Full Day workshop - indoor shoot with Olivia

I hosted my second full day workshop last Sunday. The day started of with a bit of a bang, or should I say, with no bang at all since there was a power outage just before I planned to start my slide presentation. After the electricity returned, the rest of the day was smooth sailing. It is amazing how terrified I am leading up to a workshop, but the moment the attendees arrive, it all just unfolds so naturally. This group were so great and made me feel so at ease and were very tolerant of the disastrous fact that there was no slide presentation in the beginning.

Our first model, 5 year old Olivia, arrived with lots of fun outfits and goodies so we all piled into my room to shoot her on my bed. She was such an angel sitting there with so many cameras pointed in her direction. I think she was a little bored at first, but luckily her mum brought out the teeny tiny tea set and Olivia became enthralled in entertaining her sweet dolls. This made it much easier for me to verbalise the technical side of shooting in manual mode and I didn't have to focus too much on getting our lovely model to pose for she was doing fine on her own.

I wanted to mix up the back drop in comparison to my last workshop's indoor session so I used one of my new textiles to frame the Olivia and I think it adds a real old world feel of grandeur. Plus, she has the perfect look for this sort of shoot, and her wreath of flowers upon her head just makes the image complete.

I'm sorry, but is she not just so angelic sitting there pouring tea for her dolls and having her own private tea party? It was great because as soon as she had this activity, it made shooting from any angle in the room so much more interesting for the attendees.

We had Olivia do a quick change out of her gorgeous 1920s dress and into something a little more sassy. And the best bit was she was rewarded for sitting so nicely while everyone mastered their settings by being allowed to have a little fun bouncing and spinning on the bed. And once given the go ahead, her face lit up and she spun and twirled like a star.

Thank you Olivia for being so good to all the attendees at the workshop. You were such a good model and hope you like some of the results.

Full and Half Day Workshops - behind the scenes

I hosted a couple of workshops last weekend. There was a half day one on Saturday which had been rescheduled from a rain date in March, and a full day one on Sunday.

The mini workshop was originally planned for a Sunday morning, but the only time everyone could do was last Saturday afternoon, and in retrospect, later in the day worked out much better, especially for the lighting. Cairo kept the attendees company while we waited for everyone to arrive and I kept the cooke plate from feeling too lonely by returning every couple of seconds for another one.

After the mini presentation at my house, we headed out to Dockyard for the practical part of the day. The group was great - keen to learn and full of enthusiasm for the art of photography. I had decided to go for a glam engagement-session style shoot and the models really played their parts beautifully. Not to mention, the light was just incredible and so perfect for teaching the attendees about how to find the best conditions.

The next day was the full day workshop. Five minutes before the first attendees arrived, my electricity went out. Ben, who is not only my husband, but also my technical guru, was pulling out of the driveway with the kids and happily waved good bye, leaving me in a state of panic. There were still no signs of power at 9am when we were to officially supposed to begin, and I realised I couldn't use Cairo's cuteness as a distraction any longer. So I began my presentation using the hand out which was very prose oriented rather than the simple bullet points which triggered my thought process. Nonetheless, all the info is in my head and I surprised myself, even if I did babble off on tangents more than I had planned. When the lights came back on shortly before 10am, I have to say I was unutterably grateful that I could complete the theory side of the day with my well prepared power point presentation, not to mention those desperate for coffee were grateful the kettle would finally boil. We finished up the theory presentation with lots of Q & A before heading to my room to do the practice indoor session where I threw everyone in the deep end and insisted they use their full manual settings.

After lunch, we headed to a beautiful property full of cedars, banyans and romantic backdrops where the lighting conditions in the middle of the day were challenging to say the least. It was a great location to test the attendees of their knowledge so far and pushed their manual shooting boundaries.

I couldn't believe all the props, accessories and outfits we lugged with us, but it really made the difference to make the shoots special for everyone involved. 

Keep checking for future posts on the two workshops since I will be sharing in stages. Thanks to all who signed up - both days had great groups of photography enthusiasts and hope all learned a tonne!

Diptych

Isn't that just the best word? I think I love it even more than the word triptych. And not only do I love the sounds of these words, but I also adore what diptychs and triptychs are. As a photographer, these clever combinations are the best tools for story telling with two or three images.

I heart faces is having a collages category this week and I have to say, I adore the thought process behind putting certain images together. One of my faves is a close up detail of something personal in a child's hand, and then the panned out image of the child and the pleasure exuding from the little one's face when holding the fruit or flower or toy. Just so sweet and such a fun way to tell her story.

In my last post, I did one of my fave triptychs of Tamsyn and her beautiful belly, but when I thought about which collage would be the most unusual for this week's challenge, I remembered these images of my lovley assistant, Lana, and decided a little creative rearranging would make a really cool collage.

