The Sony Photo Challenge competition has ended on Tuesday 11th January 2011.will end tomorrow midday. The final winners have been revealed. Among the prices of the competition: a Sony NEX-5 camera is the world smallest interchangeable lens digital camera.

Thank you to all of you for participating to this competition.

The last week of the Sony Photo Challenge competition will end tomorrow midday. Today is your last chance to upload your 'Sport' photograph to the competition to win a Sony NEX-5 camera.

Sony NEX-5 camera is the world smallest interchangeable lens digital camera. Be quick and upload your contribution to the competition. Just submit your image to the Flickr group and tag your image with 'SonyPhotoChallenge' and 'QH Photography'. More info here.

My blog and its readership has been invited to the Sony Photo Challenge, we are in the middle of week 3 with the subject being 'People'. Sony has revealed the winners of last week 'Travel' 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.

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.

My original plan for today has been cancelled so I popped down to Notting Hill Gate at around midday to say hello to my fellas from the LPMG at the Tabernacle. There was a fotogym on Lightroom for beginners. And at 1pm I was in Borough Market to meet Dan Davies and few other London photographers for a photowalk. Lunch was a nice mexican wrap at Hobbs, it was just delicious! Today photowalk's subject was to take photographs as if we were shooting with a film SLR, so the rules were:

- choose an ISO setting and stick with it
- maximum 36 shots throughout the walk
- the LCD screen is masked out with electrical tape, no picture review

I thought it could be fun and challenging, but the other challenge was the cold!

My mate, Frank Williams called me few days ago as he wanted to go out for some evening photoshoot. So today we headed to St Paul's in the end of the afternoon and waited for the sun to set in order to get some nice pictures. As usual, the British weather wasn't very great, we were freezing! Lots of clouds, so no deep blue evening sky as a backdrop for the cathedral. But luckily by the end some of the clouds got a marvellous red tint that come up pretty nice. Another issue was image sharpness, eventhough we brought our tripod with us the issue didn't come from the camera stability, but more from the bridge itself. There was a lot of people crossing it and the bridge just kept moving which didn't help with the shoot when you are trying to get a slow shutter speed to blur the clouds. But I'm not too disappointed with the pictures and some of them came out pretty nicely, I think :-)

Over a year ago, I've been contacted by Andy and Jane. They wanted some photographs of their daughter Kimberly who was 4 months old at the time. My wife and I went to their flat for a great photo session. Kimberly was a lovely baby and she has now grown up into a cute little girl full of energy. Andy and Jane re-contacted me a month ago for a last minute photoshoot as it is rare they can have a free weekend when we can organise a shoot. Again my wife accompanied me, she's great helping me during the shoot, making the kids laugh, checking their hair, chatting with the parents... After fantastic brunch composed of Dim Sum, we started doing some environmental portrait in Kimberly's room and then went in a nearby park. It was such a great experience and you could see how much love there was between the parents and the child.