Hi there!

I do hope that you have followed me over to my other website where I blog a lot more frequently than i do here. 

Its over at. www.shippey.se

Hope to see you there!

All the best.

/Helen Shippey

Check me out at - www.shippey.se

 Hey!

You can these days find me at www.shippey.se

Hope to see you there.

All the best.

/Helen Shippey

Find me on my new blog page!!

Hey all,
I am now blogging on my website page instead so please head over to http://shippeyphotography.com to stay up to date with my latest activities.
Hope you venture over there and we can continue to chat!
Over and out.
Helen Shippey

BECOME A BABATUDE MODEL in Dubai.

On Wednesday next week I am photographing the winter collection for Babatude and we are now looking for Children Models for that shoot.

'We are looking for babies and toddlers and little ones, for our next photo shoot on Wednesday 17th August! If you know of any gorrrrrgeous babies aged between 9 months through to 4 years, that are Dubai-based and might be interested in becoming a Babatude mini-model, please have their Mum or Dad email Joanna – joanna@babatude.com - with a couple of recent pictures as soon as possible ! x'
http://www.babatude.com
If you have a little one that fits the age criteria and are available on Wednesday morning please don't hesitate to email a recent photograph to Joanna she is scouting for the models.
Don't fret if you are not in Dubai for this photo shoot more photo shoots will come later on in the year.
Cheers,
Helen

Not one of my images. Previous Babatude collection

I am still using chillies for every meal part from breakfast. :-) Although I have heard that hot chocolate and chillies are a great combination. But then again I am not drinking hot chocolate for breakfast.
I am enjoying learning how to cook/steam vegetables for dinner. I never really ate them growing up and have never really made a dinner with vegetables unless they have been part of a stew, so I am surprising myself in how much I am enjoying eating them. Today I even had raw cauliflower as a snack. Not too shabby I must say and very healthy don’t you think?
My hubby laughed at me the other day when I asked if you eat the green leaves on the cauliflower. I just don’t want to waste any food and don’t mind cooking them if you are supposed to but apparently you don’t eat that part.
Just so you are aware I grew up on salads not vegetables my hubby grew up eating vegetables and very over cooked ones. Me I prefer them to still be almost raw at least crunchy. In my pursue of the perfect steamed vegetables I can say that it is much yummier to eat vegetables that you have bought fresh and not the frozen ones.

I have had a great start work wise this February with a few jobs coming in and that is without me really looking for any so that is great. I am very pleased since I know that being new in town I probably need to crank up the marketing a bit in the beginning.

I am tomorrow for instance photographing a ski tournament in Dubai which will be great fun. I am doing it Pro-bono to market myself towards the Scandinavian market. http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=183419385030995&id=699197495&ref=notif&notif_t=feed_comment_reply#!/home.php?sk=group_143110569081030

I am also giving away a Free Family Portrait session as a prize. Thinking that I need to do a few things like these in the beginning to get seen so people know that I am back in town again.

Next week I will be busy with photographing golfers during the Dubai Desert Classic tournament. As well as a golf clinic with Richie Ramsay at Al Badia Golf Club. http://www.albadiagolfclub.ae/

So happy days but busy ones for sure.

Red Chillies for dinner.

Wow this thing about being able to cook again in my own kitchen is great but it asks a lot of creativity out of you. I know this might sound silly to you that have been cooking all along (I have not had a kitchen to cook in for 3yrs and 3 months) but every meal seems to be so often and I am only talking about dinner here. Breakfast and lunch we (hubby and I) both eat separately so I don’t need to plan that thankfully. I definitively need to get some routine and new ideas on what to cook for dinner. Once our container arrives I will have to dig up the cooking books. The single best thing about cooking again is that I can make what I feel like having for dinner that night! And spice it the way I prefer it, with lots of fresh chillies! Yummy.

I used to go to the Fruit and Vegetable market in Dubai for great photo opportunities when I lived here before, I think I need to go back there for some fresh veggies and herbs and maybe bring my camera along as well shame to leave it at home... :-)
I wonder what I should make for dinner tonight?
Please if you have a favourite food recipe do share it with me! I would love to hear what you cook in your kitchen give me some inspiration.
In the meantime I might need to use this website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/
for ideas. Hum here is an idea maybe I should start taking food photographs? Food for thought. Pun intended.
If you have similar thoguths check put this food photography link: http://www.learnfoodphotography.com/15-food-photography-interview-from-2010/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=15-food-photography-interview-from-2010
Cheers,

Helen

Arrived safe and sound to Dubai, U.A.E.

