I have been very fortunate to work with many great models, and one of the best is the wonderful Chrissie Red. Sadly, as she comes from Scotland, I don’t get to work with her as often as I would like, and I realised that although I use some images of her in exhibitions I have been very remiss in not doing a post about her, something I intend to remedy immediately.
Chrissie was kind enough to put me up for the first night on my very first visit to Scotland to shoot models in 2010. On that visit I took one of my all time favourite images, it hung in our dining room as an A2 print until very recently, with Chrissie looking over me at every mealtime :)
I may go back an re-process it again at some time, as my post-processing skills should have improved a bit since then, but here is Chrissie on a very cold beach.
The next shot is also on my all-time favourites list, but I only started entering it in exhibitions quite recently. Chrissie has it on her Purestorm profile as a colour image, but I was never quite happy with it and couldn’t get the colours just right, plus I was not entirely happy with how I had cloned my feet out as it was one of my first ‘above’ shots. Fast forward a couple of years and suddenly it hit me, it needed to be a mono shot, so after a quick re-process with the excellent content-aware fill feature of Photoshop it is now finally finished.
Now this next shot is another first, this was the first time I used my walkie-talkies. I had picked up my regular shooting buddy Dinah Jayes from her home in Birmingham at 5am, driven up to Perth where Chrissie lived, then shot for a few hours at a nearby location, and then headed further north towards Aberdeen where we were staying the night on one of the cheap Travelodge offers!
As we approached Aberdeen we randomly took a side road from the main road, and I guessed at what might be a good location for the sunset. We found a great cottage by the side of the road, but as it was by the side of the road we had to have a spotter looking for cars. One of us stood on the brow of a hill so we could see both ways, and we used my newly acquired walkie talkies to tell the other when it was safe to shoot. And this was one of the results, a great shot of Chrissie on a lovely piece of wood with a beautiful Scottish sunset.
I was also fortunate enough to shoot with Chrissie on a recent trip she made to England, back again to the above shot technique to show the beautiful bridge and reflected sky, and Chrissie doing a perfect pose.
I can’t recommend Chrissie enough and wish she was closer, I hope to work with her again in September when I shall be visiting some camera clubs in Scotland to give my print lecture. Thank you Chrissie for creating some of my favourite images,
3 Comments
Beautiful photos. The beach shot is a gem.
some fine images here Tim. can see why you hsd the beach one on the wall it agreat image.
love the others too.
Here, again I feel, they would have been better without the model. In fact I would propose another approach as a home-work – shoot with and without the lady and merge them, so that eventually it would feel like the nudes are just being imagined, or remembered. Like a boy-hood fantasy. :)