Before all the guests arrive at Bar Mitzvahs I usually spend about 15 minutes photographing the main Bar Mitzvah man himself and the family.

Tha Arts Depot in North Finchley London all set up and looking good for Sam’s Bar Mitzvah.

There’s never much chance to rest at a Bar Mitzvah, so much fun and dancing to take photos of!

Time for the speeches…

Sam’s Bar Mitzvah speech went down well with the crowd.

The final dance of the night.

Photographer: Me! | Ian Olsson Bar Mitzvah Photography If you’re planning a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah and looking for a photographer please give me a call or fill in the contact page.
Venue: Finchley Arts Depot, North London
Events Planning: Uptown Events

From the number of friends ringing me and asking for help it seems this is more common than I thought, but the good news is all is not lost! Whether you have pressed ‘delete all’ or ‘format memory card’ by mistake, or get the dreaded ‘corrupt card, cannot read data’ message, there is hope. It’s always good to be pass on a bit of wisdom that might help someone. Hopefully you’ll never need to know this, but just in case!

- Accidentally deleted photos or formatted memory cards: Doing this does not physically delete the photos off the memory card, it just deletes the data that tells the card where the photo is stored. So, the photo is still there but the memory card or camera cannot see it, and therefore thinks there is free space on the card for new photos. As long as you don’t overwrite the physical data by taking more photos, you are likely to be able to recover them.

- Corrupt memory cards: Sometimes you may see a ‘corrupt memory card’ or ‘memory card error’ message, either on the camera or when you get home and try and download your photos. Firstly, don’t panic! As I explained above, deleting photos doesn’t physically remove the data off the card. In a similar way, the photos are likely to still be on a corrupt card, it is just that the camera or computer can’t read the data that tells it where to find them.

- Recovery software: There are lots of options out there. If it is urgent, there are instant download pieces of software that will scan your memory cards and show you what (if anything) they can get off them before buying (try Data Rescue, $29, or Image Rescue, $34).

The best option if you can wait (or get in advance) is to buy a Lexar Professional range memory card, which is cheaper than downloading the software mentioned above. These come with a licence to download the software for free. A quality card and recovery tool for less than it costs to just download the software, sounds good to me! These memory cards are guaranteed for life, and in the unlikely case that recovery software doesn’t work, you can send the card back and they will use their own secret, magic way to get the data off and send it to you free of charge.

Where to buy memory cards: I have found MyMemory (http://www.mymemory.co.uk/) and Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/) to be good options.

Prevention is better than cure; memory card top tips:

- Buy quality memory cards (by either Lexar, Sandisk or Kingston).
- Never buy a new memory card and use without testing (e.g. at the airport when you’re about to go away on holiday!). Always fill up a new memory card, leave for a couple of days and see if the card is still readable). The quickest way to fill up a memory card is to set the video to highest quality and hit record.
- Always ‘format’ new memory cards, and do this rather than ‘delete all’ when you have run out of space. Read your manual for instructions on how to format a memory card.
- Do not delete photos on your camera one by one. As well as running the risk of ‘deleting all’ by mistake, it also increases the chance of the card corrupting. Download them all to your computer and then delete from there.
- Hide your camera from any irresponsible younger siblings, children and pets!

I hope that helps, and if this makes no sense and you’re still panicking, feel free to get in touch.

Ian

PS. You might be interested to know that some professional cameras like mine save photos to two memory cards at the same time, creating an instant backup. This is especially important for wedding photos, and gives me and my couples piece of mind! It’s worth checking that your wedding photographer’s cameras have this if you’re on the lookout for one.

Photos by Commercial, PR and Events photographer Ian Olsson | 07731 37 97 27.

1. Set up tripod, camera in landscape at 28mm, 10 second exposure, f22, ISO 100. Resolution set to highest (22MP) as I knew I would want to crop. As you can see, the first effort wasn’t very good!

2. Trying to make a traditional Christmas Tree shape with star on top and pot at the bottom proved tricky.

3. So we moved on to the idea of circles (not very well at first!).

4. Now you can see it coming together…

5. The one above was good enough so we switched to sparklers.

6. Getting there…

7. This was the shot I used, cropped to about half way. I increased the contrast, saturation and pushed the black levels up to max.

8. The final design. I removed the bottom ’swirly bits’ in Photoshop. To fit in with my brand colours I adjusted the hue to blue.

Et voila!

The Cast:
Alice Fitzwarren & Her Dog: Ashleigh Butler & Pudsey
Idle Jack: Stephen Mulhern
Sarah the Cook: Eric Potts
Dick: Michael Pickering
Fairy Bowbells: Kimberley Ensor
King Rat: Dave Lynn
Tommy the Cat: Kayleigh Wilson
Alderman Fitzwarren/Sultan of Morocco: Anthony Houghton
Captain: Ben Goffe

Photos: © 2012 Ian Olsson | 07731 37 97 27 | ianolsson.com

This is the first event I’ve been to with ‘living statues‘. They were really good!

If you’re having an event, party or wedding and are looking for a photographer, please contact me on 07731 37 97 27 or email me.

Photography: Me! Ian Olsson Photography | 07731 37 97 27
Venue: The Radlett Centre, Radlett, Hertfordshire.
DJ: Crazy Martin’s Fun Show! 07795 026 352

Here’s a few of my favourites from the day. The slideshow is best viewed with music and in full screen (click the square in the bottom right of the video to make it full screen, press escape when you have finished).

Not loading? Click here to see the wedding photo slideshow on your iPhone/iPad.

Think this is my favourite, the Park looks amazing with all the flowers in bloom. With the Olympic Stadium behind and a bit of cloud to add texture to a bright blue sky it has all come together nicely. Tip: I had to wait a while for people to walk past to get the shot I wanted. Don’t just point and shoot, think about the photo and have a bit of patience if it’s not quite how you want it to look.

Tom Daley & Pete Waterfield in the synchro diving.

On the way to Excel Centre from Greenwich via the very cool cable car (made me want to go snowboarding though!).

TeamGB in the team table tennis.

There were flags, logos and Olympic rings everywhere, the venues looked amazing.

The countdown timer in Trafalgar Square.