Fire and Ice

Just before Christmas Fire’s Secret posted a message on Net-Model that she was looking for a snow shoot on the following Sunday, this was posted on the Friday. I responded that I was available for a shoot and the booking was made.

Thee had been a good snowfall on the Friday, and even more on the Saturday as I discovered when I took my car into Grove for a service and MOT test. I managed to get back from Grove in one piece and hunkered down for the rest of the day and watched the snow get deeper in the garden. There was a danger on the Sunday that the roads would be impassable, but we were lucky and the roads in our locality were fairly reasonable to drive on, and Fire’s Secret happens to live 10 miles from my location.

There was a good covering of snow on the day of the shoot.  

At 1:00pm I got a phone call asking which was the gate to my place, well my house is well hidden near the town centre, I confirmed that it was the right gate and went to my front door in time to welcome my model for the day. A quick cup of tea and a short discussion about how and what we were going to shoot was followed by the first set of photos. Now I must admit that Fire’s Secret does travel with quick changes in mind as all she was wearing was a coat, and a knitted dress that was all removed as quick as a flash and there she was stood naked at my open front door.

 

Because it was freezing and the fact it was a nude shoot, I kept shooting time to a minimum and the shoot consisted of nine separate sets that were shot in a period of two to three minutes each, followed by a return to the warmth of the house to review the images that had just been taken. One aspect of the shoot was the quality of the light, it was very flat and quite dull which did not help with lifting the images, though it was probably for the best as the snow would have been impossible to record if the light was too bright.

 

 

After the shoot we both got warmed up again and I burnt a disc of images for Fire’s Secret to use on her web site. This shoot was a first for me and I would certainly like to do another one, with some sunlight.

 

Shooting to a Christmas Theme

In October I decided I had better get my ‘Christmas Photo’ organised, and so it was I set-up another shoot with Fire’s Secret at my local studio. A Saturday afternoon was the chosen day and the shoot was to take place after she had done an outdoor shoot with Ivory Flame in Oxford, now that is a shoot I would have liked to have done, two red-heads together.

Sharon duly arrived and once we had found somewhere for her to park, we set off to the studio which is just outside of town, in the unlikely setting of a second hand car sales office. Fortunately the studio operator had warmed the place up, as it was quite a chilly day.

After a quick discussion about costumes and other wardrobe essentials, we started shooting with the Christmas theme first, with Fire’s Secret wearing a red negligee that was trimmed in white, with red evening gloves and white stockings. I took over 100 photos in this outfit, before we mad a few small changes to what was being worn and reduced the outfit to just gloves and stockings.

 

Next outfit was a white slip that would pass as a dress, finished off with Ugg boots a really glamorous combination that actually worked quite well. This was quickly followed up by an outfit that consisted of a rather fancy thong assembly finished off with a pair of glamorous heels, now I am not a great fan of shoes when shooting nude or topless images but as we had added a pole dancing pole to the setting I think it worked on this occasion.

 

The next outfit was a long black negligee, which was worn in various ways, followed by a white lace poncho, which was worn, on its own to great effect. The final two sets were nude and a topless set in cut down denim shorts. All in all a very productive shoot crammed into a fairly short period of time in a compact and bijou studio space.

 

Introducing ………………..

At the beginning of October I had a shoot with Laura and her friend Yasmin. I have photographed Laura many times, but I had never met Yasmin before, so I believe she is totally new to modelling.

On the day of the shoot I drove up to Gloucester to pick up my models, and then back again to a compact and bijou studio local to me that I had rented for a few hours. Laura was her usual relaxed self in front of the camera, and Yasmin settled into the routine of shooting very quickly.

Yasmin wanted the photos to be in Black & White, but I do think some of the colour ones work quite well, but I will just show the Black and White ones here.

Laura and Yasmin

Laura

Yasmin

A Busy Week!

Two days after my shoot with ERosanne, I had another shoot with Miss Lou Lou, and once again the location was to be my garden. On this day the sum was shining quite brightly which is not the ideal lighting for portraiture and people photography, but being the optimist that I am I went about the shoot with relish.

I collected Lou from the station in Swindon and drove straight back to my place, and as we had a cup of coffee we discussed what outfits Lou had brought with her and what we could hopefully achieve in the time we had available. After the refreshments we set about the first set of images.

After the initial couple of image sets, we moved down the garden to do some work based shots with a hardhat and high visibility jacket. It was during this set that we posted one of the images of Lou in a wheelbarrow to Facebook to indicate what she would be wearing on a night out.

Later on Lou went into the next door garden so the we could do some over the fence shots, it was at this time that she caught a frog and we did a quick shot, I had thought about doing a kissing the frog to see if it was a prince type of shot, but it was a bit too lively for that.

After some fashion shots, we finished the shoot with some bondage style shots.

Phoenix From The Ashes or Recycling Again

At the start of September I took some time off work and had the opportunity to work with ERosanne again. During the pre-shoot communications I mentioned that I would like to do a shoot based upon the Mythology of the Phoenix, with ERosanne rising from the ashes of a bonfire that the person who was doing a makeover on my garden had had a couple of days before the shoot.

On the day of the shoot I collected ERosanne from Oxford railway station, and on the drive to the shoot I mentioned that we might divert to the Ridgeway first for a short location shoot near to a monument that had some ‘Big Landscape’ views that I thought would make a good setting for some nude shots. At this point Ros started to get changed out of her travelling cloths, I think I can see a pattern developing here! Unfortunately the weather proved to be a bit too unreliable, so that idea got cancelled and we went on to the primary location, my garden!

The first set of images featured ERosanne topless and wearing a tool belt and in a labouring mode! The majority of the images she was pulling on a length of rope that was tied to a post just out of shot.

The next set of images were nude shots in the ashes of a bonfire, in places they were still warm from a fire that was burnt the day before. Ros covered herself in the ash that adhered to her skin as she still had the baby oil on her skin from the previous set of images. She started off kneeling in the ash and finished it standing and quite liberally covered in ash.

After a quick shower we progressed onto the next set which featured Ros in a green dress, that did not stay on for long, finishing with some more nude images next to the seat and garden wall.

Returning to the Phoenix theme, we tried to re-light the bonfire with some woody garden waste that was available. Sadly the fire did not really take hold, but we did do some more nude photos through the smoke and flames that we did manage to raise.

 

The next set of images featured a new and as yet unused wheelie bin that the council had recently delivered; I had mentioned this to Ros in the pre-shoot communications, as I knew she had also done shots in a wheelbarrow and a shopping trolley. The only additional prop that Ros used was a pair of shoes that she had recently bought. The sequence of shots was great fun and many different images were obtained.

Inside my home is a rather unusual staircase, that is top lit by a Velux skylight, and Ros wanted me to take some shots of her on the steps. It was quite a low light situation but I set the ISO to 3200 to get the images without any additional lighting.

The last set of the day featured Ros in a long skirt and one of my swords, which she was quite good at wielding for the camera. This was no mean feat as the sword is quite heavy. The set was finished off with some portrait shots in my neighbour’s garden which had a bit more greenery than my garden has at the moment.