So here they are: Pixtures from Claire and Wooly’s pre-wedding party! More text coming soon….enjoy the pictures!

So you managed to get as far as scrolling all the way down to here…sorry for the long post, but just too many pictures to choose from…. and for those of you who attended I am sure you wanted to get a good reminder of what actually happened THAT night….as I am sure many won’t really remember it Need I say more?

“We want more”, I hear you say??? No problem, you can download the whole low resolution party pack by clicking here. BANDWIDTH LIMIT WARNING: Click wisely – the party pack weighs just over 30MB. You’re welcome to use these on your facebook, myspace, bebo pages etc, but if you do, please link back to us with the following text: “”Photography by Barbara and Anthony Peyper: http://www.anthonypeyper.com“”

Hope you enjoyed the pictures…if you did – let us know by leaving a comment.

A few more pictures available on Barbara’s blog.

About 3 months ago I ordered a custom made water housing for my Nikon D700. It’s been a long wait, but I got it…finally…and I feel relieved. Somehow it got lost in the post and we (the manufacturer and I) had given up on it being found again. The day before the 2nd housing was due to get mailed, the original waterhousing turned up!

I just wanted to say a big thank you to Philipe Chevodian from Liquid Eye for all his support and great service from begining to end. Even though the package got lost (beyond his control) and was dilivered a few months later, it was so well packaged that even though it arrived totally battered, there was not as much as a scratch on the housing. I Still need to submit it to some testing before I take my D700 for a splash. Just been too busy. Probably a week or two before I get a chance to test it properly…so watch this space.

These pictures we taken using my new DIY beauty dish. I must say – I am very pleased with the results.

Strobist Info:
1x Beauty Dish with Nikon SB-900 @ 1/16 pwr in Manual Mode – camera right
1x Sigma EF-500 DG Super @ 1/4 pwr in Manual Mode – camera left behind subject

Not shown in the images: Pistol-grip with trigger

After months research and careful planning, I FINALLY reveal my first DIY beauty dish. If I do say so myself I am pretty pleased with the first result. I haven’t performed much testing and have taken a few pictures (no special lighting) just using my SB-900. I’ll probably reshoot and repost with decent pictures when I have more time.

Ingredients:
1 x Stainless Steel Mixing Bowl – from “All Rooms” in Liffey street (Dublin) – €12.00
1 x Bullar baking tin set (only used the base of the baking tin for the inner reflector) – from IKEA – €6.00
4 x set of 100mm machine screws, washers, nuts and dome nuts – €10.00
2 x cans of spray paint – €20.00
1 x Flash bracket from eBay – €15.00

Total: €63.00 + a lot time and patience.

Please note that all aforementioned prices are approximate or rounded off

Most of my time didn’t go into making the beauty dish, but more so planning it and finding the perfet ingredients. Dublin doesn’t seem to be the best for DIY, so I had to resort to finding supplies on the web. The most difficult thing to find was the 100mm machine screws. I eventaully managed to locate them locally from Inox.ie, where Ben was really helpful in finding what would best suit my requirements.
Secondly the base for the inner reflector was really tricky to find. I spent day trawling through through my head to come up with an idea of what could work. I had read that a pizza dish would well for this, but alas I could not find anything the size I was looking for. Eventually I remembered seeing cake baking tins with a removable base. So I was back in the game.
Finding the perfect mixing bowls which wasn’t too heavy wasn’t easy to find either.I must have gone to about 10 fifferent stores looking for something that would work. One option was a very well made stainless steel bowl from IKEA, great size and quality, but very heavy. It was when I was looking for the cake baking tin that I found the bowl which I finally bought. Not the best quality and probably slightly more than I had hoped to pay, but I knew it was the best option, mainly due to the shape and light weight.

I finshed off the outside of the dish last, using a textured iron cast finish spray paint. I thought this would possibly be the most wearing and show up the least defects. I know black looks more “bling”, but it also shows up scratches and dents very easily.

I used a matt white finish on the inside after first sanding the stainless steel finish to allow the paint to better grip the surface. Spray painting the inside first allowed a for a few “hiccups” of white paint getting onto the outside. Doing the outside last would allow the inside to be pretty sealed off when it was flipped over and the flash/screw cutouts were taped closed using a masking tape.

Having majored in Industrial Design before returning to photography, finish is very important to me. So I went with a dome nut to rather than a lock nut to “end” the machine screw. Their might be better options available, so I’ll still be keeping my options open. On the point of “finish” make sure your paint is 100% dry before you try moving the dish….oops! I need to redo a few bits and apply a last coat on the outside.

Profile view just to show the dish curve. Of course every dish will havea different size and/or curve, so it’s important to dest the light effect by varying the distance of the flash from the inner reflector. I still need to test accordingly, but am fairly hapy with my initial results.

I was lucky to find this bracket on eBay. It’s very simialr to the ones used by Lastolite on their portable softboxes. Since buying this one I haven’t seen them available again, but am hoping it will come available again if ever I (or you) want to attempt anotyher build. Even though it allows for multiple mount options, I decided to mount the bracket using the same machine screws used for separating the inner reflector.

I used fully threaded 100mm machine screws with a series of lock nuts along the shaft to fix the bracket to the dish as well as mount the inner reflector. This just means that there is less hardware and results in the dish being slightly lighter. Every bit helps, right?

There shall be light!!! As mentioned before I still need to test using varying distances of the inner reflector to the flash.

