An Hour In The Spitfire Factory

I am not currently doing much photography at the moment, so when I had opportunity to spend an hour with S_Olivia on a studio day, I did not need to be asked twice! The studio opened in the last year and is located in what was once an aircraft factory where Spitfires were built many years ago. The factory is now a complex of business units hence the name of Spitfire Studio.

By today's standards an hour is not a long time for a photo shoot so I had to be fairly well organised by my standards, and I brought a minimal amount of props with me and asked for most of the shoot to be nude, this kept time out from shooting to a minimum. I was making something of a rod for my own back as I am intending to do a lot of post production work in Photoshop with some digital manipulations which I will post at a later date.

Photographer: Me (Mugshots-UK)
Model: S_Olivia
Studio: Spitfire Studio

View my full portfolio on PurplePort.com

Have Been Quiet Lately

Things have been quiet lately, being unemployed means that there is little money to pay for studios and models, so i have to take full advantage of any opportunities that may occur from time to time.

Such an opportunity arose recently when Spitfire Studios in Swindon had an open evening, and suggested that photographers bring their cameras with them as there would be a couple of models and make-up artists in attendance. On the evening I was joined by Fire's Secret, who lives close by, as she wanted to find out how to get to the studio as she had not been there before.

At the studio there were quite a few people there who are members of WASP (Wiltshire and Swindon Photography), a facebook group for photographers, models, make-up artists and stylists in the Wiltshire and Swindon area, so it was a good opportunity to network with fellow creative people.

I took the opportunity to take a few photos of Fire's Secret and Cherry Blossom Coats, as well as having a chat with many of those who attended. All in all an entertaining evening.

You can see more of my work on my web site or on my Purple Port portfolio.
I can recommend Purple Port as a good site to network with photographers, models, make-up artists, stylists and studios. It is friendly, easy to use and you can join here.

A New Colour Scheme

I had not worked with S_Olivia for three months and when we arranged a shoot for the end of August I was not aware that she had changed the colour of her hair, she is now sporting red hair.

We had a short shoot in my garden and I wanted to see if I could capture some new portraits that showed her new hair colour. Some of the images actually worked better as black and white due to my camera giving me some strong colour casts in the shadow areas, but I have found a way of correcting this problem so I will probably re-process some of the affected images at some point.

Some of the shots featured some new wardrobe items, including a long dress that will need to be adjusted, as it was too long for her even when she wore her high heels. We also did some nude and topless shots as well, including an attempt at some bodyscapes that did not work too well in daylight, I will have to try again sometime in a studio.

You can see more of my work at my Mugshots-UK web site or on my Purple Port portfolio.

Another Home Shoot

This week I had a shoot with Fire’s Secret. Nothing unusual in that, but this time it was a ‘Home Shoot’ and for a change it was not my home. Fire’s Secret has recently moved has now lives in a spacious house with potential as a photographic location.

We worked in a large living room with white curtains that provided a good backdrop, and if the sun had been shining would have provided a good background for a silhouette, but as the weather was not playing we used my trusty Elinchrom studio flash to illuminate the scene. With the occasional interruption from Murphy, a colourful parrot, we did a series of shots loosely based around a chair inspired by designer Arne Jacobsen and a famous photo of Christine Keeler taken at the time of the Profumo Affair. 

After a while we moved to another room to do some shots that involved some large mirrored sliding wardrobe doors. The space was limited and it was awkward to keep my reflection out of the photo. Photoshop came to the rescue to remove some unwanted detail in the images, and I must admit that I am quite pleased with the results.

You can see more of my photos on my Homepage or at PurplePort.

It’s Supposed To Be Summer!

Last week I saw a short notice-casting put out by Miss LouLou so I contacted her with an offer of a shoot on the Wednesday. The reply came back saying that she preferred to shoot on the Tuesday, so we agreed to do a shoot on the Tuesday afternoon.

Having collected Lou from Swindon station, we headed back to my place and set-up for a shoot in my garden, and the weather was doing the typical British summer and was dull overcast not very warm and to top it all off it was trying to rain, the poor light levels dictated an ISO setting of 400. Fortunately my garden has a covered patio so it is possible to work outside in wet weather without getting a soaking so we started to work on my ideas.

Initially I wanted to do some multiple images that I have been trying out recently and set up two ideas, one with Lou placed in different parts of the garden and another one with Lou walking across the garden starting off clothed and ending nude, the second idea has so far delivered two multiple images and may deliver a couple more.

After doing a few more shots, nudes and portraits, we moved into a neighbours summerhouse that was available for us to use, it was the first time I had used this space and the lighting was really good albeit not very bright and I had to wind up the ISO to 800 to get a reasonable exposure. Despite the available space being limited I did images that I was pleased with though one of them did actually accentuate Lou’s height and made her already long legs look even longer!

All in all a reasonably successful shoot despite the weather, and as it happened the following day the weather was greatly improved and there was even some nice warm sunshine.

You can see more of my work on my PurplePort portfolio and on my Mugshots-UK web site.