Pictures of Perfection

Here's a quick one from yesterday's gothic wedding at Redworth Hall. It was a really great one to shoot as the bride and groom wanted a little less traditional and to make the service a little more personal. The wedding dress was blood red & the bride walked down the isle to HIM - Right here in my arms.

We took this shot just before shooting the formals on the main green:



We got a lot of great pictures that they are going to be thrilled with - can't wait to show them the album. We were at the wedding all day as they invited us to be a part of their whole day. We set up a simple lighting rig (just an elinchrom 400BX with a shoot through umbrella and a Pocket Wizard) in the hotel room for the bridal preperations which lit the room up nicely.

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

E: info@Picturesofperfection.co.uk
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M: 07984 441322

This guy showed up in our garden today!



We thought he was dead at first but a few seconds later he woke up and flew off. Busy prepering our gear for Kerry & Tom's wedding at Redworth Hall tomorrow, weather report is promising so really looking forward to it. They have booked our popular Emerald package.

Speaking of the Emerald package we had a consultation today for one of our high end Graphistudio album packages and when the clients turned up it was someone that we used to know! Small world after all. Really looking forward to their wedding next August!

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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 changed the appearance of our site so that we have some more large images on display whilst retaining the identity of the website, which has always served us well. The new neutral design allows us to expand the site to cover our various other photography styles rather than build up 4 or 5 different websites, which will come in handy soon.

We've also given the blog a bit of a sweepover so that it looks a little "prettier"!

Looking forward to the wedding of Kerry and Tom on Friday - it's going to be a cracker, as long as it doesnt rain!! And even then I've got some good ideas.

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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

Whilst it's not something that you'd like to think about, there is always the small chance that something can go wrong at your wedding that is not anyones fault.

For this reason it is important that when choosing your wedding photographer you ask them if they can show you their insurance certificates. Your photographer should have all the standard equipment insurance in case something happens to their gear just before your wedding. More importantly they should also hold Professional Indemnity insurance and Public Liability ensurance and if they have employees they should also hold Employers Liability Ensurance.

Without asking these questions you could potentially leave yourself open to a lot of risk, which makes it a very important question to ask.

Pictures of Perfection takes pride in having the highest level of cover available within each category to provide our customers with peace of mind. Thankfully we've never had to use it, but it's better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have 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

Just two quick pics from Simon & Jane's wedding yesterday:





They were married at the Middlesbrough Registry Office and only wanted a few pictures of themselves and their family after the service. Our Crystal package (See Here) is perfect for this with about an hour and a half coverage on average, usually covering the ceremony and the formals afterwards, as well as some alone time with you and your partner for some portraits.

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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

You can see some of our Handywork from last saturday on the front page of today's Northern Echo. We took some photos of TFT Supremo, Graham Ramsay, promoting TFT's new comedy night "Big Mouth" at the Town Hall on September 6th. We are also providing official photography at this event, continuing our tradition of being the most popular stand-up comedian photographers in the area. Here are two of the photos used:





One of our photos Stephen Carlin was recently picked up in fact, and he is getting a return slot at a forthcoming Big Mouth event, dont miss him as he is hilarious:



Today is a busy day as making an outcall for a wedding consultation for this September, so big rush to get that sorted for the client on time as it's all very last-minute. Tomorrow we are picking up some high-end bowens studio lights for our sister business which does in-home portrait sessions.

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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

Whew what a night! We were out at the BB launch party til after midnight last night, but it was a great party! I really enjoy covering these kind of events as you always get to talk to some interesting people. I was up at 7AM this morning too to do a photoshoot at the town hall. Sleepy!!

Here's two quick shots from last night - loving the bokeh (background blur) that comes with the 85L lens. Neither of these photos have any saturation, sharpness or contrast adjustments - its straight out of the camera.





Looking forward to using it regularly!


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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

One week on and my dream lens has arrived. Here's a quick test shot taken today of one of our award winning pedigree bengal cats, Pepper.



The Depth of Field (Area that is in focus) is razor thin which makes this the ultimate portrait, detail and wedding lens. Really looking forward to putting it to good use tonight at a corporate shoot at Hardwick Hall. The image above looks a little noisy...however for any photographers reading this, here's the geeky part: this image was taken handheld at iso 1000 indoors with the curtains drawn - thats how much light this lens allows inside!

Tomorrow we are off to Leeds but fitting in a wedding consultation for our Diamond package as well as a promo shoot for the head honcho of TFT.

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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 had an enquiry today over some of our photos taken for a band called 3 Foot Ninja at the Stockton Festival recently. Shooting a festival is always a great experience & we're in our third year of festival coverage now. Here's a few of the photos in question:





Look out for them appearing in magazines soon.

Busy day for wedding enquiries too, good to see the trend of booking weddings early is continuing with many bookings for 2010 taken already and the 2009 bookings flooding in. The credit crunch doesnt seem to be affecting our customer base as most of our customers tend to go for the higher quality packages, especially after seeing our sample albums.

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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 love it when there's a lot of kids at weddings. Some people hate it because of the noise and disruptions, but there's tons of photo opportunities that arise when theres some kids that arent camera shy.

Here's two perfect examples:





Not to say that you need kids at a wedding - sometimes the peace and quiet is nice, but I think many a Middlesbrough and Cleveland wedding would be a lot more fun with some kids running around!

