After a lot of planning and a few models falling through, Rob and I finally managed to arrange a springtime photo shoot.  We had a loose idea of a few images we wanted to do and after a quick scout of the area (near Ashdown Forest) we met up with our model for the day, Jo.

Our first stop was Chidingstone Castle, which had some lovely grounds and lots of early blooming flowers. It was rather open to the elements and the day was cold and windy, so we fired off a few ‘standard’ shots here and moved on to the next location in fairly short order.

I’d had a couple of ideas for images I wanted to do on this shoot which is a bit unusual for me.  Generally speaking, when we go out shooting photos with models I just kind of wing it as each location is different as are the models.  Since we’ve been talking about this outing for a while, I had some time to envision a few images that were slightly more staged.  I even drew up some prototype sketches (which are embarrassing and won’t be shown here) of what I wanted to try.

This first is this image.  It’s fairly close to what I’d had in mind, with a couple of exceptions.  I’d hoped to have the ‘axe man’ smaller in the image so he appeared to be further away.  Unfortunately, even really stopped down he was blown away by normally welcome bokeh to the point where he just appeared to be a dark blob.  Also, my radio triggers were having issues with the distance for some reason even though we were well within their stated ranges.  The other issue I had was I was hoping for a brighter backlight, but this was down to just having a single flashgun firing off in the middle of the day.  I just didn’t think that one through enough.

This second planned image turned out ok, but looked quite different in my head. The clouds are a bit too dense to look realistic and I’m not 100% happy with how the light turned out.  It’s alright though as the whole thing was sort of a learning experience and anything that pushes my photoshop mojo (or lack thereof) is a good thing.

These four shots are all of the images from the day, so no need for the usual gallery link.  We’re hoping to get out again before the end of the month to get some images in the bluebell fields.  I’ve been saying every year for the past five years that I’ll get out and shoot some bluebells, so fingers crossed for this year!