Studio Portrait Experience Week follow up

Back in the October half term I ran a Studio Portrait Experience Week to allow and encourage people to come along to a Professional Portrait studio and have the total Portrait experience.  I am pleased to say that there were many attendees during the week long event, all of whom loved their time with me and left me some beautiful comments in my guest book to reflect on how they felt during this event and the resulting images that I have presented to them.  Below is a small selection that they felt were appropriate.  Thank you to all of those who attended, I do hope you will cherish the memories.

Personal Project

For those of you that have been following my photographic development path, you will know that I owe a lot of what I learnt to The Photographers Academy and in particular being an Apprentice to Mark Cleghorn for a year.  Well I am pleased to announce that we are back filming with them again, as many of the followers wanted to know what we had been up to in the years following the Apprentice year and how we had developed.  This next cycle of training is designed to push our skills to develop new, well new to us, techniques and try new concepts.  Over that past month or 2, I have been working on a personal project where I explored the use of light in the studio to define muscle tone and shape.  These shoots have been on a Male Model, a Russian Hip Hop and Street Dancer and a female Body Builder. Below are a couple of images from the Dancer.

Studio Portrait Experience Week

As we head into the darkness of Winter, bring some brightness to your day, book in for a session during the Studio Portrait Experience Week I am running 27th Oct to 3rd Nov. 

For one week only come and enjoy a complimentary Portrait Experience with JBM Photography, be that a family portrait, Baby/Child session or something personal.

Book early to avoid disappointment!

Boudoir Photography

Boudoir Photography has been around for many years, in recent times as peoples attitude to life change and the uprising of confident women, the popularity has risen dramatically.

Boudoir is a unique opportunity for any woman to feel confident, comfortable and passionately feminine. Sensitive photography creates an atmosphere of intimacy and tenderness, a gentle sensuality that is as emotional as it is physical.  It can be as revealing or as discrete as you wish.

From start to finish, a Boudoir experience provides a beautiful private opportunity to create a lasting memory for any reason, be that a private moment to share with just yourself or the one you love.

To demonstrate the beautiful images that may be captured, I had a Boudoir shoot with a lovely young Model in the studio who allowed her images/Boudoir experience to be shared.

Thank you Sammie

  

Monochrome Mystique

Here is a video of today's Monochrome Mystique Shoot.  This style of photography provides an Emotive, Classical and Eternal feel to the images.  Black and White photography has been around for decades and has never lost appeal to many people.  Come along and have a styled shoot of this nature for yourself and allow me to capture that moment.

Prom Dress shoot in the Snow

Tash always said that if a decent amount of snow fell she wanted to have a photo shoot in her Prom dress, well when the snow came, she kept her word!  As the Snow fell here in Poole briefly, Tash and I headed out into the cold, needless to say she was colder than me.  Whilst other people looked on somewhat in shock, we got the pictures taken.  Its fair to say my fingers were numb at the end of it, so much so we sat in the car to warm up and get feeling back before I attempted to drive!

A New Year begins

So here we are then 2013, last year seemed to fly by.  With a new year comes an updated Web Site, the main changes are the inclusion of a Boudoir section due to the rise in this Genre of photography for me and by customer request, I have now added an on-line Voucher purchase facility.

Many Brides and Grooms these days, have lived together and have a place of their own, long before their Marriage and as such the old traditional thoughts of kitting their home out as part of their Wedding presents has been largely superseded.  With this in mind a number of people have said they wanted to contribute towards the Couples special day by giving a Voucher that can be redeemed by the newlyweds towards the creation of something special to remember their day by, be that a piece of wall art or a Photographic Album of the event.  These vouchers are not solely designed for Wedding Couples, they are equally as valued for someone to have a Portrait Experience.  If this is of interest to you then pop over to my website today and purchase a gift that will keep on giving for years to come.

http://www.jbmphotography.co.uk/vouchers.html

Training Opportunity

As many of you know, I was an Apprentice to Mark Cleghorn for a year, during that time I met another phenomenal Photographer in the name of Kenny Martin, he produces these absolutely stunning black and white Portraits that he calls Photo Noir.  I have admired his work for some time no, but as he lives in Peebles, which is along the Scottish borders, I have never got round to actually attending one of his classes, well thats about to change, for those of you who may be interested he's about to go on tour in January 2013 and for a very reasonable price, have a look at the attached link, I can't wait!

http://www.markcleghorn.com/training/seminars/photo-noir-photo-blanc-tour-kenny-martin

The Little Princesses

Last Friday I had the pleasure of having 2 little girls in the studio for their photo shoot with their beautiful dresses from a Family event.  Here are the images taken.

Family Shoot

Last month, just before I went away on holiday, I had a family of 8 in the studio, well 9 if you include the dog!  This is the most I have had in for a single shoot so far.  If you look further back through my Blog you will se the pictures of the Octuplets, this was a session I carried out to practice the lighting set up for a large group without actually having that many people in the studio and that was in preparation for this shoot.  The Family concerned have since been back for their viewing and have allowed me to put up their video for others to see.

