Keylight Photography

29/10/2024

Hi All, after 3100+ Weddings over the last 28 years, today it’s MY turn 💍🤵🏻‍♂️👰🏻‍♀️

29/09/2024

MAIN WEBSITE SHOULD BE BACK UP NOW :D

The hosting site has moved the main site onto a new server and I am aware there’s a “risk going forward” type of message that pops up when accessing the site.

It is accessible to most users by clicking through the warning. Firefox, Chrome and Edge users should be able to continue to the site. Safari on iPhones and iPads seems to not pass through the warning screen.

And I will speak to the hosting company tomorrow, as it was supposed to be a smooth move between servers at their end, without warnings popping up.

Many thanks,
Jonathon Dow - Owner

12/06/2024

10/05/2024

LOTS of new Wedding Videos coming.

I am working on shortening some of the movies to work better on social media, as they tend to be full-length epics which run for about an hour or more. I am getting someone in to help with this so that I can publish them both on the main website and on all my social media too. :)

In the meantime, please email me at [email protected] to get the current Welcome Pack which has links to a selection of these to stream directly from the Keylight WeTransfer Cloud space.

Many thanks,
Jon.

10/05/2024

I recently had to switch off commenting on my business page because there have been a number of fake Facebook profiles that pretend to be 'Facebook Admin' accounts or other 'autoritative' pages, which post spams and fake accusations of things like breaches of Facebook terms and rules etc. and leave links that appear to take you to viruses and malware.

It's not just my page that has had this, it's become rife among business pages over the last 6-12 months. Many of us think that it has something to do with the new AI systems that have been developed and are increasing daily.

So for any questions or more information, please feel free to either inbox me here or send an email to [email protected]

Many thanks,
Jon.

Jonathon Dow - MPA DipPP
Master Photographer

Keylight Photography
147 Tamworth Road
Wood End
Nr Atherstone
Warwickshire
CV9 2QQ

01827 875 643
07968 751 032

Welcome to Keylight Photography. If you're looking for professional wedding photography throughout Coventry and Warwickshire then contact us today.

10/05/2024

Hi All,

Jon here. I know it's been pretty quiet on this page for posts and updates as I have been working like a machine in the background, getting all the editing done as quickly as I possibly can, following the last few years' worth of disruption which led to me moving two whole years' worth of Weddings and fitting them in among the other existing bookings etc., which led to a bit of a tidal wave of editing all at once.

Things are finally getting a lot closer to back to normal and I am hugely grateful for everyone's support during what became the busiest time of my 28 year career, by far!

Lots of changes, including a set of five amazing new Sony Alpha 7 cameras for all the photo and video work, new gimbals, drones, top quality lenses, new computers for editing and sharing out workloads etc.

The new cameras are amazing to say the least. They all have AI face recognition and eye tracking with super high-speed focus tracking, so that more can be captured - especially when the kids run about, and more off-the-cuff shots that happen spontaneously. The face-tracing lets me store a picture of the Bride and Groom as priority people, so that when they’re among a group of guests, it finds them and focus tracks on them automatically. Here's a selection of examples that I have put together recently. The majority of them (99%) are from the new Sony gear and a couple are from the new lenses on the older cameras.

Now that I can finally see the horizon in terms of getting everything edited and sent out I will be more active on here in coming weeks. I still have a way to go, but I guess that's what happens when the government block weddings for 16 months which led me to 24 months of date changes. It was always better to give everyone replacement dates, some six-to-ten months before the wedding, rather than making them wait until the last minute to see if Downing St put on another lock down last minute. And it worked too. It enabled all my lovely customers to have the wedding they dreamed of and planned.

Thanks ever so much. I couldn’t have done this without you!

Jon.

10/05/2024

NEW GALLERY FROM THE NEW CAMERAS and/or LENSES.

A recent spend of about £20,000 all in all to purchase five new full-frame Sony Alpha cameras for both photo and video purposes, and a selection of new lenses that work on the old Canon and new Sony cameras, has seen a big boost in quality and style.

Some of the favourite high-end lenses include 35mm and 85mm f1.4 units which provide much more blurring to the backgrounds (Shallow depth of field) and also improved low-light performance.

Please take a look. :)

Here's some newer images taken with the new cameras and lenses. Five Sony Alpha 7 full-frame camera bodies and a set of top quality prime and zoom lenses

04/08/2022

A quick glimpse at what goes in to each wedding movie editing session. I forgot to mention, this is all done in one day. And while it’s rendering to a watchable movie file, I also edit the photos in the photo-video packs. I’ve been building ‘shortcut macros’ as I go, so it makes simple repeat actions a lot quicker. 🙂

04/08/2022

Just a quick message to all of my customers to say that I think you're all amazing. And I am so glad that everyone can see that I'm doing the best as I can with the delays. I just couldn't have bared it to have acted like so many other suppliers, where they simply held bookings to ransom and wouldn't budge unless there was an actual lock down over someone's date at the time.

