What do you think of when you hear the word ‘portrait’? Perhaps you imagine an oil painting or a photo from your grandparents’ wedding where everyone stood in a line, scowling, looking straight into the camera. But portraits don’t have to be serious and miserable. In fact, they are usually completely opposite; they are a lot of fun!
Sorry I haven’t posted on here in yonks. It isn’t because I have gone out of business or anything like that, in fact, it is the complete opposite! I am so busy shooting, editing & teaching that I struggle to give much time to blogging.
Those of you who follow me on twitter (@mattlollar) will know that for the month of November I decided to grow a moustache to help raise awareness (and cash) for prostate cancer which effects over 37,000 men per year in the UK alone. Before I took part in Movember I would have never known that of those 37,000 men, 10,000 will die from it each year. 252,785 people across Britain registered to take part in ‘Movember‘ and have raised over £15,000,000 in sponsorship for prostate cancer research. For more facts and figures check out the Men’s Health section of the Movember website.
I love all different types of photography but my long-term dream and goal is to shoot professional sport portraits.
My love for sport portraiture starts with my love of sports. From a young age until now, I have loved sport and played everything from American football and rugby to baseball and golf. I even have a blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do.
I enjoy the determination, competition, skill, passion, physicality and commitment that sport requires of an individual and team. In my sport portraiture I hope to capture some of those qualities and communicate them through a single image.
This past weekend I had the privilege of taking some family portraits in Cardiff for the Tyler family who are good friends with my sister and brother-in-law. These portraits are special to me because of who the Tylers are. They are a lovely family who have been through a lot since the birth of their little boy, Noah.
Noah Huw Tyler was born on February 11, 2011. When he was born, he was not breathing and his heart was not beating. The doctors resuscitated him, but for those precious moments he was without oxygen. The doctors immediately put him on ventilators and oxygen, and in those first few days the biggest concern for his parents and doctors was his brain. Another problem for little Noah was the functioning of his liver and kidneys.
In my experience (and style), simplicity is the best approach to photography. It doesn’t matter if it is lighting, post processing, composition, equipment, contracts, prices, etc… I like to keep things simple. There are infinite ways of doing things (especially in Photoshop) but I believe simplicity is the key to quality work.
So here is a little taste of an ‘on location’ photo shoot that I did for an organization called Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF). My brief was clear: they wanted me to photograph (head & shoulders) 40 members of staff in a 1.5 hour break time at their annual conference. I needed to get there, set up and shoot each person in 2.25 minutes.
I have the privilege of shooting Tom & Emily’s wedding in a couple of months but recently we did an engagement shoot in the Peak District. It was really difficult to choose my favourites from our shoot but I have managed to pick a few for you to see!
As a professional photographer I have always shot with Nikon cameras. There are things I just loved about Nikon: the build quality, lens selections, camera layout, durability, auto-focusing system, etc but one thing which has always frustrated me is the colours that Nikon cameras/lenses produce. They are often too warm (too much yellow and red) and a bit flat, lacking punchiness! At one point I got so frustrated (particularly with skin tone colours) that I sat down and calculated what it would cost me to sell all of my Nikon equipment and switch to Canon but this was going to be a very expensive change. I decided I had to find a cheaper alternative as I had invested way too much money into Nikon already.
As a wedding photographer, I meet/photograph tons of soon-to-be brides and grooms every year and the ones whom I enjoy photographing the most are the ones who have put a lot of thought into the detail of their wedding day.
Last year I had the privilege of shooting Sara & Siegfried Jaeken’s wedding in Genk, Belgium and this week I received a lovely thank you card in the post from them and this is what it said:
“Thank you for taking really beautiful, romantic, in-the-rain pictures on our wedding day. We are so happy with them!
And thank you to your wife and very cute little girl for letting you come all the way to Belgium for this occasion. Thank you for making our wonderful day last! 
Lots of Love,
Siegfried & Sara”
For a while I had been thinking about buying a new iMac and in the new year I took the plunge and purchased a 21.5-inch iMac with a 3.06GHz Intel Core i3 processor. I know, it sounds cool, right? The past two years I have done all my editing and design on a 13″ Macbook Pro which has been excellent but it was really starting to slow me down. The Macbook is great and still very very fast and it would be my number one recommendation for an amateur photographer who isn’t editing hundreds of pictures a day, but it just couldn’t meet all of my needs as a full time professional photographer and to be honest no one piece of equipment will.
07920 714 828
matt@mattlollarphotography.com