This was a super little shoot where this little fellow got to smash up a big cake for the photo shoot. Everyone involved had an enormous amount of fun and a lot of squashed yummy cake. Awesome.
© Mike Barrett Photography 2018 – All Rights Reserved
Fun
The Complexities of Pizza and being 5 Years Old
It’s difficult to manage those emotions and choices when you are 5 years old.
Take pizza for instance. What topping to have? What drink to go with it? To wear the free hat or not wear the free hat? To order a side of garlic bread or not! Etc.
Still, the best thing about being 5 and going out for pizza is that it can turn out to be a lot of fun too.
Click on images for slideshow.
© Mike Barrett Photography 2018 – All Rights Reserved
Tough Mudders
A good friend of ours hired me to photograph her sons birthday bash. No probs I said.
This was a brilliant and fun photo shoot. Although I hadn’t quite anticipated just how difficult a shoot it was going to be until I got there. This delightful muddy course is the Fitness Success Obstacle Gym, Wakefield Road, Oulton, Leeds, West Yorkshire. Their motto is ‘Think Outside The Gym’. Well, we were well and truly outside the gym, that’s for certain and for sure.
My task was to follow over 30 lads around the course and get some decent shots of the action. That was the remit. Simple right? Nope!
I didn’t have time to recce the site before turning up for the event, so getting into the optimum positions to get the prime shots was difficult at best and a veritable nightmare for the rest of the time, certainly when you consider the ground conditions. It’s not that I was particularly concerned about getting muddied up either, that much was a foregone conclusion. I was, however, much more concerned about my kit. If I had dropped my camera in the kind of mud that I was surrounded by for most of the duration of the shoot, it would have been the end of camera and lens. So slipping and falling in was not an option at all. To further compound the issue I was wearing trainers; an old pair, as I don’t currently own a pair of wellies, and for much of the course it very much felt like I was walking on an ice rink made of wet dough.
That said, I did manage to survive relatively unscathed with all my kit in tact, even though there were some hairy moments, and also managed to get some cracking shots of the event. It was a lot of fun to photograph to say the very least. In fact, a fun time was very much had by all.
Success Obstacle Gym’s Website: fitnesssuccess-obstaclegym.co.uk
© Mike Barrett Photography 2017 – All Rights Reserved
Color Me RAD, Harewood House Estate, Leeds – 2015
Last year was the first time I had been to this event and it was a lot of fun watching hundreds of people run 5k then get totally covered in paint. We went back again this year. I was once again armed with my camera kit, while my wife ran the 5k but this time with our daughter who is two and a half years old. I think my wife carried our daughter around the whole course to be honest, which is like a double workout, so hats off to my wife for that effort.
The day was a lot of fun and as promised, full of colour. I am of the opinion that as much as people love to run the 5k, most people turn up just to throw paint at each other. Fun? Oh yes! It’s brilliant to see so many people letting their hair down, getting absolutely drowned in paint and dance to funky vibes. The day is full of laughter, smiles and pure joy. A fab spectacle indeed and great to photograph!
Check out their website here… COLOR ME RAD
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
“Don’t tell him pike”!
My wife and I have attended the Haworth 1940’s event for the last three years running.
It is a fantastic event set in the heart of Bronte Country in West Yorkshire where local people along with many visitors kit themselves out in 1940’s get up in celebration of an era past.
The entire village gets into the spirit of things and the place is transformed, to such an extent in fact, that you may well be forgiven for thinking that you had walked through some kind of wormhole and actually been transported back in time.
There are many attractions to see including Swing, Jive and Lindy Hop performances, a Military and Vintage vehicle parade, a ‘We’ll Meet Again’ concert, a Market Marquee in the park and an array of food stalls and places for refreshment, such as the NAAFI Café or perhaps even the Keep Calm & Carry On Café and much, much more. You would be hard pushed to find a more enthusiastic and much loved event on the calendar.
If that’s not enough for you, there are always the steam trains making their usual regular trips up and down the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway and let’s not forget the obligatory Spitfire flypast, which is always a crowd pleaser.
Great for small kids and really big kids. You know, like big kids in their 40’s!
Haworth itself is beautiful and well worth a visit regardless. It has some great pubs, some really fantastic and quirky shops and the surrounding scenery is just stunning.
Here are a selection of photographs of the event from the past three years. 2012, 2013 and 2014.
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
In the Sticks
Went out at the weekend with the family and we found an amazing field of tall grass stems. Couldn’t pass up the chance of a bit of a photo shoot. My daughter loved them. It’s fabulous being out and about in the great outdoors. Nature is so beautiful at times. Even in the middle of winter.
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
Hay and Jay – Engagement Shoot
A fabulous couple. Really great fun to be around. These two have a natural enthusiasm for all things good in life and it rubs off on you when you spend time with them. Had a great deal of laughs with them on this shoot.
