Thanks to everyone who attended my seminar yesterday in London. Had a great day and the team at Calumet did a fab job of being great hosts. Next week I’m in Belfast on Tuesday and then the last one on Thursday at Birmingham. For more info & booking details, please log onto Calumet’s website.

Those who inquired yesterday about my future workshops / events, here they are as below:

Increase your photo business profits
Apple Store, Regent Street, London
28 Sep 2009
7.00 – 8.00pm

Portraits for Profits
Nikon House, Kingston
14 Oct 2009
10.00 to 4.00pm

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Oz

I’m absolutely delighted and pleasantly surprised at receiving the prestigious Filemaker Excellence Award ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at the recently held DevCon 09 in San Francisco, USA.

This Award is in recognition of the impressive level of professionalism and creativity in using FileMaker software to deliver excellent solutions to their customers. This annual conference of more than 1200 developers from around the world is the largest event of this type.

It is an immense honour and a privilege to receive such an Award. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in my team who has worked so hard in achieving this Award, there are far too many names but everyone from the designers, web programmers, marketing & PR, support team and the resellers. You guys are brilliant. This Award is for all of us.  Last but not the least, to our loyal customers without whom we won’t be here, thank you very much. This Award is a great incentive for me and my team to work even harder and make Foto SF a ‘must have’ software for every photographer.

Here are some images of the event.

Oz

Calumet launches new seminars with Uzair Kharawala

Calumet Photographic have released a series of dates across UK & Ireland with multi-award winning photographer Uzair Kharawala. ‘Business & Beyond’ is a full-day seminar and will be held at Calumet stores at:

08 Sep 09 Manchester
10 Sep 09 Bristol
15 Sep 09 Edinburgh
17 Sep 09 London
22 Sep 09 Belfast
24 Sep 09 Birmingham

Uzair will be presenting on how to run your business through these tough economic climate. A variety of interesting and exciting subjects & topics will be covered to help you grow your business. These include:

Time management
Branding
Marketing, advertising, PR & promotions
Workflow
Shooting with minimal equipment
Creating a ‘hook’ for your clients
Networking and how to build relationships with vendor
Organising your office and keeping on top of things
Cashflow & business management
New technology & experiences for your clients
and much much more…

A not to be missed event. Price only £45.00 (inc. VAT) including refreshments & lunch. For more info and booking, please visit Calumet’s website.

Lighting-on-Location

Shiv contacted me regarding how to create images on-location with off-camera flash and also using available ambient light only. His experience of off-camera flash was minimal, but after a couple of hours shooting & training, he was able to shoot images as posted below. Katie Green was our model for the day and we went around the beautiful grounds of Woburn for the shoot. The below images were shot by Shiv using just one SB900. Great work and well done Shiv for balancing the ambient & flash light wonderfully. I’m sure you’ll love working with off-camera flash.

Thanks Shiv for sending this nice testimonial: “Thank you Oz for the wealth of information you gave yesterday and I felt much more confident using off-camera flash. Most people in the industry are reluctant to pass on the knowledge and experience gained to new people entering this industry. You are a true professional. Do let me know when your next presentation is around London as I would love to hear more inspirational stuff from you.”

Contact me if you are interested in learning how to use flash creatively on-location or alternatively log onto Nikon’s website for the hugely popular ‘Portraits for Profits’ workshop. The next one is at Nikon House, Kingston on 13 August 09. Only 2 places left on this workshop.

Oz

Thank you to Apple for inviting me to do a presentation on how I shoot on-location and the kind of equipment I use. The event was very well attended from photographers all over the south-east and some came along from as far as Cirencester and Nottingham. It’s always a pleasure and a privilege to present at Apple’s flagship UK store which is now I believe the biggest Apple store in the world. It certainly is my favourite store in the West End.

Alongside me was Katie Green, our model for the evening. I’ve worked with Katie for the past 3-4 years and she now is one of the leading models in the UK. She is brilliant to work with and a complete pro. The shot below was taken with a Nikon D3x and lit with two SB900.

