelfia and some of his crew. Shortly after that, the rain started pouring and I risked my brand new lighting set up to photograph the skipper and crew of one of the boats that came in from Brixham.

Alien Bee Test Shoot

Sam — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:34:52 +0000

I just bought some Alien Bee strobes and modifiers, here is a test shot I set up with my friend Tom using a ABR800 ring flash with the “moon unit” 30″ ring flash softbox plus two Alien Bee 800’s fired through softboxes with grids.

Buying Alien Bee lighting from abroad

Sam — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:52:02 +0000

After hearing so many posts and articles about how good the Alien Bee strobes and light modifiers are, I did a bit of investigation into buying them in the UK. Unfortunately, the US company that makes Alien Bees (Paul C Buff Inc) doesn’t ship outside of the USA and have appointed an Australian company to ship Alien Bee products to customers outside of the US. So, in order to get them shipped, you have to order them from the Australian company who then order them from the US!

Seems like a lot to go through but if you have time, it’s definitely worth it. They’re great strobes and weirdly, even after all the shipping and import duty the alien bees still work out cheaper than a comparable lighting system bought in the UK (I calculated the price of a similar order of Bowens lighting from Calumet’s online store which turned out to be a good deal more expensive). I ordered 2 x Alien Bee 800 strobes, an Alien Bee 1600 strobe, an ABR800 ring flash, 2 x vagabond batteries, a beauty dish with grid, 2 x softboxes plus one extra large softbox and a 30″ moon unit for the ring flash.