So many other couples I know of (not my customers) ended up either having to have a tiny Wedding with hardly anyone there (especially vulnerable grandparents) and almost no entertainment, or lose so much of their budget if they 'chose' to cancel outside lock downs, being stuck to each supplier's contracts. Blimey, remember when it was only SIX guests?

Watch this space for regular updates :)

Jon x

03/08/2022

PART WAY THROUGH THE CALENDAR BACLKOG EMAILING NOW :)

Thanks for bearing with me. Many of you will have now had the emails with edit and sending dates and it's taken all day to get everything juggled about. I will be getting the rest of the emails out in the next few days.

The plan is working :D

Many thanks,
Jon.

01/08/2022

Hi All, I’m halfway there with all the calendar entries for editing the backlog and will be finishing it on Wednesday and emailing out to those remaining (wedding tomorrow). Thanks for bearing with me 🙂

28/07/2022

UPDATING ALL OF MY PATIENT CUSTOMERS WITH THEIR PHOTO-VIDEO PACKAGE TURNAROUNDS (Lock Down backlog)

On Monday 1st AUGUST I will be sitting down and adding every single job to my Outlook calendar and contacting every customer who is either over the 6 months or coming up to it, with a date that I will keep aside to do their photo and video editing.

I will use that day to perform the editing and rendering and within a few days of that will be the DVD and USB pack creation and postal packs prepared to be sent.

I will do everything in chronological order to ensure it is all done fairly. Thanks again for your patience and look out for emails on Monday from me from the [email protected] address. 🙂

Many thanks,
Jon.

28/07/2022

A QUICK UPDATE ABOUT THE BACKLOG DELAYS :)

Hi All, I wanted to say that I am eternally grateful to all of my customers who are waiting so patiently while I work through the backlog of photo and video editing following the moving of two whole years’ worth of Wedding bookings from the 2020-21 lock down happenings.

As all of you are aware, I went much further than was required to help everyone move their dates with ease and without too much fuss as many people were stressing about how to do it. A lot of other suppliers simply did the bare minimum by telling their customers that if there wasn't a lock down in place at the exact time of your Wedding then there's no budging with your contract or date. This essentially held bookings to ransom, especially where Weddings could go ahead but with huge restrictions on guest numbers and what activities were allowed to happen on the day itself (no music, no dancing, no evening party etc.).

The way I helped everyone did mean that I moved a lot more bookings than was probably necessary, (which has led to the backlog that I am working through like a machine) but it seems it was definitely the right thing to do so that everyone could have the Wedding that they dreamed of with all their guests there and all of the activities happening properly too.

While Keylight and myself are totally fine, it is now turning out that so many other suppliers (not just photographers) are going out of business every day and I see so many Brides on the forums on Facebook who are crying out for replacements, many of them at the last minute too. It seems that while these businesses simply did nothing to assist in all the date changes like I did, they ended up losing most of their customers and bookings and sadly had not survived.

I am conscious that I am overrunning with many photo and video pack turnarounds, and I am using multiple computers over here to divide the tasks up - one for video editing, one for photo and a third for rendering the finished editing to postal packs. But I will never give up. By the end of this year, I expect the normal turnaround timescales to be back in place and for everything to resume. I did also have issues with the video editing firm that I drafted in to assist me, because I had to send things back to them so many times for alterations, because everything has to be done properly.

So a MASSIVE THANKS to all of you. You're incredible!

Many thanks,
Jonathon Dow.

27/06/2022

A Business Update about my backlog of editing work and delays getting packs out to customers due to the lock downs and all the date changes happening at once.

Thank you for taking time to watch this, as I’m conscious of how long things are taking me to send out at the moment. Rest assured, things are starting to move properly now 🙂.

And thank you to all of my customers who are being extra patient while I work through the mountain of photos and videos. I couldn’t do this without you all.

Much love and respect,
Jon.

(I know I talk a bit quick in this video, but I’m using a teleprompt app for the first time 😂)

I reposted this because it had been cut to 1 minute long before.

27/06/2022

I AM GOING TO REUPLOAD THIS AS IT'S MEANT TO BE 13 MINS LONG AND IT'S ONLY SHOWING 1 MINUTE...

A Business Update about my backlog of editing work and delays getting packs out to customers due to the lock downs and all the date changes happening at once.

