Bedfordshire Wedding & Portrait Photography by James McClean » Portraits

Luton International Carnival 2010

James — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:35:09 +0000

This guy had an awesome beard!

The school of samba is my favourite float, so many colours!

Even the balloon lady was dressed up

The guy on the right is actually a costume

Carnival people enjoying the funky fun

I found this guy amusing

Had an awesome time at the Carnival in Luton earlier today. Loads of colours and happy people as always and the weather just about managed to hold out for us

I shot the Carnival last year as well – check out the images here.

Aldenham Country Park

James — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:07:24 +0000

Super cool reflection shot of Kerry

Really beautiful natural portrait

I think this tree was carved like this - might just be some kind of freaky tree

We visited Aldenham Country Park near Elstree this weekend. We were going for a picnic but I also wanted to be sneaky and scout the location for a fast approaching pre-wedding photo shoot. It was way less interesting there than I had expected (I imagined it would be super amazing!) but still pretty cool.

We got totally lost on the way due to a total lack of road signs and ended up in a really beautiful local village called Letchmore Heath, I’m going to have to return at some point and take some photos there too!

Shakespeare’s House

James — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:54:20 +0000

Shakespeare's House

Seen through a window of the gift shop

Stratford Upon Avon Food & Drinks Festival

Making tasty Crêpes

Abricots & Fraises

Silhouetted Saxophonist

One of the stall owners

Bridge over the River Avon

Ice cream narrow boat

Cool shot of Kerry

Fantastic bridge in Barford

We spontaneously decided to visit Stratford-Upon-Avon this weekend. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too much of a long journey but it took twice as long as it should have, we got stuck in traffic on the way into Stratford as there was a Food & Drinks Festival which we had no idea about!

I only took my 50mm lens so I had to move around to get the framing right on each photo. I love the photo of the ice cream shop/narrow boat, somehow managed to catch a seagull in mid flight – it really was a great example of “The Decisive Moment”.

Rance’s Rockin’ Chair Band

James — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:48:28 +0000

Loads of firsts in this post, 1st time I’ve shot a band, 1st time I’ve basicly put an advert up on the photoblog and 1st time I’ve posted in this format. Click “More…” or the image above and scroll down for more photos!

This fantastic band were playing at Lydia and Justin’s wedding. They’re called Rance’s Rockin’ Chair Band and you can check out their website here. I was massively impressed with how awesome they were. They played a fantastic version of “I wanna be like you” from “The Jungle Book” I found a spare moment between shooting and asked them if they would like a couple of shots out on the balcony and this was the result!

They’ve got a couple of CDs available on their website which I’m sure are excellent but if you’re in the area you should definitely go and see them live. There’s a list of upcoming gigs available here.

Just as a side note: I’m getting nothing for this, they don’t even know I’ve posted it yet! I just thought they were really cool and deserved some recognition.. and of course the photos are super amazing

Luton International Carnival 2009

James — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:14:18 +0000

This last week has been so busy with part 1 of the street fashion/urban portrait shoot on Tuesday, Lydia & Justin’s wedding on Saturday and Luton International Carnival on Monday. I’ve taken almost 2000 images in under a week! Full blog posts will be coming to the front page of the site within the next few days with images from the 1st two events. I thought I’d stick the images from the carnival on here.

It was a crazily super hot day and there were thousands of people everywhere, oh and it was REALLY noisy! Had a pretty cool time though Loads of colourful costumes as you can see, the guy in the van stood out as something a bit different! I also got the mandatory feet shot at the end.

John – Smile

James — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:51:30 +0000

Another shot from inside on a dark evening this shot was taken as ISO 5000, you can see the noise/grain but I’ve found that with the 5DII as long as the quality of light is good the amount isn’t so important.