Photoshoot with Maja - 18th September 2012

Here is one of my favourite images from a recent shoot with Maja.

The shoot was done out on location at an old building which I am sure a lot of you will recognise from some of my previous images.

This was Maja's first real shoot and although she was nervous beforehand, she soon settled into it and helped create some great images.

Photoshoot with Laura - 31st August 2012

I can’t believe when I look back, that the last time I did a photoshoot with Laura it was back in late January. Where does the time go? I remember talking to Laura soon after that first shoot together, about arranging another one. Let’s hope it does not take me as long to get her back down for another shoot.

The plan for this shoot was to try and get back to doing some fetish imagery as I seem to have been concentrating more on the Artistic Nude against the backdrop of dereliction this summer.
I still wanted to do this fetish shoot on location as I am sure it will not be long before the weather just gets too cold for location shoots, and I have to return to the studio. Although I will avoid it as long as possible as I just love mixing ambient light with strobe light.

I didn’t have any firm plans for this shoot other than fetish being the theme and just wanted to play it by ear and see what developed.
This turned out to be a very productive shoot and I am very pleased with the results. I used only one strobe for the whole shoot as fill in and set the camera to underexpose for the ambient light.
Mine and Laura’s favourite image from the shoot, is interesting as I was shooting Laura against an old brick wall on the outside of the building, where the sun was creating great patterns of light due to having to come through tree’s and the undergrowth.

I was getting some great images shooting from Laura’s left, but decided to see what it would look like shooting from her right through some shrubbery. The light was even better from this angle and reminded me of one of the most important bits of advice I ever read when trawling through all those books on photography, Move!!! Yes don’t just stand in front of your subject, move around, get low, get high, and basically work the angles. Sometimes the results will not be good, but sometimes they exceed your expectations.

I have included a Critique that someone left on this image in Deviantart and I was so impressed with his description I just had to let you all read. I wish I was able to use the English language this well in describing photographs.

“The first word I used to describe this image was "haunting". And indeed, it has a sort of dark fairy tale forest sort of feel to it. But this comes from the juxtaposition of elements rather than any one unearthly effect.

The model leans back against a brick wall, head cocked at a carefree angle. Her arms raise in a leisurely yawn. She could be stepping through the French windows of a stately bedroom to greet the dawn, for all her pose tells us. What you see of her face betrays nothing but serenity.

The light, broken by trees, shatters and refracts. The shards mottle the brick wall and what vegetation has taken hold there. She is leaning back against the cold clay, relishing the shower of sunlight on her nude form.

But for all the cheery disposition of the model, everything else in this scene has a dark or threatening aspect. Bare cobwebbed branches jut out in the foreground, reminding me of the Hudson River School of painters. The girl is bound, a knotted crotchrope pulled tight. Clamps connect her nipples by a chain that hangs catenary. She is ballgagged and blindfolded.

When you look closer, you begin to see that the model is the one tying the blindfold on. Her hands could easily undo everything on her, but that little detail suddenly explains everything. Once you see this as a self-bondage scene, the placid expression becomes more of a satisfied smile. The model is in her element amid cold bricks and rough rope, thorny branches and steel clamps.

This is an image that keeps me looking for more. I cannot tell where technical flaws end and serendipity begins! I have to wonder if Delta feels like a careful plan bore wonderful fruit or if lightning struck. The shadows and branches and ropes all play together pragmatically against the model's body, and yet the subject of the photo remains clear.

It still haunts me, but in so many wonderful ways!"

Please feel free to leave feedback, comments etc. It is much appreciated.

Photoshoot - Miss Jezebel 20th July 2012

It has happened at last, I have done a shoot with the lovely Miss Jezebel. We have been trying for what seems like ages to work together but life seems to have got in the way of all our previous plans until now.

I am pleased to say the shoot has now happened, and now I want to plan shooting with Miss Jezebel again as it was such an enjoyable experience and well worth waiting for.

The plan had always been to do art nude images out on location, so we went to a favourite haunt of mine. Recently I have been getting this fixation with art nude and adding some item of clothing like a scarf, boots or small top etc. I don’t know why this would be but think it is influenced by looking at a book by the amazing photographer ‘Dahmane’. The book is called Dressed Nudes and in all the images the models are wearing some item of clothing. If you haven’t looked at the work of Dahmane before I would recommend you take a look.

With this in mind I had asked Miss Jezebel bring along some clothing we could use which she did including an amazing top, thigh high boots among other things. We started with the top and boots and an example of these images can be seen below.

We then switched to a new outfit which can be seen below. As always for these images I was using one strobe off camera with an umbrella as fill light and setting the camera to underexpose the background at the sametime as capture the ambient light streaming into the building.

