Seppi has reached the finals of Master Photographer of the Year Awards 2011!

We are very proud and excited to have just discovered that Seppi has won 2 merit awards in this year UK Master Photographer of the Year Awards. We now have to wait until October to hear if one of his two images made it to be an overall UK winner........but even so, to make it this far out of thousands of entries is so exciting, well done Seppi!!!!

Copy of article in local newspapers:

Local photographer into finals of major Photo Awards




Stirling based photographer, Seppi Preston has won two merit prizes in a major international photography awards.



Seppi’s images are now in the finals of the forthcoming Master Photographer of the Year Awards 2011. The Awards are run by The Master Photographers Association (MPA), the UK's most respected organisation for professional photographers.



Seppi, owner of Lighthouse Studios in Causewayhead, now goes forward to the final judging and faces a nervous few weeks while he waits until the Awards Ceremony in October when the overall winners will be announced. The Master Photography Awards 2011 presentations ceremony will be held at the Gateshead Hilton in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne on Sunday 9 October.



MPA Chief executive, Colin Buck made this comment on Seppi’s achievement: "It is exciting to reach the Merit award stage of judging as Seppi was in competition with the very best photographers in the world. There were over 2,500 images submitted this year so to be awarded a Merit prize is a real success, well done to Seppi, and good luck in the final!"

Seppi's Got Talent!!!

May saw the Annual Master Photography Awards in Scotland, held this year at Dunblane Hydro.
And guess what....Seppi came away with FOUR awards. Considering there were over 900 entries this year, we are very proud.

This photo of Chris and Antonia's wedding won and Award of Excellence in the Complete Wedding category. Seppi loved the fun of their wedding day, and also was really happy with lots of the shots of Chris and Antonia - for this category you have to put together 10 photos, to capture the emotion of the day, which these photos certainly do!

This unique shot was for a corporate Christmas card (believe it or not) and we love the way that Fin the dog is almost rolling his eyes at what the guys behind him are wearing!!!! A merit award for this photo, this time in the contemporary portrait category.

And the photo that won Seppi and award of excellence in the family portrait category - the Richmond family, who had a ball during their session!!!

And last but not least - Chris and Antonia again, this time in the reportage wedding category - winner of an award of excellence.

Some familiar faces

I was really pleased to see not one but two wedding customers coming back this week to have their photos taken ... we took Lorna and Scott's wedding photos in 2006, and then Lorna's brother David married Marion in 2009 and now they both have gorgeous sons. So slightly different from wedding photography, the whole troop came in to get family shots taken, and fun was had by all!

Pre-Wedding Shoot - Eva and James

Eva and James came into our studio in Stirling for a pre-wedding shoot - this helps get used to the camera, and how I work. We started in the studio, with Eva and James getting into their new modelling careers! I really enjoyed it too, they were lots of fun.

Then with it being quite a nice day, we were able to get out to the park just next door, for some more photos. All in all a great session - I look forward to their wedding in May up in Inverness, think there might be quite a lot of laughter.

 

Corporate Photos

We were approached by Barty's solicitors to photograph their staff - they wanted informal, approachable photos of everyone for their website.

They enjoyed it, and we got some great pictures for their promotional use to help them stand out from the crowd.

Family Get-together

Well, here we are, back again after a VERY long blogging break - we had our busiest EVER quarter at the end of 2010, can't believe we got it all done! Then we took a family holiday in January (taking advantage of being able to take holidays during term time, for the last time before Mylo starts school in August).

So anyway, here we are, back again, and what a start to 2011 it has been. Family get togethers has been very popular for us in recent years - Seppi was delighted to photograph the Richmond family - with 19 people in the group, they were really happy at the variety of poses that Seppi captured; the kids had a great time too which shows in the photos.

They even managed a fun one, with everyone letting their hair down, and with some pretty impressive jumps!!!

Cathal and Sarah's French Wedding Extraordinaire!

We were over the moon that Cathal and Sarah O'Donnell asked us to capture their amazing wedding in France, near La Rochelle. They had chosen a venue very personal to them, Sarah's family home. We take our hats off to them, organising a wedding when you don't live in the country - from the gorgeous details all interspersed throughout the amazing gardens (even wellies had flowers in them!), to the band who had travelled hours from Paris (they found them on utube!!!). The flowers were all local (no, we won't give your secret away of where you stole the lavendar for the table from ... oops did I say you stole them, they just fell into your car didn't they!!!) Sarah had no less than two incredibly stylish dresses, and even her own personal stylist there to change her hairstyle from up to down (the sort of thing celebs have sarah!).Of course, the Irish craic on the day meant that the atmosphere was on a high all day until everyone left singing well into the small hours. A day and night no-one will ever forget!

