Expect the Unexpected!

One of the things I love about being a photographer is that every shoot is different. Sure, you get some that are similar lighting setups, or you'll be creating similar scenarios, but often the people will be different, or something will happen that sticks in the memory. It's what makes photography so interesting.

Well a couple of weeks ago I was booked to shoot some "fashion style" images for a client's portfolio. Nothing out of the ordinary there. She'd sent me some samples of what she was after, and I'd met her previously while I was shooting for another client. Everything was pretty straight forward.

I always have a rough idea of poses and shots in my head before a shoot. They're only rough ideas, and I rarely write them down as I don't like to be too regimented in my work. I prefer my shoots to be more fluid. Anyway, one thing I hadn't planned for was that the client would be 4 months pregnant!

As well as the fashion shots, she now also wanted a few maternity shots, which I wasn't a problem...



The client still wanted the same fashion shots she'd booked me for, that didn't make her look pregnant. I'm not a fan of sitting in front of Photoshop for hours and hours retouching and liquifying people. I find it incredibly tedious! I always prefer to make people look their best in camera. So with a little rethink on posing and lighting, this was the result...

Modified Motors : November 2009

Here's a couple of pics of Danni in the November 2009 issue of Modified Motors. In total the feature covers 5 pages, plus a small pic on the cover.

Gemma Massey

Had a great shoot last thursday! Gemma Massey called me because she had use of an Ice-Cream Van for 1 night only before it was crushed. I'm not one to miss an opportunity, so I headed down to Wembley.

The shoot was so much fun and we got some great shots which are up for sale.

Jenny Laird

Back in August I took a trip up to Birmingham to shoot Jenny Laird for GIRL Syndication. She was a great model and worked hard! Check out the pics and the behind the scenes video!

Aly Paul

They say things happen for a reason.... well last tuesday we had a photoshoot arranged for Girl Syndication. The model had been booked a week in advance to arrive at 5pm. Well at 4:15pm she decided to cancel the shoot because apparently it was going to take her too long to get to the studio. As you can imagine, we weren't overly impressed by this, and as the make up artist was already en-route we tried to find a stand in model.

Enter Aly Paul... I've known Aly for many years and shot her a couple of years back. She hadn't modelled properly though for nearly 2 years due to various personal reasons. That said, she was awesome!!! She totally rocked the place and I'm sure we ended up with way better images that if we'd used the original model!

Just goes to show that good can come out of any situation!

Modified Motors : July 2009

Here's a quick pic from my photoshoot with Emma Louise, featured in the July issue of Modified Motors in Ireland. Emma is one of the Max Power Babe Squad and we thought it would be cool to get her posing on a mountain of tyres!

Gemma Massey pulls faces for Red Nose Day 09

In an attempt to do our bit for Red Nose Day, we got together with Gemma Massey to pull faces and generally act like idiots for this photoshoot. All proceeds from the image sales are going to Comic Relief.

It was a lot of fun! hehe

Morgan Lees

Did a shoot on wednesday for GIRL Syndication with Morgan Lees. Kept the lighting really simple for this one. Used a single light on the background to turn the back wall of the studio into the only light source. This combined with an aperture of f/4 gave a really nice soft back light. I used the modelling light from a second strobe to focus.

Gemma Massey

Shot Gemma Massey last week for GIRL Syndication. Was great fun working with her. As well as this image set, we also worked on some shots for Comic Relief. I'll post those up at a later date ;)

Fifi Russo

Yet another shoot for Girl Syndication. I've worked with Fifi Russo before (Click here for the blog post), so this shoot was always going to be a lot of fun. Fifi is a great model and also a make-up artist who has been in an exhaustive list of publications.

Daniela Levy

Another shoot for GIRL Syndication. Daniela Levy is a fitness model who also does a lot of TV work.

This shoot gave me chance to try out the new RayFlash Speedlite Adapter. I was pretty impressed with the result and can see me using this a lot!

Check out the video...

Paige Robbins

Yet another shoot for Girl Syndication. This time, the model was Paige Robbins, a model/promo girl who has been in a multitude of publications as well as having contracts with Team Dynamics and Harley Davidson.

Rachel Louise

Rachel Louise is a new model based just outside London. She's great fun and a joy to work with. This shoot was for magazine syndication purposes and will hopefully grace the pages of magazines around the world.

Samantha Vale

I'm usually known for my hard edged portraiture which often features side or backlighting, so it made a change to shoot Samantha Vale, a local dance teacher, using only natural light.

I opted for a more editorial fashion style shoot using the autumn leaves as a backdrop and the main source of colour for the shoot.

Decibella

On monday I had the pleasure of spending a busy 6 hours shooting a new all girl dance group for their new website. We had a lot to get done with several outfit changes, group and solo shots as well as hair and make-up to be done for the different looks.

My setup was fairly easy. I had a white backdrop with a long thin softbox lighting it at f/16. I used a large rectangular softbox on camera right at f/8 to light the subjects with a hairlight to the right of the backdrop. It was all triggered using my Pocket Wizards, which I'm still amazed at how flawlessly they seem to be working!

This all gave me f/8 at 1/125sec at iso200. I shot 95% of the day at 50mm, although there were a couple of shots where I opted for a wide angle lens to give a bit of distortion.