Pictures of Perfection

I love the north-east. We get two of the best council & arts funded festivals and whats best? They are both free. Apart from shooting weddings, I do a lot of music photography and at the weekend, as usual, I covered Middlesbrough Music Live for TenFeetTall, the organisers of the festival.

I thought I would share a few shots below; and if you missed the festival check out Stockton Fringe July 31st, August 1st & 2nd; it's going to be a blinder!

I hope that you are all well. As mentioned in the previous post, I'm happy that weddings are keeping me so busy. We're not like other companies; closing down our studios due to badly thought out business plans, and taking fisheye-closeups of brides to make them look unflattering. We leave that to the silly-billys ;)

Ashley x

































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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

Hello Internet people!!

It's been a while since we have updated our blog but don't fear, unlike several middlesbrough wedding photographers we are still trading and in fact business is booming and we are having a very busy, very warm British summer!

Here's a few quick shots from the past few weeks:

St Cuthberts church in Marton:



The Parkmore Hotel:


St Cuthberts church in Billingham:


We will be revamping our website over the coming weeks to keep everything up to date, add new pictures and discuss new album options that are to be available.

Stay tuned!


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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

Just some quick shots today from a portrait session;





Really looking forward to Thursday - its the first of our advanced training courses that we are embarking on to futher hone our skills. Travelling all the way to Huntingdon, Cambridge for the course and hoping to take some really useful things from it. I think no matter how good you think you are, there is always room to learn something new, so I'm really excited about it.

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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

For a wedding photographer, January is a mixed month. It's normally a quiet month for weddings themselves, however with Christmas out the way people decide its time to sort out their wedding plans at last, so there's no chance to relax!

We're being kept busy over the weekend with image processing and album creation, and we have 4 consultations on Saturday followed by one on Monday. I suppose that even in the worst economic conditions people still want to get married, which is good :)

Corrie & Dan's photos are now receiving the finishing touches so we will be arranging a viewing with them soon to go over album options. We have invested in some album design software recently which is much easier than doing it from scratch all the time. Here's a quick sample:



That's a quick B&W panel from the bridal preperation that is available with some of our packages, or as an extra to any package. See http://www.picturesofperfection.co.uk/services.html for details.

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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

Christmas has come and gone and we are now heading into the start of a very busy 2009. Like everyone, we're in the habbit of taking some time out to consider some new years resolutions. I think the key one for me is to have a strong ethic of continuous improvement. No matter how long you spend behind a camera there is always more to learn, and our european counterparts spend just as much on training as on equipment!

With this in mind Pictures of Perfection have joined the SWPP - Society of Wedding & Portrait photographers - and has submitted a panel for Licentiate qualification. In addition to this we have invested in several training courses to expand on our existing knowledge. This all doesnt come cheap, but our gear is as good as it can be, so we are now focusing on making sure that we improve ourselves as well as our equipment!

That said, we've bought some new gear too (it wouldnt be christmas otherwise!) with a Manfrotto monopod for those dark church weddings, a Manfrotto tripod bag to house our Nano stands, pocket wizards and shoot-through umbrellas, Some bongo-ties for putting flashguns in some creative places and another pocket wizard should drop through the letterbox tomorrow.

We're also expanding our Yell.com advert to cover the middlesbrough region and building on our already complex (and successful!) Google adwords campaign. We've already redesigned our pick-and-mix wedding photography pricelist for 2009, and we will be putting together so me pre-built packages for those that just want to see a simple price and know what they are getting.

Here's a quick one from Corrie & Dan's wedding on Saturday. They were a really fun couple and we had a great time at their wedding. We have a few of Simon & Laura's photo's to process yet and then we will concentrate on processing these.

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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

I'm pretty beat. had a really great day today shooting Corrie & Dan's wedding and they were a really fun couple, up for a lot of fun poses and not afraid to get their feet dirty!

We started coverage at 10am and finished around 20:30PM, but it was a really nice day at Rushpool Hall.

