Ashley & Costa Studio Night

So it started with a concept of a shoot I seen where Beyonce worked with Vogue and an idea for a background that I had seen where Brett Harkness created a backdrop in his home studio  and I wanted to pair the two of them together….I knew the exact model who  could pull of this look and a great creative team to bring it together.

 

I started by constructing a frame out of 3×2″ CLS timber mounted on the back of some 12mm MDF sheets to give it some rigidity. I filled all of the holes and gave it a primer in some grey paint I had spare so that the “Cement” could key to it. I used Rapid set tile adhesive as the “cement” and boy was it rapid! I literally got one side of the panel done and the adhesive starting setting in the tub I had mixed it in, so it has a tough task to get it on the wall and for it to spread fairly evenly. I used some spare flooring from the kitchen and bathroom to give the area a base.

 

 

This shoot was part of a creative evening I was hosting at the studio , so we had another ten photographers attending and using the set ups we had. Ashley (our model) was perfect for this set up and style…. enough talking here are a couple of headline shots…

 

In terms of lighting, for the standing shots, these were lit by a strip softbox over Ashley’s left shoulder directed towards the wall, and a beauty dish off to the left of the camera to provide fill light. See the diagram below;

We also had the very cool and crisp Costa as part of this session…

 

A massive thanks to everyone who came along for this shoot but most of all the creative team who turned my vision into reality…

 

Model – Ashley Robertson

Model – Costa Toulis

MUA – Laura Lou

Stylist – Steph O’Neill

 

1940’s Headshot Series…

So recently I got together with the very talented model Sarah and worked again with the awesome Laura Lou Make Up Artist  to create something a bit different. I had a vision in my head that I wanted to tell a story of a 1940’s female going through the emotions of getting ready for a night out and then right through to having an argument and being quite upset but shooting purely as head shots. To be honest I thought I gave Sarah a very tough gig with this one, god knows I wouldn’t be able to convey all of these emotions while sitting in exactly the same place….

So I wanted to channel a little bit of Emma Stone in Gangster squad with this, while letting Sarah do her thing! I think she nailed each look amazingly….

 

We also created a little video while shooting this one….

 

 

The New Digs

So we did it, we recently made the move to a new studio space!! Based in Hebburn (just 5 mins from my house) we now have an awesome studio space as well as two funky offices. We are already running new workshops and studio nights every couple of weeks and shooting more children’s portraits and model portfolios.

 

Here is a quick look at the space and some details in my office….

(You can also find out all about our new workshops over on the Facebook Page)

 

June Studio Night – Dee Dixon Headline

“The biggest part of making a mistake is learning from it..”

So this rang true very much so for me on June 10th when I hosted the first creative studio night in my new studio in Hebburn when the post code I believed was that of the studio actually led all of our attendees into a residential cul-de-sac about 1/2 mile away…Safe to say I won’t supply that post code again.

Apart from that somewhat ropey start I was delighted with the turn out to this event. A real mix of talent and abilities turned out and everyone left with some amazing images of our models….that is except me. I was too busy trying to entertain and mingle that I took very few images of our guests and even fewer of the photographers strutting their stuff. Again- I will not make this mistake again….

Here are a couple of behind the scenes images and what we actually created on the night… and a couple of diagrams showing how we created them…