iPowerUP have created a range of advanced accessory mobile power products for consumers and business professionals.

Ergonomic, slim, and shock-resistent  the multi-functional chargers double your battery life with options to extend the the use of your iPhone or Blackberry smartphone.

iPower Tote provides multi‐charging capabilities to significantly extend the usage time of an iPhone.  This stylish wallet offers protection and portable power for iPhone 4/4S users.

A mobile docking station, the iPower Charging Case is for ‘on the go’ 3G/4G smartphone users providing portable power and protection to significantly extending the iPhone usage.

With built in FM transmitter iPower FM makes easy wireless listening through your radio speakers. Alternatively iPower Amp provides a wireless boom box experience via Bluetooth to your smartphone.

Available now from photogether.co.uk

Grablet have come up with a great solution to those tricky iPad handling situations.

This multifunctional cover for your iPad is made from rubberised plastic.  Available in a range of rainbow colours the sleek and sexy design ensures all the buttons and ports remain accessible.

Choose how you want to use your Grablet, carry it or hang it.  Easily adjusted for a custom fit, the straps are quick to clip in or out for multiple uses.  The hand strap doubles as a prop to place your iPad at the perfect angle for typing.

Available now from photogether.co.uk

Combine old and new technologies with the Booqpad.  This wallet style case holds your iPad 2 on one side with space for your notepad and pen on the other.  Designed symmetrically, the Booqpad is suitable for left or right handed use.

Need more space? Then the Booq Taipan Shadow is what you are looking for.  A compact and lightweight messenger bag with lots of room for your documents or accessories in addition to  your iPad.

Booq Taipan Spacesuit is made from elegantly textured smooth neoprene with a silky sheen to protect your iPad yet is slim enough to slide into any bag or backpack.

Check out the range of Booq iPad Bags available from Photogether here.

Do you have a variety of computer hardware? Do  you have some images on your iPad, others on your MAC or Windows PC? Have you ever thought how great it would be if you could share your keyboard with your iPad?

Now you can.

J5create have developed a range of docking stations and switches that make it simple for you to transfer files between two computers, share a keyboard and mouse or add another monitor.  Whether it is Mac to Mac, Mac to iPad, Mac to PC, PC to PC, PC to Android Tablet J5 create make it possible to move seamlessly between the two.

Available now from photogether.co.uk

Three chances to WIN a Photo Book package upto a value of £265

Our second photo competition is sponsored by Aperture Books who are offering THREE photo book packages as prizes, first prize is valued at £265!

The theme for this photography competition is “Togetherness”.

Get shooting those images to be in with a chance of winning one of the fantastic Photo Book prizes donated by our sponsor Aperture Books.

First Prize: 2 Deluxe Photo Books up to a value of £265. Choose from A3 landscape or 297mm square.  Each Deluxe Photo Book is complete with dust jacket, ribbon page marker and presentation box.

Second Prize: 1 Deluxe Photo Book up to a value of £135. Choose from A3 landscape or 297mm square.  Each Deluxe Photo Book is complete with dust jacket, ribbon page marker and presentation box.

Third Prize: 1 Standard Photo Book up to a value of £105. Available in a range of sizes.

Togetherness

Demonstrate your creativity, technical ability and originality by producing an image that best represents the theme ‘Togetherness’ for your chance to win one of these terrific prizes. There are no restrictions on the type of image that can be entered, opening up artistic opportunities for post production creativity as well as imagination and expression behind the camera. Photoshop or other manipulation techniques are permitted, but all entries must be the original work of the entrant.

Terms and conditions apply.

Aperture Books are all about quality and value for money.  Here are a few reasons why we have chosen to work with Aperture books:

• Easy to use software to design and order your photo books
• Correct paper weight for photobook size
1. 300gsm for A3 & 297mm Square Photo Books
2. 200gsm for A4 & 210mm Square Photo Books
3. 170gsm for A5, A6 & 105mm Square Photo Books
• A photo book for life
1. Hand stitched pages
2. Archival quality inks
3. Hand finished
• Perfect presentation
1. Personalised covers and dust jackets
2. Professionally creased pages for lay flat appearance
3. True panoramic image across the spread
4. Presentation (personalised) box option
• Depth of Range
1. Wedding Book
2. Parents Photo Book
3. Preview & Guest Photo Books
• 60% discount available for professional photographer sample photo books

The easy to use software makes it possible for anyone to design their own album but it is the quality of product together with the Professional Photographer’s images and page design that makes these great products just the perfect combination for Wedding Books, Boudoir, Portrait Photobooks and Preview Books.

