An Evening with…. Emilie

I recently had the chance to work with a local model, Emilie Walt. I have worked with her before, these either being location shoots (local car parks in the Jewellery Quarter) or a dance evening, so this was something different. A more relaxed studio shoot with the chance to move the lights were needed and the opportunity to move Emilie into the various moods and shoot that I was after.

A lot of images where taken on the night and these are interspersed throughout this blog.

Emilie, as ever, is a great person to work with, and knows how to move herself for the result that you are trying to achieve. She is simply superb..

Thank you Emilie

March 6, 2016 0

An afternoon with……Ruby

A first for me. I was recently asked to do shot a little girls, Ruby, first birthday cake smash. After a quick think, I thought, why not, something different and it helps to broaden the portfolio and get the creative juices flowing.

First step was to do some research on the net, YouTube was a great place, lots of helpful videos, particularly when it came to backdrops. I soon realised that my material backdrop would not be very practical, so off to the local stockist for a paper background. All the information on line suggested going for a bright yellow, which I thought why not, keep it bright and not glitzy. There came the first issue, the car friendly lengths of 2 meters do not come in yellow, so a 3 meter roll was purchased, after I had checked that it would fit in the car, the staff at the Flash Centre in Birmingham were very helpful, with the back seats dropped and wedged into the front passenger well. All was OK.

So on the day of the shoot, I loaded up the car, with backdrop filling up most of the space and just had room to get the camera, flash heads, lighting stands and the backdrop stands. There was just space to get myself in the drivers seat and away…..

Setting up was straight forward and I decided to only use one flash head with a soft-box on it, keeping the light fairly low.

Got the images first of the cake on its own, all intact and Ruby, before the carnage started.

Now came the fun, Ruby , at first was not the slightest bit interested on smashing the cake, but kept walking around it and coming up to me to look into the lens. After some encouragement, she soon got the hand of it and started the smash in earnest. Only issue was that now with gooey cake on her fingers she was trying to share it with me, and the camera lens. Not a good result but being quick on my feet, I managed to avoid any sticky mishaps.

At the best part of all, using the paper background left the clean up very quick, cut if off, fold it up and dispose of in the rubbish bin, great.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a few hours, will certainly do it again and the research on the web paid off.

I have put a few images form the day in the post and hope that if anybody reads the post they enjoy them, I did……

And if anybody is wondering this was how the cake looked when we had finished…..Tip,if doing this, get a cheap cake…

February 25, 2016 0

An evening with…. A bowl of M&M’s

With the weather being absolutely awful the UK, not much chance to get out of a weekend, whether photography related or just for a walk in the countryside, it was time to get the old photo mags out and have a look to see what I could do at home with minimal kit.

After looking through them i chanced across an article where they were taking images of a bowl of smarties using glycerine,a macro lens, piece of glass, tripod and a desk lamp.

Great, got all of these except the smarties, but a quick trip to the local supermarket and a bag of M&M’s where in the basked through the checkout and back home in no time at all.

The set-up was quite straight forward, the tricky pats was making sure that the glass was absolutely clean with no grease stains, finer marks, stray hairs were present.Any of these needed to be cleaned off.

After that it was just setting up the bowl with the M&M’s on the table, the sheet of glass above it, supported on each side by a few books. then drops of glycerine on the glass and then set the camera up on a tripod with the desk lamp positioned off to side. Then, just started playing with how close to put the camera, how many drops ro put on and changing the focal point, aperture and speed to suit.

It was a great way to spend a few hours, better than getting wet, got some great images, and the best bit, got bowl of M&M’s to eat when everything was tided up.

Well worth doing, and i will be doing this again trying out different props, ant mixing them up, maybe jellie babies and liquorice allsorts.

February 7, 2016 0

An evening with….Mark Hadon

Recently had an evening session in the studio with local part time model Mark Hadon. Mark, by day, is a teacher in a local school, and as you can see from the images, really looks after himself.

Mark was great to work with, adept at most poses that he was asked to perform, and some of them was quite hard on his body, despite the rippling muscles.

He even brought his own kit to use…….

Well, he didn’t bring the tyre, that was in the studio.

It was a great night, Mark was so easy to work with and has a great personality.

Mark Hadon

Hopefully I shall be working with Mark in the near future.

January 31, 2016 0

An hour in the life of…….

