Portrait and Bridal shoot in the gorgeous City of Amsterdam, Netherlands | www.gavinconlan.com

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of spending a couple of days in the beautiful City of Amsterdam with some great friends.  Myself, Bandele and Evette had travelled from the UK (London and Birmingham respectively) and Tasha travelled in from the States with her friend and now our friend too, Alisha.

Special thanks go out to Tasha for organising Charlotte our amazing model and the fashion outfits and Evette for bringing the bridal wear and being our make up artist, she is an amazing beautician as well as a photographer and Bandele for booking us into a great boutique hotel with not only free wifi but also free drinks sadly for me no alcohol....

If you are thinking about having a break in Amsterdam then I recommend you check out this place its called the Hotel Hermitage (click here) it's really close to a metro station and is walking distance to all of what Amsterdam is famous for - a word of warning though keep your eyes on them bikes they seem to ride them everywhere.....

I had so many great laughs while I was there, learnt loads and generally just chilled out for two days.  Walking through the red light district was an eye opener I'd heard the stories but to see it in person was slightly surreal I've gotta give the girls credit though they were looking damn fine apart from one or two that I'm still trying to forget about...... On the last night we all took a canal boat ride all joking aside it was pretty good just a shame we chose a boat with no bar and a sexist driver, still can't believe he would only allow the girls to steer the boat. Seeing the narrowest house in Amsterdam and quite possibly the world with the width of one meter (3 1/2 ft) was my personal highlight of the canal tour.... 

Here are the links to my friends websites, please check them out they are all amazing photographers;

Bandele - www.bandelezuberi.com

Evette - www.evettechiverton.com

Tasha - www.tashawalkerphotography.com

I have selected a few of my personal favourites from the shoot with Charlotte, I hope you enjoy them and please feel free to post a comment.

Anyways enough of me, here is the imagery;

Photo shoot on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral with Stella | www.gavinconlan.com

Back in November I met up with Stella for our second shoot.  This time we decided to meet at St Paul's the weather again dictated our schedule, you'll see from the images below the locations we ended up using.  The shoot started on the steps of St Paul's I love the columns of this building, amazing architecture.... from there we travelled across to the Southbank and started to walk along the river to London Bridge, the next location was a tunnel we walked through, I saw this awesome piece of light (our very own spotlight) and lastly we ended up on Southwark Street with the panel of wicked lights they have on display.  As I mentioned the weather was bitterly cold so to end up with the selection of imagery we did was amazing.  Every shot except the ones on the last location were shot using just natural available daylight, the last selection were lit using my wicked little portable daylight balanced led lights.....

I hope you enjoy the images below....!!!!

Afternoon in Chalkney Woods with my family | www.gavinconlan.com

This afternoon we decided to have a trip over to Chalkney Woods, so me and mum decided to take Holly over there. We've never been before which is weird as it's only about 10mins from home and this time of year the bluebells start to bloom so I decided to take my camera with me (as us photographers do :)

We had a great time over there, the bluebells were indeed out and Holly had a proper good time she was running around like a maniac with so many new smells to explore.  The problem is as much as we love her god she smells right now, she kept rolling around on the floor and ended up getting covered in mud.  We couldn't have the hump with her because she looked so cute...!!!!!

If you want to read more about Chalkney Woods please click here

I've posted some imagery below....

Rocking it again in Bermondsey Village | www.gavinconlan.com

If you’ve been following my journal over the last couple of years you may have noticed that there’s one place in particular I love to shoot, since first visiting back in the summer of 2008 I have been blown anyway by it’s potential as a location.  It’s got everything you could wish for plus it’s extremely quiet so you can just get on with shooting without any distractions and the odd tourist getting in the way….

This shoot with the stunning Dina was a follow up (http://gavinconlan.xanga.com/720596087/photoshoot-with-dina/). The first shoot was cut short due to the weather being so damn cold and you know what women are like they can’t handle it as well as us men ;) seriously though I remember getting to a point where I thought my eyeballs were freezing over so I was well chuffed when we decided to call it a day ....

The weather this time around was a lot kinder to us (thank god) and apart from a heavy downpour an hour or so before we couldn’t have asked for more.  As I love shooting in the village I am always on the look out for new interesting locations places I haven’t used before, we definitely found a great one in particular with the tunnel shots…

I love photographing Dina, frame after frame we were rocking out some wicked shots, the camera was working overtime on this one.  We had a great laugh which made the shoot really easy and if it weren’t for the fact we both seemed to find it impossible to direct ourselves to the meeting point it would have been the perfect 10 :)

Right enough of my ramblings lets have a look at some of the shots we produced, I hope you enjoy..!!!!!

So if your ever around the London Bridge area then I’d recommend you take a stroll down to Bermondsey Village, they have a pub there called the Woolpack which has the most amazing art decor upstairs… 

Have a good day!!!!!

personal shoot with my little cousins.... | www.gavinconlan.com

something different for today's post.  I thought I'd upload a selection of photos taken from two seperate shoots with my little cousins over the last few months.  The first selection are of Aiden who was busting out all the poses for his own personal Christmas cards which were great and the second part of this selection are of Lenny and Albie which I had so much fun producing, except for the Man United ones being a Liverpool supporter - the things you do for your family aye ....

I hope you enjoy them..!!!!

Take care, Gavin ....