Hello,
I just want to let you all know that I have arrived safe and sound to Dubai. Plane was a bit delayed and I did loose my hubby for 45 minutes at the airport but part from that everything went smooth. :-)

We are both very happy to be back in Dubai. It feels like we never left more like that we have been on a 3 year long holiday.
We have already had time to see a few friends over lunch and dinner which have been great.

I am however soreley missing my Hastens bed and pillow!! I so wish that our shippment would arrive tomorrow. The sooner the better. Our relocation firm that we are using did however say that it would take 30-45 days for our furniture to arrive to Dubai. In the mean time I think I need to frequent the gym and the pool to get some excersice just so that my body will not suffer too much from being in the 'wrong' bed. Anything that is not a Hastens bed is a 'wrong' bed incase you did not know.
If you have no idea what I am talking about check out their website or ask me questions.
www.hastens.com
Talk to you again soon.
I now need to get up to the pool and get to work.
Helen xx

Aperitifs by Chefs at Marriott Red Sea Resort - Egypt

I was attending The Race to Taba Heights golf presentation the other night. Taking the photographs of that days winner, runner ups etc. of the golf tournament. The evening presentation was held at the Marriott Red Sea Resort and the Chef had made these gorgeous and very tasty aperitifs for the event I of course could not help but to take a few snaps of them before everyone indulged, they were gone pretty quickly so if you wanted any you needed to be swift. But that is always a good sign for the Chef so all compliments to him well done on the aperitifs. My personal favorite was the pastries with blue cheese in, the chocolates were of course very good as well!

If you are interested in the presentation images I took you can find them all on the Taba Heights Golf Resort facebok page, http://www.facebook.com/tabaheightsgolfresort

Great Image - If only the subject had been slightly more to the...

Have you ever had those photography moments when you later look at the image and you think if only... I had done that or if the subject had moved this way or that?

I am now looking at the images I took while visiting Petra in Jordan last friday and I have one of them moments now. I actually saw it already in the camera at the time but the moment had gone and was not to come back! So I missed it.

What happened was, I heard a horse galloping down the road towards me I was standing looking at one of the Tombs outside the Petra entrance. The road where the horse came charging down on goes straight infront of the tomb so I quickly tired to get my camera ready (I had put my camera away since we were on our way back and I thought I was finished photographing how wrong was I!) I was as quick as I possibly could have been and pressed the shutter at the moment of when the horse was in my frame in front of the tomb. I got the horse in the frame as I wanted but I did not get all of its legs in. Very annoying to me I so wish I had the whole horse in the frame. But there was no due over, the horse was gone in a few seconds an no other came galloping through well that is not tottaly true I did manage to capture another horse with a tourist on going the other way but it was nothing near a gallop more of a trot if anything so not exactly the same effect as my first image I think anyway. What do you think?

Time to move on - Dubai here I come!

If you follow my other photography blog http://shippeyphotography.blogspot.com/ you already know by now that I am moving house and to be more specific all the way to Dubai from Taba Heights. I am very excited about the move, so many potential working projects that are opening up its doors for me. I just need to grab the ones I want!

Happy New Year to you! I hope that 2011 have great prospects for you. Me I am certain that it holds loads of good opportunities and good changes for me!

Hope to see you in Dubai next week or later on somewhere around the world.

Christmas Presents!

It is almost Christmas even here in the warm of Egypt. I am doing my best in trying to get into the Christmas spirit with Mulled wine (Glögg as we call it in Sweden), Christmas music and I find that Christmasy herbs help as well you know cinnamon, cloves etc. that combination of scent makes me think of Christmas.
Have you bought all your Christmas presents yet? I have started to receive a few Christmas cards now. I received one from my dad today and it took less than 2 weeks for it to arrive amazing otherwise 1 month is common to get things to Egypt similar when I send things as well. I sent my mum a birthday present for her birthday which is now over a month ago and she has still not received it maybe we can call it a Christmas present instead if it arrives in the next 8 days.
If you are still short on ideas for Christmas presents I can recommend Wall Art and 2011 Calendars. Please take a look at the ones I have on Red Bubble for inspiration.
I just spoke to a client yesterday that received hers by mail that she had bought at Red Bubble and she loved the quality of the images.
Thanks again Eva for buying my images at Red Bubble I appreciate that and it gives me great inspiration.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/portfolio/art
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/portfolio/art?page=5
Framed Prints
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/shop/framed-prints
Greeting Cards
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/shop/top+selling+greeting-cards
2011 Calendars
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/shop/calendars
Digital Wall Art that I created yesterday. What do you guys think?

