Country House Shoot

Recently I had a great opportunity to shoot at nearby Middleton Lodge, a private country mansion set in 250 acres of grounds near Middleton Tyas in North Yorkshire.  The venue is much sought after for weddings, corporate events etc but also incresingly so as a backdrop for photoshoots. There were some great rooms to shoot in, tastefully decorated with period furniture, and also a really interesting cellar area.  The grounds are beautiful too, unfortunately we were unable to venture outside due to the “Great British Summer”!!  Model for the day was the lovely Lucy Baty who travelled down from Newcastle with make up artist Alex Pretswell making up the creative team.  We worked right through the day trying to fit in as many outfits / rooms as we could and  I was delighted with the images that we created, below is a selection of just a few of them.  Big thanks to the staff at Middleton Lodge, Eric Murphy and of course to Lucy and Alex who were great fun to work with.

Just Dance

Recently had an enquiry from Jade who is currently in her final year of dance training at Bird College in London.  Jade wanted some images that she could use for upcoming auditions with a few fun ones thrown in for herself.  The shoot took place at Banana Studio in Newcastle with Alex Pretswell on hand to do hair and make up.   I really enjoyed working with her, although she was a little nervous at the start she quickly settled into the pace of the shoot and produced some really elegant, powerful poses that showed her athleticism and grace.  Shooting these images has inspired me to do some more dance related stuff and that has been put on my to do list for 2012.

Group Shoot at Banana Studio

Casting for Banana Studio Shoot, January 30th, 2011

A big thank you to all the models who recently applied for our group shoot at the end of the month.  We had a fantastic response with over 40 models applying, the standard was really high and it made our task an enjoyable but difficult one.  We decided to go for 6 models who none of us had worked with before, so apologies to those who were looking to do another group shoot, and came up with a list which we think has a mixture of looks and styles.  The 6 models are :-

Jordan

Dani

Misha

Natalie

Liliana

Georgia

Thanks again to all who applied, I know I will be working with some of you in the very near future.  Watch this space for images from the day next month.

Goldigger

Recently, I was asked to take part in a shoot with Durham based MUA Ashleigh Reid by model Jenny Clewlow.  Ashleigh was in the middle of planning a series of images based around the 7 Deadly Sins.  The shoot was to take place at Penshaw Monument on what turned out to be an absolutely freezing day!!  The brief was trying to get an image of a WAG caught in the act of burying her ex!!  Ashleigh was great to work with, really well prepared and Jenny looked a bit too handy with that shovel for my liking!!  Great way to spend an afternoon, despite the cold.

Kirstie – Fashion and Beauty Shoot

Kirstie Fashion and Portrait shoot

After the Marlena shoot we had to come back for more!!  Once again I had the services of Julie Ann Pattinson as MUA and stylist and this time Kirstie as the model.  I first met Kirstie through a friend of hers who I had worked with before, she had not really done any modelling before, and had no real desire to pursue it as a career, but wanted to give it a go and see how it turned out.  As you can see she has a great look and proved to be an absolute natural.  Fortunately for me she really enjoyed the shoot and we ended up shooting several more times over the following months.  We worked through a series of ideas, one of which included her being buried in a mound of autumnal leaves which I had collected a couple of days before the shoot and dried out on the conservatory floor, unfortunately the odd spider remained which did cause one or two slightly hairy moments!!  It was a long day and we shot for around seven hours with only a short break for one of my legendary sandwiches 🙂  Had a great feeling of satisfaction following the shoot though and a real sense of achievement.  Big thank you to both Kirstie and Julie for their patience, good humour and expertise which just made the whole thing so much fun.

Beauty Shoot With Marlena Ziolkowska, MUA Julie Ann Pattinson

A project I had been looking to do for a while was a set of beauty images with the help of a make up artist, I’d long been an admirer of those lovely clean images and looked out for the people to try and make it work.  A few months before I had worked with a Polish model Marlena Ziolkowska at a group shoot we had arranged up in Newcastle, she is a cracking fashion model, great hair and a lovely look, once she had agreed to do the shoot I felt I was half way there.  Julie Ann Pattinson was someone I had chatted to for a while and we had talked about doing something of this nature for our portfolios.  Big problem with Julie is she is so bloody busy!!  Trying to find a time when we could all get together was bit of a mare, but I’m glad we persevered and we eventually got it all sorted.  I’m so glad we did, Julie is a fantastic make up artist, a real gem, she also made a great contribution to the styling of the images and made me realise just how important the make up artists role is in the whole process.  It was a long but very enjoyable day, my main job was to rush around, provide drinks and make the odd sandwhich whilst the others did their thing!!  I did take the odd image though in between all the important stuff!!