Christina Lauder Portraits

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a very interesting woman named Annaleise Jacques, of Jacques Bakes Cakes , a newly formed cake company.  I've been intrigued with the whole cake industry of late.  The artistic merit in many of the creations often catches my eye.  It made me want to photograph them (in truth it made me a little hungry too - unfortunately the cakes I got to photograph were all cake dummies and therefore inedible). Her cakes are gorgeous and I can see that with Annaleise's character and drive she will have a thriving business in no time.  So as part of my new initiative of creating business links within the community I decided to join forces with Jacques Bakes Cakes to see if we could help each other out.  To start things off I invited Annaleise to the studio with some of her recent creations so that I could photograph them properly for her.  Photographing products without the knowledge or equipment of a professional can...

Recently I had the privillege of establising an affiliation with Baby Dolly , specialists in Antenatal Care. Baby Dolly, based in Hinckley and run by founder Lucy Dolly, carries out antenatel courses for both private and NHS clients.  They also conduct baby massage classes.  Their services include such things as TENS and birth pool hire and an online shop for a multitude of useful products for both during and after pregnancy.  They even offer a cool Pick and Pack Labour bag.  It almost makes me wish I could get pregnant again.  Well actually I could get pregnant again but my husband would kill me.  I was lucky enough to find Lucy through the schools work I do and we just seemed a natural fit.  We can both help each other out by passing on referrals and I can of course also help Lucy with her photographic needs.  So the first task at hand was to provide some much needed team photos which I was all to happy to provide. ...

This year I've joined up with The Advertiser and starting from last month I'll contributing with a regular column.  Here I will be providing simple tips and tricks to help the average person improve their personal photography.  Topics will include Understanding Apertures (f-stops), White Balance, Improving Your Exposures (when the camera can't quite get it right) and so much more.  Here is the first tip from the March issue on finding good light for taking portraits.  And by portraits this doesn't need to mean anything formal.  Looking out for good light is useful even if you just want to take a couple of quick snaps of your kids playing in the garden or out at the park.  This can be useful when on holiday with family or friends.  All too often I see photos on Facebook that could be improved if just a little thought was taken before taking the photo.  If there is something specific you'd like to learn about then please get in touch and l...

I was very lucky this year at the SWPP convention.  I met a number of suppliers and a few of which have turned out to be great contacts.  Two of which have chosen to use my images for their samples for display at Focus at the NEC for this years event.  And I must say it was an honour as well as great fun to see my images on display in such lovely products.  The first company is Artvue Canvas who chose to use one of my images as a cushion canvas, one of their new products.  The image looked stunning if I do say so myself.  I've been planning to use their services for my next canvas order as I've recently been looking at changing suppliers.  The second company is an album manufacturer called nphoto .  I had already planned on using this company for the portrait albums I am adding to my offering when I received a phone call asking if they could use my images in two of their sample albums.  In return they are giving me some samples fo...