Inspiration Hour!

So every now and again I like to spend an hour or so looking at new or previous photographers, artists or inspirations of mine to keep my ideas up to date and to also think of new ways I can improve my own photography. This week I have been looking at another one of my favourite all-round photographers Shaun Alexander. Shaun is a top fashion and advertising photographer who specialising in anything you can imagine, his portfolio is literally never ending! I spent a good house looking at his website, his images and his career as a whole. He really is an inspiration and his work is very unique and one of a kind! The quality of imagery is very high, and with him creating and working with numerous advertising campaigns, Cosmetic campaigns, and Editorial Campaigns. Fashion designers, high fashion magazines, advertising companies, fashion editorial, celebrities, magazine covers, his work is known famously worldwide, with the standard of photography and work always growing after every shoot of his.


If you have time please check out his amazing website! (You wont be disappointed!)

http://www.shaunalexander.net/

Laura xx

Editorial Throwback!

So I have recently been looking through my images that I shot during my first year of University. I came across a really exciting shoot that I did back with Steve, a photographer who also studies with me. During this specific shoot, we spent the whole day with the model and the MU artist. We took our cameras over to the media make-up studio in the other building and photographed the model getting ready and transforming into a beautiful mystical creature!

These things take time, so I spent atleast 3 hours chatting and photographing the model as I went, capturing stages of the transformation. It was such an amazing experience, being able to see the model being transformed, and the stages the MU artist went through to complete the look was fascinating and definitely needed someone with a lot of patience and a model who was willing to sit that long!

Here are just a few shots during the transformation stages. I love the depth of field within these images, which really allowed me to focus on the model and the makeup artist. Blurring out the background really helped me to create attention to detail in the models face and how delicate the whole process was. I also love the imperfections with some of the images, the mirror is slightly smudged and none of it was staged, which definitely makes these images stand out.

I then got onto shooting the model in the studio, Steve and I set up the studio whilst the model was having the final touches of her make-up done so we were organised and ready for when they came over. I was so excited but nervous because I wanted to capture some really striking images to do the work justice! I took a lot of images but there is one that really is in a league of its own. I love the way the light has fallen on this particular image, almost as if it is lighting up the most important parts of the image, creating and leaving shadows on the face, the ears and the dress to create depth and contrast. I absolutely love it, I think its beautiful and it was definitely worth the wait capturing an image like this one!

 

 

 

 

 

Ill be blogging again soon, thanks for reading!

Laura :) xx

 

A hidden gem

 For my most recent shoot, a friend and I popped over to Bowood for the morning. Being only a 2 minute drive from where we both live is very handy - you don't always have to travel far to find beautiful locations to shoot at! Once we arrived my friend got changed in the house toilets and we started making our way down to the hidden gem - the waterfall! Being a long walk and right at the bottom of the lake, I was worn out before I even started shooting! The waterfall is beautiful, set back from the rest of Bowood, to get there your have to walk over little stepping stones over the river! The sun also made an appearance every now and again which looked lovely peeking through the trees surrounding it. We started to shoot straight away, we couldn't wait to get started! I felt bad that my friend was getting wet from the water so I decided to take my boots off and get in with her.. well only up to my knees! We had a lot of fun and it was a great experience, especially walking back to the car in the rain and thunder and no umbrella! I will definitely be returning for another shoot here in the future, but for now here are some of my most favourite images taken from Wednesday :)

 

 

 

I have used Photoshop Elements 11 on all these images, increasing the contrast slightly and also bringing down the saturation level. I didn't want the colours in the images to be bright and 'in your face'. By dimming down the saturation in the image allows the colours to still be there but to be a lot more subtle, giving it a very smooth look to the image - an effect that I love! I am so proud of these images and it is definitely the best shoot I have done so far!


Laura xx