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.

It was a couple of weeks ago I did this shoot but I hadn’t got round to putting pictures up from the shoot, so here they are! The model was called Ruby, she had a really interesting look and was really easy to work with. We were mostly going for beauty head shots. For these kind of shots it is important to light evenly to produce clean, healthy and natural looking skin.

Thanks for looking, more soon!

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.

It’s always fun to experiment with new ideas and styles. A local Oxford make-up artist and I did a test with a model recently to try out some interesting and different make-up ideas.

To add another element to the shoot I introduced a silk cloth which I asked the model to flick across her face. It’s quite hit and miss but if you carefully time your shots and are patient you can get some really interesting photographs. In this shot you can see that the face is in focus but the silk is not, this keeps the attention on the model.

After doing several shots like this I then dropped the silk from above the model’s head to give a different effect.

Again it is really just repeating the same process with many poses to get photos which work!

The make up being applied by Emma before the shoot

The last make-up look was quite bold so I wanted a strong look from the model to go with it. All these shots were lit with one  Elinchrom 250 mono-block and a shoot through umbrella, a white reflector to the right of the model and  a silver reflector below the models face to acheive a very even, flawless skin tone.

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