Chicago (the Musical) Inspired Portraits

Every now and again I like to do some portraits for personal growth. I use this time to try new things and to just have fun in the studio. Ashleigh is one of my daughter's dance teachers and someone who helped me come up with posing ideas for Kenzie when she modeled for me on the Bowens stand at the Photography Show back in March. So I thought why not invite Ashleigh in to do some dance portraits for her. And this is what we came up with.

Ashleigh not only teaches but still performs regularly and is currently preparing for this season's Panto down south. So when it came to her portraits we wanted something that both suited her style and would lend itself well to something a little dramatic. The first thing that came to mind for Ashleigh was Chicago. So some searching online for inspiration and this is where it got us.

My vision involved black and white, high contrast, spot lights and smoke. Seeing as it was my first time using smoke pellets I have to say I am quite pleased with the results and I will definitely be using them again. It did however make the studio rather smoky and meant we needed to take a short break to let the smoke clear a little before carrying on. In fact it probably took several hours in order to clear completely. But what a difference the smoke made. I love it.

In the image above I'm reminded of a smoky jazz club and I must say it was exactly the look I was going for. We were initially unsure about adding the hat but again I feel it works so well. It really seemed to help Ashleigh get into character for her role in these portraits.

As usual, when I have someone in who says they play guitar I have to suggest they bring it in for some photos. I love the look a guitar of any sort adds to the images and this one was beautiful. Dark wood has such an appeal to me so this one was perfect.

I choose to keep these portraits in colour, partly to due to my love of dark wood and partly to keep these separate from the Chicago style images.

As I've said so many times before, variety really is the spice of life. This session gave me just what I needed and I hope to do many more that challenge me as this session has. If you've been after something a bit different please do get in touch. The possibilities are endless and who knows what wonderful work we can come up with.

Comments

London in Spring, Whats Not to Love?

Well I know there is still a lot not to love but I'm choosing to see the great things about London at the moment. I am having a ball this year visiting London as often as I can. Which is unusual for me since I usually prefer the comfort of my own home, in rural old Leicestershire. Staying home and avoiding people has always been the easy option. But this year, possibly due to the wonderful weather we keep having, has me longing for venturing out. Again, just like my last trip, I headed out with my good friend Panikos Hajistilly . Living in North London he finds it easy to meet up for our shoots. This time though I had more of an idea of the sights I wanted to use as the backdrops for my portraits. With it being spring I was in search of colour, preferably flowers. Admittedly. I didn't quite get what I was looking for. The white fronted terraced houses with pink magnolia trees we did not find unfortunately. But I did make it to Peggy Porchen's which was a must see on m...

Portraits of a Newborn Baby Girl and Her Family

Its always so nice when a family return to have their latest addition photographed in the same way as their first child. Its a great feeling knowing they cherished my work so much the first time that they want to come back to continue the tradition. I also love it when I'm given permission to share the portraits I've created. Its not often that I'm asked not to share but I never take this opportunity for granted because I know how sensitive people can be about sharing personal moments. And I'm especially grateful here for being allowed to share some of the more intimate ones. Although I always ask permission to share the standard stuff I create, I always make it known that I am fine with and fully understand if there are any private portraits that should remain so. In this case I was given full permission to share everything and I'm so pleased to get the chance to show some of the other work we can do for families. I really love how skin tones turn out ...

Baby Frankie

Well I suppose its about time I got back to blogging. I used to love writing blogs and was always thrilled to post them so I could get some feedback. But I drifted away from blogging and have found it difficult to return. Since I've been rather busy lately I thought I'd take the opportunity to share over these next few weeks all that I've been up to. I've had some great sessions with babies, families and even adults. And even did some product work, cremation jewelry believe it or not. And now, today, the school portraits season has begun. So I will be very busy over these next few months but that should provide me with loads to share. I thought I'd kick off the blogging with some work for a returning client with their latest addition to the family, Frankie. They did as advised and came over for a session when Frankie was about 2 weeks old. Ideally between 10-14 days is great. In fact they ...

Never Work With Children or Animals

Or so the saying goes. But I have to say that working with dogs has been so lovely. They have been almost entirely a dream to work with. I say almost entirely because we have had a few moments where a dog has needed to settle. And one moment where the dog had settled but one of my cats decided to have a look through the glass door which, as you can imagine, rather quickly unsettled the dog. Still, that didn't stop us from creating incredible work. In fact it was during that shoot with the cat instance when I created two of my favourite pieces, shown below. (It was while sitting on the couch here when he noticed the cat peering through the curtain) I don't know if I've just been lucky or all dogs are just easy to work with. I photographed a french bull dog puppy and I thought that would be tough as he hadn't had time to be properly trained yet. But he did everything we wanted in no time at all. And this included the props we used here (below), which to me...

My Work Experience Week by Hester Sharpe

A week in the life of a Photographers assistant, is not all about saying cheese! I’m Hester Sharpe, currently at JCC but took a week out of normal school life on work experience to be a photographer’s assistant and learn the bits behind the camera, photograph and the process to get to the end result. During my week of work experience in photography I have learnt that there is a lot more than just taking the pictures and printing them. The steps in between are the key to getting the perfect photo. For example the photos have to be cropped, tweaked, edited, colour corrected. That is just a taste I have had in the processing of the photos and there is a lot more than just those things. Those processes are the most time consuming part of the photograph and a tremendous amount of detail is put in to the picture but all the hours spent are paid off with the end result; a perfect picture. It isn’t just how the picture looks; presentation is a key to photography too. Selecting the best ...

Christina Lauder Portraits

Search This Blog