Digital Photography Art

As I have mentioned before I love making digital Photo Art, I have over the weekend created a few more from photographs that I have taken. I have added some of them below. If you want to see more of my selection of Digital Photo Art you can look at my Red Bubble account. Just click on this link here, http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey you can there also buy the images as greeting cards and framed wall art etc.
I also sell them through my website you will then get them as a soft copy and make the printing arrangements yourself. http://www.shippeyphotography.com/abstract.html
send me an email with your request to: infoATshippeyphotographyDOTcom
I have also made a few more 2011 calendars that might be of interest for you, they are also available for purchase through Red Bubble. http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/shop/calendars

Please let me know what you guys think of the Digital Photo Art that I have created.
Cheers,
Helen

Another day in the life of me.

Hi,
The other day I got a facebook message from a friend where her mother in-law to be was asking for the images that I took of a wedding that we all attended back in August this year... oh dear did I promise something that I have not delivered on yet? I know a lot of people attending wanted to see my images but I did actually never promise to put them out somewhere for them to see... So technically I haven't but anyway I have since yesterday been trying to figure out how to put the images all 300 of them on my website but without them really being linked to my official website, since these images will have no interest to most people out there unless you attended this wedding of course. I had an epiphany the other night it was actually thanks to my sister she just had her family photographs taken in the states (me being located a bit too far away) and they were uploaded on the photographers website but not through her official one so I thought if she can do it why can't I and to be honest once I figured it out it was dead easy. Well saying that it is still uploading and it is taking ages... but in theory very easy. What took most of my time is not only the uploading but the creating of the web gallery. I am making it in Aperture also easy you click and choose which images etc. and then press create, now my computer have virtually no memory space left so everything and anything that I am doing on my computer is taking ages right now so annoying. I am on my third upload attempt to my website I think it will work now once it is all there. The first two times I had the wrong folder names on some of the html pages which means that the links wont work because they cant find each other etc. you get the picture I was not happy when I realized it and after trying to change manually again realizing that it is so many pages and places that need changing it will be a lot quicker to make a whole new gallery. Do I have to tell you that it takes just as long to delete a folder on my website as it did creating it? Well it does. While my computer was thinking this afternoon I went over to a friends house for a chat. I hope I am almost done now Yey!
This morning before I started on my web gallery adventure I was out capturing some great images of the golden hour which here is between 07.00 - 08.00 anytime after that unless it is afternoon is not a great time to take photographs the sun is just too high in the sky. I got some great images of the mountains looking all golden very nice. I wanted to do some more shots but the sun went too hight too quickly so need to make anohter early photo shoot to get everything in my plan done. I also saw a few shots that would look great in afternoon light due to where the sun is in the morning so will have to plan that in later on. What I did not like this morning was that my camera gear got so dusty it did not feel like it was very windy but I had to keep on taking the sand dust off the lens several times. Not ideal.

Happy 1st of Advent everyone!

Hope you have gotten into the Christmas feel now, I decorated our house yesterday so it is now looking as Christmasy as it ever will. I also made homemade mulled wine (glögg) that I have had brewing over night so I have had some of that and some ginger bread cookies today together with listening to Christmas songs trying to get into the Christmas feel. It is otherwise a bit hard for me to get into the Christmas feeling when it is 26C outside and sunny. How is the weather where you live?
Have you celebrated 1st of advent today? If you have how did you celebrate? In Sweden its traditional to light the first candle on the advent candle holder. I unfortunately could not find any candles at home yesterday only the advent candle holder its always something missing isn't it?
My photo shoots last friday that I  told you about both went well I have not had time to go through all the images from the latest shoot but the one I had during the afternoon are all done and delivered to the client it is always nice when you have finished a job so that you can concentrate on a new one.
I have now started a personal project that I will have going beside my regular work that will be of producing more Abstract Photo Art I really enjoy doing it. I will also produce a few different kinds of calendars for 2011 it is after all time to buy a new calendar very soon if you are in the market for one. I will have all mine ready for purchase at Red Bubble.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey 

Well I better go and get ready I am invited to a party at the Hyatt Regency Taba Heights this afternoon.
Catch you all later.
Helen

Dance show Photography.

I have just finished cleaning my camera sensor and charged all my batteries so I am totally ready for this afternoon and evenings photo shoot.
First I will take some tournament presentation photographs then after dinner the fun begins with photographing a dance show hope I can get into the rhythm. :-)
I hope it will not be too windy either tonight it has a tendency to be more windy during the afternoon/evening here than it is during the day. I will use my Canon 5D together with my Canon 70-200mm 2.8f  L IS USM lens to get those lovely close up shots in low light.

