Tom in the Northern Quarter

Had a shoot in offices Manchester this morning and immediately after it, we dashed to Tom's favourite part of Manchester to take some shots for his coming website, of which, more news later. Anyway, he did a quick change in a carpark into some scruffy gear and hung around trying to look mean. Here are three or four shots:

MARRYOKE!

I just happened to catch part of Fern Britton's new show today, during my annual ironing afternoon. She had a newly married couple on there who'd had a Marryoke video made on their wedding day. This is something like a pop video and involves those featured in miming to chosen songs and then some clever editing turns it into a marryoke video. The couple featured on the show actually had the vicar in shades, swinging along to whatever it was.
I'm not sorry such a novelty wasn't available when I got married, it's not something I'd fancy on that day, but possibly some other celebratory event. What do you think folks, is this something you'd fancy on your big day? Is marryoke for you?

Mr Wrong - Must-have wedding memorabilia

Oh you won't believe your eyes! I had heard about this faux pas, but the reality of seeing the thing is so much funnier. It's worth pressing the play button to hear the music - and notice the "ornate detailing" inset! I'm not saying any more, just follow this link ....

http//www.guandongenterprisesltd.com/

Sunday Cinema - Submarine

Taking Harry, our son, back to Manchester Piccadilly, Tom and I decided to take a trip to The Cornerhouse to see what was doing. Tom was keen to see Norwegian Wood because he read the novel a couple of years ago. When we reached the cinema, we found NW had started half an hour earlier but since we were in film mode, we decided to see Submarine which came out only on Friday (18th March). Most photographers seem to be pretty gripped by film of any sort and I'm one of them.

I didn't know much about it, except for catching the end of a review on the radio where I gathered it was set in Wales in a fairly unglamorous town, and seemed to be a coming of age love story (men, don't be put off hubby was charmed!) between a teenage boy and girl, both on the cusp of adulthood.

I'm no film critic but I loved the school tribalism, the coming together of the two main characters, the grainy Super8 film inserts, the freeze frames, the humour - at times subtle, at times laugh out loud. It's a good looking film with lots of "beauty in the mudane" type shots.

Here's a nice image of the two main characters, Oliver and Jordana (Craig Roberts & Yasmin Paige). Oh and Oliver's screen mum is Sally Hawkins of Happy go Lucky fame.



Talking of beauty, how good-looking is the director of this film? If you're a fan of the IT Crowd on tv, this is the man behind the picture - Richard Ayoade.



A great way to spend a a grey afternoon watching a modern, touching romance - advertised as the best British Comedy of 2011 (How do they know this so early on?). And if I'm not mistaken, I believe I spied my cynical and hard-to-melt husband drying his eye at the ending.

New website up and running

There'll be lots to adjust and add, but at least I've hit the "live" button after two months of putting the site together. It's quite exciting - I keep looking at Google Analytics to see how many visitors I've had, like a school girl watching for "significant" texts.

Have been creating a wish list of photographic equipment that I think I need. It's going to be some time before I can afford everything but you can watch my progress on the blog. For anyone interested in equipment, here's what I am lusting after...

Canon 70 - 200mm 2.8 IS
Canon 5D Mk II - then my 5D would become the second camera and glamourous assistant, hubby Tom would take over the 5D and the 20D would become the spare.
Macro lens - not decided on the spec yet, mainly for food photography
Another 580EX flash - for Tom to use as second camera and also to play with off camera flash etc..

We'll see how long it takes me to tick them all off.

Anyway, how rude of me - thank you for visiting the blog and welcome! - visit again, it won't all be about equipment and websites, I hope to post about weddings I've shot and other assignments, there'll be photos too.