Hotel – Richie.ie

June 1, 2018January 10, 2019

Dominique Barrager in New York

© Richie Buttle | www.richie.ie | www.facebook.com/richiephoto | #richiephoto

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August 25, 2016July 14, 2018

Mary Lafferty in Dublin

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March 25, 2016July 12, 2018

Meet Christina, the beautiful Romanian Model, based in Abu Dhabi but who travels the world. I found Christina on Model Mayhem while searching for models to shoot in Dubai. I was visiting Australia in February 2016, with a stop off in Dubai, so it was a great opportunity to get a shoot in or two.

We only had 2 hours to shoot in my place in Dubai, a 34th floor apartment. It was some natural looks, minimal makeup, nothing too fancy. The setup was kept minimal also, using just window light for the majority of the shots. For the last set on the bed, I introduced a speedlight into the mix. I experimenting playing around with it as a fill light for some shots and using it as a key. I had connected to a pocket wizard, so it was wireless and hence Christina was able to play around with it.

You can follow Christina on Twitter & Instagram. Also as usual, any comments or questions, you can hit me up below in the comments.

February 1, 2016July 13, 2018

[NSFW] – Chloe Moran in London

I met up with Chloe on my last London trip. Chloe is an Irish girl living and working in London at the moment and she wanted to get do a shoot to get some nice pictures. As you can see, Chloe looks amazing and really rocked it at the shoot. Her friend Zoe was there also and she even got a few shots done after she seen how much fun Chloe was having.

We started off with the the easy looks, the body suit etc., something to ease into it. The first look of a shoot is always the hardest as there will be a certain amount of anxiety and confidence needing to be build. I generally do a good job ( I think 🙂 ) of helping people feel confident for a shoot, and Chloe is no exception here. At the end of the day, confidence is what make a person attractive; once you feel good, you look good.

We were shooting in the apartment that I had rented for the few days while I was there and they had great windows, plenty of natural light flooding in so I made the mode of it along with a 35mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.4 ( Sigmas).

What do you think of the shots, are the too glamoury or are the just nice? I am always interested to hear about what other people think of my work. Let me know in the comments below. You can follow Chloe on Instagram also.

March 26, 2015January 10, 2019

Anastasia Nova in Los Angeles

Anastasia was another fab model that I met on my 2015 LA Trip. Anastasia is a Russian born, Model / Actress based in LA. I can’t remember exactly how we got in touch with each other, I think she seen my instagram post looking for LA models and she liked it. I followed it up then.

Anastasia has the most amazing blue eyes and a distinctive look. She has a fantastic athletic figure and is your regular gym bunny. I shoot with a mix of windows light some looks but the majority of lights I was using the flash on camera with the flash bracket.

You can follow Anastasia on Twitter and Instagram

March 7, 2012July 12, 2018

Rachel Wallace – The Hotel Room Shoot

Rachel Wallace is back on the blog for her second outing. Rachel is another one of my subjects becoming a regular on my blog. Although this is just our second shoot, we had our third a few days after this one and the fourth is in the works. She is tied with Alyson who is heading for shoot no. 4 also.

Score keeping aside, there was a business end to this shoot, and indeed all my shoots with Rachel. The brief for this shoot had two parts. This shoot was filmed for parts of Rachels bio/introduction piece on ICA book camp, which will be on RTE next month. The first part of the brief was to stage a shoot for TV. The shoot images were also used for a spread in the Irish sun which was Published on Feb 23rd, that was the second part of the brief.

Rachel is fantastic to work with. A re-cap of Rachel’s story can be found in the post on our first shoot HERE. She is still with Assets and going strong, getting plenty of work. The ICA book camp should be a real boost to Rachel’s profile once it is aired and no doubt she will go great in the final.

This shoot was in the Bewley’s Hotel in Ballsbridge. They kindly lent us a room for a few hours for the TV crew to do an interview and for us to shoot for a bit. This is the second time I have shoot here, the first time being over a year ago with for my Day with Hannah.

This shoot was styled by Nicole Spain of Flutterby Fashion Styling. This was my first time to work with Nicole directly. She styled the shoot for Lisa and Faye before but unfortunately could not attend that shoot. It was great working with Nicole on this shoot. Penny’s supplied the lingerie, which looked great on Rachel. The hair extensions were by Hotloxs Hair Extensions and styled by the great team at Blow Salons.

Ironically, the images that you see here are none of the images that you will see being shot on the TV show. After Rachel finished her 15mins interview, we had to get cracking on a shoot…. or pretend to shoot so the camera can get some footage of a shoot in progress. I didnt really set up lights proper or anything. We were just shooting for the sake of shooting…. so you have been warned in advice of watching the shot and thinking that they are crap shots :).

So the shoot had two briefs, a shoot for the sake of a shoot and a shoot for getting some press images. Upon arriving at the hotel early with my gear to recon the location, I had the sneaky suspicion that the room that was organise would be the standard hotel room that they have. Under normal circumstances, this would be a fine room but it is just too small for a photo shoot, let alone a TV interview. Lights, sound man, camera man, director, assistance, Nicole, Rachel and my self, it was going to get cramped.