We finished the shoot with a set of Miss Jezebel naked apart from the boots but standing astride a long pit in the building. I wanted to try and create something dramatic with this setting, so while having my normal light setup of one strobe to camera left. I also put another strobe in the pit pointing up at Miss Jezebel to create a dramatic shadow behind her on the wall. I was really pleased with how this setup worked and how the shadow really adds to the drama of the image.

Now all I have to do is persuade Miss Jezebel to come and visit me again for another shoot.

Photoshoot with Clover & Lizzie_Spritz - 14th July 2012

I have just this morning finished editing the images from my Shoot with Clover and Lizzie_Spritz from a few weeks ago, so I thought this would be a good time to update my blog.

As many of you will know if you are regular readers of my blog, I have worked with Clover on shoots more times than I can count and I have worked with her very good friend Lizze_Spritz once before when she was called Kittysprite, so it seemed inevitable that we would all work together on a shoot and at last it has happened.

I have had some ideas running through my head for a long time, regarding having two naked models in one of my derelict Building locations to try and show depth and different light patterns of the buildings, so this was a perfect opportunity to explore these ideas with two of the most creative models I have had the pleasure of working with.

This was one of the most enjoyable shoots I have done this year, at the same time as being the most challenging technically, as I had to balance the ambient light in two different places in the building and use two Strobes one on each model as fill light. At the same time the weather was constantly changing with the sun out one minute and back behind a cloud the next.

So a lot of thought went into the placement of both Clover and Lizze_Spritz, with regards the location and also the light shining on them and that was before we even thought of the poses etc.

Below are a selection of my favourite images from the day.

I was really pleased with the results from this shoot, as with all ideas before a shoot you never know if it will work how you envisaged, but due to having 3 creative minds willing to experiment the results exceeded my expectations and we are already discussing doing another shoot along the same lines, which I am really looking forward to. All I have to do now is get a date in the diary.

To finish the shoot, Clover had this idea of the both of them in white knickers, which were all wet and I have to say this idea worked brilliantly and was fun to finish a very succesful shoot with.

Photoshoot with Jade-Samantha - 12th July 2012

I did a shoot back in early February this year with Jade-Samantha and our original plan for that shoot was to do it out on location, but we had to change our plans at the last minute and use the studio instead.

We had both wanted to arrange another shoot so we could work together out on location and managed to fulfil those plans a few weeks ago.

We wanted to try some Art Nude as well as some light fetish images. I chose a location which has an old building which is located in woodland and would meet our requirements for the fetish shots in the building and the Art Nude outside in the woodland area.

The difficult part I had was balancing the ambient light with the single strobe I was using as the sun was out but going behind clouds every few minutes, so it was a case of waiting between shots for the sun to come back out, which was frustrating at the same time as a positive as it slows down the shooting process, which I believe is good thing, as gives me more time to think between shots to study the pose & lightening.

Below is a few of the Art Nude shots, the 2^nd of which is interesting as Jade-Samantha is standing inside a building and I am shooting from outside through the undergrowth which had grown up around the entrance. I have lit Jade-Samantha with a single strobe inside the building to camera left, with the foliage being lit be the sun coming from behind the camera.

The last set of images we did were in the building with Jade-Samantha tied by the wrists and below is my favourite image from this shoot. I love how Jade-Samantha seems to be looking into this pit in front of her and how the light shows off the curves in her back and bum.

Photoshoot with Akaridesire - 30th June 2012

After a bit of juggling of the diary Akaridesire and myself managed to get another shoot arranged. If regularly read my blog, you will remember we last worked together back in March this year, where we got some great artistic nude images.

I wanted to revisit the same location and continue to work in the Artistic Nude genre with Akaridesire as I believe she has the perfect body for this genre and has legs that just go on and on.

Again on a location shoot this year it was a typical overcast day, but luckily the rain held off until we were driving back. As normal on location I used my same set-up of using one strobe as the main light on Akaridesire, while balancing the ambient for the background etc.

This time though rather than going for heavily posed shots as I did last time, I wanted a much more relaxed look to the images and I think we managed to achieve this, but I will let you all be the judge.

As I write this the news tells me that summer is just around the corner, which is hard to believe as we are nearly into August already. But fingers crossed they are right as I have a few location shoots coming up over the next month, so watch this space.

Photoshoot with Velvet - 16th June 2012

Here are a few images from a location shoot I did with Velvet a few weeks ago on one of those rare dry days we have had so far this summer.

I am sure Velvet will write up the experience much better than me on her Blog.

As you can see from the images we went for a bit of a Victorian theme.

Sorry this blog is a bit short, but the day job is seriously having an impact on my photography, website updates etc. at the moment.