Sussex Wedding Photographer Fazackarley's Blog – aka The F Word Blog bio picture
  • Welcome to the blog.


    I'm Simon Fazackarley & I'm a Wedding Photographer, Based in Brighton, UK and serving Sussex, Surrey, Kent & Hampshire.

    This blog is a little more informal than my main site, and follows both my professional work & my personal - featuring photos from weddings, as well as random photos & other things I like!

    I try to update regularly, althought this is not always possible, so add me to your RSS Reader, or to your bookmarks using the tool below & check back regularily for updates!

    Bookmark and Share

its all about the brand

Another Random Friday post, Admittedly, all my posts are pretty random, but its my blog, so nerrrrr. *maturely pokes out tongue*

Anyway, I’m heading into into a super busy weekend, chock full of meeting-y goodness!  Which is always fun, love meeting new people & talking weddings! Also usually involves drinking copious amounts of tea & coffee, which I don’t do in any other situation… so its a pleasant change!!

In other news, I’ve had a few emails asking about the website, ‘whens its due?!?’ ,’Whats taking so long?’  etc., so to answer! – The website is actually due to be finished before the end of the month!! Amazingly, its only been in progress since August… so getting on for 9 Month’s!!!… I would name & shame the obsessive, perfectionist designer behind the delays… but seeing as its me, I don’t wanna. oops.

What else is happening? ermmmm… Is it wrong for a guy to be excited about a new pair of shoes!?! Nearly everyone I knows swears by Converse All Stars! Brides wear them, Grooms wear them… designers wear them, hobos wear them… they seem pretty classless!! But I’ve never owned a pair, so I thought that should change!

I chickened out of buying an orange pair… but If they are as great as everyone will have me believe, I’ll no doubt buy some more in the future!! Also, In my mind, an orange pair would be like clown shoes… maybe white & orange spots would be more sensible?

But hopefully I don’t get the bug this guy has http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Largest_collection_of_Converse_All-Stars.JPG , not sure I have enough room in my house!!

Anyway, must dash, got to answer an important email from some reverend who wants to give me $12,000,000! Cant keep his holiness waiting!;)

New photography toys

This is one for the people that are into photography!

I’m a bit of a geek, I love my gadgets, love new toys! & This is a pretty fab industry to be in, as so many new gadgets come out, always something new to play with!!

A while ago, I read about a device that fits onto a regular flashgun, and converts it into a ring flash! As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted one in my camera bag!! Unfortunately I never managed to get one, always something else higher up the list of things to buy (food etc.!)

I absolutely love the look of ringflash images, I always think of the high-fashion, celebrity portrait photographers! For those not photographically minded, The light is like those cool mirrors, with the lightbulbs around the edge – as the lighting is coming from all edges It’s very even & eliminates all shadows. (flattering, for those with the ‘right’ face;))

Well a few days ago, I random looked on eBay for one & found they were on there! (well, isn’t everything these days?!?) so snapped one up! Utter bargain – when I first heard about them, they were going for around £200 , I got one for just over £50… eBays awesome! Here are a few pictures, save me describing it:D

It simply fixes onto the front of a regular flash gun, & redirect’s/modifies the light so that it comes out all around the lens! Great for portraits, details & pretty much anything you can imagine… I’ve had a few plays with it so far & I’m hugely impresses… but I’ll no doubt be using it on lots of shoots, so will aim to post a full review!

March 5, 2010 - 11:00 am

Leon - Yeah definitely post some pics of what the results look like! And can’t wait to see the new webpage Simon, especially with the current one already being pretty good!
Cheers
Leon

March 1, 2010 - 6:45 pm

Laura Lawson - Oh Im gonna need me one of those! Bet its good for dance floor shots. Go play with it and show me how great it is before I get on ebay…

my first ever wedding photos, from 5 years ago!

Currently I’m going through my wedding portfolio & making a new, up-to-date one! I do this every year & it never, ever, ever gets any easier, I currently have around 500 images that i need to reduce to a reasonable amount!!

With last year being such an amazing year for weddings & engagements, I have tons of new pictures to include!!, But sadly, this also means some of the older one have got to go!

So before the new portfolio goes live, I thought I’d take some time to look at my older images that featured in portfolios past!!

