Lucky 13!

Sometime ago I had an extremely productive shoot with the beautiful Fredau, and I keep going back and producing more and more really great images from the shoot.

I’ve promised myself that one day I will learn studio lighting, but over the years I’ve seen quite a few courses which initially look really interesting, and then I click to see the images that the tutor produces and I’m disappointed. So feel free to recommend any studio lighting workshops to me, but in the meantime I’ll stick with natural light.

One place I’ve shot quite a few times is the studio of the talented John Barone, which can be used for both natural light and studio flash. It’s not the largest studio, but it has quite a few interesting backdrops, a helpful owner, and the ‘world famous art nude corner’.  The last part is a bit of a joke from John, as the studio is in Wolverhampton, and the corner is basically a couple of plaster walls with a window to the side, but the light varies throughout the day and by thinking on your feet and using the changing light you can get some super images.

Here’s a few of the more recently worked on images from the shoot, showing the variety of what you can get:

I’ve been a bit quiet on the competition front, just steadily building up acceptances from new images to get me over the final hurdle in the FIAP distinctions process which will be in around 18 months time.  What I did not know is that my club had entered one of my images into the FIAP world cup. This is an annual competition where all the best clubs compete to be crowned the best club in the world.  This year 167 clubs entered their 20 best images, and my club finished 13th, which is in the top 10%, so not a bad result – UK clubs came 1st, 2nd and 3rd which was an excellent result for UK photography. I was pleasantly surprised – to be honest I was gobsmacked –  to find that the image Gaze that I created with Fredau was awarded a gold medal for the best overall image, so 13 was definitely not unlucky for me!

Judging is obviously very subjective, and is the opinion on that particular day of, in this case, the three photographers selected to judge, but it still amazes me how they can look through 3340 images of a huge variety of subjects including portraits, landscapes, wildlife, sport, composite images, still life, reportage, and other subjects too numerous to mention, and pick the award winners. The image Gaze has now won gold on quite a number of occasions, so there is definitely something special in the image that makes different panels of judges look at it and place it first.

So a huge thank you to Fredau for producing such beautiful images with me that are appreciated by so many other people, and to John Barone for his plastering job in what is definitely the ‘world famous art nude corner’ :)