Thank you for taking time to watch this, as I’m conscious of how long things are taking me to send out at the moment. Rest assured, things are starting to move properly now 🙂.

And thank you to all of my customers who are being extra patient while I work through the mountain of photos and videos. I couldn’t do this without you all.

Much love and respect,
Jon.

(I know I talk a bit quick in this video, but I’m using a teleprompt app for the first time 😂)

28/03/2022

PHOTO-VIDEO COMBO - UNDER £1000

Choose Photo, Video or BOTH TOGETHER and have your Wedding Day captured in full.

Qualified Drone Pilot for amazing cinematics.

19/03/2022

Last few steps with screen calibrations going in. Gadgets gadgets gadgets!! 😁

19/03/2022

Computers and headaches. But almost there!! 😁

19/03/2022

COMPUTER UPDATE

MAIN PC
Ok, so the main office PC has been repaired and upgraded considerably. I think I burned it out with it being switched on 24/7 for months, working & editing by day, rendering by night. It’s gone from i5 to i7, more memory and a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation. Now to install all my software and give it a test.

NEW TOP-SPEC LAPTOP
I also received the brand new Dell G15 mega machine yesterday too. For my fellow geeks it’s an i7 12700H with 14 cores and 20 threads (Alder Lake). Coupled with and M.2 SSD, top speed 16Gb DDR5 4800 RAM and a 3060 graphics card, this beast is going to speed up editing and rendering. I’ve never bought a top end computer before. I always bought machines two-thirds up the performance ratings.

Today and Monday are going to be spent getting all the machines up and running so I can then finally start blasting through the backlog. Tomorrow (Sunday) I have a wedding to shoot.

Thanks for bearing with me during the last few days of down-time. And here’s to another 10 years of computing! (tight fi**ed 😂).

Jon

13/03/2022

A QUICK UPDATE FOR ALL MY CUSTOMERS

Hi All, and thanks for bearing with me while I have been burying myself in photo and video editing. I am conscious that I am overrunning the deadlines due to the lockdowns squeezing almost two years’ worth of Weddings into July-December 2021 and it all happening at once. So I thought I would post a message for you all as an update.

First things first... Computers.
So, the main PC I use for photo editing and all the office backstage work has been fantastic, but it's now 10 years old and although it's a great gaming powered machine (I don't play games), it started playing up last week and has gone off to be repaired and upgraded (I've probably burned it out as it's been running non-stop for weeks now, rendering photos and videos overnight, like some crazy Bitcoin Farm). More RAM, a much more powerful processor, new Windows OS and hard disc are going in and it'll be back with me in the next few days. Don't worry about data, as I have multiple copies of everything all stored on a set of individual hard disks and memory sticks. What it means is, for the last few days, I have been migrating everything on to my 2017 laptop which is way more powerful and is used for video editing, as video creation eats power. So I got a bit behind with emails and the preview galleries that are due to be added to this page in the next few days.

And on top of this, I have recently ordered a top-spec Dell laptop which has the latest tech and this will be used alongside the current laptop to divide up photo and video editing. The new laptop will be 12th generation i7 with 14 cores! Cor! It will speed up the rendering of videos, to turn the whole project into a useable MP4 video file. So that will be here shortly. Dell did say the beginning of April, but I have just had an update and it's shipping. Yippee! (I'm like a kid at Christmas!)

The Backlog Plan of Action
Once the new computers are all here and set up, it will enable me to edit a full wedding movie and a full set of photos all in the same day, because at the moment, it is a two-three day process per customer pack. Early starts and late finishes will continue and I am hoping I'll even be able to burn the customer movie DVDs and get the USB photo stick and postage pack all done in that day too. So when I am not shooting a wedding, you can bet I'm at the desk, blasting the mountain of work.

New Weddings Brochure & Prices
As I have been buried in editing and more recently computer alterations, I have delayed the new 2022-24 brochure being made and added to the main website. As with everything inflation and since the wonderful government have hiked up costs for fuel, energy, small business taxes, I will be putting prices up a bit for new bookings. Don't worry, I will always be incredibly competitive as most of my competition charge more than double for the same types of coverage and packages. The main price alteration will be to the Photo-Video Combo package which is now currently £950 and will likely go up to £1050. Storybooks and albums will all go up a bit because the costs have increased - especially for those which come from Italy.

Right, back to the grindstone for me. Thanks ever so much for taking the time to read this. You're all amazing and brilliant!

Jon :)

06/01/2022

FINAL MONTH OF THE SALE!!
PHOTO-VIDEO COMBO PACKAGE - ONLY £850

Full-Day Photography & Videography & Drone Footage. Including All photos on USB with Copyright & 3x DVDs for Full-Size Movie.