Zorra
I am one of a lucky few to get my hands on these jumpers made by Zorra a.k.a. @emeraldstarfox so me and Hannah had a walk around Shrewsbury and found this graffiti, so we spent a few minutes shooting on film until we woke up a tramp sleeping just a few yards away. He seemed less surprised than us by this encounter but this is a preview from the shoot. I’ll upload more later (I’v been neglecting the blog)
Taken on a Pentax Spotmatic sp2, super takumar smc 50mm f1.4 most likely on kodak ektar 100.
Farrah
On Sunday I travelled to Solihull to photograph Farrah, it was really good to meet the family (Farrah is sister to Zorra who is going out with my cousin Ben). We had no plans and so just went for a wander around the local area as the sun started to get lower in the sky. I switched my old Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 from my Pentax Spotmatic onto my Nikon D300 and shot into the sun using my hand to block some of the light entering the lens. The old lens may not be optically perfect but I think this adds to the images in a way that newer lenses cannot match. Images are straight out of camera with no editing, shot in RAW then converted to JPEG and uploaded here. Enough rambling—
Damselfly
I did a shoot a little while back for Damselfly and have had to wait until the collection was released to show the pictures. The location was in the dairy at Berrington hall, South Shropshire. We arrived early to the dairy so that the heaters could be put on to keep the models warm in the light spring collection. It was hard work shooting in such a confined space as the dairy and required a focal length of around 20-50mm for most shots. I have worked with the models Annie and Grace before and they are impeccably behaved and easy to work with, most adult models cooperate a lot less!!
Here is another screen grab of the website:
Make sure you check it out damselflyboutique.co.uk
Security troubles…
Todays shoot started off badly when we didn’t manage to make it into the first location which was a semi derelict quarry. We had parked the cars and walked about 50yards when we got collared by security. When I say security I mean a couple of men who looked like they were out of the film the hills have eyes! We were told we had two minutes until we would be locked in so we had to make a quick getaway in the cars, this meant we had to go to our backup location only a few miles away. No security as usual here so I spent a couple of hours exploring and taking pictures for Prototype magazine. The weather was good and after the bad start things turned good. Here are a few unedited outtakes from the day, to see the best ones you’ll need to see the magazine when its out, links will be up here when it its live so check back!
Mothers day
Well I spent yesterday taking photos for Faith Tilleray and then today is mothers day and tomorrow and tuesday are deadline days at uni so I havent had any time for portraits 
And as much as I hate pictures of flowers this one does capture perfectly how the weather was this morning as I walked down to the Rocke Cottage Tearoom in the morning sun inbetween heavy showers. I like the lens flare from the old Super Takumar 50mm. This was shot at f2.8.
Back to uni work for me..
Stupid game….
My relatively injury free Rugby season was ended on Saturday with a dislocated shoulder and a night in A&E on morphine and gas and air. Shoulders back in place and so Sunday morning I headed off to London to meet with Ilya Fisher before shooting her new work the following day. Turns out carrying a full lighting kit, camera and lenses on trains with my shoulder was not my best idea! But it all worked out well in the end and I had a good couple of days in the capital including a few hours grabbing candids at Highbury on Sunday for the Scotland Vs. Brazil football match as well as Monday around Trafalgar Square.
The model for Ilya was Rose Green, couldn’t have asked for better. It’s not very often that you never hear one complaint or request from a model but this was definitely the case on Monday morning. The pictures aren’t from the shoot it’s just a quick snap I grabbed for here after the shoot before Rose left.
Oh yeah, heres my arm, before and after 
Can’t complain
I had my interview to get on to the design and technology PGCE course at Staffordshire University on Tuesday so all my time lately has been spent reading up on educational issues and such like. But, I got a conditional offer so all is very good in the world as I don’t really know what else to do!
Anyway, back to the pictures. These were taken 9days ago at the train graveyard. Whilst none of these images are in my favourite list it was a good day and Chloe Nicole is good in front of the camera! I look forward to some fashion/editorial shots in the future with her.
Films are to be developed soon, got a vintage film in the Pentx Spotmatic and some beautiful beautiful beautiful Kodak Ektar 100 in the Mamiya.