Location: Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds.
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
Color Me RAD, Harewood House Estate, Leeds. 17/05/2014
My wife and a handful of her colleague’s took part in the Color Me RAD 5K fun run at Harewood House in Leeds today. I went along for the shear joy of capturing the madness as it exploded in front of me. Literally!
Armed with a bag full of kit and a smile I immersed myself in the crowd and started snapping away.
The day was just brilliant. I don’t think I have ever witnessed such a diverse collection of people having so much fun at the same time, which is a bold statement considering the partying I used to do in my twenties.
At one point I overheard someone say that her face was aching because she couldn’t stop smiling.
If you have never taken part, I highly recommend that you do. You will have a blast.
Check out their website here… COLOR ME RAD
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
BB and Bluebells – Hartshead Woods, West Yorkshire. 12/05/2014
My daughter and I went for a picnic and a stomp around a local Yorkshire beauty spot. The bluebells were out and it was a stunning spring day. Such a beautiful time of year, springtime in England.
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
ALL.4.ONE
I recently embarked on a photography project involving my iPhone. I wanted something to do when I had a spare moment. Do you know the moments I mean? You know, when you find yourself in a waiting room before an appointment or perhaps needing to kill time having arrived early for a train, waiting for those vegetables to roast in the oven, in a queue at the supermarket or indeed perhaps just sat in the WC etc.
This project was really all about the edit. I searched through a lot of my photographs from the masses that I have, and chose a large amount of portrait shots and some other random images too, but mostly portraits. Many of these images are of friends and acquaintances that I have taken over the last few years. Some of the images were captured on my Canon DSLR’s, some on my iPhone and others on my Canon G12. Once I had chosen the images that I wanted to use, I dumped them all onto my iPhone. That is where the editing fun began.
Using a combination of different apps, it was my intention was to erode each image so it displayed slightly differently after each and every process of editing. I wanted to end up with 4 different versions of the same image, but with subtle changes. The way I have displayed the images in four boxes was to show the degradation process and also for there to be a nice continuity and uniformity across the project.
There are 100 images in all. The apps that I used in this project were ;Snapseed, Instagram, PhotoToaster, Pixlr-o-matic, Photogene2 and Retouch. It’s been a lot of fun to do,
All edits were made on the iPhone.
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
clicksnapomatic (two)
My wife and I recently spent a day on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway with her father and his partner. It was my father-in-law’s birthday so we had treated him to a day out on the steam locomotives, as he has a great love for such things.
We travelled from Pickering to Whitby and back again, stopping at many of the quaint little village stations on the way and taking in the scenery, which was breathtaking. There was also a Swinging Sixties event taking place on this particular day. This event consisted of period locomotives and motor vehicles (some beautiful classics), along with live 60’s music at various stations along the railway.
As ever I took my SLR but I also took my iPhone as I had decided that I wanted to document the day with some iPhoneography and use the apps that I mentioned in clicksnapomatic (one) to do the edits. Since then I have acquired the ‘Snapseed’ app which is a great little app and really easy to use.
Between us both, my wife and I managed to take a mammoth amount of photos over the course of the day, which is nothing unusual for us to be honest. I also took a fair bit of film footage on my phone which I plan to edit and make into a small movie of the day. When it’s done I will post it here. The old engines were truly something to behold and it was fabulous to have seen so many of them in working order bringing delight and wonder to the many people, old and young, who were travelling on them. It was a brilliant day out and I would recommend to anyone who has a love of old steam trains or the countryside for that matter. Go and spend a day on the NYMR.
See the iPhoneography from the day out below…
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
clicksnapomatic (one)
I really enjoy the technology that is currently available at our fingertips, especially in terms of fun photography. As a photographer my kit and quality of image are things that are extremely important to me. It kind of goes without saying really. Having said that and all seriousness aside I have to admit that I am enjoying taking fun snaps with my phone and using the hands on apps that are available to do the quick and quirky edits like colour correction and texture overlays etc.
Of course with a phone camera you don’t have the same control that you have with an SLR and the quality of image is still vastly different but never the less, it is still a captured moment, a little snapshot of life, a memory frozen in time and I’m finding it rather a lot of fun to be honest!
So, here is a selection of images that were recently taken on my iPhone. All the editing was done on simple editing software apps that are available in the app store. The apps that I have been enjoying so far are, Instagram, PhotoToaster, Pixlr-o-matic, Photogene2 and Retouch.
This post is called ‘clicksnapomatic (one)’. I shall be posting more phone snapping fun soon. So look out for ‘clicksnapomatic (two)’ etc…
If you’ve been having similar photographic fun with your phone, let me know what apps you’re using and enjoying. Happy Snapping! (“,)
All Images are copyright:
© Mike Barrett Photography – All Rights Reserved
