Its that time of the year again when industry commissions remain elusive yet there’s more than enough to be keeping us busy; New print material, upgrading the website, tendering, interviewing for job positions and a bit of studio feng shui, all help to freshen us up and get prepped for the year ahead.

As well as a few outstanding commissions, I’ve been shooting as much stock as possible for Getty Images. While I’m missing being in the great outdoors, it’s been a great opportunity to escape the rubbish weather and get busy in the studio.

This month we’ve been shooting environmental issues, as it’s such a hot topic at the moment. We’ve shot a series of images of children (the future generation) holding energy saving lighting. Shot in the studio, we’ve taken them into Photoshop and added a relevant backdrop, as shown in the posted image.

With the quality benefits of the Phase One back, which I’m currently shooting on, the retouching only took a few hours for each image, giving a convincing end result.

The UK’s Photography trade show, Focus 2008 is only a few weeks away. Although it’s very similar from year to year there’s always something new of interest every time. The AOP (Association of Professional Photographers) always have a good stand, maybe this year we’ll sign up for membership!

The Phase One stand, organised by the Flash Centre, is always excellent, as it seems to be ahead of the game in the world of digital backs with something new and exciting every year. They also have some excellent speakers such as Drew Gardner who I greatly admire. The interesting thing about Drew is like me he started as a press photographer working for local papers before he became the well-known advertising photographer he is today. He still has the press photographer presence and just gets on with the job rather than being a prima donna in the process.

Drew’s work: http://www.drewgardner.co.uk/

Focus 2008: http://www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk/

The AOP: http://hub.the-aop.org/

Getty Images: http://www.gettyimages.com/Home.aspx

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