Category Archives: Press

Husky Family Portraits

Husky Family Pictures

The Italian Chapel – Lamb Holm

The-Italian-ChapelThe Italian Chapel – Lamb Holm

This small but very ornate Catholic Chapel was built on the small uninhabited island of Lamb Holm on Orkney during World War II by Italian prisoners. It was restored during the 60’s and received Listed building status A.

In my usual style of “must get the shot” I sneaked in and removed a table chairs and flowers to get as close a symmetrical shot as possible, much to the dismay of the American and Japanese tourists looking on, obviously never met a Yorkshire man before! I of course put everything back where I found it…I’m a good boy really, don’t believe what they tell you.

 

Adrian

 

 

 

Barnsley Hospital Rainbow Run

Rainbow-Run-Yellow-webHi all

 

had the marvellous privilege of being the photographer for Barnsley Hospital Charity Rainbow Run yesterday, as you can see from the images it’s not one for the faint hearted or those without a darn good washing machine!.

The organisation team were brilliant and everything went off with  issues, well done guys, a big thank you also to all the volunteers and supporters who made the day perfect and raised loads of dosh, you should all be very proud of yourselves.

 

I have posted a few 100 images on Facebook and BHC have shared them on their page too, if you would like any of the images without a watermark please let me know and I’ll email it to you FOC unless you feel like making a donation to the charity…..hint hint lol. seriously well done guys.

Rainbow-Run-Blue-web

 

St Catherine’s Island

St-Catherines-TenbyAfternoon all

 

just a quick update from my recent South Wales trip for the book shots, we had a great week and found some fantastic locations, certainly some for band shots too. I’ll post as many as I can over the coming weeks, needless to say we met some lovely people and dog lovers, the gang really enjoyed the sunshine and sea and very long walks everyday to help me get to locations.

This one is St Catherine’s a must if you’re ever down that way, open to the public but not so for our fury friends so they get a big fat ZERO from me because of this. They are however allowed on the beach and what a beach it is, huge and goes on forever…..a bit like me!

 

anyway check it out HERE

Have a great weekend, plenty to catch up with next week inc updates on commissions.

Adrian

The Magical Wood

WT-DisneyHi all

had a great weekend filming topped off by a long drive to Hertfordshire on Sunday to do an event shoot for Woodland Trust and Disney. The Magical Wood is the largest new native forest in England with some 15,000 new trees being planted. The partnership between the Woodland Trust and Disney celebrated its 10th anniversary with some 100 volunteers turning out in very cold and windy conditions to help plant some 3000 saplings on Sunday, well done all.

WT-Disney-2A couple of volunteers

WT-Disney-3Pre planting warm up

TPT Silkstone

TPT-silkstone Happy Friday all

as part of a commission shoot for Christmas cards I ventured out earlier in the week to scout a few locations, one of which was the Trans Pennine Trail at Silkstone and although it was a thoroughly dismal day with deep mud and fog it was great to be out and about.

The Husky gang managed to drag me through Nabbs Wood far faster than should be done on 2 legs and I very nearly finished up on my bum several times, people in the neighbouring village probably heard me cursing them. However their one redeeming grace is that when you need to go uphill you just say ‘Go’ and away you shoot up the hill, one trick that works a treat every time.

Got my copy of the book yesterday you ‘Barging Round Britain’ by John Sergeant and my name is in it , in fact reference the photographs the book it’s more like  ‘the Adrian Ashworth show’, I did 75%+ of the images used so I’m very proud. Inner and end cover shots too as well as some shots with John himself.

I’m credited in the back with 5 canals and 2 other photographers with 1 each, I feel a weekend of reading coming on, that is of course after I have watched the accompanying TV show which is aired tonight ITV 8pm for the next 8 weeks, very excited.

have a great weekend

Adrian

Money Supermarket Challenge

Morning all

a few weeks ago I was set a challenge by Moneysupermarket.com to do a comparison shot, my Canon 1DS MKIII V a budget camera bought from Amazon.co.uk, “easy you say”… Not So, I say.

Firstly I had to contend with the myriad of point and shoot cameras available compared to and being realistic Canon or Nikon in the DSLR range. A quick google and you’ll get 50 cameras all around the £50 mark all claiming to do everything Joe Public will need and more, image stabilization, HD video, effects galore etc etc. The only thing in my favour is that I am pretty happy with Canon and have always stuck with them since I turned professional in 2009, I currently have a 5d MKII a 1DS MKIII and my favourite scouting camera a S100 that is always with me no matter where I am, it shoots RAW and has many capabilities that my main DSLR has at a fraction of the size and weight.

Anyway, back to the “Hot Shot Challenge”, after much searching and researching amazon reviews I came across a Canon Ixus 130 in used condition with a sale price of £54,59 yup I couldn’t believe it either especially with a rrp of £239 but many on sale approx £175 on Amazon.co.uk.

