A couple of days ago Michelle and I got back from an amazing holiday in Thailand!

We had a brilliant time, Thailand is such a beautiful country and thanks to all the effort Michelle had put in to the planning (I must admit I didn’t really do anything….) we got to see lots of different places and do so many incredible things such as swimming in the rainforest, canoeing, feeding and washing elephants and trekking in the jungle! Thank you so much again, Michelle

We started the holiday in Chiang Mai, a city in the north of Thailand. Whilst we were there we visited lots of temples, went on trips to Doi Inthanon (the highest peak in Thailand) and saw the incredible Wachiratan waterfall. We then spent two nights in Khao Sok National Park where amongst other things we stayed on a floating tent in the rainforest, just amazing. We spent the second (and more lazy) week at Kata Beach in Phuket in the south. We spent most of this week on the beach but we made time to see The Big Buddha (a hugh statue which overlooks Phuket) and went to Patong for the night (a crazy crazy place!) to meet our friend Rebecca who is traveling and was there at the same time.

I didn’t take my “big” camera this time as I didn’t want to be lugging around my bag everywhere with me (and I only end up changing lenses every two seconds when I’m supposed to be on holiday!) so I bought myself a Fuji X100 compact camera which I now love. I am so pleased I bought it it is a brilliant camera. The quality of images which it produces is literally unbelievable, they are easily DSLR quality and I would say that it is even better than my Nikon D700 cameras when it comes to shooting at high ISOs. The Fuji X100 has a fixed focal length lens so there is no zoom option, which takes a bit of getting used to but the quality of the images more than makes up for that. The camera also has a fantastic ‘panoramic’ option which I loved, by automatically stitching lots of images together it allows you to take very wide panoramas which look amazing. I can’t wait to incorporate them in to my wedding photography now!

Here are a few of my favourite Thailand photographs:

These are the floating tents we stayed in – amazing!

How cool is this setting for wedding photographs?!

I would have LOVED to have been this bride and groom’s wedding photographer….

Yesterday, Michelle and I got back from an amazing 3 days break in Rome – what a beautiful city!

Although getting round as many of the sights as you can (and there are a LOT of sights in Rome!) was quite tiring, we had a brilliant time.  Rome is just beautiful, one of those places where there is a building which just has you in awe, around almost every corner. Places like The Vatican, The Colosseum and the Trevi Fountain just have to be seen to be believed – the architecture and history of these places is just incredible.

Of course, despite covering two brilliant weddings last weekend, I couldn’t resist taking my camera to Rome, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t. I didn’t go too overboard with the photography, just 1 camera, 2 lenses, a small bag and no tripod. I know from when we’ve been away to other places that if I take too much equipment, the photography side takes over so this time I was just snapping away for fun like everybody else. This meant almost all the photographs were taken during the height of the day – no magic hour in these shots!

Whilst we were in the Colosseum, Morgan Freeman brushed past us (not who you expect to see right in front of you as you turn a corner) but unfortunately I didn’t have my camera ready at the time! Oh well….

Anyway, here are a few of my favourite Rome photographs:

I had this weekend off from wedding photography, but not from the camera..!

To make the most of the time off, we went to Monkey Forest in Trentham (just near Stoke in Staffordshire) for a few hours.  It’s a place we have been before, and we really like it.  The ‘Monkey Forest’ is a huge area of enclosed woodland which is home to 140 Barbary Macaques monkeys.  The monkeys have total freedom in the forest so it’s a really nice environment for them.  If you haven’t been to Money Forest before, I would highly recommend it

Anyway, here are a few photographs which I took whilst we were there. I’ll be back to the wedding photography for my next post!

Yesterday, a few short days before her 30th Birthday, my wife Michelle fulfilled one of her lifetime ambitions of jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet!

I was extremely proud of her, not only because it is something Michelle she has spoken about doing for a long time (but I know she was quite nervous about…), but because she also raised a lot of money for the World Society for the Protection of Animals by asking people to sponsor her to do the jump.

If you would like to sponsor Michelle for having the courage to do this then please click on the link below:

http://www.justgiving.com/Michelle-Shinn/

Well done Michelle!!! x

Off they go…

The instructor thanking Michelle for helping him to land safely….

I had a rare weekend off from wedding photography this weekend – but not from the camera!

