[NSFW] – Lareina Slight
Lareina is a super cool chick. Go follow her on Instagram
Mary Lafferty in Dublin
Cristina Chereches in Dubai
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.
[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.
[NSFW] – Lauren Wood in London
Images below are Not Safe for Work – NFSW ….. You have been warned!
I have been heading over to London for syndication shoots with agencies over there for the last year, but haven’t posted any… (haven’t been doing enough posting in general). Syndication basically means that pictures are taken with the aim to sell them to various magazines and papers. The kind of shots that I have been doing over there are mostly glamour shots, i.e. sexy shots where the girls are often topless & implied nude. It is not something that is done over here in Ireland as there is no demand or industry for it. All the Lads Mags, Page3 etc. are all based in the UK.
With a standard Ryanair flight to Stansted at just €19.99, it is fairly cheap to head over for a day and shoot. A usual trip involves grabbing a flight over, renting a studio for the day and shooting away. The best of the shots then get sent off to the syndication company who try to sell the shots for me. Easy.
One of my first trips over there was about a year ago. I was shooting with the fab model Lauren Wood, whom is currently with Nine Model Management, a relatively new glamour agency. Lauren was fantastic to work with. Being confident and stunning made my job very easy.
The studio I rented had fantastic window light, so I utilised this for a lot of the shoot. Shooting with a Canon 50mm 1.2L, it soaked in all the light and gave a nice shallow depth of field, blurring out the background.
Things are a lot different over in the UK in terms of glamour. Being Topless for shoots is no big deal. There is no fear of a little nipple for shoots. Of course one can say that its trashy, disrespectful to women and all that jazz. My aim is to try capture tasteful glamour shots. Don’t be afraid to let me know in the comments what you think of the shots 🙂
At home with Catriona
Here are a few images from a super quick, casual shoot with Catriona Barron from Wexford. I first met Catriona from a group shoot day that rented my studio a few months ago. She was one of the make-up artists on the day. We kept in touch and Catriona liked the idea of getting a few shots done for her self, so here we are.
It is nice to get out of the studio to shot some times. Shooting on location is how I started off before I got developed the studio. I had nearly forgotten what it was like to have to lug speedlights around on lights stands and the challenge of figuring out how to light each unique location…… great fun all together.
The post title might be a little bit misleading in that is not an all natural light shoot. It is a mix of natural light and some very soft fill flash. The walls in this room were white, so they made great natural reflectors for bouncing around some extra flash. The shot does not instantly look like it was flash due to the balance of the flash and the ambient lights and the quality of the light.
I can’t recall exactly the power settings I used, but I can guess is that I wanted it to be about a 1/3 to 1 stop under the ambient. Normally to achieve this I would dial in -1 stop in the flash. However in this case, because there was so much white in the room, the flash was already metering for the white and being roughly a stop under and looked great. So I left it. When technology is working… leave it be 🙂
The other aspect was the quality of the light. This basically how hard or soft it is. The light in these images is very soft. I achieved this by taking the flash and bouncing it off the wall or bit of a wall that was behind me. As the walls are white, light bounces all around the room and does not pick up a colour cast, so all is good.
Olivia Tracy-Hogan on the Beach
Prepare for a slight bombardment of updates over the next day or so. I am just back from Glasgow where were were shooting the World Pipe Band Games with DE Photo. It was a busy week over there so I am only now finally getting some time to do some updates and clear up the workflow backlog.
First on the list is putting the pictures from a shoot that I had with Olivia & Carol in July. We had a week of great weather in July and I was in full swing with plenty of beach shoots. The two girls hopped in the car for the short drive down to Wexford for some fun in the sun. Olivia is a Dancer / Radio DJ / Model amongst other things. She is currently signed to Bscene. She is fun, bubbley and great to work with. She also has the most fantastic eyes ever. Here are the best of Olivia’s shots.
The first two Diptych‘s of Olivia made it into Flickr explore one day after the other, which was cool. It is amazing the amount of views and comments that an image can get if it is in explore. The shot above attained the same amount of views in 1 week that my current most viewed reached in 3 months. But that is a mute point as currently people seem to be weaning off Flickr as their photo sharing platform. I use flickr for two main reasons:
- Additional image back up
- Imaging hosting
* Edit… I no longer use flicker 🙂
Danilo Taveres
I had a shoot with Danilo Taveres at Laytown beach recently. It was a portfolio shoot for Danilo to build up his modelling book. He is a multi-talented guy, he is a a hair stylist, a makeup artist and hope to be model. The shoot was styled by Liam Power. This was the first shoot I worked on with Liam. The second shoot was for the Sunday World Magazine which will be published this week (Aug 7th)
This shoot was a pretty quick shoot as the weather turned nasty on us. It was all natural light except the last shot for which I brought out a single strobe as it was getting dark. I am shooting a lot more natural lately, when it is available. In stead of adding a strobe to fight the sun, I am now starting to control harsh sunlight, to give a soft light, rather than just blasting in fill light with a flash.
This was the last shoot I did with my Nikon Gear. From here on in, it will all be Canon 🙂
Lydia Coleman Beach Shoot
June and July are turning out to be a pretty busy month with shoots. With the few days of fine weather that we get… in between all the rain, its the perfect chance to get out onto the beach and take some shots. Only days after my last shoot with Lydia, we were back at it again, striking while the iron was still hot so to speak. I was also shooting Alyson Boyle at the same time, but I will put her pics into a separate post.
The team was the same as the night shoot. We had Ann-Jean Fitzsimons on make-up and Gill Keogh on Styling.
I like the shot above of Lydia. The make up was kept very minimal and natural to bring out Lydia’s freckles. And yes, both of us were in the water for this shot. I was hand holding the Speedlight and the umbrella in my left hand while trying not to drop the camera from my right hand. A little bit of desaturation in post and that is this image done.
The shot below is another great one of Lydia. I spoke before of her great smile, and here it is.
The shot above is all with natural light and a reflector. Some times natural light is just better, this is one of those cases. The reflector created nice catch lights in her eyes also as bonus.
I will finish up with this image, again showing Lydia’s great smile.
Stay tuned for the shots of Alyson in a few days.