Hannah is a young model who was looking to expand her portfolio. Kristy recenty graduated from Weltec’s makeup school and was also looking to colaborate for her portfolio. We arranged to do a fashion and lingerie shoot at the Palmer Head gun emplacement.

Over the last 10 years of shooting models I have been pretty lucky that just about every shoot has been an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately I could not rate this among them due to a whole string of issues that seemed to plague it.

The shoot was originally planned for the Saturday November 27th, and as all parties lived in the Hutt Valley I arranegd to meet them and then go in a single car. I was supposed to be picking them up at 4:00pm and figured that with travel and makeup we would start shoooting around 5:30pm. I was not too worried about the time of day as it was going to be light until at least 8pm and there was the promise of a period of golden light.

Unfortunatley Hannah cancelled 50 minutes before her pickup time, by which time I was already on my way. She had run into an issue with babysitting and so we rescheduled for the following Saturday.

The day before the second shoot day there was a drama that could easily make a soap opera script when she hadn’t replied to either a facebook or text message I had sent. Based on some other posts i had seen her make on Facebook I assumed it was not on and so arranged with a second model. When she finally confirmed I had to change the arrangements with the second model.

Then on the day of the rescheduled shoot she arrived 50 minutes later than originally planned at the pickup point. This meant that we started a lot later than planned. While the day had started out fine and calm but by the time we got to the bunker cloud kept coming in and out and the wind had picked up to the point where Kristy was struggling with the makeup. The temperature had also dropped and so the location was turning into a not too pleasant place to be.

We worked through the series of clothes shoots, as I figured this would be a good way for her to relax before we moved onto the lingerie. While this sort of worked the wind and the light made shooting difficult.

I had assumed that shooting so late in the day we would have the site pretty much to ourselves. We had a couple of people walk through while makeup was being done but that did not cause us any grief. But no sooner as Hannah got into the first lingerie outfit then a family arrived at the site, along with a bunch of preteen boys. The family did not stay long but the boys hung around. That meant that we had to stay in one very dark room which was not what I had in mind.

I could see that Hannah was clearly nervous with the presence of the boys and was also getting quite cold. When my flash starting misfiring I decided to call it quits. There was no point in trying any further.

Hannah has asked to shoot again in the new year. Hopefully that shoot will run more smoothly.

Arelle approached me via Facebook after seeing some of my earlier work. We arranged to do a shoot in Wellington and I decided to try out a new location of the gun emplacements at the top of Brooklyn Hill. Anyone who has looked at previous blog posts will know that I like shooting in locations that have a lot of street art. Unfortunately my favourite location has had all of the art painted over with grey paint.

The gum emplacement on Brooklyn are more open to the elements which makes them somewhat risky for a winters day. As it turned out it was a clear blu sky day which in winter produces some quite nice light.

The one disadvantage with the location is that it is a little walk from where you can park a car so by necessarity it meant taking minimal gear. For lighting I took a speed light with a shoot through umbrella and also the new Lume Cube that I had bought. This is a small constant light.

I have to admit that by the time I got up there I realised how unfit I was.

Cheyenne is an Upper Hutt model who posted on Facebook that she wanted to update her portfolio. We met and agreed to do two shoots. The first was a location fashion shoot which we decided would be in the grounds of Trentham Racecourse.

Now location shooting is okay but it has a major drawback that you are reliant on the weather gods playing ball. All through the week the forecasts had not been promising with rain and strong winds predicted.

I knew that the racecourse did provide opportunities for shelter should be rain arrive. Fortunately it did not and we were able to use a number of locations for different looks.

While most of the shots were natural light I did try out my new Lume Cube aimed at a golden reflector to try to introduce some golden light into the images.

Chy had asked if she could bring along a friend. Now I know lots of photographers do not allow this but I have no problems. Hine was a really good sort and found it very amusing when I said that she had an important role as a Voice Activated Light Stand (VALS).