Have been a bit quiet on the photography front, Christmas and new year got in the way, but back to normal now.

Recently tasked myself with doing a small project. I have several in the planing stages but never seem to get around to starting them, always seem to find something else more important to do, so they take their place on the back burner. So to kick start the new year and make it the year of the project I did a small project, the idea was to record the first hour of my morning from when the alarm goes of to walking out the front door.

The images are shown in the order that my first hour takes, with the alarm going off….

to the habitual shave…might try a grow a beard one day….to getting dressed……

The first cup of coffee to get me going, the fresh hit of caffeine to sharpen the senses…..

To the final act of shoes on and out the door…..

When condensed into a few images, it seem tat the hour is being dragged out and i should be able to get up and out in a lot shorter time than one hour.

Well that’s the first project done for 2016…here’s to some more over the course of the next 11 months.

January 24, 2016 0

A rainy day in Reading

So I had a try at street photography. Could not have picked a better day to try it out, it was raining heavy and the weather was miserable, but onwards and upwards we decided to carry on, so a friend and I set off to see what we could do.

We trudged around and tried a few things out from street scenes to an underpass and even the local’wildlife’ which just looked as miserable and fed up as we did.

Not the best of days to have a first crack at this genre but we gave it a go.

We even tried our hand at a silhouette in the underpass,one my favourite images from the day.

will we try it again….yes once the camera has dried out, and next time a better check on the weather forecast.

December 2, 2015 0

A look back

Has been a quite few weeks on the photography side, weather not the best and lots of other things going on.

Had a look through some old sessions that I have done before I started blogging or even had heard of WordPress.

So looking through the files I came across a set of images from a outdoor shot way back in November 2013, with Christine. The location was a long disused railway bridge, that the local ‘art types’ with their can of coloured paint spray have transformed into some quiet stunning graffiti works of art.

The site is quite unique and if you did not know of its location, you would not stumble across it by chance.

Keep meaning to go back one day but just never seam to get around to it. Hopefully the location has not changed too much…..one day soon.

November 14, 2015 0

Forgotten Images

OK so while going through some SD cards I came across a photo shoot that I did back in July 2015, fortunately it was just for myself with no end client, probably why they slipped my mind.

The model was a local girl, Charlotte (aka Lottie). Still fairly young bit really great to work with. Her parents came along as chaperone’s for the evening, and just like their daughter they were a great couple.

The location was Brookfields Cemetery in the Jewellery Quarter, seems like a strange place for a photo shoot, but it works, there is some great architecture and late in the evening the sun is low and you get some great light and shadows.

Any way, that will teach me to take them off the SD cards as soon as get back, could quote easily have formatted them and lost all the work, a big lesson to learn.

Hope you like the photos.

November 5, 2015 0

Ellie- A night in the studio

Been a while since my last blog. Recently carried out a studio shoot with Ellie, who you will see has bright blue hair….Again she was a very nice model to work with, very easy going and not put off by the strange requests that I had, involving screaming her head off as loud as she could. Needless to say that that image did not work so it will not be appearing on these pages any-time soon, maybe for another day with another model.

We used a variety of locations in the studio from a bright wall in the entrance to a few backdrops, and even managed to get a chair into the action. I would mention that it must be an age related issue that when I asked Ellie to pose as ‘Christine Keeler’ on the chair I was met with blank expression, however when this was explained as to the pose she went for it, slightly adapted…..

Still a very good night was had and between us we managed to get some good images, certainly somebody I will like to work with again in the future.

Equipment used on the night was a Canon EOS60D with a 50mm f1.8 lens. Lighting was by using the modelling light, with a reflector where required.

October 29, 2015 0

Immogen

Another studio shoot with a new model that I had not worked with before.

So let me introduce you to Immogen..who’s normally seen flying the skies from Birmingham airport as she, for her day job, works for a local airline as an air stewardess.

So for the evening I used the main studio, with just one light and kept the modelling light on, rather than use the flash head.

Attached to the studio there is a small cafe, as we were working late this was closed and empty, so instead of letting it lie unused we tried a few shots up there, carefully carrying the light up from the studio.

A good night was had and I look forward to working with Immogen again the future.

Camera used for the night was my Canon EOS60D with my faithful 50mm f1.8 lens, might be a cheap lens, bit produces some great images.

October 18, 2015 0