This last month I have removed my location from this site so that I don’t receive any more bookings in the Bristol area, and the affect on the traffic to my site has been incredible. Looking at the stats graphs for the number of visits to my site over the last 2 years, there’s an upward trend over the months. This trend has suddenly reversed from the day that I removed all references to my location.

There’s normally a general downturn in enquiries during the Autumn which I have checked against Google Trends, but this has exaggerated that. I didn’t realise that location information would have so much weight. Hopefully I’ll see traffic increase again once put my new location in.

After struggling for a long time with a Cobra Auto 160 flash for my film cameras, I’ve finally splashed out. I would provide a link to information about the flash, but it’s so old, that I can’t find any information online! The flash did its job, but it had a fixed position, and therefore flattened a lot of photos.

The flash that I have just bought is the Canon Speedlite 300TL which is much more advanced than the Cobra. It was designed for the Canon T90 which came in 1986 (7 years after my newest film camera), and therefore has a lot of functionality that I can’t use, but I don’t mind. I now have directional flash, and the ability to change the flash intensity which is a great improvement on before.

It’s certainly a buyers market for old camera equipment - it was £100 cheaper than a similar flash that I have for my DSLR!

There are always going to be difficult decisions to make when running a business, and I’ve had to make a pretty difficult one recently. I’m in the process of relocating from Bristol to Sevenoaks, and that means re-evaluating some plans that I had for the business.

The hardest decision was with regards to existing weddings that I had booked for the summer of 2009. I pride myself on low prices and competitive rates, however with the added cost of transport from Kent, the price that I offered some people would not be enough to cover my expenses. It therefore was not financially viable for me to take photos at 3 of the weddings I had booked, as I would make a loss. The other weddings booked would have much reduced returns, but I’m willing to take that hit.

I hate to let people down, but at the end of the day I have a business to run, and I made sure that I gave them plenty of time to find another photographer - a minimum of 10 months. It’s still not a pleasant thing to do, and hopefully it won’t be something that I’ll ever have to do again.

There was interesting article in the NY Times recently about removing people from photographs with Photoshop. So, is this re-writing history? Is this a realisation of Orwellian writings?

It really depends what your take is on digital manipulation. For me personally, it depends on the purpose of the photograph - if the photograph is going to be used as a historical record, then of course it’s misleading, but otherwise, I don’t see too much of a problem. Also, it’s important to remember that a photograph is just one perspective on a scene in the first place.

To be honest, manipulation of photographs to remove people or alter scenes, has been going on for years. Black and white photos were hand-coloured, and before photography I’m sure there were several portraits painted/drawn that weren’t true to reality.

Does that mean I’m going back on what I’ve said previously about digital manipulation of images? No - I still don’t want to manipulate images myself after I’ve taken them - I want to remember what I saw without embellishing the memory. What other people do is up to them and at the end of the day, it’s interesting to see the results.

It’s been a while since my last post - that’s because I’ve been on holiday in Prague. It was great to re-discover the joy of photography - sometimes things can get a little stale when only taking photos at weddings. My girlfriend is very patient when I want to take photos, which is very fortunate.

Compared with previous holidays, I didn’t take that many photos. I can really recommend Prague as a subject for photos - the light is amazing, and wet conditions would really lend themselves to black and white.

Back in April, I wrote a post about the time costs of wedding photography. I thought I would couple that up with a post about the financial costs.

This comes at a time where the average cost of a wedding in 2008 is £20,273. A recent survey by the Daily Mail puts the average cost of the wedding photography at £839. My average quote is obviously less than that, but I thought it might be interesting for couples, and those wanting to go into wedding photography to know where the costs are.

Typically, for a wedding, this is the breakdown of costs:

• Transport - this varies for each wedding, but there’s the cost of visiting the couple before the wedding, and also transport on the day of the wedding. At 40p a mile, this normally works out at about £20
• Films - this is obviously only for non-digital. At £5 a film, I normally carry 4 and use 2, so total £10
• Postage for developing - I send things special delivery for development. £4 for CDs, and £4 for films, so a total of £16
• Development of films - at £18 a time, I normally use 2 films, so £36
• Development of CDs - normally around £50 for a set of 300 6″x4″ proofs
• Cards with details of private galleries - £15 for 100 cards
• Postage to the couple - normally £8 or so - again it’s special delivery
• My time - taking the hours from my previous post (12 ) at the minimum wage (£5.52) - £66.24

So my typical expenses for a wedding would be around £221 - that’s with paying myself the minimum wage.

This probably doesn’t sound like much to some people - well consider that there are all of the business overheads, which are paid for by weddings. These include costs for marketing, website upkeep, National Insurance contributions, CDs etc, all of which eat into the profit margins.

Please be aware that all of these figures only apply to this business - other photographers will have different costs, and spend different amounts of time per wedding.

I’ve really enjoyed the sunny weather that we’ve had recently, and I’ve been wearing my sunglasses for driving. They’re slightly rose-tinted, and it’s been quite interesting to see everything with a slightly red glow. It’s a view of the world that I used to get quite a bit when I did more landscape photography.

Coloured filters are great for black and white photography. An over-simplified rule for adding contrast is:

• Red filter for landscapes that have blue skies
• Green filter for portraits

The one thing to remember is that coloured filters will reduce the light to the film, so slightly wider apertures or longer shutter speeds will be necessary.

The BBC news website has today run an article about plans to crackdown on paparazzi in L.A. This is great news as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never been a great fan of paparazzi - as a photographer I like to be unobtrusive, and I don’t like to make people that I’m taking photos of uncomfortable. Kind of the opposite of paparazzi.

“Personal safety zones” and clear rules sound like a good way forward, although I’m not sure how enforceable they are. I think the next step would be for paparazzi in general to give their subjects some peace. One of the things that I ensure at weddings is that once I’ve taken some photos of the couple on their own, I then give them some space just for themselves. Everyone deserves that.

I tested the subject line statement tonight when I filled in my online tax return for the year 07/08. I had been worried about this for a while, thinking that it would take a long time. Well, in fact I was pleasantly surprised. I had all of the necessary paperwork to hand (P60, P11D, bank account details, share details, student loan details etc), and that certainly made my job easier.

Well, I guess you’re interested in the numbers. I’m pleased to say that this last tax year I did post a profit (albeit in the double figures), despite some costly start up expenses. The total revenue for my first year of business was £1162. Forecast for next financial year already shows an increase in revenue, and definitely an increase in profit!

I’m sure that with a creative accountant I could have had a smaller tax bill, but I’m happy that I was able to avoid the expenditure of an accountant and fill in the details myself.

As a wedding photographer, I go to a fair number of weddings, and inevitably, I’m not the only one with a camera there. Some couples choose to leave disposable cameras on tables during the reception so that guests can take random photos. This is a great idea, but unfortunately some disposable cameras aren’t so good at taking photos in low light!

So, my tip would be for the best man to take a laptop with a memory card reader in to the reception. During the evening, or as guests leave, they can transfer their photos to the laptop, so the couple end up with a great all-round perspective on the day. Sometimes the official photographer isn’t in the right place at the right time, where a guest might be, so everyone’s a winner with this one!