One of my commercial clients asked me to photograph a school for children with special needs in Llangefni. Ysgol y Bont is  a brand new facility on the Island of Anglesey and offers fantastic facilities for the 80+ pupils who will attend.

Village pond, Gwaenysgor, August 2009. It was a lovely warm evening and at about 9:00 pm the resident carp began splashing about in the shallows and marginal weed beds. It was quite mesmerizing and I wonder how many baby carp they created that night!

Just arrived back from two days at the N.E.C. Birmingham. It was the inaugural UK Photoshow. I’ve been attending “Focus on Imaging” at the NEC for many years and have witnessed massive changes in photography in that time. The early “Focus” events were exciting, with seminars and talks by celebrity photographers – I think Patrick Lichfield was there one year and I remember a talk by Stu Williamson and a stunning photo of a model covered in black treacle! The term “Digital Photography” did not exist and visitors to the show drooled over film cameras by Hasselblad and Rollei and Leica. There was all sorts of darkroom equipment from developing tanks to enlargers, tripods, filters, flash guns and studio lighting. And then digital cameras appeared on the scene. The first models were horrendously expensive and viewed as a novelty by many. But as with all things electronic, the technology moved at a pace and gradually the new cameras became better and better and then cheaper and cheaper. My first digital camera was a Fuji S1 Pro, based on a Nikon 35mm film camera body but with Fuji’s digital sensor and electronics. It was only 3.2 megapixel but gave excellent results. Gradually, Focus on Imaging’s stands included more and more digital equipment and less and less film equipment and a huge increase in wedding album’s on display. Sadly no seminars for many years, which is why I was excited about the new Photography Show this year – different organisers, bigger than ever and a great range of brilliant speakers and seminars on all four days.

The highlights from my two days at the show:- Joe McNally gave the keynote speech at Monday’s Pro Photographers Conference. Joe is a photo journalist and for many years his images have graced the likes of National Geographic and Life Magazine. His seminar on Tuesday gave an insight into the diversity of challenges faced by photojournalists. Kate Hopewell-Smith is a wedding and portrait photographer based in Berkshire. She’s built her business from scratch in just 4 years and is now also an accredited trainer for Nikon. She gave an inspirational talk at the Pro Conference. Nikon’s new flagship camera the D4S looks amazing – it’s aimed at sports photographers and photo journalists and can shoot full size raw files at 11 frames per second non-stop for about 25 seconds without slowing down. Try that with your i-phones and Samsungs! I’ve been looking at changing my ten year old printer for a while and finally “bit the bullet” and ordered an Epson 3880 at the show. It’ll print up to 17″x37″ and is recognised as one of the best printers currently available for high quality colour or black & white printing.

Well, judging by all the Tweets and Facebook posts the show was a huge success and I’m already looking forward to the 2015 event and buying that D4S!

Really looking forward to The Photography Show. Going on Monday and Tuesday. Pro Conference in Monday, Joe McNally seminar on Tues. Lot’s to see and new gear to ogle! Leave credit card at home!

Finished and mailed out a disk from one commercial job, booked another commercial shoot for Friday morning, optimised, cropped and ftp’d 120 image to the lab for printing, tidied a couple of very untidy shelves, thinned out a pile of client files, had a very nice meeting with a 2015 bride and groom, then finished the day off taking photos of little Harrison (15 months) with his mum and nan. A busy but quite satisfying day!

One of my commercial jobs this week is for a national pub chain. The sun came out this morning so a nipped down to take some external shots while the light was nice. A kind taxi driver moved his car while I clicked away!

This is my first attempt at a Blog Site. I’ll use it to update all my readers (!) just what I’m up to at Chris Porteous Photography.

For a start I won’t be publishing photos from of all of my weddings this year. Not all bride and grooms are into social media and some just want their special day to be kept a little more private, and I fully respect that. So this blog will hopefully just give you a flavour of what I’m about and I’ll try not to make it too boring!

Had a great meeting with a lovely young couple on Saturday in the studio. Met them first at the Oriel Hotel open evening the other week and they have now booked me to photograph their wedding at The Oriel in August 2015. Seems a long way off but in terms of wedding bookings it isn’t really and we’re already getting enquiries about 2016.

I’m one of the “Preferred Wedding Suppliers” at The Oriel Hotel, St Asaph and I do enjoy photographing weddings there. Michelle, Sarah and all the staff really look after their wedding couples.

I spent the rest of Saturday setting up my new website which hopefully will go live this week. It’s similar to my current one but will be more compatible with smart phones and tablets than my current Flash-based site is.

Today I’ve been sheltering from the wind and occasional shower in my greenhouse! There are quite a few seedlings popping up now and that will keep me busy in the next few weeks transplanting them into pots. The days are getting longer and let’s hope they get stiller, dryer and warmer soon!

Here’s hoping for a great 2014!

Chris.