Here’s another shoot with the fabulous Adreena Angela, mostly experimenting with transparent materials & natural light. The organza around the head has the happy bonus of softening the light hitting her face, & her tattoos always give an edge to the photos. The shot of her laughing is one of my favourites, but was unplanned.
Shot at my studio in Shadwell, Central London. Hair & make-up by Adreena.
Once upon a time, in a land far far away, I considered being a wedding photographer. When I first started taking photos, as I hadn’t planned to do it for a living, I tried my hand at everything to see what I was most drawn to. Weddings can be great fun, everyone’s happy & dressed up, so lots of lovely natural expressions & great captured moments. I also love getting all the details of a wedding, such as the bride’s shoes, the table settings, flowers, details on the dress etc. On the down side, it’s a really long day, & you’re taking the most important photos of people’s lives, that will be up on show in the homes of them & their family, so it’s a huge responsibility. Add to that the fact that you have limited time for posed shots, and you need to work outdoors with whatever the weather decides to throw at you & it’s one of the trickiest types of photography to get right.
After a few years away from weddings I took a camera to the wedding of one of my make-up artists last year. It was a vintage theme, so everyone looked amazing, & in a fabulous venue, Porchester Hall in Notting Hill. Although I wasn’t the wedding photographer, I really enjoyed taking photos all day, & the photos came out really well. Having posted those, I’ve been offered a couple of very exciting paid weddings this year, so I’ve decided to be available for the occasional one if it feels right.
Here’s a gallery of some of my favourite shots from previous weddings.
Here are some shots from a fashion photography test with Bryony from Oxygen Models. I’d arranged a stylist & make-up artist, then unfortunately the first model of the day was ill. Happily, Bryony stepped in & did a fantastic job. I think everyone appreciates how important a make-up artist is for a good shoot, but a stylist makes a shoot stand out from the rest. The good ones just see things that the rest of us might miss & give the photos something extra. Jakki was fabulous & I hope I get to work with her again.
Styling: Jakki Degg
Make-up: Tamash Sharkan
I always like to find time for some testing each month; my paid work doesn’t allow me to try out new ideas too much, & I feel the need to keep creative.
These shots are from a fashion test with Chloe T from Oxygen, shot at my place in Central London. Shooting fashion is quite different for me as I’ve spent most of my photography life exploring the interplay of light on skin, & lighting clothes is a very different discipline.
It’s really important when fashion tests to have decent clothes, & I was lucky enough to get Jakki Degg to come & style the shoot. She’s really creative & has a fantastic collection of outfits, I’d highly recommend her to anyone looking for a stylist.
Make-up by Tamash Sharkan
In a brief burst of post-marathon enthusiasm, I’ve been running outdoors for the last two weeks. Not continuously, that would be weird. Running along roads is really dull, so I’ve been scouring google maps for all the bits of green in the vicinity, & found the little strip of blue that represents the Regent’s Canal. For something in the middle of Mile End, it’s startlingly pretty, & I hope to see more of it as my legs allow me to run a bit further each day.
These are iphone shots, as I didn’t want to be carrying the big camera while running. Top tip: When running on a narrow towpath on a bendy river, looking down at your phone to open the camera app instead of where you’re going may result in excessive unplanned moisture.
It’s always fun to shoot with young Miss Buckitt; she’s full of creative ideas & very bendy, which is always a winning combination 
Plus she lives near me in East London so is handy.
The plan for this shoot was to shoot something involving wax, play around with gels ( I keep my place neutrally coloured so as to match what the model brings, but it’s nice to change things round), & to see just how close Charlie’s legs could get to her ears.
This shot involved melting candles directly onto Charlie’s chin (ouch!) It was her idea, I don’t generally go round inflicting pain on my models.
For the gel shots, I lit the room with a pink gel , & used two striplight soft boxes on Charlie, with egg crates over then to control the light spill. The overall effect seems strangely flamingo-like.
This was probably the bendiest of all shots. She doesn’t train or anything, she’s naturally this way.
