Escape

The escape project was a collective idea between myself and a few friends, It started off as a shoot in an abandon house in Howth Co, Dublin and developed into a story shoot. The story is of the escape of Red Riding hood from her inprisonment in an old run down, abandon house. 

A few days before the shoot we set out on a location scout and decided on two rough locations. One location an abandon house in a woods, the second a beach looking out onto the Irish Sea. 

The Costume was designed and created by our model and stylist for the shoot Maria.  The chosen costume was a white dress, with a bright red cape, and brown boots which would be hardly noticeable in the different shots. 

The lantern was a key symbol in the series, the model uses it to light her path,  the only time the it wasn't lit was when the model was asleep. 

The series show the progression of a cautious subject from the original location as she moves through the forest towards the sea.  

Fashion Shoot

Recently I was asked by a good friend and layout designer of DCU's Look magazine to shoot some fashion photos for a few pages in the magazine. We were lucky that we have access to a fully kited out studio, with a multitude of strobes and modifiers.

Starting out I decided to use a very simple 3 lights set up, using two large soft boxes on camera left and right and one light to light the background.  I set the lights to give a 1:2/3 ratio to give nice tonal contrast across the faces and bodies of the models.

There were several outfits to shoot, the challenge was to use poses that were fun but were unique across the range of outfits.  I was then told that they wanted some head shots, for this i changed lighting set up to a 2 light and reflector set up, using a beauty dish and reflector in a clamshell set up and the same back ground light.

This set up gives by far the most striking images of models when they know how to work  with your and this set up.  Although a huge amount of work would still need to be done in post to get the effect below, when it is shot with that in mind, it make the post production very easy.

For the shoot I spent 3 hours shooting and then there was over 9+ hours spend in Photoshop and Lightroom editing these photos. To get the look i wanted from the dull looking RAW files, I had to use a myriad of techniques such as dodging, burning, selective shaping and masking to achieve the look. Some images such as the one directly above were edited for colour, converted to monochrome and then re-edited to suit the look I was after in the monochrome images.

To see more of this shoot pick up a copy of the Look Magazine in DCU or head over to my website www.photocps.com