Keep your fingers crossed for some great photography tonight. Its all about the performance and the dance costumes don't you think? I am hoping for something colourful. Like these.

I have been feeling very patriotic today wearing my Sweden T-shirt, but I guess I better go and change before my photo assignments.
Ta ta.
Have a lovely weekend I certain will. I do know what I will be doing on Sunday... at least where my hubby will be for most of the day and that is watching The Dubai World Championship Golf Tournament I will of course sneak some peeks here and there as well but I can seldom sit for a whole tournament part from the Ryder Cup I was totally hooked then day and night. That was some great golf on display!
Ps. I played on the Earth Course where the tournament is on now in July and it was a great course to play on I must admit, it also looks very well manicured from what I saw on TV yesterday.
Cheers,
Helen

Macro Photography.

When I take photographs for myself I prefer to do macro photography or abstract. You know when you are so close to a subject that it becomes abstract to you it's almost hard to see what the subject really is. Abstract and macro (close up) photography both look really great printed on canvases so that they look more like a painting than a photograph. I personally like to have large art in my house the bigger the better or a few small ones that fit together to make a larger one almost like a montage.

This image will look great in a large format printed on a canvas. It will give a lovely colourful touch to your room I can also see it together with other similar images in different coulors to have them all in  close proximity to each other complementing one another.

This is a hibiscus flower.

Getting this hibiscus flower I sadly got a lot of pollen on my shorts and in my beach bag while carrying it home... not good for my clothes but it would also have been very cool with pollen on the images! Need to be more careful next time.

These are yellow flowers that grow several tight together on a bush I am not sure what their names are.

I took all flower images at home so that I could have the flowers arranged and my camera on a tripod. I also sprayed water on the flowers with a water squirter from IKEA. I used my Canon 100mm 2.8f lens for these shots had my camera on Manual as well as the lens. When you photograph images so close up it is usually hard for the lens to focus so you need to focus manually.

This image was taken with my 50mm 1.4f lens camera mounted on a tripod.

Last week I was busy photographing a sport event which I also enjoy doing, the organizers also had evening activities that I attended with my camera at hand. I felt a bit like one of them paparazzi photographers pointing my camera into peoples faces while they were chatting and enjoying themselves. I guess it is a bit different since I was at least not sneaking in the bushes with a long zoom lens but rather asked everyone to please look at me and don't forget to look at the images on facebook!

So this week I have been busy with editing some of the images to get them ready for magazine use. I am just finished and will deliver all the images to the client tomorrow.

I just heard from my sister that it is Thanksgiving this weekend in America so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that celebrate it!

Cheers,

Helen

Birds are magnificent creatures

Hi there!
Today I saw a Pigeon Hawk chasing a Pigeon it was a very noisy flight but quite magnificent to see in a way. To see first hand how life evolves in the wilderness and not only happens on the Discovery Channel. I did however watch something very fascinating yesterday on the Discovery Channel about fish! But that is another story all together. Of course I did not have my camera at hand to shoot some frames so that I would have something to show you guys.... Murphy's Law isn't it?
Yesterday I also wished I had my camera with me I think I need to start to carry it around with me at all times! I walked down for lunch and on the way I saw an eagle sitting not more than 5 meters away from me I would have had a great opportunity to get some great close ups. Of course it later on flew away once I got closer but wow are they great birds of pray to watch them fly they look so graceful.
I am having a busy week of events photography so I have made sure I got all my gear sorted out there is one last thing I need to get done after I publish this and it is to clean my camera sensor and format one of my cards then I will be all set. 
Yesterday I got my bookmarks from the printers and if I may say so myself I am very happy with them! But then of course I have done the design and taken the images LOL so I guess I better like them. Don't you agree?

I have made personal bookmarks so I have had a specific person in mind when making them so using images that I think would be suitable for them either with them in an image or with places they have been to or I know they like etc. So takes a bit of creative searching in trying to get the image I feel would be perfect for just that person. But I then also hope that the receiver  of the bookmark also would enjoy it even more. We will see how well that goes only time can tell.

A sneak preview for you of them.

A great gift that is perfect for posting (snail mail) to your friends and family living far away since they weigh next to nothing.

