Music Awards

Gary Barlow
© Nat Jag/WireImage

The Music Industry Trust Awards in London on Monday 5th November 2012 saw Gary Barlow win the award. He already knew when he arrived as the whole event was in his honour. Not bad for a self taught pianist. Many celebrity guests including Nicole Scherzinger, Tulisa, Kimberley Walsh and of course the man himself Gary Barlow, plus many others.

Ice Age Live: World Premiere?

Nicola Mclean
© Nat Jag / WireImage

I was ask to photograph the celebrity arrivals for the 'Ice Age Live: A Mammoth Adventure' World Premiere. Only I was there Friday evening 02 November, and there had already been shows on 1st November and an afternoon show on that same Friday. Was it a World Premiere?

There was a mediocre guest list, with only a handful of that list turning up with their family to watch it. Pictured is Nicola Mclean.

Hamina, Finland Latest addition to Alamy

Hamina Town Hall
© Nathan Hulse/Alamy

A recent trip to visit family gave me the opputunity to photograph some attractions or local landmarks in the town near where I was staying. I packed my tripod for the long exposures required for low light / night photography.

I hope you think it was worth it. You can view my full collection on alamy here which inlcudes other pictures taken during my few days stay in Finland.

Sam Faiers Book Signing

Sam Faiers
© Nat Jag/WireImage

Weekend book signings on the outskirts of London sometimes get missed by the regular London press guys, as such they can be quiet for some signings. One such event was Sam Faiers from The Only Way is Essex aka TOWIE signing copies of her book at WHSmiths in Brentwood, Essex. I'm not a fashion expert, Sam in my opinion made a good effort with her choice of outfit, certainly not a drab black outfit.

Caroline Monks Party

Nicola McLean
© Nathan Hulse

I would guess many people would say "Who is Caroline Monk". She is Cancer survivor and hosted a party to celebrate the women involved in her cancer makeover campaign. She is also a PR and is involved amongst others the mercury prize awards. I did attend (as a photographer) a previous party of her's which was so well attended by celebrities, it was possible the same could happen on this occasion. Luckily it didn't and a few turned up, including Nicola Mclean who was recently in Celebrity Big Brother.

My Flash cable decided to stop working, I could only use the flash mounted on the top hot shoe, which tends to leave a horrible shadow in the background. On the link above, are my pictures, plus those from another photographer, you can see my pictures are slightly brighter, but also have the shadow in the background right.

Albelli vs Blurb books comparison

Both book covers

I recently ordered a book on Blurb.com, then a few months later a similar book from Albelli.co.uk. A friend asked how they compared with each other, so here are my few observations and conclusions. The books weren't ordered as a comparison, therefore wasn't intended as a direct comparison. Both were hardback with printed covers, Blurb book ordered with extra cost luster pages, while the Albelli one wasn't. I couldn't use Albelli's software on my mac as I have an older operating system, their online book creation software worked for my simple book design in this instance. 

The print quality of both books is perfectly acceptable for me and the colours matched as close as possible to those displayed on my colour corrected monitor. The first observation is that the cover pictures, which was an extra cost option for both are different. The extra cost with blurb is approx £8.00 and £4.00 with albelli on the book sizes I ordered. With the Albelli book the cover is glossy, while the blurb book is matte (glossy on their softcovers).

While the blurb book was ordered with luster pages as an extra cost option, it's also an extra cost with albelli at 15-20p per page depending on book size. The Albelli book pages were as glossy as the blurb book. The pages in the blurb are thicker, which you can see by the advertised paper weight.

Albelli Book binding

Blurb Book Binding

The other observation is the inside front cover of both book. In the blurb book you can see the stitching, while the albelli book is covered up. On a closer inspection the pages are glued or similar in the albelli book. I did have more pages in the blurb one, there may be a cut off point when they switch to stitching as I have another smaller blurb book which is glued.

Is one better than the other? Should you choose one over the other? I don't think so, they both offer slightly different book sizes. I will continue to use blurb.com for my annual personal portfolio that I have started doing, even if just to keep the sizes consistent. Albelli.co.uk will suffice my other book needs. If you want to be able to offer your books to the public for sale, then blurb is you option as they are the only company that I'm aware of that offer this service. I have used apples book service, via Aperture software, also available via iPhoto. I wasn't so impressed with the quality of that book. Whoever you may use, it's great to look at pictures on pages of a book, rather than on the screen. It's much easier to hand round to other people to look at as well.

Let me know how you get on with your books.

Law and order on Alamy

Council Chambers or Court Room
© Nathan J Hulse

Well, not quite as the title of this post suggests. More a picture council chambers, that is sometimes used as a court room for film sets. Law and order does prevail in these places, with many decisions being made.

Since the beginning of the year I have noticed that gekko images has been "Closed for re-development work" and still is. Not a good way to see images if no one can access the site. Although my link to log in still works. I have managed to block all my images from being sold, if anyone is able to buy images through the site. Gradually I shall be moving my collection to other picture libraries I use, Alamy seems to be the obvious choice for most of them. I just have to find the original files from my own records.

My stock collection with Alamy is becoming a miss-match of various subjects rather than a specialist style I was hoping to concentrate on.