Do you have a pet project you would like videoed or filmed?

Media work for me is an unpaid hobby. However, I am always happy to talk about your pet project. If you have an interesting building that needs recording, or a special event you would like a public record of, then email me. Even if it is a commercial proposition such as promoting your own company, I may be able to help. Below are examples of that sort of thing that I have done in the past. Including inside the laboratory of a local electronics manufacturer. A popular local driving school and Surrey maintenance company.

Aerial Videos or Photography for a unique view

It is clear to see that aerial photography and aerial video, can be used to great effect. The introduction of remote controlled 'Drones' has made this sort of imagery much easier to obtain In the UK and most of of Europe, the regulation of drone usage is extensive, but if you have the right certification and training the results can be very rewarding

If you are contemplating this sort of production. Talk to us about what can and cannot be done, to get what you want while keeping legal. The images here show St. Mary’s in Byfleet a project I have had the pleasure of working on twice.  Next to it is the new factory of a Hampshire based vehicle builder and lastly one of a number of significant private properties I have been asked to film

Recording ‘Special Events’ to share with others

Here are a some images from a few special events I have covered. The first show Sir Mike Penning MP during the PROF (Professional Recovery Operators Federation) campaign for Road Safety, which I was greatly involved and produced a number of videos for. The second image was done at the launch of Green Flags sponsoring the Williams F1 team. The last shows the stars the TV Production of 'Decisions of the Heart' having a quick break from filming and sitting in my car.

Personal Photography

Glamour Photography has been an interested of mine since I was old enough to appreciate the art form and I seem to have the knack of making almost any women look good. Being married to a 'part time' online lingerie catalogues model, I have produced Glamour Photographs that have won competitions, popular Glamour Calenders, as well as images for the online lingerie adverts.

Next image is a still from my video of Alison Downey, Justine Greening MP and Baroness Sally Morgan (L-R) opening the refurbished ARC Putney Academy, an event I covered in 2016. Then lastly and at the other emotional extreme, saying goodbye to a Recovery Industry Legend

Photographic and Video Hardware

I operate a large selection of digital recording equipment and work as standard at HD level. However, when recording I will normally work in 4k UHD (3840x2160) or 8K UHD-2 (7680x4320) This allows for post-production editing where I can focus on the centre of any activate. This equipment includes waterproof units, high level and dolly mounted units. Stabilised hand-held units and of course drones.

Miniature, or large cameras can be fitted to high performance vehicles to record events both inside and outside the vehicle. At the other extreme it could be fitted to a 'rolled' tanker to let the recovery operative see how it reacted when he winched it back upright. The images below demonstrate firstly the incredible useful way Drones can replace expensive Helicopter for filming from above. Then how to fit a industrial camera to a vehicle for ‘on the road’ movies, and lastly how to film a model swimming from under the water.

About Post Production

Many people, myself included, started recording videos with the good old Sony 8 cassettes. Back in the eighties this was the first real portable format to gain any ground. If you have footage you recorded in this format it can usually be convert and placed on a DVD, or flash drive, to enjoy all over again. Back at the studio I have editing suites for almost all formats.

I also have a pair of the legendary Panasonic AG-7700's so that we can edit your VHS, SVHS tapes as well. I even have the adapters to load the VHS-C and SVHS-C mini cassettes. However, most work today is done on fast and sophisticated multi-screen digital edit hardware, along with state-of-the-art software to get the best traditional and artificial intelligence driven results.

Lastly a warning - Once old tapes are converted to a digital format they will no longer deteriorate, which unfortunately your existing tapes are doing every day. So please remember, if the tape is important to you, get it transferred to digital media as soon as possible. If you can not, then please store it away from anything magnetic and where the temperature changes slowly and over a small range. There are few place worse than leaving them on that shelf under the TV in the living room!

Damaged Photographic image improvement

The three examples above demonstrate in different ways what can be done in post editing, in the first case with an important documentary image. Clearly once detail is lost it can never be put back, but in the case of noise (little white dots in this image) it is possible to guess at what was there and clone it back. In the case of torn edge, it is safe to assume that most of that area was curtain and so again it can be cloned from elsewhere in the image. Even the missing bodies can be cloned, but of course the face cannot (hence the two greyed areas). The rest is just general clean up and yellowing removal.

The next two before and after images show someone’s much prized picture of HMS Tiger, taken in the eighties, but sadly greatly deteriorated after twenty years in his wallet. The second image shows what can be done to bring it back to life. The last two images in this section show a tired black and white image from 1982, taken outside Kingston’s then legendary Rabbit Rabbit Hutch CD shop. With the aid of AI and a little intelligent guess work, a passable colour copy can be manufactured.

Post Production image cloning

This little snap I took of my glamours wife one day at the office while getting changed to go out to an evening event. I felt it was totally spoilt by the background which is something that often happens when a photograph is taken on the 'spur of the moment'. I eventually decided to cut her silhouette out of the office environment and put it in to an outdoor sunrise setting. Then added a poppy as a point of focus, to replace the file. Many glamour shots are done with a blue screen background allowing the background to be easily changed, but of course when there is a background already it can be a little bit more tricky

Summing up Video and Photographic Editing

In summing up I hope that I have been able to give you some idea about how to fix some major problem and how it is possible to breath new life into old and tired photographs or video. With AI become a useful tool to assist us some of the tasks it will become easier and results better. Lastly for those who want to try editing themselves, based on my years of doing it I would recommend theses products. For Videography Sony’s Vegas Pro (now owned by MAGIX, a German software company) it has a steep learning curve but is a package you can buy rather than rent like Adobe Premiere. For Photography I mostly use Corel’s Paint Shop Pro which again unlike its big rival Adobe Photoshop you can buy,