Hello All

[gedbrogan]

My name is Gerard Brogan; I currently reside in Leeds, UK. I have been a photojournalist for some time. Mainly in the USA covering health care, social justice and labour issues. I am just now launching a website to tout myself as a photographer in the UK.

http://www.gerardbrogan.com

Any comments/feedback welcome on this newly launched site.

I also have a question; tonight I dropped my Minolta beercan lens from a height of about two foot, onto concrete! The lens looks ok but was hard to get on my Sony alpha 700, the camera would not register it.

I need someone who is knowledgeable to look at this lens to see if it is worth saving. Does anyone know such a person in the UK? Preferably near me or Cambridge or London where I travel to a lot.

I would like to thank all who contribute to this site, specifically David Kilpatrick who seems to be everywhere I look when it comes to Minolta and Sony and other cameras too. I hope to add to the fund of knowledge here when I can

[David Kilpatrick]

That's a rich website, it works fine on my system (24 inch iMac) and some strong images. Good luck. Leeds is a good base, given your multicultural interests. We have of course got Adrian Paul with his Sony spares and Alpha lens hire based in the Headrow, Leeds city centre (Adrian was the Minolta Club admin from 1981 to 1995, and became a specialist dealer in accessories after that - along with taking our lens hire stock and running that). I used to spend much of my time in Leeds because the best photo labs were there - I would drive 60 miles to get a roll or two of film processed on a one-hour service.

David

[gedbrogan]

David, Thanks for the tip , I will look Adrian Paul up. Thanks too for the comments on the website.

[gedbrogan]

By the way , my website was made by neon sky.They are a great outfit out of the USA, reasonable pricing and they love photography and photographers. They have magmum photographers and national geographic amongst their clients.

[gedbrogan]

I am noit finding adrian paul on a gogle search woudl anyone know the name of his store? I might just walk up and down the headrow and get some exercise!

[David Kilpatrick]

01332 448 664

[bakubo]

I used to spend much of my time in Leeds because the best photo labs were there - I would drive 60 miles to get a roll or two of film processed on a one-hour service.

With the price of gasoline and the traffic it probably wouldn't be too cost effective to do that anymore!

[David Kilpatrick]

That was in the 1980s, when we charged £450 a day for photography and I've worked out that relative to property prices, that would be £4,500 today. Day rate? More like month rate... These days loads of studios work for £300 a day or less on commercial shots, not that they should. They can make £5000 out of a wedding customer if they are lucky, but can't find any way get business to budget decent fees.

I've just walked over new gravel on the way back from the post. The local church has had tens of thousands spent on cleaning it up, because the Duke of Roxburghe's daughter gets married on Saturday and Prince Charles and the entire royal crowd are there. It's about 200 yards away but they won't need to come past, so no-one has offered me free door painting or new gravel. I'll be interested to see who does their wedding photography, whether it's someone in the £5k-£10k bracket, or the local town studio on £500 and hoping the print orders come out well.

Richard (son) spent all today at Marcus Bell and Jeff Ascough's joint seminar (£200 for the day, sold out) in Manchester. Ken Lam and some friends flew in from Hong Kong to hear the talks. The world has certainly turned upside down - the money now is in wedding photography, and there is very little of the commercial shooting I used to do still happening outside London (there is not much manfuacturing to support it). Also, there are hardly any of labs which used to survive doing 60 minute superb quality E-6 processing as their mainstay.

Could the root of all this be oil prices?

David

[gedbrogan]

Thanks for the phone number Dave. I am not sure the root of the problem is oil prices, I think they are a symptom of the root problem.
Interesting comments on the state of wedding and commercial photography, informative.