I was lucky enough to cover the Heineken Cup Final at Twickenham yesterday and it was one of the best shifts i think i have ever done !

I’ll start at the beginning, with my Aer Lingus flight from Belfast International Airport to London Heathrow.

I wasn’t able to book on all my camera gear, so ended up leaving with limited amount of stuff to cover this huge game. Darren Kidd had drove my 500mm lense from Scotland to London which helped a lot.

When i got to Twickenham, there were no shortage of fans, supporters and just great characters to take pictures of.

After our media meal, there was a meeting were photographers were briefed on the rules of where we could go and not go, what coloured bibs allowed you to be where and our positions, which had been marked out on the ground.

This is where i sat for the Ulster attack in the first half, but the second half was even better, as you ware sitting about 3 feet below pitch level.

Twickenham was such a big stadium, and the organisation was second to none. Darren took this pic of me pitchside, look at the shine off my bald head ! My picture is with an empty stadium, look at the difference when the fans started to arrive.

The great thing about a packed stadium is the background for your action pictures, i’ve saw a lot of good action pictures, and they aren’t as strong because of empty seats in the background, or scaffolding at one end of the pitch.

To give you an idea of the scale of this stadium, and how big of an occasion this was for players and fans, look at young Paddys face as he walks on the pitch.

Over 80,000 people at the final, and only one fool tried to run on and get close to the Ulster Team, everyone else were great, leinster and ulster fans together outside the ground, in the pubs etc.

All in all it was a great day, although didn’t get the result in the match we wanted, we did get treated really well, had a great weekend in London and Heineken fed us full of free beer !!

As you can see from my iphone pic of William Cherry in our Media Room after the game.

Came home today to find out my wife had bought me Photoshop CS6 Extended version. That was a nice surprise ! i’m just loading it onto my laptop and home computer at the moment. This is a lot different from the Beta testing version that was out on release, you can tell who has the beta version,

as This appears on start up

When you have the actual finalised version, you should see

This upon start up

Some of the things i like about this new Photoshop are :

The new crop tool functions the opposite way to how it did previously — the canvas shows the result with the base of the cropped canvas parallel to your display. In CS5, the crop area would rotate. A little hard to explain the difference, but it’s better, once you get used to it.

Both blending mode and opacity can be changed on multiple layers at once — select lots of layers and choose a blending mode or opacity to set it for all selected layers. Blending mode and opacity now also shown correctly when layers are hidden.

Layer styles can now be applied to groups in the same way they can be applied to bitmap, vector and type layers. There’s many reasons why this is an awesome feature, but my main use for it will probably be to apply more layer styles to objects — you can now have two or more drop shadows by nesting layers inside groups and applying layer styles to the groups. In my opinion, this is a far better technique than using Smart Objects for the same purpose, because this will allow documents to scale and maintain quality.

Also i love the built in Gradient Map Presets

I’m away to finish trying this CS6 out, i don’t always buy the newest Photoshop (although my wife bought this one !), but there are so many updates and new features in this new Photoshop, it’s well worth it.

Had a very quick photoshoot with Wayne McCullough yesterday at a skateboard park, i’ll not say how long it took me to get out of the deep Skate Bowl, but Free Willy were he tries to get over the concrete wall at the end comes to mind !!

Wayne is always a gentleman, and with his ister in Law, Nicola Bothwell, they’re one of the easiest teams to work with for photoshoots, and Wayne is a hero of mine (and Carl Framptons !) which makes spending time with him even better.

Well, on the 23rd May at The Old Courtroom in Antrim there will be an evening with Wayne, and tickets go on sale on Monday Morning 02894 463113

If your a boxing fan, this is not to be missed.

Nicola Bothwells Twitter is @NLBothwell

Waynes twitter is @WayneMcCullough

Today was the press conference for Prizefighter press conference in the Europa Hotel, Belfast. These usually consist of boxers sitting at a table, answering questions and just makes for headshots of the guys, so i knew i needed a few feature pictures if at all possible. Above is Joe Rea from Ballymena, a real nice guy, not hard to photograph as he has the boxers face, what i mean by that is a bit of hard lighting and he really looks the part.

Next up was Lurgans Ryan Greene, this is a boxer who can really hit hard, and he’s quiet and unassuming, so when i asked him to come into the toilets with me and my camera, he had a fantastic blank look !

I spotted some wallpaper i liked, but we had to cut throught the toilets to get to the locked room, i think it worked out ok, i hear Ryan will be fine after some counselling sessions !

Last, but by no means least was Eamon O’Kane. Eamon is fantastic to photograph, and after shooting an add for Betfair in his underwear he really knows how to pose. As you can see from the photo above, we went onto the roof of the Europa Hotel, it has SAFETY RAILS, but if i had of taken my pics here they would look rubbish.