The Booq Python Camera Bag Collection is for serious photographers who really want to protect their camera equipment in style. Booq have always been associated with manufacturing bags and backpacks for tablet and laptop computers and now they have introduced a range specifically designed to carry cameras and other photographic accessories including memory cards, lenses and laptops as well. The Booq Python collection unlike many mass market bags uses sturdy, densely padded dividers which can be moved and configured in a number of different ways to suit your kit and requirements. All the bags have a durable water repellent ballistic nylon outer which holds its shape even when the bag is not full – no more saggy rucksacks!

The collection starts with the Python Toploader Camera Bag and these are ideal for traveling light but still transporting a DSLR with either one midsize lens attached or 2 smaller lenses. A great starter camera bag but if you want to transport up to 4 lenses and an iPad then you will need to look at the Python Courier Camera Bag. With padded walls and configurable padded dividers this is a versatile camera bag which we found easy to convert to a more casual everyday bag by removing the the U shaped padding and dividers.

Booq are also renowned for ensuring their products exceed expectations and the next camera bag in the range the Python Sling Camera Bag certainly achieves this. It has a great side loading facility which means you can easily access your cameras (it can hold either 1 or 2 DSLRs) whilst still wearing the bag, although we would caution against making this your default action. It also will hold up to 4 midsize lenses, a large zoom lens and tripod plus a MacBook Air (11″ or 13″) or iPad. We found the concealed interior slots perfect for memory cards, spare batteries etc.

The Python Pack Camera Bag is the daddy of the collection and holds enough gear to equip the photographer for every situation, in one ergonomically designed camera backpack. Like the Sling it can store either 1 or 2 DSLRs, 4 midsize lenses, one zoom lens and a tripod, but the pack allows both an iPad and a 15″ Mac Book Pro to be stored in a separate compartment. There are numerous pockets for accessories, probably more than you will ever need.

Thorsten Trotzenberg, Founder & CEO of Booq believes “The needs of a photographer today differ greatly from just a few years ago. The Python camera bag design is focused on accessibility, protection, comfort, and the ability to customize to adapt to the gear you’re carrying. The camera bag is just one of many tools to get that perfect shot and keeping your gear organized and protected ensures you’ll be ready when that moment happens.”

Finally all Python camera bags are tagged with a Terralinq serial number. Once you are registered, the Booq Terralinq service may help reunite you with your lost & found bag.

WinWithPhotogether competition results – Life Through a Tube.

Firstly a big thank you to everyone who entered our first photography competition and apologies for the delay in announcing the winner and the highly commended entries.

We had over 300 entries which was truly fantastic and so many good entries that it made the task of the judges much harder than we anticipated. However that said they all enjoyed looking through the images. It was very close in the end but the winning image from Patrick Feeney is definitely a worthy winner. It would be great if Patrick could share the winning album with us once it is completed.

As well as Patrick’s winning entry we also have 18 highly commended images and these will all receive a 15% off voucher for use against any Jorgensen products on photogether.co.uk plus a certificate from our judges and sponsors.

Our next competition “Togetherness” is due to commence on 1st May 2012 and our Sponsor is Aperture Photobooks an exciting new range of Photobooks available from Photogether. We hope everyone will enter again and encourage their friends and colleagues as well.

“Fashion Lux” is all about style and colour.  Mario Acerboni  well known for their high quality and  stylish wedding albums are now offering a whole range of coloured pages, instead of the traditional slip in pages of black or white. Photographers can now colour coordinate Mario Acerboni wedding album covers with “Fashion Lux” pages to provide the bride with the opportunity to match her album to her wedding day colour scheme.

Available in eight vibrant colours choose Fashion Lux pages to complement or contrast with the wedding photograph album cover colours.  Further enhance the package by printing the images with stroke lines to match the page colour.

To buy now from Photogether click the button above or click here if images are disabled

Notes from a Photo Studio

When photographers set up a studio they look to lighting, flash guns, backgrounds, lenses and a layout. They spend hours trawling the net and trade shows comparing prices, reviews and specs of each component part, often going for a one hit answer-all deal, which they soon find out doesn’t answer all at all. It is often said that you should always use an expert, and this is true. Creativity Backgrounds is a company specialising in photographic backdrops. They sell paper, fabric, varitone, vinyl, muslin, velour, chromakey, stands, clamps and even the tape to stop the photographic backdrop from flapping around on the floor and whizzing up and curling round the model!

