Sri Lanka Photography Holiday – next date 2020

Join me in February 2020 for a photographic trip around Sri Lanka. The holiday combines cultural highlights of Sigiriya, wildlife safaris in Minneriya and Udawalawe, a short trek in the Knuckles range, street photography in markets, a train journey up to tea plantations, the stilt fishermen and Dutch Fort of Galle, cooking with a local family and more.

It’s an action packed itinerary taking in Negombo, Sigiriya, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Galle so to unwind we’ll be staying in some fabulous 5 star hotels, as well as a night camping in a nature reserve. For more details and pricing please get in touch.

Bookings are now open.  Arrival in Sri Lanka 7 February 2020, 11 night holiday.

See below for some images from my previous tour there.  For more information about me or the holiday please get in touch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Negombo Fishing Harbour

 

Negombo Fishing Harbour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Train journey Kandy to N Eliya

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Winter Wedding at The Savoy

Photographing a wedding at The Savoy is always a treat.  Impeccably organised by Bruce Russell and the Fairmont team, any couple is guaranteed a magical day, and no more so when it is the weekend before Christmas where Christmas spirit, champagne and sparkly lights just adds to the occasion.  As one of the Savoy’s recommended photographers, Rebecca and Jamal came to me via the Fairmont team.  They were a lovely relaxed couple, and trusting that their photographer would capture all the different elements of their day in a discreet way. Getting the fine details of timings, group shot lists etc established in advance of the day ensures everything runs smoothly on the day itself.  With invaluable help from Laura Ross from the Savoy events team, this was all in place well before the day so everything ran like clockwork on the day itself.

With nearly 170 guests, the wedding spanned several of the Savoy’s function rooms, including the legendary Lancaster Ballroom. On days like this I’m always glad for my part time role of fitness instructor – running around for nearly 10 hours with a lot of heavy equipment, I’m convinced it gives me an edge to keep going that extra mile in order to keep capturing the moments as they happen.

Whilst the edited selection given to the couple totalled 941 (which sounds a lot of photographs but with so many guests and all the various elements to the day from Rebecca getting ready, Jamal’s usher’s lunch, the ceremony, the group shots, drinks reception, speeches, dinner and first dance, it’s easy to see why) for the purposes of this blog I’ve limited the selection predominantly to images including Rebecca & Jamal, their family, ushers and bridesmaids only.

“We absolutely LOVE the photos, thank you so so much. They are just amazing and we will cherish them forever.” (Rebecca & Jamal)
If you are looking to organise your wedding at a central London venue, whether you plan on having 2 guests or 200 guests, you can contact the weddings team:   SavoyWeddings@Fairmont.com
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PUGLIA photography holiday

2018 saw a new location for my photography holidays.  I’d heard that Puglia down in the heel of Italy was a gem of a location, and so it proved.  Blue blue skies, turquoise seas, historic white washed walled towns, and excellent portrait and street photography opportunities, not to mention fabulous food and wine, made for a wonderful springtime trip in May with a group of 7 photographers and our guide Cristiano.

Below are some of the images from the trip, starting with my favourite town Gallipoli in the southern region of Salento.  Fishing is a family thing, often two generations of men go out at 3am – father, brothers, cousins – bringing the catch back at dawn to sell in the market.  They then sit repairing the nets until mid afternoon before getting some rest and repeating it all the following night.  It’s hard work, and much of the young people of these towns have headed to bigger cities for a different life.   What’s left are lovely towns and an elderly population living the slow life, sitting around in town squares having a chat or a coffee.  There were plenty of opportunities for the group to capture these street scenes with their cameras.  You’ll see from the images how many of the ladies are wearing black.  When they are widowed they continue to wear black for the rest of their lives.

The next section of photographs are from our wanders around towns capturing street scenes and taking portraits. Also a visit to Italy wouldn’t be complete without getting a chance to see how some of the wonderful food is produced.  Cristiano organised a trip to a local dairy for us to see how mozzarella is made.