We took a quick few pictures in the middle of the roof, and that’s fine but i really wanted to go past the huge safety Rail and take a shot with the old Europa sign behind him, but how do you ask a boxer, or anyone to climb over a safety rail 13 floors up ?

Ironically enough, Eamon was used to heights and didn’t blink an eye when asked. As you can see, the concrete between Eamon and the 13 storey drop is only knee height, and even lower where i was. We shot there for a few minutes and slowly made our way back on the legal side of the safety rail !

BUT, in my opinion it was well worth it, as i got the best picture of the day by far.

Just a very quick post about Friday night when i went to Holiday Inn in Belfast to photograph the boxing, i wasn’t being paid for going, i wanted to go and i had gave my word to Allio, who is Luke Wiltons dad and one of the nicest guys you could meet.

Not having to send photos, work to a deadline was great, and Allio and the BritishBoxing Board of Control were really helpful, so i was able to spend a limited amount of time in the Dressing rooms as the boxers were getting ready for the fight.

Above is Cruiserweight Moses Motavu, he along with the rest of the boxers were very cool about me taking pictures, i’m not sure i would be that relaxed. Anyone who knows me, knows i love shooting Black and White inside the camera, and changing the settings to see what i can get with little to no Work after the photo is taken.

Long Day, so i’m just posting a few photos from todays Photoshoot at The Giants Causeway for Prizefighter Middleweights which is being held at The Kings Hall on the 5th May. I was at the Causeway for 7.30am and it was one of the most glorious days i have EVER seen up at the North Antrim Coast ! It would be amazing if the NW200 could get the same amount of heat, sunshine.

I’ll update this in the next day or so, i’ll explain why Jo Rea was trying to light up the mountain with a Speedlight, why Anthony Leaver was dancing in public (see bottom picture !), The best stew in N.Ireland and how i was spoilt by some of the nicest lighting i’ve seen in this country.

Right, need sleep.

Paddy Barnes, represents the Holy Family ABC in Belfast and won the Ulster title in 2005, 2006 and 2007. He has faced Jimmy Moore from the St. Francis club in Limerick in each of his national finals being runner up in 2006 but winning the All-Ireland title 2007 and 2008 and Paddy is just back from Turkey, were he qualified for the London 2012 Olympics.

Hopefully my next pics of paddy will be with a Gold Medal !

If anyone is looking to contact Paddy, MG Sports Management is who to contact.

Was put on to this story by a few friends about a UK wedding photographers Westgate Photography, whose images were so bad, brides and grooms wanted their money back. Problem is, the company is bankrupt !, Take a look at some of their images and you will see why.

What about the bride ? what exactly did she think she was going to get for a few hundred pounds ?, i have come across this many a time

“Just e-mail any images you take “

If only i had a few pounds for every time i’ve heard that.

Take a look at some more of this companys pics and see what you think !!

Colin Morgan, a 50-year-old Guyana native, himself a former professional boxer who was forced into corner man duties due to injury in the early 1980s, arrived in Cork just over a year ago and was tasked with the unenviable mission of harnessing the undoubted raw talents of the Cubans before it was too late.

A resident of Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, Morgan had spent the better part of a decade preparing fighters for the Don King stable before this unique opportunity presented itself. He’s the most laid back man you’ll ever meet, he trains the Cuban boxers in Watergrasshill, Cork. Here’s two of the pics i shot of him.

The last time i worked with Ciara was the picture above, about a year ago, that’s too long in my opinion. Ciara is one of the models for Allison Campbell Modelling Agency and is one of the best, any photographer who can feel at home with a model in the first few minutes knows she’s a professional at her job, and Ciara is what the Americans like to call “like the girl next door”. That’s a good thing, so when i met up with her today for the Dairy Council for Northern Ireland it was as if i had only seen her last week. These shoots are nice and simple, almost repetitive at times, which i swhy we went with the bath picture last year, this year was simple.

As you can see, picture is nice and simple, it just involved one light, no umbrella, nothing, i get amazed how much everyone is putting up 2 lights, 2 umbrellas, really overthinking a simple picture

as you can see from below photogrpah, this was a really quick and simple way to get the picture that Milk Cup wanted. It doesn’t always need lots of lights, and i’m as guilty as the next guy but i had to go today and not take what i wanted but what Dairy Council wanted, and do you know what, it was a nice, simple easy going job.

As for Ciara, it was also an easier job for her than she has had the last few times we have worked together, between sitting in a cold bath of Milk, to getting covered at the finals. Thanks Ciara