The specification:-

Canon IXUS 130 Details                           canon_ixus130

Camera Type:  Ultra Compact

Megapixels: 14

Zoom: 4x

LCD Screen: 2.7

Memory Cards: SD / SDHC / SDXC

Aspect Ratios: 4:3, 16:9

File Formats: JPEG

Focal Length Equivalent: 28 – 112mm

Shutter Speed: 15 – 1/1500 seconds

Aperture: f/2.8 – f/5.9

Sensitivity: AUTO, ISO 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600

White Balance Settings: Auto (including Face Detection WB), Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Custom

Exposure Compensation: -2EV to +2EV (in 1/3EV steps)

Viewfinder: No

Flash Modes: Auto, Manual Flash On / Off, Slow Synchro

Flash Range: 4m

Metering: Multi-pattern, centre weighted, spot

Shooting Modes: Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Smart Shutter(Smile, Wink Self-Timer, FaceSelf-Timer), Low Light(3.5MP), Color Accent, Color Swap, Fish-eye Effect, Miniature Effect, Beach, Underwater, Foliage, Snow, Fireworks, Long Shutter, Stitch Assist

Maximum Movie Resolution: 1280 x 720

Max Movie Frames Per Sec: 30 fps

Maximum Movie Duration: 4GB or 10 minutes

Macro Focus: 3cm

ManualControls None

Image Stabilisation Yes

Lens Converters No

Self Timer 10 seconds or 2 seconds

Video Out (TV Playback) Yes

Computer Connection Yes

Batteries Lithium-ion Rechargeable

Dimensions 92.2 x 56.1 x 17.8mm

Weight 133g

The Images:-

Well lets start with my 1ds MKIII value approx £5k along with tripod £1k and a Singh Ray Reverse Grad filter £200, oh and not forgetting my trusty 16-35 f2.8 L USM lens £1500, camera bag and associated gear brings a rough total to £8-10k (I know my wife doesn’t know either) but it does afford me an income and the passion for what I do cannot be price tagged, unless you’re my long suffering wife then its probably several hundred pairs of shoes and the relaxing beach holiday we forgo every year for me to follow my dreams!.

Location: Anglesey       Time: 21:21    Date: 15/7/2013

Money-Suopermarket-1

settings:-

F/11.0, 1/8s, ISO 100, 35mm

Singh Ray Reverse Grad, Lee .9 ND

GITZO GK1581OT Ocean Traveler Tripod

Arctic Muck Boot Wellies, an absolute must, the Irish Sea is freezing even at the height of summer

This is a well balance shot utilising my filters and tripod to hold the position perfectly still. A very small amount of post processing to adjust the light balance and remove dust particles, cropped to suit.

Canon Ixus 130 IS, straight from the camera image

Money-Supermarket-2Settings:

F /2.8, 1/60s, ISO 125, 5mm

Oakley Dispatch Sunglasses

Hand held

I’m a firm believer that composition is king when it comes to photographs, it doesn’t matter if you have a £40k Hassleblad, if it looks wrong it usually is. Composition isn’t something that individuals take easy to being taught, I’m not saying it can’t be learned but you instinctively  know when someone has “the eye”, and this is how I became a photographer, people always thrust the camera in my direction and said “let Adrian take it, he always gets it right” well almost I’d say!

I utilised my sunglasses to act as a filter as I used my expensive filter on my 1DS MKIII image, it certainly helps a lot as the sky is so much brighter than the sea and anything I could do to help balance the light is what matters, it’s still slighty “blown out” as we say, (too bright that some detail is lost) and of course when you shoot without an effective balancing act of light in the foreground , middle and background  you get silhouettes, shadows and blown out areas.

Saying that I really like the result, the camera has created a pleasurable image and definitely a memory pretty close to how I remember the sky and sea that summer night. It does however lack some of my 1Ds’s qualities and this is where the money maker that is 1ds comes in, the overall quality of the Ixus  against my 1ds is far less sharp and noisy (has a grain) and the 14mb shot is no where near the same size pixel wise as my 1ds, being  2935 x 2068 @ 240 pixels/inch V the 1ds’s 5520 x 3680 @ 240 pixels/inch.

In trying to keep this blog as nontechnical as possible it must be said that full frame resolution of the 1ds is far superior to Ixus 130 as well as handling and and overall performance, but this comes at a price and lets face it I don’t carry my 1ds MKIII whilst doing the shopping at Asda but I can say that I do now carry the Ixus 13o everywhere along with my S100 iPhone…..sad you may think but I always remember a saying  “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” now this makes perfect sense when applying this to photography but its actually a quote from Wayne Gretsky a Canadian ice hockey player, but you get the idea.

Will I be using this camera to make money shots that I’d sell on my site, probably not as I don’t think it compares highly enough to my 1ds MKIII’s overwhelming quality and scalability that my customers demand but I would certainly use it for web, blog, social media and just having fun which when it comes down to it is what photography is about FUN and recording the moments that make up our lives.

I think the Ixus 130 IS bought at Amazon was and is worth every penny, its small, practical has some great functions and you don’t worry so much about it just being shoved away in your pocket, keep it handy ready for those occasions that count.

I thought about the image and decided to give it the same chances as I did with my 1DS and run it through the processing in Photoshop just to see what can be made with and image, this is the result.

Money-Supermarket-2-Shopd

Think you’ll agree it works rather well now doesn’t it?, this took 5 minutes and could easily be recreated using the iPhone Photoshop App PS Express and PS Touch, maybe not a seller but one to be proud of and certainly when printed say A4 looks very presentable.

Hope you enjoyed this blog, loads more @ http://www.adrianashworth.co.uk/my-blog/

 

Sunset Rocks

Sunset Rocks

Been really busy lately so I’ll keep this short and sweet, Just completed the Christmas light, fireworks and German market shoots for Barnsley, really enjoyed myself and got to meet Bob the builder, she was very nice…..can I say that?…today was the heritage minister and lotto shoot for the regeneration of Barnsley’s fantastic Town Hall, they have done a magnificent job, looks so beautiful, very proud of my town.

 

Below a couple of shots from last night, looking forward to a little break now…….

 

have a great weekend

 

Adrian

 

 

Barnsley Town Hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barnsley Fireworks

HERO

Aubrey-Martin-Wells

I was honoured to be the photographer for the launch of the Barnsley poppy appeal last Friday and captured Aubrey Martin-Wells in front of the decorated hoarding at Barnsley Town Hall, he is an inspiration to us all, such a wonderful man.

 

God bless