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Professional Photo Studio Lighting: Essential Setup Tips for Perfect Portraits
Refining the New Lighting Set-up I have been tinkering with the new lighting set-up when work allows it. I started by trying to use my giant soft box in my living room. This resulted in me having to position it left of the camera which just felt wrong to begin with. God knows why. I…
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Professional Headshot Photography: Essential Tips for Perfect Business Portraits
New Headshots First job after a soporific summer break. August seemed to last forever. I needed to do something to wake myself. When I was contacted by an old client and heard the brief I thought ‘perfect.’ I have several basic go-to set-ups for headshots which I customise depending on the person, location and available…
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Corporate Photography: Creating Professional Business Portraits and Office Environment Shots
Creating Professional Business Portraits and Office Environment Shots This might well be the last proper job of the summer. Lugging my equipment out to the taxi I felt the heatwave had arrived. Everything was going to feel like a slog from now on. I was glad to know I would be in Greece within the…
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La Zaida and Evonik
La Zaida and Evonik Ahhhh… La Zaida… Many years ago, on a train in Portugal, we passed a place without stopping and I quipped; “It was a one horse town… and then they ate the horse.” La Zaida has that feel; a place with a population of 500 that might easily be called nondescript… except…
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Emerald Travel; almost a naturally lit photo shoot
Emerald Stay; almost a naturally lit photo shoot The brief: 2 headshots and a group shot, well, 2 guys. The location turned out to work quite well. I was even worried I would have no excuse to use all the lighting I had brought with me. I had even dug out the really…
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Rejuversen Revisited
Rejuversen Revisited I have done a few jobs for Rejuversen now. This is the second time I visited their research lab at Parc Scientific Barcelona. Things have improved a lot there! The last time I visited I ended up having to clean up the images because the lab looked like a bomb had hit a…
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Ivan The Mysterious
Ivan The Mysterious A couple of months ago I rejoined Soho House and fairly quickly met Ivan in the exercise classes they have. Soho House was always good for meeting new people and potentially new clients. Ivan became a Soho House friend and then a client. Result. He was keen to do shots…
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Portrait Photography at Sunrise: Complete Guide to Natural Light Portraits
Portrait Photography at Sunrise: Complete Guide to Natural Light Portraits I have a client for whom I shoot interiors, his daughter Ariadne is a budding actress. He decided it was time she got some professional images for her book. We decided to start at sunrise… yippee… plus the clocks had just gone back so that…
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Home Studio With Siphokazi Oranuba
Home Studio Siphokazi Oranuba I got back from holiday and the day after had a home studio shoot. It has been a while and still being in holiday mode I was not looking forward to it as much as usual. Plus, these days I kind of prefer to find outdoor locations where I can fake…
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Home Studio Shoot – Hugo
Another home studio shoot. Photographing people in a home studio can be a rewarding and challenging endeavor, Hugo arrived and was nervous. This is very common, portraits shoots are as much about psychology as technique. It is good to have your technique refined so you don’t even think about it. Get to know your subject:…
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Location Portrait Photography: Mastering Outdoor Photoshoots at Iconic Landmarks
Location Portrait Photography. Return to the Magic Fountain About a week after doing a corporate portrait shoot outside I got another inquiry. Murat Uslu wanted a mix of shots but doing indoors and outdoors in an hour is not so feasible. Apart from setting up the studio you are going to need at least half…
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Looking to refine my Corporate Portraits
Corporate Portraits? I feel the need to experiment. A large amount of my work of late is corporate portraits and the vast majority of these are headshots against white backgrounds. Now studio style photography is fine and would be awesome if I had a proper full size studio. But given the choice I still prefer…
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OOH Capital
Bloody hell a paid job, thanks OOH Capital. Post-Covid is still proving to be difficult. Work is not back to its normal level. This job with OOH Capital is pretty typical of what was common pre-pandemic. A set of headshots and a group shot or 2. We were working at the Almanac hotel just…
