Pixie contacted me about taking part in the shoot and as she lived in Whanganui we arranged for me to shoot her on the way back from  the Photographic conference in Stratford.

The original intention had been to shoot Pixie on  the same backdrop as used in the previous shoot so that was packed in the car. But when I arrived at her place that completely changed. She lived in this old villa that was in original condition. The kitchen in particular had an amazing retro feel to it that I knew that I had to shoot her there.

That posed some issues as it was not very large and I was trying to light is using my seven foot umbrella. We managed though. The one issue with using an actual location was that I was getting reflections on the windows from the umbrella.

This was solved using the double tap approach. Basically you take two images in succession. The second one goes off without flash but is such a short duration behind the first that the subject tends not to have moved. You then combine the two images in Photoshop and you use the non-flashed image as the replacement for the windows.