Delivery date for the 85L lens is on Thursday. I have a weekend to play with it as this is the only few days this month that we arent busy with shoots or weddings, so I'll have a few days to get to grips with it before putting it into good practice. Looking forward to playing with its razor thin depth of field.

Apologies to anyone that feels this blog is aimed at them by the way, its not meant that way. I guess its easy to misunderstand things online, but the observations posted on this blog are merely aimed at reassuring our customers about our business practices.

We had contact with a fellow photographer today from CameraArt. They keep getting people putting gibberish in their contact form and theyre getting 5-7 of these a day. Pretty bad form whoever is doing it. Anyway, it was nice to hear from another local firm and the advice we gave is good advice for anyone with a webform on their site - make sure it cant be submitted without real information (ie an email address in *@*.* format) this way if it is a bot crawling the site following the links then it wont get through.

Busy weekend, as well as playing with my new toy we're also off to Leeds for a bit of relaxation at the Wendyhouse, not before having a consultation early in the morning. I'm shooting at Hardwick Hall on friday night too so itll be a late one for me, and we have a consultation on sunday too for someone that I used to know from back in my Arena days... good times!


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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

You may have noted me talking a lot about lenses lately - this is because we believe firmly in using the right tools for the job. At Pictures of Perfection we use a range of 6 different lenses. These are split into two categories - "prime" lenses - high quality and incredibly sharp lenses that dont zoom, and dont distort the image, and "zoom" lenses. We use Prime lenses wherever possible as the quality is amazing, however the versatility of zoom lenses makes them indispensible.

Zoom lenses are often much lower quality than Prime lenses so to combat this the zoom lenses that we use are all what are known as "L" lenses made by Canon. These lenses are geared towards professionals and are of the highest quality possible.

Throughout your wedding day we will switch lenses regularly depending on the situation - whether it's a low-light church shots or traditional formals or candid reception shots, there's always a lens that is going to be suited to the situation.

When picking a wedding photographer you should always make sure that they will be bringing their full lens setup to your wedding. Mechanics dont use only one spanner, artists dont use only one paint brush - your photographer should have a range of equipment to capture your day no matter how much you have paid for their services - be wary of one lens wonders or those that will only take their full equipment if you are taking their more expensive packages.

On a similar note, look out for the often expensive option of a second photographer. At Pictures of Perfection we include 2 photographers in almost all our packages and we do not make a charge for this service. This gives you twice the range of pictures to choose from and makes it less likely any magic moments will be missed on your big day. This is a great service for you, but not one that you should pay £200+ for.



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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 currently in the middle of redoing a lot of the sections on our website as I like to keep it ever changing. THe about us page is going to reflect a lot of the photography we do outside weddings just to show a bit more about the kind of things we do.

Whilst doing so I'm just browsing through some of our recent sets and thinking about cars - for some people its not an important thing as its such a small part of your day, but on the other side of the coin your arrival can have a lot of impact on how the rest of the day goes - if you arrive feeling like a princess then I'm sure you'll go on to have a great day. If you arrive in a mini on the other hand...!

Here's a few from some of our most recent weddings:


Stretched Limo


Old School!


A little more contemporary!


Just use your own!


and a timeless classic!

Clearly there is a large range to choose from and it all depends on how big your pocket is!
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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 love taking pictures of wedding rings. They're a big investment and make a beautiful full-page in your wedding album.
Here's one from yesterday:



There is a selective colour effect in use in the above image - we arent afraid to manipulate your image as digital effects can look stunning as long as you know how to do them. If you want completely natural photos then this is no problem, however we've found our range of effects we apply to images to be very popular with our customers.

I'm very excited about the forthcoming arrival of the 85L lens - it's going to be great for shots like the above. We're going to get plenty of use out of it as August is a really busy month for us each year and this year is no exception. Still, we're looking forward to next year as we have 6 bookings already for August 2009.
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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

Today me and Jacqui photographed Karon & Michael's service at the Treebridge Hotel. Great location and quite near to where I used to live. I've eaten Scampi there many a time growing up!!!

Unfortunately the weather was far from perfect but it didnt pour down too heavily.

The service was intimate with approx 20 guests and everyone there was really friendly. The best man and groom were looking really dapper and were up for some fun photos:





had a really great time while we were there and they invited us to come back later for the reception, which we would have loved to but we had already made plans. Here's a nice view of Roseberry Topping:



We've made a large investment in a new lens this week as we consider every purchase we make carefully. The new lens is the Canon 85L F1.2 - if you aren't a camera geek this is basically just a really nice lens that gives stunning blurred backgrounds with sharp in focus subjects. Trust me - it's nice! We only use the highest quality Canon equipment.

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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 the third year running we photographed Stockton Fringe Festival for From Teesside with Love (http://www.teesmusicalliance.org.uk/ftwl) & Haxed (Http://www.haxed.co.uk) and had a great time. The weather was a bit hit and miss - some blazing sun and some total downpours, but there was a really good crowd and a good time was had by all.

Here are a few of the highlights:











It was a really good festival and hats off to FTWL and Stockton Festival for helping the festival go from strength to strength. You can see more on our FlickR account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashleypenny/collections/
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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 a quick photo from Marie & Jamie's wedding at Preston Hall Museum last weekend. We've just finished processing over a thousand photos taken at Stockton Fringe festival, so I'll put some of those up soon.

I really like Preston Hall Museum, there's a good range of photo opportunities all over the grounds and the weather was really sunny.


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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