A great little networking event at the Blackburne House, just off Hope Street in Liverpool.
Held by the Future 100 organisation - it’s all about young entrepreneurs getting together… being inspired by other’s success stories and then speed networking - akin to speed dating where you have a limited time to meet everyone in the room… quite entertaining!
Here’s a few photographs from the event…




To jump back to Ant Clausen Photography - click here

Due to open before Christmas - the dramatic waterfront block that is One Park West will be tempting potential buyers with views out over the Mersey and the new cosmopolitan area of Liverpool One.
The Brief - to capture the views to entice potential buyers in with the dramatic panoramas they can see from their new balconies. The solution… grab the Manfrotto, the D300 and then stitch like mad using Photoshop CS3.


Panoramas are great if viewed say 1 metre plus across… but you often need a bit of close up detail too… so I grabbed another shot where you can clearly see the Albert Dock a bit clearer.

Then wandering back to my eco-friendly bicycle I looked back and noticed the sky had turned quite a cool shade of red - so I grabbed another shot and then did a quick HDR render on it to bring out a bit more detail.

Thanks Bel for sending in a shot of the “two terrors” that I photographed whilst back in New Zealand earlier this year. Your room looks fab! It’s great to see my photographs on your wall!

I will be focussing on shooting portraits over the winter - creating nice crisp high-key black and whites. For more portraits click here to go back to my gallery.

It was all about Cuba and Havana Club rum on Wednesday night in Liverpool. “A Piece of Havana” is a celebration of everything Cuban and is touring the UK, with live Cuban entertainment and most of all… plenty of Havana Club rum.
Alma de Cuba was transformed for one night only into “a piece of Havana.” Having travelled to Havana, Cuba a few years back - I was looking forward to capturing the essence of Cuba in a converted church in the heart of Liverpool. And it didn’t fail to disappoint… with great music, fantastic ambience and plenty of rum - it’s hard to go wrong!
Definitely a great night for photography in Liverpool.
Here’s a selection of images from the night - and for the complete gallery - please click here

And no event would be complete without a “Wag!” Wayne Rooney’s wife Colleen McLoughlin joined the party later in the evening…

To go back to the Ant Clausen Photography main website - please click here

If there’s one place in Liverpool to get a bit of both - it’s the Bluecoat. With the restaurant “Upstairs at the Bluecoat” re-opening this week - it’s a great place to be! Here’s a couple of shots of the interior. With the new look complimenting the old - I think it’s working quite well.



We then set up the restaurant with some “guests” and attempted to make it look nice and busy!
Can’t wait to get back there and try some of the cuisine!


To go to Ant Clausen’s main website click here

The call comes in… “Ant, we need you to come down and photograph the cover of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers book… projected on the side of an old dockyard warehouse building”

I’m like “Cool. Very cool.” Having been a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan from the good ol’ Freaky Styley/Mother’s Milk days etc… I was intrigued with the whole concept. And the concept, it turned out, was very hot indeed.

I jumped on my bike, armed with my Nikon artillery - and headed down to the Liverpool waterfront. The idea was to coincide with the “stars/celebs” rolling into town for the MTV Music Awards. Timing was critical, and placement just as important. They settled for an old abandoned standalone dockyard building (plenty to choose from in Liverpool!) but from a strategic viewpoint - this was the business. Set between the “Three Graces” and Albert Dock - it was prime positioning, catching all the traffic making their way along the Strand.

And what a result! It’s amazing what you can do these days… backing up a van, opening the back doors, turning on a high powered projector and projecting an image on a 100ft building across the road. Bl**dy nice work I have to say.

The team at Think Publicity are really pushing the creative boundaries to full effect!

Photographer Tony Woolliscroft is the man behind the book. He’s been travelling and photographing the Peppers for over 20 years. The Peppers regard him highly and it’s with that trust, that Tony has captured images that are intimate and show a personal side to the band never seen before.

I’ll definitely be grabbing myself a copy. To check it out for yourself click here

And to check some more images from last night’s “screening” click here

To go to Ant Clausen’s main website click here

Was up in the remote west coast of Scotland (as you do!) shooting a wedding. I arrived on the Friday night, checked out the venue - the lovely Stonefield Castle, then ventured down to Tarbert where I was staying. Had a fierce hunger brewing, so wandered along the street and asked a couple of locals where I could find the best fish and chips in town. I was told there was one place still open, so I walked hurriedly with a new sense of purpose along to the other end of town. I grabbed some hake and chips, a cheeky beer and headed west to watch the sunset. Bearing in mind this is a couple of months ago - 10pm. I could already see the warm light backlighting the treetops, so I followed the winding road signposted “West Loch Pier” which sounded promising to my unfamiliar, foreign New Zealand state of mind! Turning off the main road I followed the gravel track down through a maze of dense forest. I arrived at the Pier and grabbed my tripod, my D300 and wide angle lens and walked back along the estuary to where I spotted a glimpse of what looked like an old sunken ship on the drive down. And so it was. A beautiful sunset, an old sunken boat… I was in photographic heaven - if it wasn’t for the sandflies! They were biting viciously and I set up my camera hurriedly to catch a shot before the sun went down. Standing there getting attacked by sandflies… the things we do to capture “the shot!”

Anyway, enough banter! Here’s an HDR shot (minus the sandflies) I bracketed this shot with 3 multiple exposures and blended them in Photomatix 3 Pro. I then sharpened in Photoshop.

It’s amazing where your photos end up… and stock photography is a great way of getting worldwide exposure for your images. I believe this site is a Norwegian travel information site
I’m currently submitting to 5 different online stock agencies and receive a good monthly income which I use for mostly photographic purchases (lenses, tripods, studio lights etc)
My most lucrative site has been Shutterstock and i’ll be writing more about the land of Stock Photography in future postings. In the meantime - feel free to ask me any questions you might have regarding blowing the dust off your old hard drives and making cold, hard cash from images you may have lying around!

Same sunrise as the one shot below - just a minute or so earlier.
This is one of the most dramatic cloud formations i’ve ever seen…

for the sunrise… which is not really saying much as the sun only gets up at about 7:30am this time of year in the UK! Still in Wales - out in the countryside, surrounded by farmland, the sun started creeping up over the distant rolling hills… I looked to the east to see some brooding storm clouds ominously rolling their way towards me… the perfect formula = dramatic clouds + sunrise.

This black and white HDR image - edited with Adobe Lightroom initially - 3 blended exposures (-2, 0, +2) tone-mapped in Photomatix 3, then back into Lightroom to convert to Black and White. Phew!