Mary Jo

A few weeks back, I found out I had the opportunity to go up to Manchester for a day and decided it would be a great opportunity to fit in a shoot. Only problem was, I'd never been there before and therefore had no idea about locations and didn't have any make up or model contacts to work with whilst up there!

Luckily I managed to get some fantastic make up artist recommendations from fellow photographer Kate Vanhinsberg (thank you!) and super-assistant Sam Pyatt helped me out immeasurably with the whole process, including doing a reccy at the previous choice of location to find it out was flooded. I managed to find another one through a bit of Google Maps browsing and after getting in contact with Boss and being offered the beautiful Mary Jo to shoot, we were set!

Model: Mary Jo @ Boss
MUA: Dan Wood
Styling: Myself
Assistant: Sam Pyatt






And finally some BTS pictures courtesy of Sam - so chuffed with these :D
 

Arrival of Spring [Video inside]

Here is a video with some of the images I have been previously posting on my blog. Hope you will like it. More new images are coming soon. My new photo-series is food related, so it's going to get yummy!!!

Pink Blossom

Pravins jewellers - pt 1

In the last half of last year I worked on my favourite client job to date - a three day lifestyle campaign for Pravins the jewellers. The aim was to shoot a set of stylised images which would encompass themes such as seasons, events and holidays, to be rotated on the website throughout the year and also potentially be used for advertising and brochure use. Exciting!

Model-wise I instantly knew the gorgeous Felicity (who you may recognise from past work of mine) would be absolutely perfect for both the Autumn shots and Spring/Summer ones, and got her on board straight away. And Heather was a real find of Faye, the art director - her long dark locks and beautiful look were just made for the wintery shots!

Anyway enough of my chatter, let's get on with the pictures! There are no words for how excited I've been to share these with you all so I hope you like them ♥

Models: Felicity & Heather
Make-up: Marilee Koegelenberg and Emma Hardware
Styling: Myself and Faye Dunmall
Art direction: Faye Dunmall









And last of all, a little peek behind the scenes and a screen cap of one of my favourite images on the front page at Christmas time!




Part 2 coming soon, with our Spring/Summer model Sam and more of the beautiful Felicity!

Colorful

Countryside in close-up

Often we don't pay attention to the little things. And sometimes it's the familiar that can offer the strangest sights. The tree you walk by every day, the flowers you never stop to smell, the blossom that grows and fades in an instant. All of them have their life, cycle and all of them ultimately end. So here goes, a small close-up of the countryside.

click on the images for a bigger view

Photo day with Suzy Wimbourne

Back in February I met up with the lovely Suzy - we started talking on Flickr forever ago and when she told me she was coming down south to visit her family we absolutely had to fit a photo day in. I don't think many things make me happier than days running around with friends, bags of clothes and and our cameras so thank you so much Suzy, we HAVE to do it again this summer!







And here are some of the pictures she took of me! I especially love the first one, it feels like a scene from a film or something ♥




Check out Suzy's wonderful work over at her website HERE and Facebook page HERE - she is crazy talented and you won't regret it!

Constructive criticism vs positive reinforcement

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the two types of feedback, and after reading a few articles I've come to realise something: although the internet has most certainly been instrumental in my development as a photographer, I've never actively used it to seek out the scary half of those two things: constructive criticism.

Truth be told I think I'm just terrified of it. But why? I have a choice of whether to act upon somebody's advice and to decide whether the criticism is justified or not, and I find the fresh perspective that comes with other people's opinions to be really exciting!

Alex Beadon posted a link to THIS article which pushes the idea that "positive reinforcement is the enemy". I don't entirely agree with it as I think that positive feedback is super powerful in its own way, but it intrigued me and made me really think about the value of criticism. We need to know when we are doing things right, but we also need to know when we could improve upon things. So I've come to the conclusion that we need both.

So here I am. I'm putting myself out here and I want you to objectively look at my work.

Drop me an email or Facebook message and tell me :D I'll happily return the favour if you wish!

PS. Now that Timeline for Facebook pages has been rolled out, I can now receive inbox messages via my page which is exciting and super useful! Click HERE to visit my page and you'll find the message button on the right hand side under my cover photo ♥