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The Great Outdoors
Yes, finally a corporate headshot session in the great outdoors! Barcelona is quite hot (bearable) and sticky (less so), so… not having to set up a home studio was a nice change. Giuseppe wanted this and i was more than happy to oblige. I remembered near me there is a small park behind the library.…
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Albert Ferrer, Me and My Medals
Albert Ferrer ‘Chapi.’ The Times Newspaper. Though Covid has affected work terribly I did get a couple of jobs from UK newspapers which tend to be interesting and relatively well paid jobs. Albert lives out of Barcelona in a small town called Masnou. I went with my friend Brett who has a car and a…
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Pento; 50 Portraits in Four Hours
Pento event at the Arts Hotel. As I mentioned in another post there was a brief hiatus in the ongoing Covid saga that allowed me to get some real work. Another one of these clients was Pento who held a quite large event over several days at the Art Hotel. They contracted me to go…
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Jordi Petriz, from Telescope to Microscope
The beach seemed as good as a place as any to start the job. Jordi Petriz was the subject.The theme was where he liked to go when not in the laboratory… I really was hoping to spend time in the laboratory, the potential for over-the-top lighting and all that tech. Hey ho. The client was…
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Home Studio Photography: Cost-Effective Portrait Setups for Professional Results
Creating a Versatile Photography Space Without a Dedicated Studio While I aspire to have a professional photography studio someday, I don’t necessarily want to limit my creative work to a single controlled environment. Environmental portraits—capturing subjects in meaningful locations—remain my preferred approach. However, the convenience and consistency of studio lighting makes having a home-based solution…
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A Flying Visit To and Then Around Casa Bonay, Barcelona
One of the first really interesting job of the year was a shoot at Casa Bonay, a boutique hotel recently opened by Inés Miró-Sans in the centre of Barcelona. Receiving an email that is a possible job is always a little like Christmas, when it comes from another country even more so, because apart from the appeal of…
International Education Photography: Capturing University Life in Geneva
When Barcelona Meets Switzerland I was contacted by Elena Panizza, head of Brain Bazaar about this job. The opportunity sparked immediate interest – it combined travel with proper compensation, a refreshing change from Barcelona’s freelance landscape. Living in this picturesque city has its undeniable charms, but the local market’s reluctance to invest in professional photography…
Olga & Carlos: A Pregnancy Portrait That Refuses to Be Sweet
The Shot That Almost Wasn’t The original idea was grand—a symbolic still life, their lives arranged artfully on my coffee table: Olga’s favorite book, Carlos’ watch, some trinket that meant something only to them. It was going to be profound. Instead, it was a mess. Too literal. Too staged. The magic wasn’t in the props;…
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Making It Work: Home Studio Portraits Without the Studio
Most of my work involves schlepping around—meeting people in their homes, workplaces, or wherever suits them. That’s fine by me. But occasionally, the most convenient place ends up being my own home. When the Living Room Becomes a Studio While not exactly purpose-built, my living room does the job. The walls are a pale, neutral…
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Paolo Guidoni, Opera Singer in El Born
Renaissance Light in a Hidden Space Some people are just easy to get along with—Paolo Guidoni is one of them. I visited him to create a portrait for an article and used the opportunity to try a painterly lighting style, something quasi-Renaissance. As always, experimentation means some faffing around, but Paolo was gracious, patient, and…
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Profile Photography: Joan Calvet Mercè, Wine Taster in the Hills
Into the Hills of Sarrià To photograph Joan Calvet Mercè, a professional wine taster, I cycled uphill to the last Bicing stop in Sarrià—with a heavy camera bag, of course. That part of town makes it clear where Barcelona’s money lives: houses, private international schools, and leafy cul-de-sacs. Joan lives in a bungalow tucked away…
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Women at Pregnancy Services – Honest Portraits in Light and Shade
Beyond Midwifery These portraits were for an article about professionals offering services to pregnant women in Barcelona. Beyond the typical midwifery work, this also included things like massage therapy and other wellbeing practices. We did the session at the office space they share. It had lots of white walls and natural light—ideal for clean, uncluttered…
