The Secrets of my Success

By a number of measures my photography has improved over the last year. My preferred subjective measure is to look at my images over the last 12 months and compare them to the previous 12 and see whether I feel there has been an improvement, and in this case I can see that I have improved, I have also developed a style and a certain maturity has crept into my images.

An objective measure would be my exhibition success, after a 9 month break from exhibitions I started entering again in June and since then have entered 17 exhibitions during which I was pleased to win 22 awards including 11 gold medals (the last 2 of which I received notification of on Christmas day!). It’s a good job I am no longer embarrassed about announcing my success :)

A number of people have asked me the the secrets of my success. Now I don’t think I have any secrets but I’m quite happy to tell people my philosophy and how I create my images. So in no particular order:

STYLE – Having a style makes your work more recognisable, the key to developing a style is actually not trying to develop a style, just to take lots of images and a style will develop.

Here’s a brand new one of mine which still needs some work on it, would you recognise it as one of mine?

Ivory Flame

ORIGINALITY – I like to think that a lot of my images have some originality to them because of the model’s pose, props and the location. An image is rarely completely original, but the more elements of originality the more likely that other people (including photographic judges) will have a strong feeling about the image. They will either love it or hate it and for winning exhibition awards that’s where you want your images to be, rather than ‘nice’ images that are mainstream and pick up acceptances.

Judges don’t seem to like this one.

Kayleigh Lush

But judges love this one.

Kayleigh Lush

EQUIPMENT – You will not find anywhere on my blog information on what equipment I use, and it’s not the latest and greatest camera that you’d expect. The key is to know all the capabilities and limitations of your equipment, and most importantly to be able to change settings blindfolded, so that you can very quickly make adjustments as the light changes without losing rapport with the model.

The light was changing rapidly here, so while the model was changing poses I was constantly adjusting exposure and composition to make the most of it.

Ivory Flame

LOCATIONS – A model can do the same pose in two different locations and the pictures be completely different, so I spend a lot of time on Google looking for interesting locations. I am also extremely grateful to many other photographers who have freely told me of locations.

This is a super pose, but I feel the location really enhances the image.

Emma May Cops.

JOINT SHOOTS – Many photographers like working by themselves with a model, and this is the way I often work. However I have also done a number of joint shoots, often with experienced photographers who have little or no experience of working with models. There are many advantages to these types of shoots; the model costs are shared and the non-shooting photographer can act as a spotter looking out for the public. I have also found these shoots very creative as I always learn something from the other photographer, and hopefully they learn some things from me.

Ivory Flame – from a joint shoot with Francisca Da Silva

Raphaella – from a joint shoot with Graham Argent

That’s how I manage to do so many shoots and yet still only spend as much each year as a wildlife photographer might spend on one 2 week photographic safari. 

PROPS –  The human body can only make a fixed number of interesting poses in a studio, but if a model has a prop to work with this often gives them more scope to be creative and produce better images. I am always on the lookout for props at charity shops, sale items, or in the studio etc.

Super poses here, but the use of the piano makes the images that bit different from the same poses on a studio floor, and the second one needs the piano to sit on to make the pose possible – thanks to Rob Southall for the use of piano.

Kayleigh Lush

Nanette McCrone

MODELS – One of the most important ingredients is the model. You spend a lot of money on equipment, then a lot of effort finding good props or a good location, but having a good model and matching the model to the location can make a huge difference to the quality and impact of the final image. Also some of the models with the highest modelling rates are also the most inexpensive models on a per image basis as you get so many great images from a shoot. So by all means skimp on your equipment but not on the model!