Sometime projects take a little while from their shooting to when they are revealed. This is certainly the case of a shoot that was held over two years ago. I had answered a casting call from a local artist who was seeking photographers to collaborate in an art project. The artist was twice World Champion bodypainter Sofia Bue and the project was a book and exhibition called “Bodies of Art”. I had seen Sofia’s work previoulsy when she was one of the tutors at the BodyFX conference I had photographed.

We met and obviously clicked as one Sunday in 2015 we all gathered in a studio at Trentham racecourse to do the shoot. It was probably one of the largest collaboration I have been involved with. It involved three models (Sophia Sparks, Imogen Stone & Amelia McCarthy) , Sofia and two assistants and a behind the scenes videographer. It took Sofia nearly five hours to fully paint the models and then we shot for nearly two hours.

The lighting for the shoot was fairly simply. Two softboxes placed of each side of the group at about a 10% angle so not quite rim lighting. A reflector was used in some of the shots to get a little bit more light.

Following the shoot the process of turning them into a final product took considerable longer than I would have imagined.  In the end Sofia turned to crowdfunding to get it out the door. This process was successful and I cant wait to see it when it arrives early in 2018.