A few images that I managed not to screw up completely

Whilst trying to organise my Flickr account into some form of order, I noted that the beter portraits were ones where a MUA was involved. Sharon Cannon was the first I worked with and her skill was evident straight away as one of the models suffered from acne scarring and covered it up so well that little post shoot work was needed. The picture below was with Sharon, the model is Saima Awan, other images can found here MUA Set

Group shoots can be a mixed bag, from free for all to highly organised and invitation only. I have attended a few and enjoyed most of them, having organised one in 2006 I know how stressful  and frustrating it can be organising one. I attended The Jewel Bar shoot last year and had a good time and more importantly got some great images. Other pictures from this shoot can be found  here Must mention that the shoot was organised by  Dani Riot and the dresses were supplied by Nikita Sablier  o

I am off work this week due to developing Pleurisy, which screwed up last weekend for me, I missed the Birmingham Model and Photographer meeting which was well attended by new and prospective models, I also had to cancel two shoots which really pissed me off big time as I hate being cancelled on so I could imagine how the models felt as well. This has also slowed down my editing for a few days as I am not coughing so much today I have spent a little time in front of the computer and re-edited a pic from a 2007 shoot I had with Shelly Radley and Katie Ingram. One of my favourite photographic books is Fine Lines by John Swannell although this book is over 20 years old I look at it frequently for ideas the image below developed from a look from the book.

One of my better shoots of 2010 was with Maddison, a new model who in my opinion an absolute natural art nude model despite only having a handful of shoots needed little direction and posed easily, unfortunately she seems to have disappeared and given modelling up.

I have commited the cardinal sin of blogging, not reguarly posting . My first post of the year involves my last shoot of 2010 and my first of this year, both models are similar physically and are glamourous in appearance. I kept the lighting simple in both cases using a ringflash on Sarah the model in the blue dress and lighting the background with my old Courtney 125's they are now around 30 years old and still going strong. The second picture is of Jessica who contacted me through Facebook, the lighting was just a softbox placed around 6ft from her and set to around one third power.

I have had a love of the classic Hollywood movies from the 1940's onwards, watching the movies in black and white on television not knowing how much they would influence my photography. I went to the an exhibition of work of CS Bull at Wolverhampton it was great to see the publicity stills of Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper and other greats close up. I subsequently bought books by Bull and his contemporaries all of them out of print but available through the internet. The image I have posted is of Josie a young model who is a big fan of Elizabeth Taylor and was in tune to what of what I was trying to achieve during the shoot. While the strong contrast I have gone for will not please a lot of people I believe it to be in keeping of the style.

The attached picture is one of a series of shoots with Joanne during her pregnancy, I have shot mainly in the artistic black and white style but this shot was influenced by two images I have loved, one by Trevor Yerbury and the late Sivad of his of his wife when she was around seven months into her pregnancy. I used a ring flash against a white board. I have one more shoot planned with Joanne and will shoot some fetish influenced images in January.