Not been into the woods for a portrait shoot for some time so got together with model Ellen for a test shoot to try out some new ideas and lighting setups.
Leicestershire is packed full of great woodland locations and its not too hard to find a nice area to capture some fantastic images.
We chose a day when it rained almost non-stop, but the tree canopies helped shelter us from most of it, although the soft wet ground caused us some difficulties navigating through the wood.
Taking advantage of the fantastic spring weather the UK is currently enjoying. I spent last weekend on two urban shoots in my home city of Leicester. First shoot was with up and coming model Ellen. This was my second shoot with Ellen, and we made great use of the mix of old and new buildings around Leicester as fantastic backdrops. A variety of natural light and off camera flash gave us a great variety of images to choose from.
I posted some images from my shoot with Rebecca a while back, and looking again through the set of images from the shoot I think this is my favourite. The chair is suspended from the ceiling and not easy to work with as it constantly moves around, but Rebecca managed to hold position long enough for me to grab a couple of great frames. Great fun.
I did a photo shoot in the studio with Rebecca recently and we managed to create some fantastic images for our portfolios. The studio has a white cove for nice clean white backgrounds, ideal for model portfolios, family and individual portrait shoots.
Although I am not into heavy post-processing of my images, I took an opportunity to experiment a bit with background textures on the last two images shown here.
I spent last Saturday over at the Superfly nightclub in Leicester to shoot a few models for portfolios. As I have said in previous posts Superfly is a great 3 story building full of cool looking backdrops for fashion shoots. But the building was cold..very cold. No doubt it costs a fortune to heat in the winter so we had to keep moving around to keep warm. The models suffered more than I did, but we got some great images nevertheless.
I brought my heavy duty Bowens lighting with me but in the end only used my very portable Nikon SB-800 flash and lite EZYBox to soften the light. Quick and easy to setup and easy on the back going up and down the stairs.
Looking forward to the next shoot.
One of the model portfolio sites I use to source models for shoots is www.purestorm.com , a great site to find models of varying experience in my local area. A group shoot was organised recently at the Leicester nightclub Superfly for a limited number of models and photographers to get together for the afternoon to try out a few ideas. It was a great opportunity to work with several models in one fantastic venue, building up portfolios for both models and photographers. With the nightclub spread over several floors there was lots of different photo locations to choose from. Below is a small selection from the afternoon.
I did an urban shoot with the fantastic model Rachel in Leicester city centre last weekend. Leicester has been undergoing a massive facelift over the last few years, bringing with it extensions to the shopping centre now known as Highcross, a new ultra modern looking theatre known as Curve and many new shops into the area. But for me the real photographic gems of Leicester can be found in the small sidestreets in the quieter areas.
Most of the shoot with Rachel was done using the walls, doors and windows of the sidestreets within the immediate area of Curve Theatre for great colourful backgrounds. The weather was great, and we managed to create some amazing images.
A 2 hour Urban Portrait Shoot in Leicester is only £75. More at http://www.paulhurstphotography.co.uk/