I’v got a busy time ahead with 3 weeks of placement to do in a school, a 2 week subject enhancement course and to finish my degree by September. Not to mention a product shoot in Shropshire, a childrenswear shoot down in London and shooting a Dyno day for charity in Birmingham!! Never mind rugby three times a week, can’t complain though, it’s best to be busy!!
Chloe Nicole
Another trip back to the train graveyard but this time with Chloe who I found on Purestorm.
We only spent a couple of hours nosing around, it wasn’t very warm at all and I’m really really starting to *hate* digital, I did manage to take a couple of images on my Mamiya and a couple on my Pentax Spotmatic but that has an experimental film in it so I’m not counting those until I see it (approx 1970s film). I’ve got to edit the images I took yet as some will need some work as the light and conditions are hard to work with down there. Not my usual style to do anything more than tweak the white balance slightly, sharpen, curves and maybe a vignette if it needs it. This image has had these four things done to it and so it can be uploaded! Just a quick picture so you can see who I was shooting today, was a good day, even if I decided to get glass stuck in my hand from a smashed window as I was hanging out of a window about 8foot up over the tracks lol. Places like this are so strange, I find it weird that in this day and age a use cannot be found for items and buildings that are just left to rot. ..
All about the light
Its true what they say, it is all about the light. Driving back from uni and the light turned really nice, burning all the fog away instantly so we pulled into Copmere End and took a few quick snaps. I only had my old Takumar 50mm f1.4 on my D300 so I was constrained slightly by the fixed focal length but the 50+year old lens flares madly (which I consider a good thing) when shooting into the sun. Below are a few technical outtakes but I kinda like them and they will serve as ideas to work on.
On a personal note I got accepted onto the Student Associate Scheme today so thats a nice £600 for 15days work in a school in the summer. More importantly it will also look very good on my PGCE application.
Finally!!
I finally escaped from my Uni work and managed to sort some time out with the camera. My friend Tom was also up for shooting so we messaged a few models on Model Mayhem and Becky was available. We headed to Copmere which was still frozen over and has a few jetties but we couldnt reach many due to the mud.
Unfortunately both the weather and the light were not very good…. everything was arranged so we decided to persevere and see if we could salvage some shots from the weather. I was shooting my Mamiya C330 mainly but the shop I get my films developed is shut until the new year so I have to wait to see how they turn out!!! Here are a few from my Nikon D50, mainly used with my Super Takumar 50mm f1.4 but some were with the Nikkor 70-300mm. Only using one reflector, no flash.
Film time
So I finally finished the roll of film that was in my Pentax Spotmatic and went and got it developed!!!
a few nice shots in it but I really need a negative scanner because paying to get the prints and then scanning them in on my filthy dusty scanner is rubbish i just cant get rid of the dust on it grrrr!!!! roll on xmas break so I can take lots of pictures
heres a couple of unedited pics, all from a cheap roll of fuji iso400 in my spotmatic with the brilliant super takumar 50mm f1.4
Hannah Nijsten
Today I was shooting Hannah who I found on Model Mayhem. I decided to go without a plan and just see what happened and how things went in front of the camera. Things went well (a lot better than yesterday – no police problems) and we got some nice shots. I shot a couple on medium format and a whole roll of 35mm which will be developed tomorrow so I’m really excited about that! We walked around town for a couple of hours and battled midday autumn sunshine to get these….
old candid pics from London town
I like finding old photos so I scanned these pair in on my own scanner (which is pretty poor quality) but at least you can actually see them!
They were taken on the old Pentax Spotmatic 2 (from Manda) which had the Super Takumar 50mm F1.4 lens fitted to it. I was using Ilford fp4+ black and white film which I love in this camera and its only 125 iso so on a really sunny day like this you can still use nice open apertures even though the cameras fastest shutter speed is 1/1000 of a second.
I dont know who these people are but they were just sitting in the middle of chaos at the British Museum. It was so hot and noisy with so many people around but somehow these pair had each found their own quiet spot to sit in.
I also really like candids