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A few landscapes next.  Admittedly not something I do much of but any visit to Puglia with its thousands of olive trees wouldn’t be complete without  some time spent with the tripod.  The first image is the bay of Porto Badisco where we had a the chance for a sea swim, followed by evening light in the olive groves and a few picture postcards shots of the beautiful spring flowers that were everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally a street photography exercise one morning when we visited a local market. The weather was overcast; none of the bright colours of the sea towns or sun drenched white walls of the historic towns. But subdued light creates less issues with shadows so I chose for the morning to shoot in black and white on a wide focal length. This means getting in close to the subjects (really close), being quick and being bold. It’s not always comfortable but getting in close brings greater energy to the image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’d like to join me on my next trip to Puglia do get in touch.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed.

Chloe

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Barrecore shoot

The brief: shoot some images in the studio to reflect Barrecore expanding their classes to include yoga.  Constraints: shoot to be completed within 60 minutes before evening classes commence.

I like working to a deadline.  Having only 60 minutes to recce the space, and shoot a range of yoga poses with two models certainly concentrates the mind.  Being a yoga teacher myself certainly helped; I knew what postures to suggest to Vanessa and Jenny, postures that not only would work well visually on the Barrecore website but also those that would work (sometimes playfully) within the studio space we were using.

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The Wren Chapel Christening

Some locations are really special to photograph and none more so than The Wren Chapel, Royal Hospital, Chelsea which was the setting for the Christening of Philippa and Alexander’s twins.  The Christening takes place as part of the Sunday service and while no photography was allowed during the service we had an opportunity for family and group photographs at the font after the service.  A beautiful lunch followed at Daphne’s in Chelsea.

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Photography Holiday – Rajasthan & The Pushkar Camel Fair, India – post trip photographs

Ask any photographer what part of their job they find tedious and I’m guessing that high up the list would be the edit and post production.  Certainly in travel photography the enjoyment is wandering, exploring, framing, capturing.  Digital gives us the freedom to shoot a lot, but the cost is eye wateringly dull sessions in front of the computer after the trip trying to make some order out of the sometimes thousands of raw files.

It took over a month after returning from Rajasthan to get round to even starting the task of whittling down and choosing images.  I like to say that the time lapse gives me some distance and a new perspective and appreciation of the photographs but often it’s just procrastination – editing is plain and simple boring and difficult.  Some photographs pop out instantly as strong images, and plenty go straight to the bin – those are the easy ones. That leaves the majority which are somewhere in between; images that might well be improved if I did a bit of post production to them, and a lot that need some degree of tweaking anyway – exposure, cropping etc. But choosing which photographs to work on isn’t always an easy choice and it’s made harder because on any given day I can be drawn to different photographs.  Plus too much time spent staring at thousands of photographs and one ends up losing perspective and becoming unsure whether something is great or total rubbish!

So, finally, here is a selection of photographs from my Rajasthan & Pushkar Camel Fair photography holiday.  Seven clients  joined me on the trip, all with a range of interests e.g. street photography, the cultural highlights of Rajasthan, capturing colour and small details.  We visited Udaipur, Jodhpur, Pushkar and Jaipur – 3 nights in each place gave us the opportunity to really settle and explore the cities with our cameras, seeing them in both dawn and evening light.

Rather than arranging by city I’ve arranged them is a loosely thematic way starting with movement, forts, Pushkar Lake and the Pushkar Camel Fair, markets, street scenes and street portraits  A little chaotic, but then so is wonderful India!  Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My guide Rajesh (pictured left) doing what he was great at – having a chat and finding interesting things to go and look at. Rajesh made things happen, a naturally friendly and curious guy, he understood our need to get away from the tourist places and find the ‘real’ India down back streets.

At the Pushkar Camel Fair Rajesh introduced me to a family and asked them to show me how to bake spelt bread – they were camping at the fair for a few days.  As you can see mine wasn’t up to scratch, to the amusement of those watching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Workshops:

Introduction to Post Production – if you’d like some tips on how to turn the photographs you shot from good to great I’m running a workshop in Camden, London Jan 2018 on an introduction to post production using Adobe Lightroom (level – beginners).