Family Get-Together

The whole Kirton-Vaughan clan came to the Studio to get a family photograph done - they wanted lots of different combinations and little Finlay, only 7 months, was an absolute star throughout the whole session! This photo is of 4 generations of the family all together!

Birthday Celebrations

I was out photographing Mrs Edwardson's 80th birthday celebrations with all her family last night at the DoubleTree Dunblane Hydro. We had a good laugh (here are all the girls together), and I hope they all had a great night. Thanks to Mrs Edwardson for telling me I outshone Freddie Starr last night! (I THINK it was meant as a compliment!!!?)

Hello and welcome to the Lighthouse Studios blog.

So far 2010 has been a pretty busy year: Weddings, Portraits, Celebrities, Dogs, Seminars & Courses, Art Galleries, Commercial Photography, and more!

We have again been lucky and have had lots of beautiful brides & handsome grooms in beautiful locations at dozens of weddings across Scotland including Roman Camp, Norton House Hotel Edinburgh, St Mary's Dunblane, Park Lodge Hotel Stirling, Airth Castle, Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh, Ross Priory Loch Lomond, Church Of The Holy Rude Stirling, Stirling Castle, and most recently Cathal & Sarah's beautiful wedding at their family home close to La Rochelle, France - an Irish wedding in the French countryside, fantastic. Although after downing tools just after midnight then staying up drinking with the bride, groom and guests until 5 in the morning it didn't seem such a good idea the following morning having to get up to check out of our guest house (Au 33 rue Thiers if you ever need somewhere nice to stay in La Rochelle) after 4 hours sleep and having to spend the next 12 hours travelling home!

Our studio in Causewayhead has been a noisy place with the fun and laughter of many families, couples and individuals (and the occasional crying baby and barking dog!)

I managed a trip down to the National Portrait Gallery in London with good friend and excellent photographer Ewen Forsyth, to see the Irving Penn exhibition which was fantastic and inspiring. Also while in London I staged a mini wedding fair while staying at the Green Park Hotel and added to our 2010 wedding bookings in the process. With the National Gallery just round the corner from the Portrait gallery it would have been rude not to pop in and spend some time with some of the Masters. It really is awe inspiring being able to admire some of the world's best and most famous works of art from just a few inches away. A great way to end the afternoon; with Rembrandt, Monet, Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Caravaggio and Van Gough - they were pretty tight-lipped about passing on any tips though.

I was asked back to the Stirling and District Camera Club to do a seminar and short course on studio lighting which was a great fun evening and everyone tells me they enjoyed it - so a success!

We have also added training courses to our website to help other photographers or enthusiasts further their knowledge of things photographic.


We are going to be launching a free advice service where we will answer photography-related questions; whether you'd like to know the best compact digital camera or how to get the best out of you new digital SLR, we will endeavour to help.

May and June saw Jennifer and Me photographing over 1000 nursery children at Day Nurseries across Scotland which was great fun and we are both looking forward to doing it all again from September.

Following on from the successful 2009 launch of the event photography side of our business, where we set up our mobile studio and are able to print professional quality prints on site, we have been regularly attending Kidz World in Alloa and Playhouse Fun in Falkirk. Our event photography studio has also been at the Dunblane Fayre at the Dunblane centre, a dog show, a children's Disney themed lunch and disco, a few parties and Lighthouse Studios were proud to be chosen as the official event photographers and one of the prize sponsors at the Tommy's fundraiser event at Devonvale Hall Tillicoultry in June.

Our commercial photography has been good fun too, working with several local businesses including celebrity chef Nick Nairn and Stirling's most contemporary dental practice Tooth Plus who chose us to do the photography for the upcoming awards they will be entering.

Talking of awards, I recently won an award in the category of Complete Wedding at the annual Master Photographers Association Scottish Region awards - which was nice! Oh, and I have been appointed Chairman of the Master Photographers Association Scottish Region which is a real honour and I am really looking forward to. It will mean organising seminars, training and offering professional support to the hundreds of qualified members in the region. I will also be travelling to other regions in England and Wales giving seminars and training days - I had better start thinking about what I am going to say!