Had very good feedback on the night and also thank you to everyone who have sent me emails / messages with very kind words. I will be returning to Apple in October, the date has not been finalised yet. So keep on eye out over here or follow us on Twitter @SFDigital.

Would like to share a couple of emails I’ve received today:

“I just wanted to say thanks for the talk at the Apple Store today. If you recall, I chatted with you and Katie prior to your talk starting. Your talk was very informative and I look forward to putting into practice some of tips you gave.  I am impressed how the shots of Katie came out so easily and so quickly.  My use of CLS does get the results eventually but I need to improve the speed at getting the correct blend of flash output vs ambient, so your F4 tip helps to simplify the process a lot. If I can, I will try to make it to a future “portraits for profit” seminar but as it depends on my work commitments. I note you used the D90 to make the Swiss Alps movie … I have read online that the D90 movies come out a bit “liquidy / jerky” but I could not detect that in the video clip you showed. Glad to have come along and keep up the good work.”
Stephen Chung

“Had a fabulous time last evening and thoroughly enjoyed your presentation. I saw you at FOCUS as well as at the Nikon Expo and everytime you seem to get better & better. I’ve already booked on your Portrait for Profits seminar and look forward to seeing you next month.”
Emma Jones

After my presentation we hit the town!! (well not quite!!). Amit from Apple took me to a restaurant called Ping Pong, which serves fabulous dim sum. Really good food.

Oz

22 June 2009

Foto SF are pleased to announce that we will be exhibiting at this unmissable event. If you want to grow and make more money from your business, then this is a ‘must attend’ event.

We will be there to demo Foto SF, answer any questions you may have or if you are an existing client, we would love to see you there.

For more info & bookings please visit Lovegrove Consulting website.

Oz

With my work schedule, fortunately or unfortunately (depends how you look at it!) I travel a fair bit. Today I was at Old Trafford, Manchester for the Photovision Roadshow. Usually  I would have driven up and down the M6/M1 but decided to take the train today. Why didn’t I think of this before. From Milton Keynes it took no longer than 90 mins straight into Manchester Picadilly and a short taxi ride to The Theatre of Dreams. The train was on time and I got my laptop out to do some work. I connected my 02 mobile broadband and am pleased to say that the coverage throughout the journey was (is) superb, except when we went into a tunnel or two!! I caught up with my emails and phone calls and before I knew it, we were in Manchester. On the way back home I’m writing this post from the comforts of my train seat having a coffee, listening to music on my iPhone, enjoying stunning countryside views bathed in glorious sunshine which I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed while driving and experiencing a hellish rush hour M6/M1. For a change, I’ll reach home very refreshed and not a grumpy old git moaning about the traffic and the motorway. So 2 thumps up for Virgin Trains and I shall be travelling again with them soon.

Coming back to Photovision, thank you to every one for waiting till the end for my presentation. Thanks to Daniel for helping me out. Much appreciated. I had a great day and saw many friends and made some new ones as well. Don’t forget, I’m back in Manchester on the 9, 22 & 23 July with Nikon for my seminars & workshops. Please visit Nikon’s website for more details. I look forward to meeting up with you guys soon. Lastly, thanks to Sean Kelliher, Mitsubishi for giving me a lift to Picadilly station.

Best

Oz

Lights, Camera, Action

15 June 2009 – 7.00pm to 8.00pm

I’ve been invited to do a presentation at Apple’s flagship UK store in Regent Street London. This is my favourite store in London, I can spend a whole day in there !!!. The presentation will be on how I shoot on-location with minimal equipment. I’ll also be demonstrating the lighting set up and techniques I use during a demonstration with a model.

It is a free event and everyone is welcome. I would recemmend you turn up early as the last 3 events I’ve done there have been full.

For more details, visit Apple UK’s website here.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Oz

The review by The British Journal of Photography of Foto SF has been featured on the monthly eNews sent by Filemaker.