Shoots, Eats and Leaves: School project continued....

Thursday, 9 August 2012

School project continued....

Unfortunately my new year's resolution of updating my blog more regularly had to be put on hold due to a very tough personal start to the year. A friend, who also writes a blog, told me to never make such promises in the first place as they are rarely kept and you then enter into a downward spiral of continuous apologies that you are not updating your blog enough. So, no more promises, I'll just crack on with showing you some more of the school portrait and food shots I completed earlier this year.

The circumstances of each shoot were not ideal: a dish brought along in some tupperware, styled by me using a box of props which lived permanently in the back of my car and a busy school refectory that we regularly got chased out of at break times. My set up being mostly something along these lines for the food photography.

The portraits were taken directly after shooting the food. Shooting "real" poeple comes with its own complications/limitations. Not many people like having their picture taken and are terribly camera shy. I therefore tried to make it as quick and painless as possible by using only natural light and shooting within the school grounds. Other "tricks" are to ask subjects to look away and only turn back to the camera with a smile at the last minute and generally prancing about being silly helps put people at ease too (I have learnt to leave my pride at home for shoots with kids or animals!). Thankfully the weather cooperated with us and so did the kids ... well actually, there were some wonderfully cheeky attempts at sabotaging the shots, but I think I managed to pull off some lovely shots nevertheless. You can view more images from this project under the new heading "People" on my website.