I was very fortunate to have a shoot with one of my favourite models last week, Holly (IvoryFlame). She has appeared in images on my blog quite a few times, and with good reason as she has significantly contributed to the improvement in my photography over the last year or so. In fact there is now an A3 framed print of her next to a spindly tree in pride of place in our dining room.
After this recent shoot it reminded me of our first shoot together in August 2009. I have never really used or displayed any of the images, although looking back at them I think there are some quite good ones. So this blog entry is a step back in time after being reminded of that first shoot, and also because I’ve been too lazy to prepare any other images for my blog in the last few weeks :)
This was also my first ‘group shoot’ where there are multiple photographers and multiple models, the shoot lasted 3 hours, with photographers working in pairs shooting each of 4 models for 45 minutes at a time. This was also my first real attempt at low light photography using natural light, I’ve leave you to judge how well I coped.
So…drumroll..here is the first ever image I took of Holly. I don’t think it’s a bad attempt, but that’s more down to the quality of Holly as a model than any expertise on my part :)
I used a Bleach Bypass preset in Lightroom to take the colour out of the image and especially Holly’s skin, then upped the saturation on the Orange channel to just make her striking hair pop.
I used a similar treatment on this next image where we have the lovely Iveta in the background, having her picture taken by one of the other photographers. I love the shape of Holly’s body as revealed by the cape, I have tried to get other models to produce a similar shape using the same cape many times since, and have failed miserably on each occasion. It’s just a shame about the poor background and burnt out windows.
Next we can see the start of my wide period, where instead of taking a picture of a model, I am taking a picture of a scene that includes a model. The sky is courtesy of a trip to Scarborough. I’ve also fiddled around with the image in Photoshop to give a bit of surreal effect. Again a superb pose by Holly.
This next image has a very classical pose, executed perfectly by Holly. In this and the previous image I have removed some planks of wood screwed to the wall using the new Content-Aware fill feature of Photoshop, it actually works quite well, and can save a lot of time in cleaning up backgrounds.
And the final image for the blog – although I will be putting many more in a gallery on my website – a different treatment but still emphasising Holly’s hair – I keep going on about Holly’s hair, but I shouldn’t as Holly is an all-round excellent model, who I would work with and recommend whatever type and colour of hair she had.
I’ve also left the pieces of wood on the wall as I don’t think they are as distracting here – plus I forgot!!
So that’s it, another entry completed, and hopefully not as long before the next. Another big thank you to Holly, without whom my photography would not be where it is today – the shots from last week were super as well. And I’ve just remembered another reason for doing a blog entry on Holly, she is the favourite model of a certain person at work who appreciates my pictures, so hello … well you know who you are :)
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