Day 2 of my training course in Paris was focused around more new lighting techniques including the use of a beauty dish. We met in the morning along the Seine, and again worked with Jen and Angelain 2 different outfits. Jen was very Chanel inspired, in a fitted suit and fabulous hat, and Angela was wearing a French ‘preppy’ look.
I worked with Jen first, using on camera flash and a reflector, and I decided to shoot only in black and white to make the images feel more classic. Some of my favourites are shown below.
The second half of the morning was spent with Angela and we used the lovely tree lined pathway along the river and the tunnel as a backdrop (we were going to venture inside but I will be honest it didn’t smell great! 🙂
We then went for lunch (where I got royally ripped off paying 16 euros for a diet coke!! note to self next time don’t eat right next to a tourist spot) and then we were into our free shooting session at the Louve. The afternoon was all about putting what we have learnt into practice with no guidance from Andrew the trainer. We were to come up with our own lighting ideas and composition.
With Angela, I chose to get my flash off camera and my friends, Stephanie and Sam, did an excellent job at hiding behind posts. Angela looked amazing in a very slinky black dress and we drew quite a crowd of people while we were shooting.
The second session was with Jen in a fitted black and white, slightly gothic, looking outfit. The minute I saw her it made me think of Alice in wonderland so rather than pose her in front of the buildings I took her off into the gardens in the Louvre. These were taken using a beauty dish with Vicki holding it behind the bushes for me.
At around 6pm we dashed back to the apartment to collect our belongings and back home on the Eurostar. I had such a wonderful 4 days, and really enjoyed working with lighting and photographing something that is completely new for me, and Paris was as stunning as I remembered. There is a trip being planned to Italy next year…I better start saving now!
If you are reading on from my Paris trip part 1 blog, you will know that I have been very excited about going to Paris, learning more about lighting, and working with models.
On the morning of Day 1 of the course (http://training.andrewappleton.com/) we met in a café in the Monmatre area. The first session was all about working with on camera flash using reflectors. We had 2 sets ups, the first was Jen in a café (where we had just had our breakfast) and the second was Angela in Bridal wear overlooking the streets of Paris. As I don’t use flash a great deal I really enjoyed having the opportunity to use it in a way that looks as natural as possible. Below are a couple of final shots from the morning session along with some behind the scenes images taken on my iphone.
We had a couple of hours to spare over lunch and we visited the Sacre Coeur and I got to spend some time chatting with Julie-Anne, Jonathan and Sam who are also members of the Guild. It was great to meet them in reality as I had chatted to them before on facebook and met them ‘virtually’ :-). We took some silly shots of all of us together and then headed for the Metro to meet at the Eiffel Tower. I don’t know about you but I can’t see much difference between us and the real models can you? 😉
The plan was to take some wide angle images in front of the tower while it was lighter, and then move closer to the tower as the sun set. This was a really interesting session for me as we used Ice lights and very large soft boxes. I don’t often photograph at night and I really enjoyed it, so now I am looking for projects where I can take the kids out at night 🙂
And this is how it looked behind the scenes…not quite as glamorous 🙂
For those of you that follow my website, facebook page or blog, you will know I have been talking for months about going on a trip to Paris. It was organised by Andrew Appleton (see Andrews training website here) through the Guild of Photographers. I am predominantly a natural light photographer, but have always been very interested in learning more about lighting & fashion photography, so when this training course became available I jumped at the chance. I was then on a mission to convince my other photographer friends to join me and Andrea, Stephanie, Rebecca and Louise also booked. We decided to rent an apartment in Paris and go out a couple of days earlier so we could spend some time exploring and doing some street photography. These are the lovely ladies below….
On the Saturday, after getting into Paris on the Eurostar, we headed to our apartment and unpacked. We then jumped straight onto the Metro and headed for the Eiffel Tower. It was a grey day but its been a very long time since I visited Paris and I forgot just how much I love the tower. Its especially magical when it lights up at night.
As it started to get dark we met up with Elodie, a French photographer, and she took us for a walk round by the tower, down to the Seine and then we headed out for a really lovely meal. These are some of the images I took on Day 1 I especially enjoyed taking photos on the metro.
On Day 2 we headed to the shopping district and to the museum which has a lot of street artists. There was a fantastic clown, and bubble artist, and I could have stood for hours watching the children running through the giant bubbles and having balloon hats made for them. I challenged myself on day 2 to shoot a little differently, so all day I used a fixed prime lens, the 50mm 1.4, and tried to only photograph in black and white.
On Sunday night we met with Andrew and his team including Jen & Angela the models and Donna the make up artist. I’d been looking forward to meeting Jen as I’ve been following her blog for a while now as she is incredibly creative and has started her own very inspiring Dream Catcher photography project. You can read Jen’s blog here http://jenbrookmodel.tumblr.com/ and see her interview with F Stoppers magazine here http://fstoppers.com/when-a-model-dictates-creative-direction-jen-brooks-dreamcatcher-project.
