Henry Szwinto Photography
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Koy Ya
During a recent holiday in Thailand we found the Happy Snapper Bar which was a great music venue in Khao Lak. There we saw Koy Ya performing. She had long orange hair, tattoos and wore a short tartan mini skirt and black crochet crop top. Jo decided to ask her if she wanted to do a photo shoot with me. Koy Ya said yes and we set one up. I had no studio equipment with me so we worked with the light from the bar and some pretty pathetic illumination from a couple of smart phones. With the pool table in the bar there was a photo I wanted to try. This is the result (after a little bit of tinkering on the computer) and on Monday it won “Action” photo of the year at Southampton Camera club. I really liked this photo but when you are so closely involved in the setting up and production of something like this you have a lot of emotion attached to it which can affect your judgement so it’s great when you find other people like it too.
Thank you Koy Ya.
Here are a few more photos from the shoot. If you like your music and you are ever in Khao Lak be sure to find Koy Ya and The Happy Snapper Bar. You will love it.
What a privilege.
Yesterday I had the great privilege of getting up close to two wonderful red deer stags here in the New Forest National Park. If you know how to behave around them and allow them to come to you, you will get beautiful views. Both these stags walked straight towards me until they were so close they didn’t fit in the lens any more. The rutting season is just getting going so these stags are wandering round looking for females. To illustrate how dangerous the fighting can be, take a close look at the big stag in the first photo and you will see he is blind in his left eye.
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Take one mad dog, add a stick. What do you get?
A walk with Vincent is always fun. Get the camera ready and plan what you are going to do and you get some great action photos. I love the ears and I love the eyes!
Celebrating National Cupcake Week.
Celebrating National Cupcake Week.
Pennington Marshes
When I enter the camera club (Southampton Camera Club) competitions I like to try to keep a broad range of work in my entries. These 2 photos did pretty well both gaining me a Seal of Merit. Very different to each other but I quite like the fact that they were taken in almost the same place. I enjoy my wildlife photography but for me the emphasis is still more on the photography than the wildlife so I often go down to Pennington Marshes when the light is very good. On this occasion Alastair, who is one of our better runners at my running club (New Forest Runners) was out on an early morning run and he provided the perfect “point of interest” subject matter for the beautiful golden light that morning. The spoonbill is a rare bird for this country but is now getting more common especially here in the South of England. They are not brilliant flyers and can have awkward, almost clumsy landings and that can provide good photo opportunities.
Velvet Antlers
Both the red deer and the fallow deer’s antlers are nearly full grown now but they are still covered in that lovely soft velvet that provides blood and nutrients to the growing bone. It’s a great time to get out early and photograph them especially around dawn when the light is beautiful.
National Dementia Cupcake Day
My wife Joanne’s mum died earlier this year after suffering years of dementia. Today, Thursday 14th June 2018 the Alzheimer’s Society have their National Cupcake day so I thought I would post a few pictures from a shoot last year with Emma Appelton-Smith. Jo had this great idea about making a corset out of paper cupcake cases and after a couple of weeks of painstaking sewing we had our main piece. A relatively simple skirt made from paper strips together with more painstaking work for a wig made from plaited paper completed the main outfit. A few white accessories and white makeup supplied by Emma and we were ready to shoot in the studio dressed with white furniture and white background. I think we got some great photos.
Paper Dress design by Jo Szwinto
Father’s Day 17th June
Father’s day is just over a week away. Have you thought what to by him?
How about a family photo shoot?
It will be a fun day out for everybody and you will get some great photos to frame and keep. It can be something that makes you laugh or a photo of his lovely children or a simple family group photo. I can supply a gift card to be used when you wish. Here’s a few examples of photos I’ve done in the past to give you some ideas. If you are interested then give a call on 07920 887909
Birds of Pennington Marshes
Whenever I get good light and calm conditions I try to get down to Pennington Marshes, Lymington which is here in the New Forest National Park. Although I have always been interested in birds, for me, it’s more about the photography rather than ticking a bird list. Having said that some of the rarer birds create more captivating images. Technique is very important and I continue to experiment there but it’s all about the light and learning about your subject. Hope you like the photos.
If you would like to find out a bit more I do offer personal tuition or small workshops or even simple guide services.
Komodo National Park and Flores Photo Book
I’ve been using the rainy weather to put together a long overdue flip book from our trip to Indonesia last November. I have so many lovely photos that this one just covers the first 2 weeks which includes our week at Scuba Junkies Komodo and our second week on Flores where we stayed mostly at Labuan Bajo. If you ever think you might like to go Joanne and I would thoroughly recommend you do and we are planning to back in the not too distant future. The coral reefs are stunning, the Giant Manta are amazing, there are so many turtles and the people are very friendly.
Photo of the week.
Top Dog
Not a new photo but photo of the week because “Top Dog” has just won another little prize on Purple Port. This composition of me and my daughter’s dog, Vincent keeps doing well in various competitions including Creative Photo of the Year 2018 at Southampton Camera Club. Compositions like this make fun but sometimes tricky editing projects. A little planning before hand can make the subsequent work more straight forward.
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