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.
How to Take Acting Headshots That Actually Stop the Scroll
Consider the casting director, a creature of boundless fatigue sitting before a flickering screen, scrolling through what must feel like several thousand nearly identical human faces. In the brutal, half second arithmetic of the industry, what actually stops the scroll isn’t a blindingly polished, teeth baring grin, the sort usually reserved for selling toothpaste or dodging awkward encounters on the high street. It is, rather surprisingly, a hint of genuine life behind the eyes.
A Chaotic, Glorious Month of Stage & Dance Photography
People often ask me whether I prefer theatre photography or dance photography. To which I say: How does one choose between a lovely cup of tea and a brisk walk through a hurricane? They are entirely different beasts.
Photographing live dance is fundamentally an exercise in defying the laws of physics. It’s about freezing a fleeting micro second of kinetic energy, capturing a high leap at the exact moment gravity seems to take a short tea break.
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.
Shooting Cast Headshots: A Tale of Tiny Thespians, Reluctant Flashguns, and Creative Survival
Over 600 images later, my flashguns were quite literally feeling the heat. When you demand that level of heavy workload from portable gear, mutiny is inevitable. Every so often, there would be a distinct misfire, or, more accurately, a flat out refusal by the equipment to continue working under such a tyrannical boss.
Now, a sensible person might have panicked. But if my time in photography has taught me anything, it's that you must never miss an opportunity to call a happy accident "creative genius."Over 600 images later, my flashguns were quite literally feeling the heat. When you demand that level of heavy workload from portable gear, mutiny is inevitable. Every so often, there would be a distinct misfire, or, more accurately, a flat out refusal by the equipment to continue working under such a tyrannical boss.
Now, a sensible person might have panicked. But if my time in photography has taught me anything, it's that you must never miss an opportunity to call a happy accident "creative genius."
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.
