ON SABBATICAL

Yes, I’m on a photo sabbatical, I’ve no idea for how long but will restart this blog when I return!

I have just come back from the Dane Sanders Fast Track Photographers course this weekend. Dane is a US based portrait photographer and taught this amazing workshop (which is also his first in the UK). The workshop was very much about the business of photography but focusing on the photographer behind the camera, rather than the technical aspects of photography.

This is very different to many of the other courses out there and was a wake up call for many attending. It was a safe place to explore who we were as photographers by first examining who we are as individuals. Dane made the distinction and taught us to see that we are not just ‘mechanics’ who press the shutter button during a session, but we are much more than that. Our clients pay us for our vision, our service and the total experience the client gets. We are not merely producing a photograph (which anyone can do), for we offer something a lot more intimate and I guess a lot deeper. The images are memories that tell a story in a moment in our lives. It captures something more than ‘just a picture’ to look at that hangs on the wall.

It was a challenging yet empowering course and afterwards I have a much clearer focus and idea on the direction of my photography. It requires a lot of changes from my end as I will be focusing my efforts on portraiture work.

So, keep an eye out, things are about to change, and I believe change is good!

The other day I had the pleasure of having a shoot with Natalie. Now, Natalie seems to love clothes, particularly those from All Saints, so we decided to theme the shoot with her wearing All Saints clothing. Below the slideshow are the static photos. Natalie was great on the day, enjoy the images.

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Here are the static images below.

A few weeks ago I had an engagement shoot with a lovely couple and last weekend it was their Asian wedding! It was a large wedding of about 500 guests and of course that makes for a lively event. What I loved about this wedding were the beautiful colours and ceremony. Nasmin travelled in a lovely Bentley and I was fortunate enough to go in the Limousine Hummer that took the rest of the family. Rakib travelled in style as well, arriving in a lovely white Lamborghini!

Both bride and groom looked amazing and I wish them all the very best for their future together. Enjoy the slideshow below or the static images underneath that.

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Here are the static images.

One of the things that I had been planning on doing was a bridal photoshoot. I’ve been on many shoots before that were organised by other photographers and I wanted to arrange one for myself. I enlisted the help of a wedding planner, Tracey of Cherish Weddings who helped me to source the venue, wedding dresses, flowers etc.

I asked Nicola of Daffodil Waves Photography if she would help me shoot on the day as we were going have 2 models. Unfortunately, one of the models was a no show on the day and we only had Vera to model for us. Also the day before the shoot the makeup artist cancelled on us, but through a contact I had found Shabana who was awesome and stepped in. Everyone in the team was brilliant and what could have been a bit of a disaster of a shoot in fact turned out better than expected. Vera looked amazing, the make up and hair was fantastic and the dresses looked gorgeous. Thank you everyone, below are my favourites from the day.

Model: Vera Lapochkina
Make Up: Shabana Dhadda
Hair Stylist: Josh Matheson Hair Stylist
Photographers: Waiman Yau
Wedding Planner: Tracey, Cherish Weddings
Flowers: Lisa Flowers Floral Design
Venue: Hogarths Hotel, Dorridge, Birmingham

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Here are the static images:

With a lot of the portrait stuff that had done, I realised that the models were generally female and I was quite keen to try and photograph a male model as I think it requires a different approach. Luckily I had someone in mind, he is not a model but I knew he had a good look and would be ideal for my personal project.

Thankfully he agreed and stepped in to model for me. Another thing I didn’t want to do with this particular shoot was to have 15-30 different images. I just wanted to try different poses etc and pick the best one. Here is the best shot I think of the session we had. I think as a future project I will try and cover more male models.

I was fortunate to be referred a client by a wedding photographer friend Jennalise Kassanis to do a wedding. The couple are the lovely Nasmin and her fiance Rakib. I had spoken to Nasmin on the telephone and we had exchanged emails but this was the first time I had met her and Rakib.

The aim was to get more details about the actual day and to meet and say hello. They are having an asian wedding with a lot of ceremonies by the sounds of it and I cannot wait to cover their wedding in September. Of course I had brought my camera with me to the meeting and we spent a little time taking a few photos. As you can see both were very natural, fun and look great on camera.

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Here are the individual photo’s to view at your leisure.

I’ve not blogged in a while but have been busy with life and shooting. There’s a small backlog of files to edit! Anyway, I was privaleged to be second-shooting for Sachin Khona a London photographer whom I first met just over a year ago. Sachin asked me to second shoot an Asian wedding with a super cool couple, Ashina & Irffan. Having never covered an Asian wedding before and the chance to second shoot with Sachin, I jumped at the chance.

The venue was St John’s Hotel in Solihull and it was an awesome wedding! Here are some of the images.

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I recently had a portrait photoshoot with Katy who had not modelled before but was very natural in front of the camera. I wanted to try something a bit different and create some studio-looking shots on location. These were the images later in the series with the white background. So, many thanks Katy for a fun shoot and who looked awesome, enjoy the images.

Slideshow of the images (may take a few moments to load)

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The individual images below.