How I Saved My Dance Photography Shoot (When Everything Went Wrong)
As it turns out, booking a photo studio for a full eight hours requires a modest degree of forward thinking and meticulous planning, two pillars of human competence that have remained, throughout my life, stubbornly elusive. For reasons I cannot quite fathom, my professional creative career has relied almost entirely on the belief that everything will simply be “alright on the night.” Remarkably, through some sort of cosmic oversight, it usually is.
The Currency of Joy: A Plymouth Pet Portrait Adventure
Daisy arrived for her pet portrait session and immediately undertook the obligatory grand inspection. In the world of studio dog photography, this involves a thorough, high velocity nose vacuuming of the floorboards to sniff out the historical news of every creature that had preceded her.
Once the administrative sniffing was concluded, we got down to business.
For Daisy, "business" exists in a very specific economic framework. Posing for a professional dog photographer is not done for the love of the arts; it comes at a strict, transactional cost. The currency of the realm was the Treat.
The Fine Art of Herding Furry Tornadoes: A Masterclass in Studio Chaos
To say these two have energy is to say the sun is a bit warm. They possessed the kind of vibrating, molecular restlessness usually reserved for a five year old child who has been systematically stuffed full of fizzy pop and Smarties. It was a whirlwind of a dog photography session and frankly, I loved every chaotic second of it.
The Art of the Pirouette (and Other Things I Don’t Understand)
The afternoon largely consisted of me issuing a series of painfully inept, wildly metaphorical instructions, which Lucy then had to translate into something graceful. She handled my bumbling directions with the kind of weary, noble tolerance usually reserved for a Spanish waiter trying to explain a menu to a British tourist who refuses to speak anything but very loud, slow English.
Capturing the Charm of Jude: A South West Family Portrait Session
Being the offspring of the South West’s most accomplished drama coach, I naturally assumed that photographing a baby as charismatic as Jude would be child’s play. I placed our pint-sized star beneath a softbox of such cavernous dimensions it could have doubled as an aircraft hangar and prepared for the magic.
As a professional portrait photographer, I’ve seen it all, but Jude dialled the cuteness up to a level that would have rendered a hardened Victorian schoolmaster misty-eyed. My shutter clicked, the flashes popped, and for a moment, I thought I had mastered the art of the infant portrait.
The Indignity of Editing and the Joy of Staying Dry
Photographing dancers is a precarious business, mostly because one tends to become so mesmerized by the sheer, improbable elegance of the human form in motion that one forgets to actually, you know, take the picture. It is a genuine occupational hazard.
Interestingly, despite the leaps and bounds, my inner portrait artist seems to have taken the wheel. My personal favourite from the session is a stark, black-and-white headshot. It captures a quiet intensity that all the movement in the world can’t quite replicate.
Professional Studio Headshots: Why Lighting is Your Secret Weapon.
If you’ve ever spent an afternoon browsing the digital headshot galleries of LinkedIn or Spotlight, you will have encountered a peculiar biological phenomenon: the "Crop and Pray" portrait.
I’m Matt, the man behind the lens at MJC-Photography, and I’m here to help you navigate the transition from "person who looks startled by a flash" to "person who looks like they’re about to be cast in a prestige drama or promoted to CEO."
The Art of Not Fidgeting: Why Your Child’s Headshot is Their Most Important Script (and How We Survive the Session)
In the competitive world of casting, a young actor’s headshot is their calling card. It’s the first thing an agent sees and, crucially, the last thing they remember. But getting that "perfect" shot isn't about forced smiles or stiff collars. It’s about capturing that elusive, sparky thing called personality.