Cute little model

I took photos of a lovely little girl today...

Isn't she just the sweetest? :)

And coolest!

Everyone loves sunnies, right?

I find that props always help when taking portraits, and Amaya liked to play with hers. After a little while, she was really getting into the spirit of modelling...

...so much so that she needed to call her nan to say that she is having too much fun and that she will be a while.

Back to business... where were we? Oh yeah, let me brush my hair first.

Gotta get everything just right...

OK. I think I'm ready for...... silly faces!

Haha, we took quite a few silly pictures and Amaya was loving her photo shoot.

What an absolute sweetie, don't you think? :)

Dark two

Snow is all but gone again... Snow-less wintry trees look like this.

Swinging with Marilyn Monroe

My evening's entertainment today: Swinging with Marilyn at The Latest Music Bar in Brighton. It was a fabulous show, some great singing and lovely performance from a local Marilyn Monroe impersonator Laura Nixon and friends.

I was impressed both by Laura's looks and her singing voice resembling Marilyn's so closely that it was easy to be imagine the real thing being on the stage.

Frank Sinatra performed a few songs, too.

While Jessica Rabbit was performing, Marilyn joined the audience at the bar for a drink and a dance.

Sadly I didn't take photos of this fan dancer's number (on the left, almost out of the frame) but hopefully she will agree to do a photo shoot with me soon! Just loved her moves and poses and want to capture them with my camera.

Elvis finished the evening with a few songs...

...after which an encore number by Marilyn...

...and Frank.

If you fancy a fabulously fun evening out, I do recommend you go and Swing with Marilyn!

Boudoir Deb

I had a second shoot with the gorgeous Deb today. Was so much more relaxed this time as we knew each other already. As I was warming up I took some similar shots as last time first, but the moment we really started working well together was when I asked Deb to work with some props.

First some variations of a shot without props...

...and then with props.

Different types of post processing can give such different feel to the images, but sometimes the straight-out-of-the-camera image is just as good.

It was interesting to find how much more relaxed we both felt about the shoot, compared to the last time. I knew that Deb was very happy with the photos that I took last time so I was very relaxed and confident about us working together again, and I'm guessing the same goes for Deb, too. I'm thinking, in future, I should meet up with any boudoir shoot clients well before and get to know them just a little in order to have a nice, easy-going, fun and productive shoot with them.

Photo shoot with Charlotte

Charlotte needed some new photos for her model portfolio so we had a photo shoot today. It is always such a pleasure to have Charlotte in my studio! It's always fun, and we both thought that out of all our shoots together, we got the best shots today. What do you think?

I haven't had time to go through all the photos from this shoot yet, so I will probably add a few shots later.

Lightroom presets

I'm a little obsessed with using Lightroom presets at the moment. Well, I'm very excited about using them, not necessarily obsessed. No need to exaggerate. Some time ago I read about Lightroom presets somewhere - don't remember where they were mentioned but I thought I'd give them a try. I did an internet search and found quite a few nice looking presets, completely free.

So I started playing with an image I took earlier today while walking the dogs. I have to admit that I don't remember where I downloaded any of these presets from, but if I find them I will add a link. For now, I will just state for each image the name of the preset I used. First, the original image, followed by the edited ones.

PH Surreal moment

PH Oldschool skintone revamped

PH Naturally BW

Gold & Blue

BW natural 1

Don't you just love them? Well, I do... at the moment, anyway!

Then I started playing with some images I took at the beach at sunset.

...and things started to get a little dark...

...and surreal.

I've worked on the above images a bit more than just applied the Lightroom preset, but I think it's great to have a starting point with a preset and then take the image further towards your own vision of how you want it to look like.

Go on, go and try some presets yourself and show me some of your work!

Mythmas shoot

We took the doggies to the studio today for a Mythmas card shoot. First, I tested the lighting with a few soft toys... (The moose was already on the eggnog, obviously)

...after which, enter the dogs!

Yeah, I did get that photo only after a couple of tries, with Miles's help. But after this shot it all got a bit pear shaped. Tigger wouldn't have it - he kept running away as soon as I had placed all hats and props where they should be and was ready to take the shot.

I asked Miles to try to pose them again...

Yes, the antlers back on Tigger...

...but it didn't work - it was all too much for the puppy to put up with. He ran away again, and obviously Zebedee thought that "What the heck, if Tigger's not playing, I might as well grab one of those irresistible soft toys... honestly, you can't blame me for grabbing one, Miles, can you?"

Haha, fantastic fun, but sadly we didn't have much time to do the shoot so we had to leave it at that. Still, I quite like the shot I got, so that'll do for our Mythmas card. Here it is again. :-)

Zebedee is such a good sport in the studio. He would have been up to posing a lot more, but Tigger couldn't handle the pressure of being a studio model. Oh well, Zebedee did grow up with a pretty much permanent studio in our living room when we lived in Newhaven, but Tigger has never seen one before and has never been asked to stay still in front of strobes before. I guess he didn't do badly for a first-timer. ;-)