Hi All!

Well this is a shoot I did late last year, well November to be precise. Summer is great because it means we can get out there nice and early, get the models wet with out them freezing however the draw back is that the sun comes up so early.

This shoot required a 4am start in order for the model to have her make up done and to allow us enough time to get to Nth Curl Curl Beach and set up the shoot. We were on the beach by 5am shooting for a 5.30am sunrise. What you need to remember is that the colour in the sky starts showing about 30 – 45 minutes before the actual sunrise time.

We were blessed with a gorgeous sunrise and was almost tempted to change to a landscape shoot. Don’t think the mua Ally Hayward and the model Mia Kelly would have been too happy about that! ;0)

I shot this series using my Canon 5DMK II and 70 – 200 F2.8 IS USM L lens. Great lens and my preferred choice when shooting people. Lighting was Elinchrom Ranger AS Speed Pack with an A Speed Head through a Rotalux 100cm Deep Throat Octabox with the rising sun as the rim.

The light changes quickly so you need to keep adjusting your shutter speed to suit the ambient light.

This was Mia’s first time modeling but I think you would agree that she did a great job.

Anyway here are a few pics and of course you can see more in my Flickr, Facebook and Glamour Galleries.

Well the day has come to finally hit the go button and launch my new website! Its been a long road to get here however I believe and hope you agree, that the site reflects a lot of hard work and endless hours that have gone into creating the site. Its almost 7 months since the initial meeting to discuss my ideas and needs for my website. To give you a bit of a run down as to where the time went and to maybe help you in your planning if you are thinking of having a website built read on...

My first meeting with meeting with my chosen design/developer, Fab Creative Solutions was to discuss the brief and what i would like to achieve with my site. At this point it is vital that you have a detailed brief of what you would like included in your site including functionality, look and feel, performance, compatibility and so on. The more detailed the better. My designer, Fabi from Fab Creative Solutions then had to go away and come back with a concept design. I guess the tricky bit here is coming up with a design that achieves the desired functionality, is practical and provides a pleasant user experience while also being a design that is technically achievable with in the budget.

Once the design, layout and functionality have been approved its off to the developers to make it happen. Once the developers have developed the first version of the site they load it to a testing server so you can begin the huge task of testing. There are so many things to test like uploading of images into galleries, links between pages, email enquiry forms and private galleries, blogs, social media integration and so the list goes on. Each time a change is made you also create a new item to test.

Another big thing to consider is the copy that is going into the site, this needs to be written in a professional manner which is going to promote and sell your services. Another big consideration is which images you want to include in the website. Important to remember that only your best images should go online as they say "you are only as good as your worst image"! Each image needs to be prepared, processed to look its best then resized for optimal reproduction on the web. This can mean editing 100's of images which takes time.

Finally before going live you need to consider your ISP and your hosting package. Does it have enough storage space, enough bandwidth and traffic, how many email accounts can you have, as well as whether or not it offers support for any databases you may run, SSL, and of course technical support.

So I hope that has given you sort of idea as to the amount of work that goes into a new website. I am very exciting to finally have my site up and running and would love to hear back from you if you have any thoughts about it.