More Sara pictures

Continuing my blog from my shoot with Sara Skjoldnes, recently appointed one of the most beautiful girls in Norway (Miss Norway), as I have a few more pictures to share with you.

With less than a day to plan, and very limited shooting time, this was an attempt of self styling. This is an aspect of photography I'm really starting to enjoy, so tend to get very involved in that side of things if I don't have a stylist onboard.

I've got so much to share with you as I have a ton of shoots I've done recently that I need to edit. So much coming up very soon!

And while you're looking at pictures, why not listen to cool track "Cosmic Love" by Florence and the Machine.

The man of my dreams......

Every photographer has a model they'd give their left arm to work with - Francisco Lachowski is mine. I'd marry him if I could, but I do realise he's a little young for me, plus totally out of my league. So I'll settle for wanting to photograph him, yes!

For you photographers out there, who's your dream model to work with?

For the girls and the gays out there, how hot is Francisco!? Looking through his images I randomly find on the www, he's got such a varied body of work and pulls everything off perfectly. Yes, wouldn't mind a few hours alone with him and my camera...

A postcard from the opera that moves

Although Spring 2011 is a little while away yet, the English Touring Opera has already started to share some teasers of their productions next year. Exciting! Especially since their material includes photography of yours truly :p.

Spring 2011 Postcard

Some of the productions for Spring 2011 includes:

Il Tabarro / Gianni Schicchi - Puccini

Puccini's operas Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi - one a moody romance ending in a grotesque murder in Paris, and the other a sparkling comedy about a family inheritance in Florence.

La Clemenza di Tito - Mozart

La clemenza di Tito is one of Mozart's final works. A story of terrorism, betrayal and forgiveness.

Very exciting to see how my images are being used to promote the fabulous productions that the English Touring Opera do. Can't wait to follow their journey into Spring 2011 :)

Miss Skjoldnes

I took the opportunity to photograph the lovely Sara Skjoldnes again recently during her stay in London. Sara won Miss Norway at the end of last year and have done numerous campaigns in Norway. I love working with Sara as she's got such a strong face, and can do commercial as well as a bit more edgy.

We only had one and a half hours to shoot this time, and was stuck with a bit of a light team (Sara + me). This meant shooting on a higher ISO than I usually do and a low aperture to make the most of the light available. Very happy with the outcome though. Sometimes simple is all that's needed :)

I'll post a few more images from this shoot in my next blog.

It's not what it seems

I'm embarrassingly bad at doing my make-up. I've had models and make-up artist try their best to show me, and as soon as I'm stuck on my own to try to achieve their wonderful results, I just suck. But enough about me and my lack of make-up skills......

Although I'm not the best at applying my own make-up, I find make-up in general fascinating. I find it interesting how it can bring out someone's good features, hide things you don't want to be seen or completely change the look of someone.

I recently worked with hair & make-up artist Samantha Hosker to experiment with some make-up looks and see what we could do. It was fun to play, and we got a wide variety of results.

Modeling for us: Hayley McCourt, Emma Davis and Vicky Oldfield

The Beauty Equation

Wanted to share a few more images from one of my recent beauty shoots. As a photographer my main inspiration for shooting at all is capturing beauty in one way or another.

But what is beauty? Nigel Barker, a photographer I greatly admire, is asking questions about beauty these days in his project called the Beauty Equation. Beauty to me is more than just a beautiful face. It's a beautiful soul, beautiful eyes, gorgous lips, nice legs, a charming smile and a good heart. I could continue, but you get my drift. Beauty is all around us, and it's up to us to find it and see the beauty in it.

Any model, musician or other person I shoot, I try to find their inner beauty and bring that out in a photo. I talk to the person I'm shooting, try to find out a bit more about them and then bring out of them what I find beautiful and interesting in the photo.

Beauty is an interesting thing, and everyone will have their own take on it. I like the search, and I like sometimes seeing what others might not see and capture that.

Hayley that is showcased in these images is of course stunning and would look good in a trash bag lol. But I would like to find more of her girly side, so hopefully I should be able to do that in not too long :)

Model: Hayley McCourt (BMA Models)

Hair & Make-up: Samantha Hosker

Redmann

A couple of more images from my shoot with Redmann.

And while you check these out you must listen to "Glow" by Madcon. I'm loving this song after I heard it on Eurovision last weekend (yes you know you watched it too!) during the break. All of Europe coming together in dance... don't know about you, but that brings a little happy tear in my eye. The song is wicked though and apparently in Germany is higher in the charts than the actual winning song!

For this shoot it was a case of finding the right location for the right shot. After some studio shots, I dragged Redmann to my garage and then found some dirty little side streets to shoot in.

I realised the other day how much I love working with models. I love trying to bring the best out of people, push them to see what they can give, get the right hair and make-up, get the styling to fit what we're trying to capture and find the right location to suit the image. Every shoot brings elements that makes me challenge myself. Photography is fun, simple as that :)

Grooming by Sandra Bermingham.