Bridal Photoshoot!

So as many of you are aware, we're looking to break into wedding photography this year. Perhaps (definitely) leaving it far to late for 08 bookings so thinking ahead for next year now. We kick started our portfolio with a Bridal photoshoot, working with our recently acquired make up artist, EmilyJane who brings a little bundle of nutiness to each shoot we work on.

On the theme of nuts - Emily's never seen a squirrel because "they don't live in Leicester" (where she has to travel from each shoot bless her!) The shoot started with a massive logistics nightmare, my experience of producing in film really came handy. The tip is to take your phone everywhere and keep it as loud as possible. I was woken by the "vintage" sound of "DUNN DUNN - DUNN DUNN!" (a text message) from Emily asking whether we should use an extra model for the shoot - she had to leave at three so I punched together a text to just continue with the original plan! Then I realised it was 7am, and the fact that we still hadn't finalised models on the day of the shoot meant it was gonna be a busy day. Thankfully, it wasnt too bad, the two models were travelling from Coventry to Snow hill station, Emily rang me to let me know she'd have to go and find the models herself because she was stuck in traffic and couldnt make to mine and back into birmingham before 11:30. So after a few calls - it was sorted and everyone arrived at mine as planned as if it was well organised, which it wasn't (entirely my fault haha). Emily perfected the make up whilst I pratted around with the precious, expensive contents of her bags including an old mans wig - which nobody seems to have a photo of. I get quite lucky with behind the scenes photos like that haha.

As for Emily and the models - the feel the full force of bad test shots and behind the scenes turd that I do whilst bored, however, today was a little different - we had our own behind the scenes photographer, which was Henry. His Dani (my partners), dad, and he popped down to help us out, he helped alot with holding the reflectors and getting more behind the scenes stuff whilst I concentrated on trying to focus a new lens. anyone who knows photography - knows that 1.8 is very difficult to focus - I looked through the shots on the LCD, thinking they looked sharp and how I wanted - got them back on the mac - and there out of focus or just slightly blurry. Lesson learned, I've never used a lens with anything more than a 5.6 aperture so this was a bad time to start learning. Still - dead happy with the overall photos, they needed some work in photoshop because my LCD seems darker than it should and some photos looked overexposed on the monitor, but I guess it's that over exposed/over saturated commercial look that I was trying to capture in the first place. Really trying to steer clear of anything too arty at the moment, although everytime I hit the shutter- I wish I could just get carried away and do it a way that would push some boundries or atleast a little more creative. today I realised my ambitions are bigger than reality, and that isn't a nice feeling. But once again, lesson learned. I'll move on and learn from previous attempts. I just want to say thanks to Dani and my family for keeping my feet on the ground the last few days - I almost pressed a big self destruct button on CBM and I'm so glad I could took a step back and thought about the situation. "One step at a time, chris" - "Why? I want to take the lift!" - that just about sums it up. I wish I could be more specific.