Creativity Backgrounds made it their business to get down to the nitty gritty and know what professional photographers want and need. So much so, this is why professional photographers have been using their photographic backgrounds for over 30 years! The same pantone you order today will be the same as it was last year and for the next 30 years, guaranteed hotspot free and seamless, allowing your lighting to just do its thing and you get creative behind the camera.

So what’s the importance of having the correct photographic background? Does it really make that much difference? Why not just drop in a colour in the post-editing process, or just stick a gel on your lights and make do with that? In response, I usually fire a question back: “What made you get into photography?” while the answer might be money (!), the main driving force is a desire to ‘capture’ an image, a moment, a composition. Many photographers are creative souls, who see frames of shots in their everyday lives, whether this is making the coffee in the morning or walking down the street to get the milk. They naturally compose a structure around a “scene”. So why should being in the studio be any different? Indeed one could argue that it is even more imperative to allow yourself greater creative freedom here than anywhere else. It is in the studio that you have control over what you shoot: you control the lighting, the composition, the styling, the framing, the model, in fact everything. So why on earth would any photographer want to restrict themselves to a gel and an immobile model? It seems crazy to me. Whilst I agree that gels have their place in the studio, there is a reason professional photographers use coloured backgrounds. First and foremost using a coloured backdrop allows the model to move. Simple. Try it, you will find that using a coloured background will allow yourself to pull back and shoot full length images or quickly zoom in and capture that expression you see glinting in the model’s eyes, directing your model to move as you shoot.

Secondly, using a coloured photographic backdrop allows you to set up a shot as you want. It allows you to be the director, not dictated to by some plastic gel on a lamp. It also allows you to set up really creative lighting solutions, which the model can move in and out of, casting shadows and atmosphere, or flooding the whole with uniform light to enliven the whole set and background with a flood of colour. Boudoir photographers, for instance, have long been enjoying the thrill and creative stimulus that a coloured backdrop allows you. Switching between black, crimson, sunflower, royal purple to create and style different looks for their models, also makes for more sales, as your sitters feel compelled to buy not just your high-key or black background moody shots, but also the additional prints taken using colour.

I would also urge any photographer who spends more than £25 on advertising a year (which let’s face it means all of us!), to buy a couple of different colours even just in the half-width roll size, take some shots and USE them in your advertising images. Whether these are print ads, online directories, local paper, your studio window, or just your business cards. Even if people end up booking you just for the high-key stuff, you’ll have made your portfolio stand out among the usual suspects simply by adding some creative colour into your marketing portfolio. This really works.

Also, any of you shoot animals, jewellery, products? Not every product is best represented slapped onto a white or black background, why not put silver on Damson or Crimson, gold on Royal Purple. Try shooting a whole collection on one colour to help your client create a seasonal look for a range, it also means that they’ll come back wanting a change of colour. And what does that mean? Ah, yes, it means repeat business and um, yes, revenue!

In short, using coloured backgrounds, enables you to style your shots, gives you the freedom to light creatively and also inspires you as a photographer to come up with compositions, looks and lighting to really set yourself apart from your competitors. Coloured backgrounds add Creativity to your portfolio and inject a compelling vision to enable you to stay ahead of the market and to encourage repeat business. What is your next shoot? Can you try adding a colour there? What colour would complement the subject? Or maybe like me, sometimes I buy a random colour and then think what I would shoot and that in itself drives me to look for and win business in areas which I might not necessarily have thought were in my remit. Turns out “It’s What’s Behind your Great Images” that makes all the difference! Try a coloured background for yourself and see the difference it makes to your own professional practice, portfolio and revenue! Let us see what you shot!

Article by Vanessa Champion, photographer

Images © Nicole at The Hourglass

“The backgrounds were fantastic to work with. They added a wonderful richness of colour and subtlety of tone and made control of the complex lighting that much easier.”
Marko Dutka FBIPP

“In this current climate returning custom is more and more important, so with this in mind, I am changing so much at Avant Photographic, in order to keep loyal customers interested in maintaining their family portraiture collection. Gone is the white hi-key background, here is the new coloured background. Creativity Backgrounds are helping me to achieve my vision and keep customers excited by ever-changing trends and unique portraits.”
Phil Burrowes, Avant Photographic MPA (se) Cherub Photographer of the Year 2008, 2009

To buy now from Photogether click the button above or click here if you have images disabled