I love collaborating with other artists, whether it be photographers, models, stylists or complete strangers!
Thanks to a good bit of word of mouth, I recently got to work with local blogger Joanne Becks from Millennial Moments Blog. She came to me for professional photos for her website and blog.
I love a new challenge and this shoot (although quite simple) was a new challenge for me. Recently, I’ve been determined to get out and do more outdoor work with natural light, having been inspired by British photographer Rob Rook & American photographer Brandon Woelfel . I recently purchased a second-hand 85 1.8mm lens and this shoot was the perfect opportunity to get it out and create that bokeh styled image.
Joanne came to me wanting some nice simple images of her for her website, so I put my brain into gear, and also visited Pinterest (my go to place for inspiration) to look for something fresh and different to my usual style. I wanted to try outdoors, experimenting with sharp foregrounds and a bokeh background giving the images something different, so I sent Joanne a couple of image ideas and asked her if she had any thoughts or ideas. She was happy with what I came up with, and because it was late November I thought we would go with comfy thick winter clothing, which she organised.
With this all arranged we met up with coffee in hand and started shooting down at the local beach in Clacton-On-Sea. I had a quick scout around and had about 3 to 4 locations in mind, and if anything else came up brilliant.
First Spot – Beach
The beach was a great starting place and I tested out my focal length and standing position for both the lenses I was using in this location – the 85mm and the 50mm. For the image below I believe I used the 50mm. Joanne stood one side of the beach groyne and I stood on the other side. This was one of many I got on the beach. We tried to shoot underneath the pier, but due to lighting it didn’t work out.
Second Spot – Pier
The pier was a brilliant place to shoot, it was full of arcade games giving off that wonderful funky lighting and not only that, piers are a colourful place so we walked up and down to look for places to shoot.
We started up the end of the pier, but the images didn’t come out as I hoped. We started to head back down the pier and even though I’ve walked past this booth a good couple of times it suddenly hit me – use it! So I positioned Joanne in different poses through the poles. I couldn’t get it to look quite right but this one below was the first one I took and I was really happy with how it turned out.
This was shot at ISO 1000 F2.8 Exp 1/4000sec, then edited in Photoshop.
Third Spot – Gardens
We then moved up to the gardens nearby. I thought this would be another great spot to try as there was still some Autumn/Winter colours about. I was over thinking about where to shoot, and I randomly sat Joanne down in a seated hut area we passed and put her in different poses standing and sitting. I took my time and thought about the shot and they came out as I wanted; not spot on but the best I could do at the time!
We also done some great ones of her without her bobble hat on, which surprisingly changed the image completely in a good way.
I have learnt a lot from this shoot and it has encouraged me to work outdoors more with others, using the BIG outdoors we have around us, instead of being stuck in a controlled studio room! I am getting some great images in the studio and I am progressing with my skills, but because I’ve been in a studio setting for so long, this was a great challenge getting to be more creative with natural light.
If you want to see the rest of the photos from this set I have posted them both on my Facebookand Instagram pages.
Visit Joanne’s site Here to check out her blog on our photo shoot.