En route to the Alan Law Photography workshop last weekend (which was *amazing* by the way) I had arranged with my beautiful cousin, Bethany (Beth), to spend the day together and see what amazing shots we could come up with. From the set below you may be forgiven for thinking Beth is someone bursting with confidence, well, not quite. Beth is a young woman of very few words, mainly due to many years of bullying in school, and even after all these years I am still yet to meet the real Bethany. Despite this, Beth is a keen beauty pageant entrant and can often be found on stage performing her many talents in front of hundreds of people. From this, Beth has discovered that helping others is what makes her smile and is now the local representative for “Make a Wish UK”, a charity, which has granted more than 10,000 magical wishes to children and young people fighting life-threatening conditions. She is often donating to the homeless with her little 6 year old nephew, Ollie, and holding charity events where the proceeds are donated to those she feels are most in need of a little help around the country. A truly inspirational young woman.
As this was my first ever official “photoshoot” and also shooting someone other than my wife, I watched a number of tutorials (some just terrible…and not free either!) to prepare and studied some of my favourite photographers’ work, which I do a lot of anyway. I was mainly looking for the “don’ts” rather than the “do’s”, as I knew the scene, setting and light wouldn’t be the same anyway. I also wanted to make sure I shot in my own style, otherwise what’s the point. My challenge was to capture Beth in a more natural setting i.e. no fancy clothes, flowers, poses, or props, while at the same time being as creative as possible. We simply took a walk (in the freezing cold) and started scouting out the various locations around Bolton. I was predominantly looking for contrasting light and interesting backgrounds which led us up backs streets, in multi-storey car parks, and around some church grounds (little obvious I know, but the light in there was great). Not everything I did worked; I tried flash gels on a number of occasions which I just did not like, and there were a number of locations and poses which also didn’t work. However this is all part of the educational process and I will never stop pushing, failing and learning from it. We had a right giggle at one point, when some guy was shouting out the window down to us “Hey, yooooou, what ya dooooin?, what channel you on?” – Of course we enlightened him and shouted back BBC1, Saturday night at 7pm!
All shots were taken with my D750 and 35mm ƒ/1.4 lens. I used OCF (two SB900 speed lights) quite a lot, almost every shot to be honest, and also the grid and diffuser plates from MagMod – which are amazing by the way. A little expensive but well worth the investment in my opinion. I wish I’d discovered it sooner in the day, but I found adding the MagMod 1/4 CTO gel created a lovely warm skin tone. I will definitely experiment with this a little more next time.
I invite you to take a look at how our day went. As always, I hope you like!
You really do work your light very well. Great variety in scene and mood. Love the warm tones on Beth’s skin and my favourite image here is her face in profile against the wood panels(?) The light in that image is particularly beautiful! Working with a person on their own is never easy, I find that as I mostly work with couples I’ve grown used to having them bounce off each other (not literally) but pulling emotion into the frame, probably to compensate for the shite light I’ve put them in. Haha. I am intrigued by the multiple face image. Have you shot through something here?