With A Little Help From My Friends

A couple of days ago me and a group of photographer friends of mine wanted to go in to central london for an organic shoot with the hopes of taking portraits of random strangers that we bump in to along our way. We were armed with speed lights, pocket wizards, umbrellas and cameras and so we were not quite worried with the equipment, the challenge was to convince random public members to stop and have a lil fun with us and hopefully end up with some really cool pictures. London is not the most friendly of places for photographers as as soon as you are taking a picture in central london you are approached by a security guard or a police officer, now every location we went to we were asked to leave even though we didn't put down any tripods and we explained that this was a personal project and not a commercial shoot, and to add to that 9 out of 10 people we asked were very dismissive and frankly quite rude, its ok if you don't want to participate but there is no need to start cussing or just ignore us.

Ahh that rant is over now, i am currently watching the creative-live stream from the US with Zack Arias who is an amazing photographer, and trying to learn as much about studio lighting and how to grow my photography business. I am so amazed by the amount of great photographers out there that have been willing to share their skills and knowledge for free to photographers like myself. Zack is a visionary and to all starting photographers i would say definitely go to his blog and check out some of his work.

now before i finish this blog i would like to show you of our results from the shoot (well attempted shoot) in central london and if you havn't figured it out by now, the pictures at the top are of my other photographer friends, JAMIE McLAREN, OLA YIWOLA and FEMI in order. Here is the video of FEMI's poem shot using the 5D mk2, this was our very first time using the 5D for video and its an incredible piece of kit.

Urbanographer

For the past couple of days i have had this word (which is actually two separate words put together) stuck in my head, i don't know weather i thought of it or saw it somewhere but it absolutely fascinated me and got me thinking about what avenue my photography is heading towards. Yesterday i had a shoot with a very dear friend of mine who is on her way to bright lights and loads of £££ signs, I have known Amy for almost seven years and i have yet to tire of hearing her amazing singing voice. I took pictures of Amy a long time ago when i was just finding my feet in photography and i figured its about time we updated her portfolio since a lot of industry people are showing an interest in her so why not.

Our make up artist of the day was Abbie who is a friend of Amy's and she did a fantastic job and also assisted Amy with changing, I of course was assisted by Jamie McLaren who is a fantastic photographer himself and i trust no other than him with my equipment. The highlight of the shoot i have to say is after about 20 minutes of walking to the location we found this fantastic little ally way which had a curved door way, which for a photographer SCREAMS shoot me!!! so we decide this would be the best place to start the shoot and so Amy and Abbie start to work on make up while me and Jamie go through the lighting set ups we thought of to get a visual idea of what it will look like and to get ball park figures of the settings we will use. The girls had just finished their make up and me and Jamie were very happy with the results of the tests so we decided lets start, and as we walk literally 6 steps around the corner to the ally way a DRUNKEN MAN HAD URINATED ON OUR SHOOTING LOCATION it even started to trickle down all the way to our second area of shooting....... THANKS THANKS A LOT!!!!

The pictures are not done yet but here is a sneak peak as to what to look forward to.