I've been introduced to Celine and Julie through @fabiennehb, a Twitter friend organiser of the Apero Blog, a meetup group for French bloggers in London. The two sisters asked me to take some portraits of them as a gift to their parents in France. We went to a studio in Kennington and I went for a high key theme for these two young and dynamic french girls.

The slideshow has been created with iPhoto on a Macbook Air 11", this small laptop has enough oomph to run Lightroom for quick pre-editing, the software even loads up faster than on my desktop, this is thanks to the SSD drive which is very fast.

My blog and its readership has been invited to the Sony Photo Challenge, we are in the middle of week 2 with the subject being 'Travel'. Sony has revealed the winners of last week 'Nature' competition.

You too can win an Sony NEX-5 Camera, the world smallest interchangeable lens digital camera. Wednesday 29th December 2010 will start week 3 with 'People' as subject. Just submit your image to the Flickr group and tag your image with 'SonyPhotoChallenge' and 'QH Photography'. More info here.

Hi all, I hope your turkey is nearly ready to be eaten!

I've just received by the post a package from Sony with a letter inviting us, me and you guys readers of my blog, to take part to Sony Photo Challenge, an 'Open Category' of this year Sony world Photography Awards.

What's the idea?

Each week, there is a challenge to be taken, our task is to upload our shot to a Flickr page where it will be judge by a pro photographer. The winner of each week will receive a Sony NEX-5.

So guys, lets get set and here is what you need to do:

1. take a great shot in the subjects stated below.
2. upload your shot on this Flickr page.
3. and VERY IMPORTANT, tag your Flickr photograph with 'SonyPhotoChallenge' and 'QHPhotography', this will allow Sony to keep score of each community.
4. Post a link to your image in the corresponding Flickr discussion thread.

Subjects and dates and Flickr discussion thread:

• Nature: entries open from 15/12/10 to midday GMT on the 21/12/10
• Travel: entries open from 22/12/10 to midday GMT on the 28/12/10
• People: entries open from 29/12/10 to midday GMT on the 04/01/11
• Sport: entries open from 05/01/11 to midday GMT on the 11/01/11

Rules:

• Multiple entries will be accepted for each category as will entries to multiple categorie
• Please tag your photo with ‘SonyPhotoChallenge’ and ‘DigitalPhotographySchool’
• Post you photos to the theme you are entering
• The winning photos will be announced on the following week
• Our guest judges know a heavily re-touched photo when they see one.

See the “Terms and Conditions” discussion thread for more details. All the copyright yours, you allow Sony to use your image for a year from the competition date.

Good luck to every one!

I've been contacted by Tanya to get some portraits done of her and Chinh.
We went to central London by Westminster and started to walk and shoot our way to the London eye passing before Big Ben. As the sun was setting, the sky got interesting when mixed with the Christmas lights. I didn't need to use any tricks to make the sky blue as it was naturally tinted with the late afternoon light. But I used a quarter CTO (orange) gel on the SB-900 to warm up a little bit the skin tones. Anyhow, I then used a full CTO gel and set my camera WB to tungsten to add more saturation to the blue ambient on the last pictures on the alley in front of the London Eye. At some point, we played with a slow shutter speed and zooming the lens to create some effects on the background Christmas lights.
Thanks to Shaun Hodge for giving me a helping hand with the lights.