When my daughter was younger being in front of the camera was never an issue, she’d pose for shots and I’ve many many wonderful images in my archives. Then as her school life and my work life got more demanding the images tailed off. When she said a few days ago that she wanted to be part of the lighting setup test shoots and do images that “would count” I was delighted!
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Thanks to the program’s fictitious Amelia Sequence, the number 3185296328795229751188 that links all things together, I did a bit of Google searching and found myself coming back to my favourite topics art, design and photography.
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In the play The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus the abduction of Helen of Troy by Paris causes the launch of a thousand ships, starting the Trojan Wars.
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I popped along to Pro Beauty 2012 this afternoon at ExCel London primarily to meet up with fellow ‘tog Mark “Goose” Sayer. He’d made the four hour trip down south from Selby, North Yorkshire to work with the team on the Nouveau Beauty Group stand. They were there to promote the new line of eye lashes by Amy Childs. I was also looking for inspiration for some more off the wall make-up for studio shoots. While talking to Mark I spotted a lady with very shiny pink lips, see the fist of the shots below. While Mark did some more press shots with Amy I went for a wonder finding the lady in the second image below having a lip makeover. Applied to the lips and soaked off the paper with water they’re very much like the transfers so popular with children, only in much more vivid colours! These “lip wraps” were from trendynailwraps.co.uk

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I’ve seen a lot of “mirror shots” like the one on the left over the last few years, people wanting to start as a model and needing something they can upload to a profile site in the hope they can get a photographer to help them shoot something better. Many are shot in low light indoors in the evening, blurred and very noisy.  Everyone on this planet starts with nothing, so the fact they’ve taken some initiative is good, not everyone has the money to pay for shots and sign up with an agent day one.  Of course not everyone will make it, many will give up early leaving the determined, hard-working and persistent ones to continue on.

If you’re just about to start and using a phone with a reasonable camera here’s some tips that might help. (read the rest of the post…)

I’m still doing the final sort and edit on the images from the shoot with Holly and friends, but a few stood out for an early post. I’m loving the results from the beauty dish.

On a non-lighting side the biggest takeaway is that I need more flexible clamps to hold lighting mounts onto polls. Thankfully tarp fasteners and lots of electrical tape were to hand as an alternative!

Got one of these cards and wondering about the test shoots I spoke of? Chances are I’ve bumped into you in town, it may have been your face, hair, make-up, fashion style or everything combined that caught my attention.

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It’s been quite a satisfying week; some new code I’m very pleased with written for an IT client, some new photography contacts and DIY at home giving our rooms a fresh new look. Amazing what you can do with a tin of paint or two. And the house wasn’t the only thing to get painted. This Sunday sees me return to the studio for another test shoot.

Instead of the silver bounce reflector I will be using a large beauty dish. One of the old Bowens bowls has been adapted with a home made diffuse reflector and flash mount.

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I’ve been watching more and more TED.com talks and was pleasantly surprised to find this talk by photographer and digital artist Erik Johansson this evening. Enjoy!

People that I’ve recently made contact with will often give me a funny look when I mention GIMP. More so if they’ve watched Pulp Fiction and the “Bring out the gimp” scene. Search the web for a meaning and you’ll likely find:

Noun: Twisted silk or cotton with cord or wire running through it, used chiefly in upholstery.
Offensive. A physically handicapped or lame person.

But for many photographers and digital artists it has a different meaning. If I hand you a file with _gimp in the name it’s to make it clear to me that the file is the edited version not the original!

GIMP is the “GNU Image Manipulation Program” (read the rest of the post…)