First 'Solo' Studio Session

After much deliberation I finally plucked up the courage to hire a studio for the day. I had the motivation of only having a few weeks until my first born is due to drive me on. I wanted an image that my wife and I could look at in years to come and cherish. The easy choice would have been to go to somewhere such as 'Venture' and pay through the nose for what would probably be a lovely photograph. The more difficult option but ultimately more rewarding would be to try and create my own photograph.

I hired the studio in Calumet Photographic (Manchester) due to the very reasonable cost of £50.00 per day for the studio & £25.00 per day for lighting (All prices do not include VAT). Not having seen the studio beforehand I didn't know what to expect. On arrival I have to admit I was disappointed. I was shown to a lecture room with studio rigging to one side but the room was cold and untidy. Ten minutes later I was greeted by the rental staff who were very apologetic and immediately offered to discount the cost of hire and get the place tidied immediately. There are a couple of pictures below showing the setup.

http://flickr.com/photos/7358451@N03/3077691333/
http://flickr.com/photos/7358451@N03/3078522622/

I had made it clear when I booked the studio that I wanted to be left to my own devices as much as possible. After a short run through of the two Bowens strobes and the smaller one providing hair light the staff left me to it.

600+ shots later (five hours in total) and I came away a happy man. After much trial and error I came away with a short list of about 40 photographs with about 6 that I would have bought had we have gone to a pro studio.

I went in with the intention of getting lots of Hi-Key images, and although we did do these I think the ones with the grey background (no back light) and the Lo-Key images (black material draped over paper stand) work better.

All in all I walked away from the day having thoroughly enjoyed the experience and with a new found career in mind!!!! Let me know what you think of some of the images below. This represents just a small selection of the images taken.

Jessops School of Photography - Making a start in portrait photography

I have been on the Introduction to Flash and Studio Portrait course today in Leicester at the Jessops School of Photography.

I have to say that for £75.00 I really did not know what to expect from the course however I am pleased to feedback that it was well worth it and money well spent.

I have been eager to get to play with some studio equipment for ages and this seemed like the ideal oppurtunity. After approx 2.5 hours of theory in the morning, with demonstrations of how to effectively light a model, eliminate shadow and soften the highlights we were let rip for the best part of 2 hours on two models. The models were both very easy to work with, and naturaly sprung into various poses without much prompting. Which was great as I was a little nervous (not sure why!!!).

I have come away from the course thinking that there is now a whole new genre of photography to delve into, and a whole new load of equipment to buy!!!

All in all I would thoroughly recommend the course.

I have posted one of the pictures I have quickly cleaned up to get an idea of the results.



If you would like to see any more images then please follow the link to my flickr set below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7358451@N03/sets/72157605609943544/