Photoshoot with Satine 28th September

Satine and I have been trying to arrange another shoot together for ages, and luckily we managed to find a date we could both make. I have done two previous shoots with Satine, her very first Photoshoot back in 2008 and then again last year and we had been trying to sort another one ever since then.

Rather than go to my normal location of derelict building we decided to go to the lakes and woods located just at the back of my house in Thrapston.

We did not really have any plans for the shoot, but as Satine had brought along a Red Riding Hood outfit which she had never used we decided to go with that to start with. We used the woods and a large tree as the backdrop. I wanted to underexpose the background to give the images the feeling that they were took at night time and then used my strobe with a beauty dish attached to light Satine.

While we were shooting a van drove up through the woods and stopped and a warden (well I assume he was some sort of warden) got out and came over and asked us what we were doing. I would have thought it was obvious as I had a camera in hand and light all set up on a tripod. Anyway I told him we were just taking pictures to which he replied “you do know this is private property”. No was my response having used this location many times in the past and never seeing any signs saying it was private. He then enlightened me that the path which was 2 feet from us was the Nene Way so public and everything on this side to the lake which was another 2 feet away was private property.

Anyway he then seemed to have second thoughts and told us to carry on but remember that people walked past here, as it was the Nene Way. I did giggle to myself at this, as I have used this same location for lots of art nude shots before, but today it was mostly clothed..lol

Anyway after that interruption to our shoot, we carried on and after he had left the area we did some lingerie shots and topless, before moving to another location a short distance away to do a few art nude shots.

All in all it was a productive shoot and it was nice to do something a bit different to my normal erotic/fetish work.

Photoshoot with Clover 27th Augst 2011

Last Saturday I did a Shoot with Clover, who I must have worked with well over 20 times over the last few years and she has become a very good friend in that time of both me and the wife.

As always with Clover we set out with a plan for the shoot, and as per normal we seem to end up with something completely different than we set out to capture. The weather on the day of the shoot was forecast to be pouring rain and both of us had always wanted to do a rain shoot, so went to a group of derelict buildings which have become my regular haunt. As with all plans involving the weather the day was overcast but no rain. So we decided to start the shoot inside one of the building and do some art nude shots against the background of this collapsed roof.

Then a first for me at this location we just decided to take the camera and one strobe and wander around the field of derelict buildings and came across a very collapsed building with just one part of the wall left and decided to try some shots against the wall.

 The sky though was amazing and I wanted to make sure I captured the sky which looked very stormy. So I exposed the camera for the sky and used my strobe as a fill light on Clover, which gave an almost night time feel to the images, as well as adding lots of drama to the final images. I was pleased how the sky came out as I have a pet hate of images with over exposed skies with no detail.

We progressed on from this location to an old hay barn and to take advantage of the sky, we did a lot of art nude shots with Clover leaning against on the of iron pillars holding up the barn roof. Again exposing for the sky and using the one strobe as a fill light on Clover. I think these are my favourite images from the whole shoot.

Of course as we were in a hay barn we had to do some images with Clover rolling in the hay, but this got interrupted as the rain started. So in a rush Clover ran out into the rain naked and we started taking pictures.  This was fun as I was trying not to get rain on the camera although my strobe got soaked, but doesn’t seem to have done it any harm. The rain was a bit hit and miss as it kept stopping and starting, but in the end we did get a very heavy shower which allowed us to capture the image we wanted.

At this point with Clover soaking wet and freezing cold, we decided to just do a few more shots that we had planned inside one of the buildings before heading home for a very welcome cup of tea.

Now we are busy thinking of ideas for next shoot with Clover which we are determined to be sooner rather than later.

Photoshoot Mandy 13th August 2011

I thought I had better get my Blog up to date before my shoot tomorrow with the lovely Clover who I have had the pleasure of shooting with more times than I can remember over the last few years.

I did a shoot in the studio with Mandy a few days ago, this was the first time Mandy had been in front of a camera as she is not a model, but just wanted some nice images for herself.

At this time of the year I rarely use my studio as I prefer to get out on location, as I will be stuck in the studio enough over the winter months.

Whilst I have a very comprehensive studio set-up with in excess of 5 lights I mostly use only one light with a large octagon softbox and this was the set-up I used for the shots of Mandy. Saying that, for some of the images I did incorporate a hair light. I also mostly use a black paper background as this gives me lots of options in post production.

Mandy although nervous was great fun to work with and really warmed to it, as the shoot progressed.

In post production I used some of the images to experiment with using different backgrounds and incorporating them into the shots by use of blend modes and layer masks. I should say I use Photoshop CS5 for all my editing.  Mostly my post production workflow is very simple as in tidying up skin, background, changing image to B&W and then using dodge and burn as required before adding contrast. I do not use the actual dodge and burn tools though, but rather use a method of creating empty layers with a blend mode set to soft light and paint on these with either black or white paint set to a low opacity as I feel this is less destructive and allows me to keep going back to make further adjustments if required.

While I am not a big lover of doing loads of editing on images as I prefer to try and get it right in camera, I do find it fun adding different backgrounds, elements to images afterwards, although sometimes these experiments work and sometimes they don’t I will let you all be the judge.

Photoshoot Syren 13th August 2011

I did a shoot on Saturday 13th August with Syren, this was the first time I had worked with her and decided that we would try and do some art nude shots with an erotic twist.

As seems to be the norm for me at the moment we went to an old falling down building which I use a lot, and all the images where taken using flash from a Canon 580ex strobe with umbrella. I under exposed the image by a few stops and let the flash light the model how I wanted with the background going dark.

Overall I am fairly happy with the results and attached are a few of the images I have edited so far. Interesting this was one the of the few rare occasions where I actually liked a few of the images in colour as normaly I am a lover of B&W with lots of contrast. Saying that think I only kept about 3 of the images in colour:-)

Photoshoot with Adreena 15th August 2011

Well after just 2 weeks of creating a blog I am already behindJ so here goes, today I have set myself a target to at least get uploaded about my shoot with Adreena, and then only one other photoshoot to write up, not that I have edited all the images from the last 3 photoshoots. So need to get stuck into that as soon as.

Mostly these days I try and keep my shoots to weekends, but after much discussion I managed to get a shoot setup with Adreena who had found me through Purestorm, but I believe Clover recommended me to her. Anyway I had to take some time off work as we arranged to shoot on a Monday. But it was very much worth it as Adreena was an absolute joy to work with and brought some great outfits as well as Ballet Boots which I love. I also discovered very quickly that Adreena is the first model I have met that can actually walk in them.

For the shoot we went to my normal location of a collection of falling down buildings. I am going to be seriously devastated if they ever get around to knocking them all down!

We started off doing some shots with the Ballet Boots and an amazing corset that Adreena had made to measure, before moving onto some fetish type images which I wanted to make much more casual as in not posed to much. I used the same techniques for lighting as mentioned in my previous post, this has become my normal work mode and mostly these gives me the results I desire with just minor tweaking of camera setting and placement of the light.

I was really pleased with the results and I am hoping to work with Adreena again as she is so versatile.