That's proper art that is...

I am pleased to let you know that a very talented artist by the name of Nicola Bonney has used my work as her reference material.

She used my image "Sunrise Over Northay":

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as the basis for her painting:

 

 

What a lovely job she has made of it too.

Why not check out Nicolas other work on her site: http://nicolabonneyart.co.uk/
as she clearly is a real talent worth watching.

Camera Club Talks 2014

I have been signed up to do a fair few talks next year to various camera clubs in the Essex/North London area. If you are in the area, why not come along for an evening of my ramblings:

Club	Talk Title	Date
Edmonton Camera Club	Looking Local	Jan 06
Harlow Photographic Society	London Light/London Life	Feb 06
Colchester Camera Club	Looking Local	Feb 11
Chingford Photographic Society	London Light/London Life	Mar 10
Enfield Camera Club	Looking Local	Jun 12
Basildon Photographic Meetup Group	Looking Local	July16
Hornchurch Camera Club	London Light/London Life	July 21
Loughton Camera Club	Looking Local	Oct 01
Ongar Camera Club	Looking Local	Oct 07
Great Notley Camera Club	Looking Local	Oct 30

You can find a bit more info about the talks here.

Any Bristol / Bath Photographers out there?

The Welshot Imaging Photographic Academy seem to be going from strength to strength and are now expanding into the Bristol Area from their heartland in Welsh Wales.

The sheer energy and drive that Welshot put into everything they do is bound to make this new venture a success. If you are in the area it will be well worth your time to check them out.

And now for the slick promo video:

2010 Portfolio Updated

It's not been a great winter for me so far, when the weather has been great for photography I have been unwell and when I have been well the light has been as flat as a pancake.  So instead its time to get round to doing all those admin jobs that are real easy to put off when something more interesting comes up like keywording, cataloguing and updating my web galleries.

The 2010 Gallery includes images from across England and I hope you find something there you enjoy looking at.

Coniston Sunset

Images of Essex Exhibition opens in Loughton

Mist in the Woods

The Images of Essex teams latest exhibition opens today at Loughton Library.  Imaginatively called "Images of Essex" it features work from across the county by Dave Peck, Kevin Goodchild and myself. The exhibition runs until the 4th of February and even if I say so myself it is well worth a visit:

Images of Essex - an exhibition by www.ImagesOfEssex.co.uk
Traps Hill
Loughton
Essex IG10 1HD

Telephone: 020 8502 0181

Opening Times:
Monday: 9.00 - 7.00
Tuesday: 9.00 - 7.00
Wednesday: 9.00 - 7.00
Thursday: 9.00 - 7.00
Friday: 9.00 - 7.00
Saturday: 9.30 - 5.30
Sunday: 11.00 - 3.00

If you are in the area please pop in for a view and why not post your reaction here.

Charity Exhibition

Yup it's that time of year again when I organize the Daiwa Capital Markets Charity Photography Competition and hold an exhibition of my work.
The exhibition of the winning entries and my pictures is on display in the foyer of  Daiwa Capital Markets, 5 King William Street, London EC4N 7AX.  The foyer is open from 8:00am - 6:00pm.

My pictures are on sale at specially reduced exhibition prices with the profits going to the companies' two charities Great Ormond Street Hospital and Little Havens Hospice.

Snaking Ashore

(Would make a great Christmas Present)

With only 59 shopping days to Christmas, now is the time to pop down and bag yourself a bargain present whilst helping charity at the same time.

"Beauty of Britain" - Exhibition opens at Rayleigh Mill

Beauty of Britain - an exhibition of my landscape photography from around the country opens today at The Mill Rayleigh.   It runs till August 13th,  so you have plenty of time to pop in and look at the pics.

Lost in the Mist

(Now Appearing at Rayleigh Mill)

KG Images - new site design

My good friend and one third of ImagesOfEssex, Keving Goodchild has just completely overhauled his website.

Thre are lots of lovely new images on there from around the UK and further afield.

Snake and Ladder

(by Kevin Goodchild)

I was involved in the design of the site,  so why not take a look and leave a comment below as to what you think about it.

Do you Facebook?

If you are on Facebook, why not pop by The Images of Essex page, Become a fan and invite all your friends?

If your not on Facebook,  do you actually exist ?

Published! - BBC Countryfile Magazine

Today marks the publication of the April edition of BBC Countryfile Magazine, which has a feature on "Wild Essex".  The photographs for this feature were supplied by the Images of Essex team.

The picture Editor of the magazine, contacted us via our website which is provided by the Foliopic system. It proved to be quite a challenging assignment, as we requested to make the images as "spring like" as possible. Bear in mind the country was being lashed by the worst winter for 30 years and spring was the latest it had been for many years. Indeed, so unfavourable was the weather that as I was talking to Tor (the picture editor) on the phone about the commission, huge snowflakes were blowing past the window.

We had two weeks to get a long list of shots from across the county, sharing the work amongst the three of us meant that it was quite achievable...if only the weather played nice. For the first week, slate grey skys hung over the county and things looked like it could get quite tricky to get the required shots.  But the weather was with us on the second week and all the locations were all snapped.

My fellow Essex Imagers worked hard to get the required shots.  Dave Peck did a great job of shooting The Company Shed on Mersey Island - it's just a shed so Dave got some great shots of it's fishy produce instead of just a picture of a shed. Whilst Kevin Goodchild managed to use his influence with the military to get access to the broomway on Foulness.