And Then I would defintely like to say thanks to Todd from ishootshows.com for a few ideas, namely using the machine screws and to seal the spary paint using a clear laquer finish. I wish I had found his tutorial sooner as he has used a few very similar ideas as what I have used. Maybe if I had found his DIY sooner, I might have finished my “beauty dish 1.0″ in a few weeks or months, rather than over a year since fist deciding to make one.

In the end it took about 10 hours of actual work. The rest was planning, finding the ingredients and patiently waiting for spary paint to dry.

Hint: If possible spray paint indoors, but in a well ventilated area. Unfortunately I don’t have an indoor work area so I wasted a lot of spray paint because it never actually reached the dish – thank you wind If the can says 30 minutes to touch try, I say allow at least 4 hours before you touch and leave over night before actually handling. 15- 30 minutes between coats should be fine, depending on the paint you use. Patience dear people – you’ll be happy you took it slow.

I hope to post a few portraits using the beauty dish in the very near future. I’ll also be using it to photograph some portraits of Jennifer and JP at their wedding on this upcoming Friday (16 August 2010).

Lorraine and Cathal had a beautiful wedding on a beautiful day. Driving to Co. Rosscommon we encountered terribly heavy rain and thought we would be in for a challenging day. As soon as we arrived the clouds opened and gave way to beautiful blue skies – a perfect day for a wonderful wedding and beautiful pictures.

Congratulations! May you have a wonderful future together!

Oh what an amazing couple!!! We just wished we could also have photographed them on their wedding day in South Africa. Fortunately they asked us to photograph their wedding party for friends and family who couldn’t make it to the wedding in South Africa. You can see more of their actual wedding pictures taken by a great photographer, Jani Breedt.

We’ll be photographing Claire’s (Jane’s sister) wedding in October and are really looking forward to working with them.

Wedding Feet…Happy Feet…Tired feet! We’re just home from photographing Lorraine and Cathal’s wedding! Congratulations Guys!!! What an amazing day! Couldn’t have asked for better weather. On the way to Co. Roscommon it was absolutely lashing…Lashing, no sorry, LASHING!!!! But when we got to the wedding destination, the skies opened as though it had been ordered. Beautiful blue skies – an absolutely wonderful day for a wonderful couple…

But now it’s bed time My father lands in Ireland (from South Africa) tomorrow morning (ah sorry no…later THIS morning) just after 7am – so an exciting and busy 3 weeks ahead. Watch this space and we’ll have some pictures of Lorraine and Cathal’s wedding – we had a quick look and can’t wait to share the results with the newly weds…and of course, with you as well.

Good night all, tomorrow is another day!

Wounds: 4 Piece band from Dublin, fast moving up in the ranks! I won’t even try to describe their raw, gungy punk style sound – because it’s not just about the music – it’s the entire experience!!! I have had the fortune of doing a few shoots with them over the past few months. This picture taken from the “Black Gunk” shoot I did with them was published in Rocksound Magazine last month. Though things got pretty messy during the shoot, it was fun and if I do say so myself, I thought the results were kinda impressive. These guys are always fun to work with, thought if you don’t keep a close eye on them they tend to get very “Rock n Roll” and by the look of things, it’s in their nature to wanna shred anything that stands in their way – no prisoners taken…a bit like their approach to music/gigs.

The shot above is the original sent to the magazine. The picture below is a picture photographed from the magazine. excuse the bad quality, but I only had my mobile phone at hand – not the best, but I guess it serves its purpose.

Two “outtake” shots below from the same shoot. To be honest, I wish I had had more space to work in. But still turned out ok.

It’s been a while since I have done a self portrait, so today seemed a good day to do one again – just for the sake of doing one. No in-depth meaning to this picture, no special lighting effects, no tricks – just a self portrait!

Strobist info:
1 x softbox camera left (subject right)
1 x open head full power behind subject
various reflectors

Ah..the joys of spring and sunshine. These brighter days and sunny spells sure are appreciated in Ireland. I remember the days of living in South Africa when we’d talk about wet or rainy spells. Here in Ireland, even the weather reports “sunny spells”

Making use of the sunshine we headed outside, still armed with windbreaker jackets and sweaters and it seemed as though most of Dublin had the same idea. A beautiful, yet crisp day!

This picture isn’t the best as far as pictures go. As for the subject – nothing spectacular or rather out of the ordinary! I like to see every living creature as being spectacular in it’s own right! All in all – not a wonderful photo, but I just liked this gull: the colouring of it’s eye and beak, backed by some beautiful coloured water. I like it Besides, he owed me a picture, I just fed him some calamari!

Though I must admit, the seal clapping for attention was much more amusing, yet slightly less photogenic than the seagull or the baby seal we previously encountered. This guy was pretty lazy but his (what might have seemed as) intelligence made up for his lack of willingness to move. There was a crowd of people throwing fish into the harbour waters to feed the seals. While the rest of the seals were scurring about to catch the fish he did not not move. Well almost didn’t – except for one flipper which he waved to the crowd and splashed in the water to get attention. Any fish not hitting him practically in the face was left to the masses to scuffle over, while he simply just splashed with his flipper once more until he got the attention of somebody with better aim!

On the way home from work today I bumped into my good friend Christian and his family, which reminded me that I never posted any of the pictures we took of them. So here a few months down the line, finally a sample from the shoot.

They told me that they were very happy with the results and have one of the pictures blown up and hanging on the wall in their living room! Of course they were happy with the results – how could you not be with such a beautiful family?