I won a couple of contests - yeay!

So firstly I won a small contest on Model Mayhem : The concept shot of the day (Males)



with this photo of Miles Leeson and his son entitled "Protected"



And then this weekend I came third in the photography category for the Think Pink III contest on Deviantart (out of literally hundreds of entries so that was quite cool) with this photo taken in the recent shoot with Charlie:



Entering the contests has helped to raise awareness of my work by driving people to my portfolios to see my work so it can't be bad. I have just entered the Witcher Contest on deviantart with this photomanip:



The Witcher is a new game coming out. There are thousands of entries so I'll not get too excited just yet but we'll see.

Lessons learned the hard way......

So.....the lesson for the day is:

Get the model to sign a model release BEFORE the shoot!

Problem: The model from the last shoot decided she didn't like the pics and didn't want them to be used. (Great!)

Given the hundreds of pounds I spent and hours of preparation organising this shoot I was not prepared to be beaten and throw them all away - especially as the pics turned out so well (in my opinion anyway).

Solution: I managed to take the facial features from models I have used in ealier shoots and blend them to the face in the pictures in question to reform the facial features to such an extent that they no longer resembled the model in question.

Result: I think the pics look better than they did before......phew! and no model release form required seeing as the person now in the pics actually doesn't exist.

That will not happen again!

So the new pics:




the full series can be seen at my deviantart page: http://fairieswatchoverme.deviantart.com

First of 3 - Journey to Rivendell

So........ firstly my intended model didn't turn up for the shoot yesterday (less said about that the better).

Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I manged to get hold of Jess, who I hadn't yet worked with and not only did she have the perfect look for the shoot but she was willing to jump straight in there and then and was a star to work with.

So here's a "behind the scenes" shot:




and here are two of the finished pics:

PICTURES REMOVED - SEE NEXT POST FOR DETAILS AND FULL STORY

The dress was a vintage "medievel style" wedding dress and the hooded cloak was made by me at 2.30am the night before (lol). The wig is a Cosplay wig that came from Japan.

The background effect was created using the strips of hanging material and coloured light gels seen in the "behind the scenes" shot above and then some careful blending and blurring in PS.

More pics from the series as always can be seen on my deviantart page http://fairieswatchover.deviantart.com

Huge thanks to Jess for stepping in at the last minute and being so brilliant.

vintage goodies

Managed to aquire a vintage "medievel style" wedding dress:



It's awesome and perfect for tomorrow's shoot, which is with Emma. We did a shoot with Emma a couple of years ago when we were looking for a live version of our cartoon mascot on smileonthetiles.com.

Here she is:



This shot of her reminds me so much of an old photo of Elizabeth Taylor when she was young.



Next post will be all about tomorrow's shoot................

new shoots coming - very excited

I have 3 shoots coming up which I am very excited about and I have been spending far too much money on costumes and props for them. I am going to have to curb my "speilberg" tendencees if I am to avoid going broke! lol.

Not going to give much away yet but one of the shoots will probably be the most challenging for me to date and the other two probably the most creative.

Watch this space over the next few weeks to see the stories unfold. :)

So much pinkness!

Pinky pinky photo shoot with Charlie after walking through town with 24 helium balloons (!) (just a tad embarrassing).



And a couple of the finished pics:



More photos from this series can be seen on my deviantart portfolio: http://fairieswatchoverme.deviantart.com

So finally - the day of the circle thingy shoot. I had chance to have a little play around with the lighting beforehand and decided on doing some shots with lights in front and behind and then some with just behind.

This is how the set looked.



....and here are a couple of the photos from the shoot.







you can see the whole series of photos at my deviantart page : http://fairieswatchoverme.deviantart.com

with thanks to my dad for building the circle thingy and to Anoushka for being a great model.

Look at earlier posts to see the progress shots of the circle thingy being built.

"The cirlcle thing"

Progress on "The Circle Thing"

It's getting exciting!





The first model I shall be using this mega structure with is Anoushka - here's a couple of shots from my latest shoot with her:




All should be happening in about a week's time so watch this space.

Further pictures from the Anoushka series can be found at my deviantart : http://fairieswatchoverme.deviantart.com

Omega

My Dad is a star. I've had a structure in my mind for some time for doing some nude shoots and having talked it through with my dad and discussing various ideas for what I could use - he is now building the structure for me himself.

Here's how it's going:

First stage:



And next:



Really chuffed - it's exactly what I wanted. You'll be seeing it featuring in shoots to come.

Andre Brito

If I'd had a blog in February that's where this post would belong....but seeing as I didn't, this is where it will reside.

I had the pleasure and priviledge of visiting one of my all time favourite photographers in Feb of theis year. Andre Brito creates the most amazing fine art nude photos and his fashion work is mighty too. You can check it out here: http://www.andrebrito.com

Here's some pics of the visit (with my friend noemi modelling for him).





I learned alot from the visit and my friend did amazingly well as the model.

You can see one of the final shots from the shoot on Andre's website - hopefully there will be some more up soon. His deviantart is at http://abrito.deviantart.com

what to write on your first blog.......

.....well I suppose the first post in a blog has to start the story........

so......Once upon a time.....

I have decided to create a blog (for the first time actually) as I have been rather enjoying my photography lately and was inspired by a fellow photographer to start documenting the shoots and my photography experiences from the "back-stage" approach.

I work in education as my "day job", which tends to be quite demanding, and my partner and I have our own photography business too, which is totally demanding. We spend our evenings out and about taking photos in nightclubs and bars and venues in Devon for people to download their memories from our website (http://www.smileonthetiles.com) . It's extremely popular and we have over 100,000 members on our website (and over 600,000 photos from the last 2.5 years). It is, however, extremely hard work and whilst it is highly rewarding personally, it is not so rewarding finacially so we'll see how that pans out over the next few months.

So, in amongst all this I try to fit in my art, my passion, my "real" photography, which I enjoy immensely. I have some time off work for a couple of weeks and I have some shoots booked in so there should be lots to see here soon.

I have a few posts to make to catch-up so those will come next.