These, as the title suggests, from 5 years ago, my first wedding! I’ve kept some of these in my portfolio, (through 5-6 revisions!), mainly for sentimental reasons!! 1st one always being special and such!

But it feels the right time to replace them!

These are from Adrian & Jackies wedding, at The Royal Pavilion, in ‘05. At that time I worked with Adrian & he saw some of my (early studenty, arty) photos being used on the office newsletter, & asked If I’d shoot his wedding!! Crazy leap from pretty pictures of benches, water droplets & lamposts… to one of the most important days of someones life, but a totally amazing experience!

Since then I’ve had the priviledge of photographing sooo many weddings, but Adrian & Jackie’s is always going to be a special one for me!, If it wasn’t for them asking (& being super nice about my complete amateur status) I never would have got a start in this, most awesome of businesses!! So, Thanks guys!

Technical stuff, for the photography minded! – These were shot with a Canon EOS 300V film camera and a 28-90mm 3.5-5.6 lens… with some ultra basic, Fuji ISO 400…  I probably shot around f/3.5, as I’ve always shot wide open!

February 26, 2010 - 11:05 am

Alex - really nice! i think your first are better than some probably take in a lifetime! cant wait to see the new portfolio/website! – taken long enough!

Random Friday

Another quick post today, By now you’ll probably have noticed that my posts are much more frequent these days! Exciting stuff eh!

I’m actively trying to be a better blogger, scheduling posts for when I’m away, posting random photos that I like… just trying to use this blog a bit more! originally it was just a place to put wedding photos, but I figure, as its my site, my brand… I can put up anything I like!!

Afterall, the main site is full of weddings & the (soon to be launched!) new site is full to bursting with weddings, engagements, bridal sessions & other lovely things… I imagine you not only wanna see nice pictures on the blog, but maybe you want to know abit more about me! (Well, I hope!! haha)

So, what have I been upto this week?

Working on my new website… which is really coming on nicely… it’s actually starting to look finished!!

I’ve actually been impressing myself with my coding abilities!! Was always a bit of a weakness at uni, used to wait til certain classmates got it done, then kinda sorta copied it!! (oops.. cheers Matt!!) but now I’m actually pretty solid… yeah not as fluid or as quick as a professional coder… but enough that the new site is going to be properly swish!!

The other thing I’ve been upto…

Watching the winter olympics!! Lots of late nights for me! My sport of choice is Hockey & the BBC are just about covering it… Some amazing scores… even been dipping into Womens Hockey… 18-0 Canada v China the other day… amazing stuff!! Can’t wait for the later rounds of the Mens hockey though, If the Russians & Canadians should meet, that will be s-p-e-c-t-a-c-u-l-a-r!!

If only the summer olympics were half as much fun!

To-do lists… As I get deeper into business, I’m finding I’m keeping lists for everything… Is this natural? currently my desk is full of lists with random sprawl on them.. mostly about killer ideas for the new website… most of them totally unfathomable to anyone but me… I even have some shopping lists lying around… mainly clothes… no food… my priorities may be off!

Maybe I subconciously write in code, or maybe my mind is just a proper mess… who knows!!

This weeks been pretty special for my lists… have produced about 10 lists…for one section of the new site! brilliant, nice & organised… but no, sadly all of them contradict one another…

To pad this post out a bit more.. here are some random pictures I took early this year of the snow, I figured I wouldn’t be posting them til we had more snow… but the Olympics has got me feeling all wintery…

the next generation of wedding photographers

I was just sorting through some of last years weddings (for the new portfolio) & came across these lovely shot’s – which I’d totally forgotten about!! (& for some reason, they never made the blog!!) It’s amazing how fast weddings fly past, & I’m documenting them!! I can’t imagine how quick they must go for the Bride & Groom, as well as all the guests!

Although its a huge shame its a Nikon, was trying to keep this a Canon only zone!! – (I’m sure theres a joke about Nikon’s being toys in there.. but I don’t want to offend the internet!!)

February 18, 2010 - 11:20 am

Simon Fazackarley - Haha, Thanks Stu, no doubt! Probably drinks less caffeine than I do, so doesn’t have shaky hands :) … also, Nikon’s are much sharper than Canon’s… *rolls eyes*…

February 17, 2010 - 10:17 pm

stuart cooper - I’d love to see if his images are sharper than yours!!!!