The Picture Editor had requested that we email the shots to them as they were taken, but instead we used our Foliopic website and created a private password protected gallery where we could upload the images easily and the customer could brows to pick the shots they liked.  This was a much better way of working and made things quicker and easier for us all.

If you are passing a newsagents, why not pick up a copy.

Mobified

I have just been playing with mobify: http://www.mobify.me/ and have created a version of this blog that should look ok on a smart phone. It was really rather easy.

If you browse to the blog on a phone it should automatically redirect you to the mobile version: http://m.shepherdpics.com/ I hope it helps those of you with wizzy phones.

Published

As part of the promotion for Darren Chaplins new gallery. This months Essex Life magazine features pictures from Kevin Goodchild and myself. Four of my images of spring are in their Beautiful Essex feature.
Darrens Gallery opens at Easter:
The Gallery
The Craft Village
View Garden Centre, Old Chelmsford Road
Rawath, Wickford,Essex
SS11 8SJ

Exposure at Virginia Court Hotel

A date for your diaries...

Why not Be among the first to have an opportunity to view the full exhibition of photographic works on display around the newly refurbished Virginia Court Hotel.

Exposure, features landscape works by local Cromer, Norfolk and East Anglian based photographers and demonstrates the full variety of the countryside and wide open beaches that surrounds us in North Norfolk.

On display are works of art from the award winning David Morris, Brian Wells and members of the 'Painters with Light' collective including award winners Chris Herring, Jon Gibbs, Chris Calver and Ian & Sue Flindt alongside Chris Shepherd, Dave Peck and John Duckett. Most of the exhibitors are full time photographers and all pieces are available to purchase and take away, making a stunning momento of your visit to Cromer and North Norfolk.

Brograve Mill
(Click to view large)

This launch event will be attended by several of the photographers where you will have the opportunity to discuss the technical and artistic skills behind their images. Taking place between 4pm and 7pm, with canapés and a glass of wine, it will be the perfect way to start the week in style!

To receive your invite to the launch of this exhibition, please email at marketing@virginiacourt.co.uk and we will add you to the guest list and our mailing list for future news and event updates.

Images of Essex

Over the last few weeks I have been working with Kevin Goodchild and Dave Peck to create the website Images Of Essex. it is hopped to build the website into an extensive collection of pictures from all around our home county of Essex.

Mersey Island
By Dave Peck

The Site features a collection of galleries organised by season and a map of Essex to help you find photographs of your favourite location.

The site was created using foliopic an new service providing websites for photographers and artists. Why not have a look at the site & let me know what you think in the comments section.

Published...again!

You wait ages to be published and then two come along at once.
The January edition of the excellent UK magazine Outdoor Photography has an article by yours truly on Thorpe Bay.

This is the image used in the article.

Published!

This months Essex life magazine features a cover photo by myself and a double page spread of my snowy scenes:

A few people have asked me about the images used in the feature, so here are some links to them:

• Cover Image - Snow at the Gate
• Snow and Gate
• Gone Sledging
• Cold Walk Home
  

Can you dig it ?

Saturday morning I spent a pleasant time, covering people attempting to break the world record for tree planting. It was a lot of fun, though I am glad I was only taking pictures and not actually doing the digging as that looked like hard work.


The team did really well to plant over 20,000 trees in sixty minutes. Unfortunately all though that broke the World Record their total was beaten by the other two teams involved in the day.


Although they didn't beat the record, they have created the beginnings of a new wood. Hopefully all the volunteers will be able to wander through that wood in twenty years time and enjoy the results of their hard work.

Crabgate!

So the winners have been announced for Landscape Photographer of the Year and there are some extremely competent and stunning images in the book and exhibition.

On a personal note I was very happy to be shortlisted for this and this - but they didn't make the final cut.

Looking at the winners I was surprised to see this image as one of the finalists:

Hermit Crab by Brian Griifiths

My initial reaction was that it owed more to Photoshop than nature. it seems that I wasn't alone in this assumption as photography forums exploded in a series of discussions about it. My favourite is the dissection by Tim Parkin on Flckr.

I am naive enough to feel that a landscape photograph should be a representation of the scene at the time and not just be the basis for freestyling in photoshop. My opinions don't really matter, but how this got to a final in a competition where one of the rules is:

The integrity of the image must be maintained and the making of physical changes to the landscape is not permitted (removing fences, moving trees, stripping in sky from another image etc). The organisers reserve the right to disqualify any image that they feel lacks authenticity due to over-manipulation.

,is beyond me!

There are an awful lot of great shots in the competition, so I hope this doesn't detract from the award and exhibition. I would love to hear your opinion, should this shot have been a winner ?

Charity Exhibition

Yup it's that time of year again when I organize the Daiwa Securities Charity Photography Competition and hold an exhibition of my work.

the exhibition of the winning entries and my pictures is on display in the foyer of Daiwa Securities SMBC, 5 King William Street, London EC4N 7AX. The foyer is open from 8:00am - 6:00pm.

My pictures are on sale at specially reduced exhibition prices with the profits going to the companies' two charities War Child and Demelza House Childrens Hospice.

Remains of the Day
(really would look good on your wall)

With only 70 shopping days to Christmas, now is the time to pop down and bag yourself a bargain present whilst helping charity at the same time.

Portfolio 2009

I have just added my portfolio of images for 2009 to the site. We are only halfway through the year but it is already proving to have provided better light than I got for the whole of last year.
Why not take a look & leave a comment to let me know what you think of the show so far.

Brograve Mill