Joe Bailey Photography

I’ve been doing a lot of event photography since I’ve been in Southampton, and whilst my new Sony A77ii (unusable at ISO 6400 and above) has a lot better ISO quality than my Sony A58 (unusable at ISO 800 and above) did I’m finding that I require, or rather want a new lens.

I currently use a Sigma 24mm F/2.8 lens (the only other lens I have is the Sigma 100-400mm F/4.5-6.5, highly unsuitable for event photography).

I also sold my portrait lens (Sony 50mm F/1.8), and am looking for a replacement for that at the same time.

I require a lens with a low aperture, such as F/2.8 or even better F/1.8 and something covering a range of 24mm to 50mm. I like having quite a wide angled lens as I have a cropped sensor DSLT and the wide angle lets me get more creative with my images.

I have found the following two candidates that seem to fit both requirements of a portrait and event lens.

Sony 16-50mm F/2.8 (Purchased 10th December)

Sigma 18-35mm F/1.8

To get in the Christmas spirit me and my friends visited Bournemouth Christmas Market and went to see the Coca-Cola Truck. There were a lot of shopping centres in Bournemouth with only about 3 shops in each which we found a bit strange. There was a cat cafe that I’m going to have to go back and try.

We saw an upside-down house.

The Coca-Cola Truck was extremely busy, and we didn’t even get any free cans of coke.

We went to the beach and took some shots of light painting. This was achieved by using bulb mode to keep the shutter open for the duration of the drawing.

I started doing a bit of Web Design for The Truprint Group and then started to take photos of their monthly quiz night too. The quiz was held at Neighbourhood. I’ve taken photos for the event for 3 months running and it’s been good to add yet another event to my portfolio. The bar is quite dark, so I had to use a high ISO resulting in quite grainy images, however, I started to use flash from October onwards.

27th September

25th October

29th November

I saw a post on Facebook that said photographer wanted and, having changed my attitude since going to university, I gave them a message. Next thing I know I’m photographing the Coco Bar & Lounge Comedy Night. Shooting this event made me want a new lens even more as I could have done with a bit more focal length. Even sitting in the front row the comedians were relatively far away. The surroundings were quite drab too, which didn’t make for interesting photographs. You can see some of the photos below:

I saw an advert for creative people on Solent Graduate Jobs and decided to apply. I met Zuby a week later and we had a lovely chat about life, and university, and what his thoughts were for our future. There are lots of exciting things scheduled to happen in the new year.

I had the opportunity to photograph his gig at The Joiners in Southampton which was part of his Perseverance tour. It was great to photograph all of the acts and I was thankful for the 12fps shooting speed on my Sony A77ii as the lighting changed so quickly. I actually managed to fill up my 64GB SD Card.

“They’re fantastic. Some of the best live shots I’ve received.”

– Zuby

Here’s me taking photos!

Check out this video by Groundive Productions:

I saw a post on a Southampton Freshers group on Facebook asking for a photographer to take some portraits. I decided to give it a shot and met Charley, who I learned was a singer and leaving university at the end of the week. We took lots of nice photos in and around the parks close to the university, but as light dwindled we had to call it a day. I touched up the photos and I’m really pleased with them. She’s going to use them to market herself.

Me and my friends went to watch the fireworks in Southampton. We went to the top of the IKEA Car Park in the hopes we’d have a great view, however, being a city, there were loads of buildings in the way. After that blunder, we went to take photos of the Guildhall in the dark but there were lorries in the way! I thought one of them looked like the Knight Rider lorry, so I took a panorama of that.