If you are interested in purchasing any of my images for Christmas or any other occasion you can take advantage of this promotion that lasts till the 14th of November 2010, 15% Discount when using this:
Discount Code: hshippey_is_on_sale_2887
You can buy my art work as postcards, on canvas or framed or as large posters.
Take a look at this website to choose your image that you like. http://www.redbubble.com/people/hshippey/portfolio/art

Image filing system and some Portraits

I have recently gotten a request from a magazine about images from a certain place here in Egypt. No problem I have plenty of images to send to the magazine to choose from. My biggest issue was to find the images on all my several external hard drives. I thought I had a good system but it turns out it is not so good so it took me a lot longer to find all the images that I knew that I had. So I have this morning started to make up a new system my issue that I am facing now is if I am going to continue my old system parallel to this new one which then means that I will have duplicates all over the place that will take up space that are quite precious to me… I am leaning towards to only use my new system. I hope it will work. The system I have now is according to year and month of when I have taken a picture but then you need to remember when you took an image. My new system that are far from all implemented or completely thought through, it will probably take me months to get it all done anyway it is based on categories. Such as a folder for; food and vegetables, Stockholm, Golf course names etc. so all images that have anything to do with the categories goes into that folder no matter when the image was taken so Stockholm for instance will have plenty of images from several different years since I go to Stockholm about once a year and take pictures every time. What do you think will this system work? I guess most of the time a client do not need an image from a certain year they just want an image of the place they are requesting.

Some images will of course be trickier to place in just one category and there is no point having duplicates (unless it is your back up of course!) Maybe that is when sub categories come in? You know when a picture can be thought of as fitting in two or more different categories such as an image of a date palm tree with dates on, it could be in the fruit or tree folder or in a golf folder since it is taken on a golf course. I will have to think about that one! I do think it would be good with subcategories though to make it easier and maybe fewer folders to see as a start. If I do folders per country but then I will have it tricky when it comes to golf courses since I have so many images of them from different countries. If I make a folder of golf courses then I can put it all in their but if I do countries then I will have to have a golf course folder as a sub category in all country folders which I guess there is nothing wrong with either… Let me know if you have any great insight into my new filing system or if you have another one that is idiot proof. I spoke to another photographer about how de does his filing; he had a system that he thought was very good well at least worked for him. I just thought that it was the most complicated one I had heard of so I will definitively not do what he does. I guess it is all down to making one that works for you personally and sticking to it.

I am already quite good at deleting images but I think I need to up my game a bit and become even better at it to save space. I save almost no images on my hard drive on the computer itself but still I got a worrying message the other day when I opened Aperture; that I had too little memory for it to work properly and that I was risking loosing images! Wow that was a wake up call so I straight away frantically tried to move images from the computer to different external hard drives. I did peek at the utilities on the computer and I was scarily low on memory not sure how that happened. I need to be better at keeping an eye on it that is for sure.

I recently helped a friend take some avatar images of her for an article that have been written about her for Living Abroad Magazine. So we both ventured out to take some lovely images of her for the editors to choose from here are a few of the ones we came up with.

Bird watching

Hi there,
I went out the one afternoon to take some photographs of white birds that I had gotten a tip of was in the area. The person telling me about them did not know what kind of birds they were part from that they were quite large in size and flew away when he got close :-) No surprise there ha ha. Anyway I set off to take photographs of them. I put on a pair of shorts with lots of pockets on the sides for lens caps etc. and to that I had my 'new' company t-shirt those of you that have followed my blog knows that my compay t-shirts are bright pink in colour. I think that was my first mistake of this photo excursion. I very likely scared away any bird with any sense. I did fire off a few images towards an eagle that I saw or was it a large hawk? I am not sure. But it kept on flying away when ever I got close. I did chase it around for a while until he got tired of it and flew way off so that I had no chance of following it, so quite clever! I saw this early on my bird expedition so I was not at the lake where these white birds have been spotted so I set off trying to find them I had brought a book with me incase I had to wait for them. Once I got to the lake there was no birds in sight I scouted the area trying to find a good place for me to wait for them. But that is not as easy as it may sound since I had no idea of where they would be coming from and which part of the lake they would like to be at not that the lake is that large but still large enough to be at the wrong place at the right time..... well you know what I mean. Instead of sitting down to read I walked around trying to see other things to photograph while I was waiting. I did see the eagle again but only briefly he got a glimpse of me and few off and never came back I waited around for about 45 minutes. But no more eagles or the white birds. I am guessing that the white birds are a kind of heron because I have seen them in the area before and they can get quite large. But I did not get to see them this time. I did how ever photo graph some smaller birds. :-)
See images below, not the ones I had planned to photograph but they were there while I was waiting around and my bright pink shirt did not scare them off so easily or at all really. I guess for next time I should dress a bit more inconspicuous maybe some desert colored clothing would be a good idea so that I can blend in with the environment more.
Ps. if anyone knows the name of these birds below please let me know. Thanks!
Over and out till next time.
Helen