Men at Work

Men at work  (Helen model shoot)

Business planning  

We are in the process of compiling some really good images for our website which we plan to go live early next spring. It's imperative that the first 5-10 images viewed on a website give the maximum amount of impact to a potential customer. It's also extremely important to hold your viewer's attention and hopefully sell your product in the first few minutes that the site is viewed

We hired a model at the weekend to shoot some promo images for our website. The models' name was Helen who was very experienced and professional which makes the shooting experience that much quicker and easier. Helen had all her own wedding clothes,bouquets,props etc which is ideal for us as we do not have to hire costumes. It's crictical that your model has experience. Shown here are some image/videos of Jim and myself hard at work which outline some of our techniques used to produce our photography on the day

Soucing a decent location to shoot your models is paramount for a successful shoot and old buildings are an ideal backdrop to give your images that special ambiance. I gained permission from the church we used from the National Trust before we shot our images. The church had some lovely old stone buildings with beautiful textures which complimented our model and shows off her looks

It's imperative to make your model feel at ease, and its vital that you have a good rapport with your subject. We are always constantly talking to our models throughout our shoots, cracking jokes and general chit chat etc,this makes the modelling assignment so much easier and gives your model more confidence which is benificial to all party's

We used off camera flash triggered through a soft box for a lot of our shots in these images. This creates a much softer light that tends to wrap around our subjects and also creates a warming effect, this also eliminates harsh shadows. This kind of side lighting is very effective as opposed to direct flash pointed directly at your subject and is used by all top photographers

It's also very important to show the model your progress throughout the shoot,which enables her to make changes,change poses and gives them her an overall feel of the tasks in hand,we regularly show our models the images we are shooting on the back of our cameras

It is also essential to have a lighting/prop person available to help with your shoot. This person's contribution is very important to help setup lighting,stands,reflectors,backdrop's etc which helps the photographer concentrate solely on taking some good photographs.

Shown here is our prop man with some of the difusers we used on the day

It is very important to pre-plan your shoot something that I did a couple of weeks ago and there is a lot of planning involved

This is a list of the preparations I made :

I had to source my model first from an online model agency

Then Source some locations for the shoot

I had to gain permissions from the owners of the locations to shoot on their land

Plan the shoot when the weather was fine and arrange a suitable day and time with my model

Arrange the shoot on a fine day to prevent damage to equipment etc

Arrange for a prop/lighting man to assist with the lighting setups

Consider health and safety.The health and safety of my model was also very important  and I had to make sure there was no issues with trip hazards,trailing cables or dangerous locations

I also had to provide changing facilities for my model, these included a church and the back of my colleagues land-rover

I had to provide a model release form allowing me to use our images of the day in advertising and media publications

The only downside of the shoot was the model forgot her wedding shoes,luckily the dress she wore was a very long one which hid a nice blue pair of Nike trainers