Capturing Movement – a guide to shutter speed workshop – early spring 2018 (date TBC)

 

Upcoming Photographic Holidays:

Puglia 12th – 19th May 2018 (guaranteed departure only 2 spaces left)

Kerala Feb 2019 (please email to register interest)

Rajasthan Feb 2019 (please email to register interest)

 

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Intimate Weddings at The Savoy, London

Wedding photography. One tends to think of a big ceremony and late night party attended by lots of family and friends, sometimes upwards of 200 people, and all of that to be documented on camera. But occasionally I am asked to photograph a wedding for just the bride and groom, or perhaps the bride, groom and their best friends as witnesses.

These commissions come to me from couples who are choosing an intimate wedding at The Savoy in London, preferring a lovely romantic weekend away to marry quietly without the inevitable stress and planning involved in a large bash. The Savoy offers the perfect setting for this – beautiful suites to marry in, and only a lift ride away from the fabulous American Bar and Kaspars for dinner.

These weddings are very special commissions. My natural wedding photography style is documentary anyway, and this really lends itself to photography at a wedding where there are only a handful of people in the room. Being discreet is essential.

Below I have selected three such weddings, two were just the bride and groom, the third comprise the bride, groom and their best friends with a service in the Savoy Chapel nearby. I start in the same way – observing – noticing and photographing the small details that are always different as each suite is different. It’s always relaxed – the Savoy just does that so well – once inside the comfy quiet rooms, it’s impossible not to unwind into a different world. I photograph the couples getting ready, often with a make-up artist. The registrars arrive, there’s a bit of formalities to do before the ceremony followed by the ceremony itself then a walk about with the couples to shoot some portraits. Two or three hours and the visual story is complete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second wedding starts with preparations in the couple’s suite Claude Monet before a ceremony at the nearby Savoy Chapel.

 

The third wedding was a romantic escape to London for the couple before the birth of their third child.  Family heard of the marriage when we took a photograph of the couple holding a ‘just married’ sign.  They wanted a special weekend away together where they could take time to simply be together.  They got ready in their suite and had the ceremony in The Gondoliers Room.

 

Re images 7 & 8 from the bottom….any wedding photographer will probably agree that getting the group and family shots at a large wedding done in a timely way can be a real challenge. With the best planning in the world there’s usually always someone who goes astray – Uncle Whoever who found the champagne and disappeared off somewhere forgetting he was meant to be around at the crucial time. That sort of headache. With an intimate wedding like this – no group shots! Or so I thought. Until one bride and groom were bombarded on the Embankment by 50 Canon enthusiasts. So we did a group shot for them anyway, even if the result is slightly random.

 

I am one of only a handful of preferred photographers for The Savoy Hotel in London and get to work with Bruce Russell and the Fairmont team in a beautiful iconic Savoy Hotel – special commissions indeed.

 

If you are looking for something similar please do get in touch chloe@chloehall.co.uk or you can contact Tamara.Pfaumann@Fairmont.com direct at The Savoy.

 

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A Quiet Place – Yoga in the City

For a while I’ve wanted to try to use photography to convey some of the aspects of yoga that I find really powerful. Not just how it can transform the physical body, but yoga (whether physical postures, or a seated meditation) can be a way of carving out an internal quiet space amidst the busyness and noise of our everyday lives. Whether it’s a repetitive mental dialogue or the external noise of traffic, sirens, construction in London, life can get really noisy. Underneath all that narrative and external noise there is in us all a quiet space. It just doesn’t seem very accessible much of the time.

When we move on a yoga mat, focused on our breath, concentrated on holding a posture, the mental noise can quiet down, and the external sounds often drop away from our focus too. Photography has the same effect for me. I wanted to do a yoga shoot in the heart of the City on a weekday afternoon when it’s busy.

I collaborated with Vanessa who I met via Facebook when I was struggling to get a yoga class covered and she stepped in to help. Her yoga background is very different to mine. As a child I refused to do ballet, had flat feet and came to yoga in my late 20s initially to try to regain some degree of flexibility from cycling. Vanessa is a dance artist – lithe, strong, flexible and incredibly graceful.