I got the key card and went up to the room and my suspicions about a small room were realised. I didn’t unpack any gear until the TV crew arrived. I was hoping the the producer who organise the room initially would be able to see if there was a larger room available, and so their was. We moved a few floors up and we now had a bigger room with more space.

So the TV crew got into prep mode and started to set up the camera, hot lights etc etc. I set up my Elinchrom lights and softboxes to be used as some props in the background…. Rachel was supposed to be on the set of a photoshoot after all. The Elinchroms worked great…. apart from the cooling fan that kicked in every so often. The noise from the tiny fans was enough to put off the sound in the interview. Luckily they cool down pretty quick, so after a minute of it being off, we turned be back on and it was good to go again for another few minutes.

Once the TV crew got that they needed…… which was mostly some random photos been taking and some useless direction by me, they were off. Once they were gone, that left Rachel, Nicole and my self to work away and start getting our stuff done. Nicole had a selection of items for us to shoot. Some of those included lingerie from Pennny’s and t-shirts from another company.

Lighting wise, there was nothing new or ground breaking here. I did how ever crack out the Orbis Ring Flash out of hibernation. I haven’t used it since Aug of last year. I used it for all the shots of Rachel on the bed as I wanted to give it a try….. no other reason really. I could have used the other lights that I had with me, such as the Elinchroms. I suck with the Orbis anyway for this look. It was armed with a 580-II and triggered via E-TTL cord. I was shooting in E-TTL move with +1 EV Flash compensation. This is needed as I find that I need to up the juice a bit of the flash when using the Orbis.

Thats all for now, any comments or questions, holla below.

August 18, 2011July 12, 2018

Miss Ireland Dubliner Magazine Shoot 2012

Congratulations to Holly Carpenter who won the Miss Ireland crown this year. I met Holly and some of the other Dublin Miss Ireland contestants at a shoot for The Dubliner Magazine. I was asked to shoot it as the Official Photographer, Vince Tully was unavailable due to the new arrival in the family, congrats Vince! It was great to be asked to do it . The opportunity to work with the Miss Ireland crew, the contestants and getting some work published was great. The location was the D4 Berkey Hotel. The manger Gerry was fantastic in accommodating us for the shoot, making sure we had everything that we needed. The D4 Berkley, was also the venue for the Miss Ireland Final

Jumping in at the last minute for a shoot is never ideal. It means you are not fully prepared, you may not fully understand the brief for and what shots are required. I was told a basic brief that entailed of some swimwear, some cocktail dress, individuals and groups shots. I wasn’t to know the style of the cloths until I seen them on site and I also was not familiar with or the team that you are working with. All these questions I want to know before a shoot if possible as the more planning that can be done pre-shoot that more time during the shoot is spend actually getting the shots rather than trying to setup and find the shot.

With all this in mind, I made sure to turn up early for the shoot. Getting there early means there is some time to meet the models, the hair and make-up team and to have a scout around the location (It turned out that I did know one of the team, Tassia). Unfortunately though I still had no ideas of the cloths that were were shooting or what looks were needed, it would be a few hours before all that came together. So knowing the locations is only half the battle, the cloths is the other half. Some cloths will suite that particular locations etc.

Any spare time on a shoot, no matter the reason for it is valuable time. I spend that time getting up all the lights and testing them to make sure that they were all firing. I even got some of the girls up for some shots to test out some locations and also to get the chat flowing a bit and keep things some what interesting while we waited. Having all the lights out and ready to go meant that when the cloths arrived and it was go time, it was just a very short time required to place lights, set power and start shooting.

The extra time was great on this particular shoot as it was the first time I was using the Elinchrom 135cm Octobox and the 70cm Deep Octo. I had them already assembled at home, so it was just a matter of putting them on the lights an seeing how they performed. I done the usual stuff, a few test pops with the light meter at various distances to see its output along with some test shots. But more on that in a future post.

As this was my first time shooting for a publications with a set brief, it was a little strange having some one else take control and be the Creative Director. Up until this point, all my shoots have been my controlled by either my self of the model as we try out different things, experiment and see what we like. I always knew what I roughly wanted and we worked towards that. There was no pressure to deliver a particular shot. This time it was different. Brendan Marc Scully was styling the shoot today and he was the Creative Director as such. The CD’s job is basically to tell the photographer what shot they want, how it should look and then its up to the photographer to do it. It was good in a way as it means that there is a certain element of thinking and responsibility is removed from the photographer. It also means however that creative freedom as a photographer is surrendered and that there is the extra burden of making sure that the required shots are delivered.

Shooting for print or for a client also has some other differences as opposed to shooting for yourself /your own portfolio. The main difference is that you usually don’t get to chose what shots are used. When you are shooting for your own portfolio, you pick the shots that you really like and want in there because its your work. When shooting for a client, they pick the shots that best fits the story they are trying to tell. If you are the type who gets attached to your work, it could leave you frustrated as you see some of best shots from a shoot not being used. At the end of the day however, they are the customers and you don’t always know the end used for the images.

Thats about it for now. The trouble with leaving blog post for so long after the actual shoot is that you forget a lot of stuff to say. I will be doing a BTS post later as I have a good few lighting shots. But in the meantime, feel free to ask any questions that you may have.

Tag: Hotel