Recently things have been going quite well with regards to work – I have been doing quite a bit of fashion work on behalf of a marketing company, shooting some brands you might have even heard of! Needless to say its been pretty cool because this year was all about getting more work on and that’s starting to happen. Its not all been smooth sailing but things seem to be on the up! I will be blogging about some of the work I’ve been doing, with lighting info and pics soon.
This shoot was for a couple of musicians collaborating on a duo act called Huckleberry. The makeup was done by Jenny Cadwallader who can normally be found working with her boyfriend Danny Baldwin, an exciting fashion photographer based in London. I have mentioned before on my blog how musicians like leaving things to the last minute – this was no exception. Preparations included calling all my friends to find out if anyone had a straw hat and then convincing Guy (the guitarist) it would be a good idea to wear one. The end.
If any readers of this blog are looking forward to the bit where we all pack our bags, board American Airlines, land in New Orleans, eat some fried catfish for breakfast and then get shooting on the grand banks of the Mississippi, they will be slightly annoyed to learn that the title of this blog was only a metaphorical tip of the hat to Mark Twain’s immortal character Huckleberry Finn. Please do not be too annoyed because the location still has all the historical and industrial relevance of the mississippi delta, minus, of course, the romantic penning of Mark Twain. Our location? Non other than the Great Manchester Ship Canal. The canal nowadays is completely deserted, which is strange considering only 50 years ago it was the third largest shipping port in the UK. What’s interesting is, its days lying peacefully disused may be numbered, as the canal has been aquired this year by Peel Ports. Their plans include redevelopment, expansion, and an increase in shipping from 8000 containers a year to 100,000 by 2030, as part of their Atlantic Gateway project. According to Wikipedia. So some or all of that may not be true. All fascinating stuff and nothing to do with photography at all, except, I love shooting round that area as there are so many different views to be had as backdrops including my all new ‘Mississippi Delta’ look! Hit the jump to get the geeky lighting info and see the rest of the pics…
Geeky Lighting Info: For the main shot I had a medium sized softbox, with two Nikon SB80’s with a stofen diffuser on each, camera left, quite high and dangerously near the water, feathered away from the subject and toward Guy (the guy wearing the hat – I win!) in the background. That ‘feathering’ or ‘pointing away from the subject’ gave the light on her face a nice fall off, from left to right. I also had a nikon sb80 speedlight with a half CTO warming gel camera right quite far back shooting towards me and the subjects for a bit of warm rim light which blended in well with the warm sunset light. For the back shot of them walking away from me I had the same set up on the gravel road – softbox camera left and rimlight camera right. Quite a large part of the way these photos look was created in processing in lightroom and photoshop – if anyone wants to know what the process was leave me a comment below or on my flicker account and if enough people request it I will do some sort of tutorial for that look.
