It’s that time of year… Had a fun day in Portobello market shopping on Saturday despite the freezing cold! Shot with Canon 50mm at F/1.8. Thanks Fi!

I recently shot a set of headshots and portraits for David Campbell, one of England’s top clarinetists who lives and teaches in London. I shot a variety of different looks with and without his clarinet for use in magazines articles, profiles and concert programs. This was my favourite shot from the shoot, taken with the Canon 50mm F/1.4 and 2 Elinchrom studio heads at F/1.4 only using the modelling bulbs of the flashes.

Head shot session with actor Lucy Walters for use in Spotlight, the premier actor’s listing directory. A simple 2 light set-up was used to capture her head shot, it was then cropped to the 10×8″ required for Spotlight (has been shown here at the original crop though). I shot several different angles and with hair up and down to give a variety of looks.

I am now living and working in Shoreditch, East London having moved from Oxford at long last! I have quite a few exciting projects in the pipe line, more information on them soon!

I am back from travels in Asia, I went with my girlfrind Fiona for a month and visited Singapore, Thailand and Laos. I took a lot of photos, and I am hoping to have some kind of exhibition later in the year. In the mean time I will put some up here once I have edited them!

Before going away I had a portrait session with Anthony Whitehead. Anthony is a man with a story to tell. Having survived cancer in his teens he has gone on to perform in a variety of settings for the Teenage Cancer Trust, including the Royal Albert Hall. His first album is coming out in the next few months.

He is originally from Oxfordshire, but is currently living in Brighton. I have known him since I was 5 years old so it was fun to do a portrait session with him. I picked a location in the Oxfordshire/Berkshire Downs to show his country side up-bringing. For this shot no flash was used to get silhouette from the sun.

One flash from the left was used with a tight beam to catch just a thin strip of grass.

This is the setup shot for the photo below, though slightly later in the evening when the sun had dropped lower. Canon 580ex mk II and 430ex flashes on full power triggered by skyport radio triggers. I used Canon 70-200mm F/2.8 for nearly all the shots as it gives lovley out of focus backgrounds and is very sharp. Out in the open countryside space there is plenty of room to stand back and shoot from a distance.

Two flashes were used for this shot, one for the main light and one to give a slight rim light to his left as described above. I am also just finishing off a website for Anthony, I will post about it when it is finished.

Playing with lighting ideas, trying to make a rainy day look sunny! Basically a back lit shot, with some front fill light.

1 580ex Speedlite as front left fill, silver reflector to right and 1 Elinchrom 500 with yellow gel as the backlight/bounce main. Thanks Fi for modelling!

I recently photographed a set of photos for an Oxford based band Invisible Vegas. I really enjoyed the project because the band gave me quite a free reign on the kind of shots they wanted. I found a great location in Oxfordshire by a river and with an old barn in the grounds. For this shot I used Elinchrom mono-block heads plugged into a portable battery pack. This gave me the freedom to be away from the usual mains power restrictions. I used two flashes to the left and right of the camera and the standard 45 degrees reflectors on the strobes.

Getting the background right meant that the timing of the shot was important as I wanted to capture it at dusk to get a ‘moody’ sky. I used a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second to retain good detail in the clouds and sky. The logs were already there, we just moved them around a little to provide small platforms for each of the band members.

After the outside shoot we moved into the old warehouse to get some closer shots of the band, showing their faces. This shot was lit with three lights, one above the camera through a white umbrella and then two strobes behind and to the side to give rim lights.

This shot was taken with a shoot through umbrella and then a flash behind the band members which creates a back light to the band, and also create the shadow coming out from their feet.

This shot was lit again with two rim lights and one main light above the camera.

Here’s a set-up shot of the band after we had finished the shoot. You can see the two rim lights to the left and right of the picture and the main light high and in the middle but without the umbrella which was attached for the shoot. As we were working inside and had access to the mains power I didn’t have to use a battery pack for these later shots.

Invisible Vegas will next be playing the 02 Academy, Oxford on the 27th May 2009.

The sun has been shining and I am loving it! This was shot at a BBQ in Cardiff last weekend. This shot wasn’t setup, I just snapped it whilst the guys were messing around. Just goes to show it’s worth taking the camera everywhere!

Here are a couple of black and white photos from a dirt jump spot near me which I help build at. I love documenting what goes on here. Summer time should be amazing when they are running too. The trees are still bare but it’s warming up and you can feel spring coming.

Checking the length of a jump

Aidan

Liam ‘Lima’ Eltham needed some photos to go on his BMX sponsor’s websites; Fox Racing. Thanks to a bit of scouting by me and some of my BMX friends a fantastic location near Oxford was found. A small lake in a nature reserve was used as the location. I choose to do the shoot just before sunset so that the sky, balanced with flash would be a beautiful dark blue colour.

There was a rock in the lake which was just below water level which gives the effect of Liam floating just above the water! I used 3 flashes to light Liam and make him stand out from the background. This image was shot on the Sigma 10-20mm, this allows you to get very close to the subject and get lots of the sky in the shot.

All the pictures are also linked to Flickr, just click on them to visit the Flickr page to post comments on them.

The reflections produced were almost a perfect copy of the scene which really adds interest to the image. The rest of the shoot was shot with a Canon 70-200mm F/2.8

After a while to try some different ideas I got some of my friends to throw rocks into the lake at Liam! Liam is a tough guy and didn’t mind the freezing water, too much… The flash freezes the water droplets perfectly.

The Fox jacket kept Liam warm, but his shoes were pretty soaked by this point!

Setup shots

Lighting diagram

Here’s a set-up shot of the lighting for one of the shots. Each blue circle is where a flash was placed. The Elinchrom skyport radio triggers allow me to be a good distance away fromt the subject, but not worry about trailing wires to fire the flashes.

The lighting diagram shows the set-up for the below shot.

This was the photograph that was picked to be used on the Fox Team page, it can be seen here:

http://www.foxhead.com/us/bmx/team/?id=15056

I used a strong rim light  for this shot to separate Liam from the background. [A rim light is the light that produces the white line along the left side of his body]. The water droplets are frozen by the fast flash duration, as is the motion of his body making Liam appear to float. It was a fun shoot, a big thanks to Liam for being open to trying ideas!

Feel free to ask any more question in the comments section below.

A quick portrait session with illustrator Tinhed. Also going to be doing a website with him soon, go see Foals for some of his drawings. Expect big things to be coming from his way soon.

Tunnel vision at the moment… Big project is finished a week Thursday, it will be a big relief to get that out the way and I can enjoy some of the beautiful weather that is slowly creeping round the UK.