On my Model Mayhem profile I do state that I am open to shooting concepts that models are willing to come up and this was certainly the case with yesterdays shoot with Emilija.

She approached me with the idea of doing a shoot where she was painted up to look like a skeleton. I suggested that we shoot it in Bolton Cemetery  in Wellington which is quite old and also has the advantage that most of the headstones are not actually over the graves, as most were repositioned when the motorway went through the site in the 1970’s.

Emilija was body painted by the very talented Margo, who I plan to work with in the future on projects.

Although we took full lighting gear to the location we were able to use the natural light with the help of a reflector to provide everything we needed.

I met Ernestynne via a post in Facebook. She is a performer in an aerial circus using lengths of fabric. She had booked and paid for a session with a local photographer who had then given every excuse under the sun as to why no images were forthcoming. Eventually she managed to get her money back but the experience had not been so good for her. Given the background of the photographer and the usual types of sessions she shot I had my doubts that the true reasons for the none delivery was that she had taken on an assignment beyond both her experience and her gear and that there were no usable photos from it.

To restore her faith in the wider photographic community I offered her a free shoot which was arranged to take place in the factory building the circus uses to train in.

She has told me that the building had skylights but I still anticipated that lighting would be the main issue. When I arrived I discovered that the back wall had been painted black and that she had already cleared away stuff so that we had a reasonable clear background. Overhead was a yellow gantry crane which I knew would show up in shots if I was not careful.

I decided to use a white shoot through as my main light with the gear extended on the boom to sit to camera right and about the same height that Ernestynne would be positioned. A second light was positioned low down and was simply to provide some separation between her and the black floor. I decided that where possible I did not want to shoot up but rather at a level equal with her. This meant that for most of the shot I stood on a small ladder.

Before we starting taking photos for each session I had her show me what the routine looked like. This let me visualise what I may want to shoot but also more importantly gave me an indication of where to position the lights such that they would give me what I wanted but at the same time be in such a position that she would not hit them.

The shoot went very smoothly and the positioning seemed to work out well in that most images will only need a minor touch-ups in Photoshop.

I really liked the post that Ernestynne made on Facebook after I posted a sneak peak image.

Hi there everyone. Some of you may remember that last year I had problems with a photographer that I paid for. In the end I was given a refund but no photos. Today a different photographer, Paul Whitham, was generous enough to do an aerials photo shoot with me. He was punctual, professional and a great guy to work with full of lots of interesting ideas. I highly recommend him to anyone wanting performance shoots

I met Aleks through the model mayhem site although it turned out that she was friends with one of the other models I had shot. After a couple of false starts we managed to set up a shoot for her portfolio. She particularly wanted to do a series of shots in lingerie. I had done plenty of this style before but mainly in a studio environment and I decided that I wanted to try something different. I wanted to set the shots in positions and poses that you would see in lingerie ads. Therefore I planned to use several rooms around the house.

There are two challenges that you face when shooting around the house, rather than in a controlled environment.

Firstly you have be very careful with what appears in the backgrounds. While I thought I had most things taken care of it is amazing how small things will suddenly appear after the shoot when you are reviewing the images. Thankfully Photoshop can fix those.

The second challenge is windows and particularly reflections of the lights in them. I solved this by mounting the camera on the tripod and took two shots in quick succession. The second one was too quick for the flash to recharge nor for Aleks to move so essentially I got a fully masked image that I could composite.

Yuuna Phoenix is originally from the United Kingdom but now lives in New Zealand with her husband and son. I met Yuuna through Model Mayhem when I answered a request she had posted. Despite having a 10 week old baby Yuuna wanted a set of images to submit to the website SuicideGirls.com.

While she had modeled before she had never shot a nude shoot which was a requirement of submission to the site.

As I had used with Anna I used a length of fabric at the start of the shoot to relax her nerves. These images were taken during that part of the session.

The rest of the shoot will be linked her once it appears on the website as that was the condition of the shoot.

Sharyn is a very talented Wellington photographer who happens to also like to dress up in costumes. When I saw the outfit that she had worn to the Wellington Armageddon expo posted on Facebook, I said that I simply had to shoot her.

We arranged a shoot for the afternoon of Anzac day starting the alleyways behind the Opera House in Wellington and finishing up on the beach at Owhiro Bay.

It is alway tricky shooting another photographer and especially one where you like  their work. Fortunately we clicked and she liked the images that were produced. Phew!!!

Sharyn’s work can be found at http://www.bysharyn.com/

Tamara is from Mexico and I met her during the Pan De Muerto shoot. I asked would she be willing to shoot with me and she agreed. It took a little while to get the shoot sorted and we shot at three locations round Wellington.

The final sequences were on Breaker Bay where she bravely agreed to try some fabrics and fly them in the wind. While the day had started out with promising weather as we went through the shoot the light got worse, the wind stronger and the temperature dropped so we called the shoot off early.

Even so I am really pleased with the results.

After she loved the images from our first shoot Maly and I agreed to do a second shoot but this time with a studio session that was actually set up in her lounge.

For this series I had brought a number of lengths of different fabrics. The concept was very simple as I believe that great shots come from collaboration between model and photographer. Maly simply played with the fabric and I shot the result.

At the end of session I also took a number of close bodyscape type shots. Maly has a natural dark skin, which comes out absolutely beautiful especially when water was added from a spray. One of the images for this session was entered into a competition and won “honours”.