Oscar's 1 Year Old

Wow, where has the year gone? I completed one of my personal projects on Friday where I have followed Oscar through his first year of life with a sequence of photos, starting at 8 days, continuing on with 3, 6, 9 months and 1 year. As always he was very happy to have his pictures taken, we started outside in the park where a couple of the shots were inspired by Kenny Martin and his Woodland Dream series, finishing with a Birthday cake that he demolished quite happily! The proud parents loved every minute despite not getting a great deal of cake.

Prom Dress Arrival

This week saw the arrival of my Daughters Prom Dress which immediately led to a photo shoot. Here is a sample of the images showing off the great dress and how my little girl has grown to be a beautiful young woman. I can't wait to see her on the evening ready for the event.

Autumn Shoot

I made the most of the decent weather last weekend to get out and do a couple of photo shoots whilst the Autumn colours were still around, here is my delightful Niece having fun and being my model for the afternoon, she was great!

Oscar's 6 Month photo session

Following Oscar through the first year of his life had me return yesterday to capture the images of him at the six month old stage. He is growing fast and such fun to take pictures of, always full of smiles, I just can't believe how fast the sessions seem to come around. Back in Jan/Feb for the next one. Here is a sneak peak at some of the photos.

Jak second location shoot

We were out yesterday for the second location shoot with Jak. He had some specific shots he wanted me to capture, and I had some ideas I wanted to try. Thankfully the weather held off for us, although it did get dark rather quick towards the end. Watch and enjoy!

Keeley, Jack and Family

Last Friday I was invited around to take the family portraits for a friend of mine with the emphasis on Keeley and her new brother Jack, here is a small slideshow of the session.

Course update

As I reached the end of my Apprentice period with PhotoTraining4U, I attended a couple of courses run by Mark Cleghorn. I have only just got round to processing the files as I was away on holiday!

First up was the Wedding Photographers Wanted, which was a 2 day event run by Mark but he was assisted by other professional photographers, Gary and Sue Photography and Kenny Martin. The purpose of the 2 days was to allow the professionals to pass on their secrets to the business of Weddings, along with some great shooting tips and tricks to shoot and sell more, with the second day being practical shooting in and around the City of Cardiff with the masters. Here is a sneek peak at what I shot during the second day -

The second course was a follow up to the Wedding Photographers Wanted course and designed to give ideas on how to shoot Bride and Groom out on Location, hence the name Location Location. It was for photographers to develop their creative ideas and how to shoot quickly when getting out of the car when travelling perhaps between the ceremony and reception or looking at it as a follow up photo shoot in a cherish the dress style shoot, where more time would be available. It also included details of Album design and a bit of promotion/marketing. Again it was in and around locations in Cardiff and was great fun. Here are some of my shots from the 2 days.

Oscar

I can't believe it has been 3 months since I last photographed Oscar, such a happy and content baby as can be seen by the photographs below. These images are from the second shoot in a series, where I intend to follow Oscar's growth through his first year. When showing Mum and Dad the images after the shoot direct out of the camera, I was hearing all the right noises, such as ooohhh aaahhh and I like that one and that one, must be getting something right!

Patsy

I took these pictures of Patsy at her home yesterday, both Nan and Mum said she never smiles! Even without the smiles, although we did get some during the course of the shoot, we got some lovely images, which I am sure they will all love.

My Little Angel

I was out at the weekend, refining a photo shoot I had done previously. My darling little Niece, got a set of fairy wings at Christmas along with a wand, (I wonder who bought her those?) and I thought that would be a great concept for my revised graveyard shoot at sunset. Off we went on a freezing January evening, me all wrapped up in a warm coat, Tia bless her, was only in a lightweight dress armed with her fairy wings and wand! (we did have a big coat for her as well, I’m not that cruel!, but it came off for the shoot.). The intention was to utilise off camera flash and turn day into night by overpowering the daylight with flash with my little fairy highlighted in the graveyard, surrounded by silhouettes. The results were spectacular, or so I thought anyway. Here is a shot I took and subsequently entered into the SWPP monthly image competition, I got a B (Bronze) for it, which I was pleased with as it’s much better than getting a U (unclassified)! I took several other angles but this is one of my favourites.

After the graveyard experience and once she thawed out, we did a few studio shots. This image was achieved by placing the studio flash directly over head with a honeycomb grid on it to prevent the spill of light on to the black background and metered for the face. When taking the shot, it was a case of getting her to look directly towards the light and get the wand to just fall within the light path but not create a shadow on the face. It took a few attempts to get all the pieces correct! Post production, I just extended the canvas above to give more negative black space. This image got me a Silver award, so I am really pleased.