Here's another quick one from Simon & Laura's wedding, also at Rushpool:


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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

We're halfway through our winter weddings and it's good to be busy. It can be a quiet time of the year for some but people still want to get married despite the cold and we have had 2 fun wedding so far.

On Saturday we were at Rushpool Hall for the wedding of Simon and Laura. The weather decided to take a break from its usual bitter windyness so some photos outside was not a problem. no matter how cold and wet it is, we always recommend to our clients that you have some outdoor photos - its worth the short term pain!



Rushpool Hall looked really nice in the mid-morning sun, and the happy couple seemed to really enjoy their big day. We'll be waiting for our lab to reopen in January as Simon and Laura have opted for one of our new traditional print-based albums in a black colour 10x10 inches, with 50 pages of photos inside. Really looking forward to putting this together for them.

We're buying a few more pocket wizards this month as well as investing in new rechargeable batteries, more advertising for the new year and a few other items here and there. You have to spend money to make money, although thats not what our accountant seems to think! ;)


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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

We've been working hard at finalising our range for 2009. We are offering new albums from Loxley, Sim2000 and Spicer-Hallfield as well as our existing extensive range. We're also streamlining our packages to keep things simple, as well as expanding the range of products that we offer.

These are all high quality products from professional suppliers - things that you have told us that you would like us to offer. You won't find any fridge magnets here!

The photo shown here is one of our traditional "print" albums, for those that don;t like photobooks. This high quality album is available in 3 sizes and different colours and has a leather exterior, smooth magnetic opening, lace interior with thick boarded leaves. The cover also has an aperture for a small image. It comes in an attractive matte-finish box to protect it from scuffs, dust and moisture.

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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

It's really christmas time!! well it's december anyway!



Merry christmas to all our customers past and present!

We've purchased this Hoya Star filter as we have quite a few weddings over the festive season and it adds a nice touch to christmas photos with highlights from lights, candles etc. You can get them quite cheap for home use however we opted for the Hoya pro coated versions for maxiumum quality.

As the british weather is often not all that pleasant at the best of times, nevermind mid-winter, we have also purchased several large golf style umbrellas in pure white and deep black. These will not only add an interesting point to pictures but serve a functional purpose too - warding off snow and rain. It's little touches like these that make our customers really happy. We have a few other props on the way, including hand made lace parasols, which can be used for your wedding photos.

We've had a busy few days with consultations for 2009 and tying up details for december weddings. We now have 20% more work booked next year than we had this year as well as 2 booking forms just sent out, and 2 consultations on Thursday. Diversification into portraits and events is going quite nicely too. One of the best parts of our business though is we dont just reap the profits in - we re-invest much of our profit back into the business. Today we've just bought a Canon 24-70L F2.8 pro-grade lens for £800 which Jacqui will be using instead of the 24mm F2.8 prime and the 50mm f1.8 primes. This is a higher quality professional grade lens (canon's L lenses are the best that money can buy!) as well as being more versatile due to it's zoom range. This is our second 24-70L meaning we now have a backup lens as well as making it so that the only non-L lens in our lineup is the 15mm fisheye.



Quick studio session with Mr & Mrs B for a birthday canvas.

This weekend we were also at Ormesby Sports Centre documenting the Middlesbrough Milk Rollers family fun day. A good time was had by all and we manage to fit in a team photo while we were there:



www.middlesbroughmilkrollers.co.uk



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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322

We did some photos at Stockton Arc last night - a mix of live shots from the front row and some portraits of the acts outside the ready room. Here's one of comic Vince Atta:



This was lit from the right with a shoot through umbrella and triggered by pw. We like doing environmental portraits - showing people in their typical surroundings. Vince had just come off-stage after a successful set, and was happy to oblige with some no doubt well versed poses.

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For more information please see our main website: Pictures of Perfection or contact us:

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
T: 01642 886016
M: 07984 441322