Aga: Model Shoot

A quick preview from my shoot with Aga...

Not my usual style and bright colours!

...more coming soon!

Tina & Cliff

A few shots from Tina & Cliff's Wedding earlier this month.

It was a lovely day... except for a small burst of rain conveniently decided to arrive as I was taking the Bride & Groom Photographs just after the Ceremony!

This wedding was slightly different from the others that I have photographed.

The entire wedding was at one location - a hotel. Many of the guests had rooms there so in between the ceremony, breakfast and reception, most of the guests disappeared to their rooms, so it was quite difficult to take a lot of reportage shots. 

 

It was also the first wedding where I haven't been able to photograph the service at all which was a shame. The Registrar had informed me that I was not to take any photographs until she instructed me to after the register had been signed. There was also a massive widescreen tv behind the bride and groom, so as you can imagine, it didn't make a very nice backdrop!

That being said, we did get some lovely photographs out on the golf course overlooking the Wiltshire landscape.

I am pleased with the shots from the wedding, it was just a shame that the majority of the photographs were group shots. I would have liked to have been able to get far more reportage, but every wedding is different and the Bride and Groom had a lovely day.

Tina and Cliff have already viewed the photographs and have said that they are very happy with them so I still have 100% client satisfaction (I'm dreading the day that I don't)!

I will post the gallery link and more detailed feedback soon.

The MacBook...

I have a new computer. A MacBook...

I'm finding this rather odd as I am a PC person and have never really used Macs until I started Uni so I am struggling a little to get used to it.

Admittedly, I have also avoided using them at uni as I am so used to PC's and have never felt the need to use or learn to use a mac.

That being said, the calibration and quality of the monitor is brilliant and they really are easy to use!

Shortcuts are annoying though - they are nearly the same as a PC, except I need to remember to use the 'command' key rather than the 'ctrl' key, which I am struggling with as its a force of habit.

The mouse pad is also really odd. I have the new MacBook Pro, so the pad acts more like my iphone - there aren't any buttons (you can click anywhere) but you need to use a combination of movements eg. swiping 2 fingers downwards scrolls and bringing 2 fingers towards each other makes the text smaller etc... too much to remember!

I'm getting there though and it really isn't as bad as I thought it would be, plus... it's a new toy!

Natalie: Model Shoot

I had a shoot booked a couple of weeks ago with two sisters, both of which model in their spare time. Unfortunately, one of the sisters had to cancel the shoot at the last minute. Natalie had said that she still wanted to shoot and I was quite happy with this but it meant that the shot ideas and plans that we had would not be possible to do.

We agreed on a location where there would be plenty of variation for shots - a local park that offered woodland, fields and canal locks.

I had not been to the park for a while and didn't expect to see a think carpet of bluebells! Naturally, I took advantage of the colour as I thought it would make an interesting and colourful bokeh backdrop.

After shooting in a woodland previously, I had decided to take Josh (my fiance) along to the shoot to assist with lighting, as I knew I would need the use of a bounce board. I was really glad that he came to assist as it was quite an overcast and gloomy day!

Natalie was a great model to work with. She was very confident, bubbly and had a good sense of humor. We are planning to rearrange the shoot with both Natalie and her sister in the near future.

Model: Natalie Young

Photography & Post Processing: Me

Bridal Shoot: Lotherton Hall

A couple of weeks ago, I had a rather large shoot at Lotherton Hall in West Yorkshire.

Lotherton Hall is an impressive Edwardian mansion, formally the home of the Gascoigne family surrounded by stunning formal gardens, a deer park and many other features in this very impressive Estate. 

I had a stunning model, Vivienne Edge, who I had been talking to for some time and one of the things that she has said that she wanted to do, was a bridal shoot.

I contacted a make up artist, Bethany Hawkins to see if she would be interested in the shoot and we discussed ideas further.

As I wasn't working with a stylist, I organised the wardrobe, props and jewellery.

I bought all of the dresses, including the wedding dress for the shoot as I have plans to use it again for a couple of other ideas. I'm not going to tell you how much I paid for the wedding dress, all I'm going to say is that it was new, never worn and absolutely stunning. The staff at Lotherton Hall spent all morning guessing how much I had paid for it and when I eventually told them, they didn't believe me!