Attempting to look all sweet & innocent. Almost pulling it off, the lack of clothes probably doesn’t help.
This is a shot from further back so you can get an idea of the lighting set-up.
And finally, this is George, who helps me set up the lights, & saves the model from having to stand there while I fiddle about trying to get the right effect.
The London Marathon goes with 50 yards of my house (twice!) along The Highway, so it’d have been rude not to pop along & take a few photos. I chose the 2nd pass-by, at 22 miles, as I thought the photos would be more interesting later in the race. It was a really busy spot, with a friendly encouraging crowd, & even a choir of Gamesmakers from the Olympics singing the runners along their journey.
Some of the outfits were incredible, it’s hard to believe that people can run 26 miles in the first place, let alone dressed as a womble! I also saw a 7 foot fire extinguisher, an 8 foot shark, various fruit & vegetables, a honey monster, an FA Cup, several superheroes, 2 camels (someone ran 26 miles as the back end of a camel!) , some rhinos, hundreds of fairies and many many more.
I didn’t realise that the runners mostly wore their name on their chest. This meant that when the crowd were cheering them on, they could call them out by name, which really gave them a boost. This was amazingly uplifting to watch & be part of, I got really emotional. It’s hard to appreciate just how difficult it is until you see the race close up & the pain etched on the faces of the runners.
I got a shot of one guy smiling at hearing his name being shouted, & it turned out we had a mutual friend who tagged him in the photo on Facebook, resulting in a lovely message from the guy in question. He’d been on his last legs at 22 miles, & hearing his name made a big difference, so by sheer fluke I captured a pivotal moment in his race. Getting that message made the whole day out worthwhile.
Needless to say I was motivated into getting my trainers on this morning, & managed a not-quite marathon standard 20 minutes before collapsing, but if I could increase that by just 5 minutes a week over the next year I’d be at slow marathon pace….. can’t see it happening though, I really really hate running, plus my earphones keep falling out, so I’ll probably stick with the Wii Fit.
During the heaviest of the snowfalls in January, I couldn’t resist running outside to take a few photos. I’d forgotten how wet snow is, I literally just grabbed the camera & ran outside, & had to hide it under my jumper to stop it getting soaked. I’m lucky to have a very pretty part of London on my doorstep, and it was nice to get out & shoot something different from my usual glamour. It’s hardly Game of Thrones levels of wintriness, but still very pretty.
Mind you, my house looks out over a graveyard, so come the zombie apocalypse I’ll be the first to go. Are zombies good at climbing?
Here’s a glamour shoot from a while ago with Kayleigh Pearson out in Gran Canaria. Sunset is a magical time to shoot, but the window of opportunity to get the very best light is pretty small, so you have to work fast. The sun seems to set with alarming speed over there, & some days a little bit of cloud in the wrong place can leave you with no good light at all.
Also, there are a lot of environmental factors getting in the way. For a start, it’s really not at all warm, especially if, like here, you’re naked & wet throughout the shoot. Sand gets everywhere (this type of shoot is not kind to your camera!), hair & make-up get messed up, the current can be really strong which makes it hard to hold a pose, & occasional bigger waves can soak your model (or knock her over).
It’s also not the easiest thing to balance the right amount of flash with the rapidly-changing ambient light, so there’s quite a bit of fiddling involved.
All that said, it’s totally worth it & I love the photos we get. It’s great going for something to eat afterwards (we finished around 9.30) knowing you’ve done a good day’s work, then off to bed as you have to be up at 4am to get make-up done before the sunrise…
Here’s a behind the scenes video from a glamour shoot I did for Alexis Smith Lingerie featuring Jessica Wright. She makes lingerie specially for augmented breasts (Alexis not Jessica). I had no idea that a video had been made, it’s amazing what you find when you google yourself! Fortunately I was too busy concentrating on shooting Jessica to notice the video camera so I couldn’t get self-conscious. I’m really not great at posing, as my poor flatmate discovered one afternoon when she tried to get a few shots of me…
