Paul Saxby Photography

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a scarf and a half...

27 July 2009

Today I had the pleasure of working with a good friend and excellent photographer Sam Hook.  Sam had asked me to help her out with a commercial shoot, which involved photographing a collection of beautiful scarves for a forthcoming brochure.

The shoot involved photographing 14 different scarves, which wasn`t so bad as we had an afternoon to do it, plus we had the help of Model Sara, who had already worked with Sam on a previous shoot.




Sam already had a few ideas, plus a fairly good brief from the client so she knew what she wanted from the shoot, I was there for moral support and to hump and dump the gear about.  Even though Sam had a good idea about what she wanted, Sam also wanted me to bounce a few ideas about and come up with some shots of my own.  I happily got stuck in, and after we had shot everything we needed I took the opportunity to play and photographed Sara and a couple of the scarves with a slightly different slant.



I had a great time working with Sam, its always good to work alongside a different photographer every now and then, as it helps to bounce ideas about and to give a something a little different to the project.  I just hope the client is happy with the images...

Thanks for today Sam, I really enjoyed myself, I look forward to working with you again soon....



 

 

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Dogs in all shapes and sizes....

26 July 2009

The CLA Game Fair - Belvoir Castle

Today was a great day, after a busy few days photographing families and babies, a day out in the country was called for, so we decided to visit Belvoir Castle, which was hosting this years CLA Game Fair.  The fair, which the largest countryside fair in the UK, has thousands of visitors, most of which seem to want to bring their dogs along. 

The show has demonstrations of just about every outdoor activity or past time.  You can buy  a 50p dog toy or a £20000 shotgun.  Visitors were arriving in thousands from all over the world, some even flying in by helicopter.

I decided I wanted to record the show by photographing all the different dogs and their owners.  I wish I had planned this before hand, because I only had my 50mm f1.4 on a 1D MKIIN body.  I would normally have a whole range of kit with me, but since this was supposed to be my day off, I had only brought along a basic camera outfit. This restricted me to simple portraits of the dogs.  If I had brought my 300 f2.8, I could have photographed the dogs at work, but they were just too far away, but the 50mm is perfect for portraits so I left it at that.

Of all the dogs I photographed today, two little Miniature Pinschers caught my eye, not just because they were so tiny, but because of there pure character.  These little dogs really thought they were the biggest dogs at the show, even taking on, and chasing away a huge Rottweiller that only wanted to play.....



Despite the rather expensive entrance fee and the ridiculously priced food, we really had a wonderful day.  I would recommend anybody to visit the fair next year, especially if you are dog lovers like ourselves.

 

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Pole Dancers - Entertainers or Athletes?

21 July 2009

I don`t often get jobs like this one, photographing a scantily clad young lady... and getting paid for it!!!



This job was to shoot some photographs of Roseanna, a Pole Dancing Instructor, for her promotional material.  Roseanna only opened her school, Vertical Fitness, a few weeks ago and has had a flood of enquiries from ladies of all ages wanting to do something a little different to keep fit.  Working out in the gym is often boring, or expensive or even both, so Roseanna has set up this new facility in Newark so girls can exercise in a safe environment and have fun at the same time.



The dance studio had been fitted out with plenty of shiny new poles, but still had exposed breeze block walls, so I set up a white backdrop against the wall to hide the brickwork and clean the image up.  I kept the lighting simple with a single 50 inch softbox lighting Roseanna and the pole and a pair of Vivitar 285HV`s lighting the white backdrop.  Roseanna is extremely fit, and was able to hold almost all of her poses for several seconds while I shot multiple images from different angles.  Before long I was beginning to feel terribly old!!




I also photographed a few images with a dark background.  To do this I simply moved my lights closer to Roseanna, this forced me to close the aperture, which means the exposure falls off rapidly, making the backdrop go black.  I also moved the Vivitars behind Roseanna for some shots to silhoette her, this gave a raunchy night club feel to the images.