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.

I used to do a lot of gig photography, it was always good to go see bands for free and take photos at the same time. I haven’t done so much since moving back to Oxford, but I still do the odd gig. One of the guys I used to ride bikes with is now in a band asked me to do some gig photos of them and some shots of the band.

The venue was the Oxford 02 academy, a venue I have been to a lot before but never to take photos.

The lighting as usual seemed to involve vast amounts of red light and not a lot else… I have tried to show the more interesting, differently lit shots on here, but I have hundreds of pure red shots from the night.

I will be putting up the band group pictures in the week, we had a really cool location to shoot them at so can’t wait to put them up!

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!