How bizarre does this look? I keep double taking and it is such a fun idea for a diptych that I think I will start shooting like this more and more just so that I can create these sorts of collages.

Head over to i heart faces to get some great ideas from others with all their collage entries and while you are there, enter one of your own.

Textiles, Tamsyn and a beautiful bump

This is Tamsyn.

This is Tamsyn's belly.

This fabulous mama has always thought henna was a beautiful art and so spiritual. Since she has embraced her bulbous belly throughout her first and this second pregnancy, she thought it would be a wonderful way to make an artistic feature of her life giving form which itself represents the love between herself and her husband, Jeff.

In Indian tradition, the darker the henna stains your skin, the more your husband loves you. Tamsyn's skin is very pale and the henna has previously not held its colour so well. In order to emphasize the incredible detail in the pattern, and to show off how truly smitten Jeff is with his wife, Tamsyn decided the photographs would have more impact if she allowed the dried henna to remain on her skin rather than brushing it off to reveal the stain beneath.

You may have seen my seen my last blog post showing some of my new fabrics (well the colours of them at least) in a wee thumbnail collage. They were taken from this shoot. Originally, we had booked a session to capture Tamsyn's first pregnancy in February last year. But sweet Baby Aura was keen to make her grand entrance, and so instead of waiting patiently in her mummy's tummy while I took photos, she decided to come into the world at 4:30am the morning of our shoot. At the time, I was deeply disappointed as I was so excited to capture a henna painted tummy, but now that I shot this one, I am over the moon and know this is so much better than I ever would have done last year before I had all my delicious materials to use as backdrops. And instead, I was able to capture Aura during her first days at home which was so beautiful to witness and photograph.

Tamsyn is convinced it happened for a reason too. Over the last 15 months since Aura's birth, Tamsyn has redefined the type of images she hoped for and even the day before the shoot, we planned to do very different images that what we finally did. We'd planned on classic imagery that really would have worked only in black and white. But then I found myself in amongst all those fabrics and when Tamsyn arrived the next morning, I think she had no choice than to let me channel my bubbling over excitement into her images using my textiles and creative energy.

Tamsyn and Jeff know they are having a boy this time. They will call him Micah, which is a derivative of Michael, in memory of Tamsyn's father. Sadly, he passed away 4 months before Aura was born, after fighting cancer for three years. He was his daughter's best friend and the best father she could have wished for. Tamsyn says she is so proud of who he was and what he represented in life and through his fight. She has grown so much spiritually from the ordeal and believes it prepared her to be a better mother, wife and friend. It taught her to live and love life each day... everything truly does happen for a reason, no matter how painful... and you just have to embrace life's experiences and grow with them.

 A dear Indian friend Tamysn's spent two hours painting the henna on her belly, and was kind enough to loan all the amazing jewelry to complete the image.

And the best bit about the shoot is at the end, we decided to brush off all the henna as it really was starting to crumble and flake off everywhere. And was revealed beneath the thick paint was a dark rich stain, so dark that it is a sure sign that Jeff is more madly in love than even Tamsyn or henna on pale skin could have foretold.

Tamsyn - thank you for trusting my artistic eye whole heartedly and believing in me and my whims. It was so fun and I am so proud of the images we made together so thank you thank you for making it possible. Love and happy birthing. Can't wait to meet Micah. xx

Fabric Fervor

Ok - I think I am getting overly excited these days. I don't know if it is because I am pushing myself to be more creative, or if stars are just aligning recently, but either way, it feels so great.

I went to an incredible fabrics sale on Saturday. This wonderful upholsterer is retiring and selling ALL of his stock. There was so much to choose from that half of it you couldn't even dig out from the shelves for the weight of all the bolts piled atop one another. I was there for over 2 1/2 hours and made the most enormous pile that people thought is was another area of stock. I needed to get Oslo and Indigo to guard my precious pile and they were fierce!

At the end, minutes before the doors were closing, I narrowed down a bit, but still ended up buying 17 different fabrics. And you won't believe this, but I am dying to go back! I never thought me much of a textiles addict, but when I was in that inspiring space, fingering all the fabrics and drinking in the richness of the colours and textures of the textiles, I felt this heady rush and knew that materials were yet another blessing on this planet for which I am eternally thankful.

The next morning I had a photo session here at my home studio and although we had planned something totally different, my fabulous client trusted me implicitly and let me go wild. I was beside myself with the madness of a creative type with new ideas spilling out of me faster than I could put them into practice. The set up was not perfect, but it worked and we made some magic I can't wait to share.

I also bought some divine bolts which had enough to reupholster some of my mad antiques so stay tuned to see the results of those in photo shoots in the future.

In the meantime, savour the colours in the thumbnails above, and one of these days, when I next roll them all out and caress their gloriousness, I will snap some proper shots of the true beauty of each piece to share.