Cass  /  Kestrel  /  NickStrong

Welsh Gold


January 21, 2012

Welsh Gold – I’m not talking about the metal that is mined in north Wales and is usually used in royal wedding rings, but something from the same region and that is far, far better.

I have visited Scotland a few times and got some superb images because of the wonderful scenery and superb models located there. Unfortunately because of it’s distance from Birmingham I can only really do it once or twice a year, and I tend to have stay up there for a whole week. So last year I thought about taking photographs in Wales as it has similarly beautiful scenery, is much closer and is suitable for visiting for just a couple of days.


To cut down on travelling for the models I thought I would search for a Welsh model. Because I knew the area from visits to do landscape photography I looked around for models in north Wales and instantly struck gold with Cassandra Freeman. Stunningly beautiful, perfect art-nude figure, and located in some the of the most beautiful scenery in Britain.

I have shot with Cass twice now, and can’t wait for the weather to get warmer so I can pay some more visits to north Wales. On the first trip Kestrel another well-known and superb photographer put me up and showed me some of his locations, and then on my second visit in November another great photographer Nick helped me sort out a studio and let me use his lights and props. I am so grateful to both of them as it made my shoots so much easier than if I had to arrange everything myself.

So some from our first shoot in June. I got to Kestrel’s house and Cass was staying the night so we could have an early start, the evening light in a nearby field was superb so we went out to get a few shots.

The next day we visited some locations, including a wood next to a stream. Here’s a few headshots taken while we were waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud .

 
And this is why we were waiting for the sun to go behind the cloud:
And some shots from an old cottage trying out a new wide angle lens, and mucked about a bit and converted to mono.

Our next shoot together was when I visited Wales for my DPAGB assessment, so I took the opportunity to work with Cass in a studio as it was a wee bit cold for outdoors. We worked all of the time apart from the last 15 minutes with natural light, and the studio had an amazing stained glass window so we made very good use of it. There are loads more images, these are just a very quick selection from them.
And finally no model escapes working with the now infamous big white TuTu.

I really need to sit down and look through all of the images from both shoots, as although these shots are great they are literally a very small and quick selection of them as Cass is such a super model and you get loads of great images.

So thanks to Kestrel, Nick and especially Cass, who I can’t wait to work with again in the beautiful scenery of Wales when it’s a bit warmer.

Leave a reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.