And while it’s not helpful to encourage the idea that you need to be really flexible and look like a ‘perfect’ yogi in order to do yoga – you don’t – it is inspiring to see, and beautiful to watch, someone who can hold and move between really challenging physical postures with ease.

Prior to meeting I made a list of a load of postures I thought would look great for the camera, quite a controlled and safe way of approaching a shoot. But as I cycled to the meet her I decided to abandon that list and treat the shoot a little like yoga i.e be a bit more open to what unfolds in the moment. I had a couple of locations in mind I wanted to try but then why not just wander and see what happens. Likewise with the postures, as a starting point I asked Vanessa to begin by standing on some steps outside and just start with a yoga flow – to move as she wanted instead of being directed, holding a posture then flowing into another in a sequence. She started to move using the steps and the handrail – responding to the landscape and echoing their form. So we started using the buildings and landscape around her to inform the postures.

Going through the images afterwards there are two quite different sets of photographs – the quiet moments where it’s about Vanessa’s posture in the urban landscape and some more street photography style photographs where the unexpected collided with us.

What was remarkable (although perhaps not unsurprising coming back to the original point of London being chaotic and everyone rushing about so absorbed by their mobile phone that they don’t see anything else) was the sheer number of people who just walked by without seeming to notice this incredible figure holding herself still on one leg.

It’s often hard to choose a favourite image from a shoot. It’s often luck that gives you a great street photography shot being in the right place when an interesting set of events collide and quick enough to capture the image. It’s very satisfying to get a strong documentary shot and that kind of observational, slightly distant photographer style of photography is what I’m comfortable with. But the image I’m most pleased with is the quietly held paschimottanasana (seated forward bend) shot from above down onto the staircase. Why? Because every image I’ve ever seen of this posture it’s either shot side on, or from in front of the feet, and this feels quite different. And because the idea came to me when we were there. It evolved out of that moment – I saw the treads and asked Vanessa to take the posture in the same form as the stair tread. The softness of her pose contrasts all the sharp lines and shapes around her, and the stairs and brass, her skin and clothing all echo each other.

The photographs are roughly divided into the two categories mentioned above.

If you would like to arrange a shoot out around London please get in touch. To see more of Vanessa’s work and find out where she teaches please visit: https://www.vanessamichielon.com

 

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Justfitwear – fitness brand shoot

A friend of mine, Cece who is big into fitness and is Europe’s #1 female referee at Touch Rugby, has set up her own clothing brand justfitwear.com.  She asked me to join her and a collection of outstanding women from sport – Team GB athletics, touch rugby, and other just plain strong and sassy ladies for a morning in a crossfit studio shooting material for her new website.   I had a couple of aims for the shoot 1. to show the strength and athleticism of these ladies and 2. to show the brand.  We used natural light and the low key tones of the studio and then they just did their thing, making it all look effortless.

Below are some of the images I liked from the shoot, and a couple at the bottom show them in use as on the justfitwear.com website.  The fabric and fit are fantastic.  Anyone into fitness check out the product www.justfitwear.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yoga for Cyclists Article for Virgin Active

Teaching group exercise in gyms has for the last 11 years been a regular part of my weeks in London.  I have permanent group indoor cycle classes (‘spinning’), Body Balance (a Les Mills Programme) and Yoga classes for various London gyms.  It is a great complement to photography which can be quite solitary – behind the camera at a wedding, followed by days in front of the computer editing.

I first became a fitness instructor because I fell in love with spinning – the combination of high energy, dance music and cycling had me hooked from my first class.  My interest in yoga came later, but now is an essential part of my life.  At some point I’ll write more about my fitness journey, but for now I just want to post an article that is on the Virgin Active blog that I co-wrote on the benefits of yoga for cyclists.

Here is the link, and beneath that the text in case the link doesn’t work:

https://www.virginactive.co.uk/blogs/article/fitness/2018/12/01/yoga-for-cycling

Yoga instructor and avid cyclist Chloe hall shares her expertise on why practising yoga is helping you go faster and further on the bike

07 June 2017
By: Chloe Hall and Joseph Cummins In

Look at the aerodynamic position of any pro cyclist and you’ll see similarities to the steady posture of a seasoned yogi. Carefully position limbs, a rock-solid core and relaxed breathing – the two have more in common than a mutual love of lycra.

