Several months ago, Aston Hall in Birmingham, invited myself and fellow tog, Adam Hale, into their beautiful building to conduct a fashion shoot. As a collaboration between local make-up artists, stylists, models and of course photographers, we spent the entire day shooting across various rooms of the Grade I listed Jacobean mansion, including the huge long gallery as pictured with model, Anna ‘Paranoya’ Lenart, below. Differing from my normal approach to shoots that often involves ridiculous amounts of meticulous planning, […]
Doubletake Studios, one of the UK’s largest commercial fashion and portraiture photography studios, yesterday closed its doors after 15 years in operation with studios in Birmingham, Manchester, London and Southampton all being shut down. As a result the local photography markets have just got a lot less competitive. With some of Double-Take’s studios seeing up to 90 clients a day and being open seven days a week, a lot of freelance photographers are now able to tap into the portraiture […]
To view in HD visit the film on Vimeo here. Don’t forget to full screen it! Well it’s been a big project but finally Vigilante is finished and out in the open! Several months prep and post work went into the shoot that lasted for 2 days and shot with only a four man crew; myself, actors Rob and Karen along with the fabulous make-up artist Bethany Davies. It was hard work but seeing it all come together is fantastic! […]
Fellow tog Jak Flash and I recently decided to have a play around with some cinematography and we thought what better way to get our arses into gear than to enter a competition that gives us a very strict deadline. And so we put together a team of 7 to enter the 2 Weeks 2 Make It WM music video competition. We were randomly paired with Leamington Spa based band, Valhalla Smith and were given 2 weeks to create a […]
T’other week I had a delicious 5:30am start to get onto the set of BBC’s Doctors for 8 to shadow DOP, Ted Ames. I met Ted whilst working on Matt Chambers’ (Dr. Daniel Granger, Doctors) short film, For the Love of Eli. He invited me on set of Doctors to observe the logistics, creative and technical elements behind the low budget TV drama. The first thing that staggered me was the speed of shooting. Blocking and rehearsals were done in […]
The more I edit the stills and footage for Vigilante, the more impressed I am with the location. Standard Works Jewellers is a 4 storey building located in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, 5 minutes’ walk from the train station. For anyone looking for an industrial looking location for film or stills – this is the property to check out. It’s let by estate agents Nattrass Giles who were kind enough to agree to let me shoot Vigilante there. The basement is […]
Hi all! With a request from actress, Angela Peters, to create a portfolio of cinematic images with a dark action based feel, I trundled the kit down to Moseley Bog (a beautiful nature reserve where Tolkien took inspiration for the Shire in his books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) to have my first bash at shooting day for night. It’s a pretty straight forward process. Simply set the aperture and shutter speed to underexpose the environment to […]
So just where on Earth does one get fake newspaper printing to use as prop? When planning the Vigilante Project I had just this problem. I had written my own articles across a 12 page spread and just needed to find a printer able to print onto newsprint. This proved to be a rather difficult feat and resulted in me spending about 4 hours calling a myriad of printing companies including newspaper presses and novelty gift companies who offer spoof […]
Well it’s been a mad few months prepping for, shooting and editing the stills for Rob Ho‘s Vigilante stills production, but finally all 115 final stills have been edited and are now waiting to be sequenced alongside a further 240 shots taken for a timelapse for the short film. The project follows Rob’s character, Tao Lee, and documents his internal struggle with the overwhelming guilt and blind rage he experiences when realising the truth of what he has become after […]
Last week I did a couple of shoots in one of the penthouse suites of Birmingham’s Rotunda. The first was my first male nude, followed by a female lingerie shoot. Emma Tullett was both assistant to the first shoot and gorgeous model for the second and along with make-up artist Jen Brown we had a terrific day shooting. I’m not shooting much in the way of fashion these days as I’m focusing my attention on film and production work, however […]