Dulwich Park

Third shot with Janayah. She is quickly settling into the photoshoots now. She's not bothered by passersby. You can see it in her face, she just looks relaxed.

It was also an opportunity for me to use a new speed light. It supports High Speed Sync (HSS). This means I can use as fast a shutter speed as I want with the speed light. There a lot of explanations about what HSS is and how it works. So I wont go into to a lot of detail.

When a flash of any kind is used there is a maximum shutter speed that can be used, it's called the sync speed. If you go above this speed a shadow is cast on the sensor by the shutter as the flash fires.

Why would you user HSS? If you want to alter the exposure you use a smaller aperture, right?

If there is a well lit background, you either expose for it and have the subject in silhouette, or expose for the subject and have the background over-exposed. With HSS you expose for the background with the combination of shutter speed and aperture. And use the flash to light the subject.

If the location is well lit, without HSS you would have to use a very small aperture to in order to be able to user a shutter at your camera's sync speed. A side effect of a small aperture is a big depth of field. So the background will be in focus. By blurring it with a combination of large aperture and HSS, the subject stands out more.

My speed light isn't powerful enough to completely overpower the sun, so the nearly cloudless sky is still largely over exposed. But Janayah isn't silhouetted and the rest of the background is well exposed.


Two different styles of outfit, two different areas of the park. I think the bridge suited the dress Janayah was wearing. I also used a 80-200 that I had only previously used for motorsport. The long lens is used to foreshorten perspective. Combined with a large aperture it made Janayah stand out more, almost giving a 3D effect. It meant standing a long way from Janayah, losing a little of the connection I like to have in my pictures. But I liked the results, I'll use it again if space allows.

I hope you like the results.

85mm lens

These two are at 200mm on my 80-200mm telephoto zoom

And then with HSS and the 85mm again

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Sporty fashion

This was my third shoot for Caroline to produce pictures for her website. This time there was s sporty style to the clothing. A local park has a tennis court. It would be ideal for all the pictures I needed.

I meet Janayah and we talked through the clothing list and suggestions Caroline supplied.

The weather was great, unless you have to shoot in the strong early afternoon sunshine with little shade.

So I decided to make that a part of the style. Don't fight it, work with it.

The trees gave some shade but also added a green tint to the shots. A preset run on the pictures as a last processing step cured that.

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Please checkout my website and facebook page. And leave a comment about this post. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this or any blog post.

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Xandria

Saturday marked a new high for my photography.

Xandria contacted me through a photography/modeling website. She asked about working with me because she had seen my pictures and liked my style. It matched the style of picture she wanted for her new profile.

It was great to hear this from non family or friends.

We discussed location and style of clothing. It became clear we were after the same thing. She especially wanted fun pictures that showed her age. Not too grown up, natural.

Because she is relatively new to modeling, she looked to me more for posing and composition than I had experienced on previous shoots. The models had more experience interpreting what I wanted, and could also work unprompted. Xandria was still very good, and we worked well together. It wasn't all one sided by any means. And once she relaxed it really started to flow.

Because she wanted pictures for her profile, I delivered over sixty pictures for her to look at. Pretty much straight from the camera. Between us I wanted that number reduced to around twenty. The final number was 38. I then processed them to produce the finished product for both our profiles. I hope to work with her again.

Here are my particular favourites.

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One model, two sessions, two locations.

I had shot with Jemma in my early days.

It was in a house she had access to. I hadn't shot with many models at this time, so it was good that Jemma was easy to get on with and understood the style of picture I wanted. I found it very easy to plan for different rooms and moods.

The second session was in a local park. The first time I had shot in a public location. Had to keep an eye open for people walking across the back of shot. I was very self-conscious at first. But once I got started. It just didn't bother me.

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website