That’s what draws so many cyclists to the mat in search of the perfect panacea to bike related tensions. Chloe Hall, group cycle (/classes/group-cycle) instructor, avid cyclist, photographer and yoga instructor at Virgin Active Merchant Square (/clubs/merchant-sq), is the first to admit that she didn’t have the liquid limbs of the archetypal yogi. “I’d done a few sportives and cycled the Alps and Pyrenees,” explains Chloe, “Naturally I was not particularly flexible anyway, but I noticed how increasingly tight and inflexible I was getting.”

It was because of this she turned to yoga. As you cycle your hamstrings, quads, hip flexors and glutes are under constant stress which causes the muscles to shorten over time. Tight, unforgiving muscles work to pull your body out of alignment and significantly increase the risk of injury.

Your yoga fix

Yoga remedies this by lengthening muscles and taking them through a full range of movement – something you rarely get in the saddle – and increasing flexibility. The forward folds, downward dogs, lunges and twists in a yoga class will help promote muscular balance and healthy movement around the joints. Whatever the variant, it’s tough not to feel a little looser.

Any newfound bendiness will help you hold position with far more ease, and reverse some of the other aches and pains that follow you along the road. “Because of the hunched posture on the bike, and compounded by our modern lifestyle of sitting in front of computers (or being behind a camera in my case), many cyclists and spinning enthusiasts will have weak upper bodies and tight chests. Repeating this year after year we risk developing a kyphotic posture or rounded shoulders,” explains Chloe, “yoga can help strengthen the back, stretch the chest muscles and draw the shoulders back into a better posture (/our-difference/discover- classes/mind-and-body/yoga-align).”

Chloe recommends poses that compliment your position on the bike by reversing the movement. As your shoulders are hunched forward, try poses that will bring your shoulders back and stretch across your front such as camel pose, hero pose and upward facing dog.

Beyond bendy

Whilst the initial appeal to cyclists may be improved flexibility and reduced chance of injury, Chloe stresses that there is so much more to yoga, “yoga can help build strength in your key cycling muscles, and holding your entire body weight in yoga balances challenges the whole of your body, plus the steady breathing in a yoga class will help calm the mind.” But yoga is also a mental discipline – holding a posture when it gets physically challenging is no different to a huge hill climb or interval training session where your mind is screaming at you to stop – can you breathe into the discomfort and work with it rather than react to it?

“Yoga improves your core stability on the bike,” says Chloe, “so you’re better able to hold good posture, breathe more fully, and direct energy (and therefore power) into the legs rather than losing it from your upper body flailing about.”

As your body becomes more fatigued, the steady breathing that yoga promotes makes sure you take on enough oxygen. “It’s not good to get in the habit of shallow breathing,” says Chloe, “it pumps cortisol and adrenaline through the body leaving you feeling stressed and anxious. The adrenaline hit might be useful for a hill sprint but not when you’re trying to unwind or sleep.”

One of the biggest impediments to cyclists developing a yoga practice is the common misconception that you have to be flexible in order to do yoga. “So many people have said to me ‘oh I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible’ but yoga encourages us to work with whatever body we have, wherever we are, right now,” Chloe says, “we can only work with the strength and flexibility we bring to the mat today so just let go of this myth that we need to be

able to do gymnastics or touch our toes in order to do yoga – we don’t.” The philosophy is that everybody is different but we can only do our best, today, and that’s absolutely good enough to make the most out of yoga.

That’s why Chloe swears by the benefits of a happy marriage between yoga and cycling. “If I get the chance I will practice a flowing yoga sequence for a warm up and then again after a big ride including more seated postures and longer holds to work on flexibility. But yoga is so much more than stretch work – like cycling it requires discipline and patience, but it’s transformative both physically and mentally.”

Chloe teaches yoga Monday evenings and Wednesday lunchtimes at Virgin Active Merchant Square

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