You know where you are going and what you want to shoot, you’ve got all your gear ready and packed; now you have to actually get the shots! Here is a video of the shoot, and under that some tips for you to keep at hand to make sure you get as much as you can from a shoot!

I am a strong advocate of learning all avenues of photography, as anything you learn in one (e.g. portraiture) can be directly apply to another (e.g. street) and will produce better overall images. I've always taken portraits, but it has never been my primary focus only dabbling from time to time. However, with the arrival of my son, Antoine, in June this year (2015), I have had the fantastic opportunity to do baby photography...  this has then spilled over to shooting other peoples babies too. Here is a selection of my baby shoots! :)

Part 2 of my "from start to finish" series, taking you through the planning, execution and processing of one of my shoots!

So, you know where you are going, and what you want to shoot (see #1 A shot list & location), you now need to pack and prepare accordingly!

I get asked how I do pretty much everything, so I have decided to share my process, from start to finish, of a shoot. In this example, it is a shoot I am doing at Bandhavgarh National Park in Madhya Pradesh, India. 

The first step is to make a shot list and get your location sorted! 

Ok, it's that time of the year again, and you might well be thinking of gifts for this special people in your life. If, by chance, they happen to be photographers, here are some gift ideas that just might be useful.

These images where shot over a weekend at Sinharaja Forest Reserve is a national park and a biodiversity hotspot in Sri Lanka. It was a fantastic place and one I would love to go back and spend more time there!

Photographs are 2-dimensional, but how sometimes you look at them, and they almost appear to be 3D. This is because in the 2D space of the image, the depth of the scene is also portrayed. Now generally, this is associated with expensive lenses, but you can give your images more depth by using some of the following tricks!

Back in 2011, I spent a very brief 40 hours in Istanbul...  with such little time, it was a rather manic trip, but in such a fantastic and vibrant city, it was difficult not to produce some memorable images. This was towards the beginning of my photographic journey, but i always like to go back and re-asses my images. Where I started, what would I have done different now, and what can i learn from them. So, i hope you enjoy this look back into my earlier works. :)

As photographers, we are training our eyes to take in the entire scene, often seeing things that non-photographers do. This is exemplified by an experiment looking at the eye movements Canon USA made. The Obsession Experiment is an advert for a printer, but the results are interesting. Check it out! :)

Hampi is (at the time of writing) the Lonely Planet's #1 sight to see in India, and after a long time, we finally made it for a trip. It is the site of an ancient city and was one of the richest cities in the world during it's heyday (1500AD), boosting an estimated population of 500,000, making it the second largest city in the world for the time. It was, however, concurred by the Deccan Muslim confederacy in 1565 and razed to the ground, leaving only ruins strewn amongst the builders! It is a fantastic place, and loved the landscape. We also visited the nearby Daroji Bear Sanctuary during this trip.

A recent paper in PLoS ONE by Vidya Athreya et al., used an innovative method to examine Leopard populations in the Indian state of Karnataka. They searched local media sources for any mentioned leopard-human incidents and applied modelling methods to draw conclusions. Their data showed that "leopards occupied around 84,000 km2 or 47% of the State’s geographic area, outside designated national parks and wildlife sanctuaries".

I think this title deserves Pro-tips rather than quick tips, but anyway. National Geographic Explorer Prasenjeet Yadav shares his experiences and thoughts about being a storyteller. He once told me, “an image has a shelf-life, a story will last forever”. I cannot agree more! :) So please, take the time to read his views, take notes, get out and start your own stories! You can check out a sample of his work at the bottom of the piece.