On Saturday we went for a walk around Dunham Massey National Trust Estate, just a few miles south of Manchester, whilst on Sunday we went to Hare Hill in Cheshire.

The first set of photographs below were taken on Saturday at Dunham Massey whereas the second set were all taken at Hare Hill on Sunday.  As I had hoped to see lots of birds and wildlife at Hare Hill (we didn’t see any!) I didn’t take any landscape cameras lenses so ended up taking all the Hare Hill photographs on my iPhone using the BRILLIANT Hipstamatic app.

I will be updating the blog again tomorrow with more photographs from Dunham Massey, this time though with pictures from an engagement photoshoot from last week so please check back tomorrow

The photographs below were all taken at Hare Hill, just south of Manchester, on my iPhone using the BRILLIANT Hipstamatic photography app:

I had a break from wedding photography this weekend and spent a few nights in North Wales with friends.  Much as I love covering weddings it was nice to have a few days off, although I still ended up taking countless number of photographs anyway…

The converted chapel which we stayed in was amazing and was surrounded by beautiful countryside.  I would loved to have stayed longer!

On Friday we went to Portmeirion which is the small village on the West coast of Wales where the 60′s TV programme ‘The Prisioner’ was filmed.  There is a lovely beach there too.  It is such a unique place, packed full of unusual architecture – I would LOVE to photograph a wedding there so if you know of anybody thinking about getting married there please do let me know!

Here are a few of my favourite photographs from the weekend.  I also took quite a lot of photographs on my iPhone using a really cool new app I bought recently called Hipstamatic.  The app recreates the film look of old, cheap cameras from the past so every photograph has a really vintage feel to it.  I’ve added some of the iPhone photographs to the end of this blog post

This was the amazing converted chapel which we stayed in!

And the landscape photograph below was the view from our front window – not bad…

Here are the photographs I took using the Hipstamatic application on my iPhone – I love the vintage film look they have!

Today, Michelle and I went for a walk at Dunham Massey, a beautiful National Trust estate in Cheshire which is home to lots of deer.

Whilst we were there a couple of stags had a fight.  On the one hand it was a privilege to see them battle but on the other it was quite sad to see as one of the stags got quite badly injured , I just hope he was ok.

Here are some of my favourite photographs from the day – hope you like them.  My next post should be some of my latest wedding photographs so please visit again soon!

I’ve photographed two amazing weddings in the past week, the first at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire and the second at Warrington Town Hall.  Both went really well and I can’t wait to to show the bride and grooms their photographs!  I’ll hopefully be posting some of my favourite photographs from these weddings to the blog soon so please watch this space!

Today though, Michelle and I went for a walk around Martin Mere Wetland Centre in Lancashire.  The centre is home to over 100 species of rare and endangered ducks, geese, swans, flamingos and otters.  It goes without saying that whilst we wandered around a took a few photographs, some of my favourites are below, hope you like them

All the photographs were taken on my new Nikon D700 DSLR, which I am absolutely loving so far!

Michelle and I went for a walk around Lyme Park in Cheshire (part of the Peak District National Park) on Sunday.  It’s a beautiful place, in fact I believe the country house there is where Darcy meets Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice!

I took my Canon G10 along for the walk and took a couple of photos, including one of Michelle when she wasn’t looking!  The two landscape photographs are each of “The Cage” which at one point was used as a lock-up for prisoners.

I love taking personal photographs with the Canon G10 as I feel it gives me a lot of freedom.  When I using my DSLR I sometime feel as though I need to get a technically correct photograph whereas with Canon G10 I feel as thought it doesn’t matter as much – which is really nice.  These photographs are full of noise but it really doesn’t matter!

My first wedding of 2010 is on Saturday at the Egypt Mill Hotel in Gloucestershire and I can’t wait!!

Wow, I have never seen as much snow in Manchester as we’ve had today!

I couldn’t resist taking some photographs as I doubt we will get snow like this again for many years.  The photographs below were all taken in Sale, apart from the last one which is Manchester Town Hall.  I will be covering another wedding at Manchester Town Hall in a few months – I’ve a feeling it will look very different by then

For the photographers out there, the first 4 photographs are all HDR images made up of 5 different exposures. I combined them using Photomatix.