Because of the arrangement of the shoot, I had also contacted Lotherton Hall for permissions to shoot on their property as for a shoot of this nature, I felt that the location would be perfect. They were so helpful and will be using some of the images from the shoot for their website as they have just started to offer a wedding service in the mansion/museum.

Lotherton Hall had kindly agreed to allow us access to the house and the grounds for a whole day so we had plenty of time to shoot. Unfortunately the weather was quite disappointing that day. Although it was quite bright, it rained on and off so we were confined to the house for the majority of the day.

This wasn't as much of a problem as it could have been though. I had arranged the shoot for mid-week so that it was quiet without too many guests and so that we wouldn't cause too much disruption. The house was huge and there were so many rooms and windows to make use of, we weren't short of locations.

In the afternoon, it finally dried up a little. But by this time, we had done a make up change and had begun to do the evening dress shots, although we did manage to get a couple of bridal shots in the grounds in between the bursts of rain. We had planned a couple of dress and make up changes though as we had so much time we wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

We used two evening dresses. The first, a mauve designer evening dress and the second, another designer dress but in a Charleston 1920's style cream dress with long satin gloves as I thought that it would work so well with the location.

The shoot went so well and I was really pleased with the shots, as were Vivienne and Bethany.

There are more images from the shoot on my Flickr page (please use the link in the bar at the top of my blog) and they have gone down very well on Flickr with other photographers as evident from the comments and favourite tags.

I would have liked the weather to have been better and have been able to use lights but due to health and safety reasons, I was not able too. All being said, the windows were huge and the natural light worked really well. I can't wait to do more shoots on the same scale as this one!

I will put up more detailed feedback from both Vivienne and Bethany soon as well as let you know what Lotherton Hall thought of the images and when they will be on display on the Lotherton Hall website.

Model: Vivienne Edge

Make Up: Bethany Hawkins

Styling & Wardrobe: Me

Photography & Post Processing: Me

EsOteric: 'Tomorrow I Won't Remember' Music Video

I went home at the weekend...again...to try to get some peace and quiet (yes, our delinquent neighbours are still at it) but I didn't get very far with people coming and going.

I gave up pretty quickly and decided to go and help out a friend who was shooting a music video at Cheltenham Film Studios. The video was for a band called EsOteric who write and produce rock/metal style music.

It was a really good shoot and I am pleased that I ended up going! I haven't been to the Film Studios before so that was intriguing in itself but the main theme of the shoot was vandalism.
They had managed to get hold of a car to smash up and they staged window breaking, smashing bottles with baseball bats, throwing a TV and all sorts so it was a really good laugh and a great opportunity to get some action shots.

They also had this awesome slow motion camera that is worth about £50k and takes 5000 images per second - the kind of camera they use in films to capture a bullet firing from a gun.
There was a full crew on the Saturday so I didn't get much chance to do anything other than take photographs for the Director. On the Sunday, there were only three crew members, including myself so I had plenty of opportunity to help with the slow motion camera.
The video camera itself, uses SLR lenses so I was left in charge of setting up as I had the most knowledge with SLRs as well as similar software as it recorded directly to a computer.

It was a really good experience and completely different to the other music videos that I have worked on before.
There are more shots from the production on my Flickr page - there is a link on the toolbar at the top of my blog.

Rachel & Kevin

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of photographing Rachel & Kevin's blessing in Witney, Oxfordshire.
The wedding had taken place a couple of weeks before hand in Cuba but they had decided to have a blessing ceremony and reception back home in Rachel's family church.

The weather was lovely, although very bright and there were some beautiful gardens next door to the church which the bride & groom had got permission to use for their formal shots.

I was really honoured to be photographing their blessing. It was such a beautiful day to suit such a wonderful couple in absolutely stunning surroundings.

The day was fairly relaxed and both Rachel and Kevin were up for a bit of fun with both their flower girl and page boy and I took some lovely shots of them all pulling faces.

The children were enjoying themselves so much, that when we did the bride and groom shots, they were stood next to me pulling faces and making Rachel and Kevin laugh which added more emotion to the shots and was quite funny to see.

The gallery is still awaiting client preview, so I will post the link shortly once they have had chance to view all of the photographs first.