Hello there, dp here from www.davidpurslow.com – As you may well know I am a wedding and portrait photographer based in Pembrokeshire West Wales.
Today saw me take a day off from weddings and portraits to shoot some portfolio shots of a really good friend of ours. Mary-Jayne is a professional singer who sings all over the country. Well for months MJ has been asking (in a nice way, not begging) if we could hook up one day and shoot some new stuff for her posters etc.
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to shoot MJ’s brothers wedding and noticed MJ in a stunning red dress – that sparked an idea with me for a set – I cant take credit for the idea, I had seen it done somewhere before but decided that I would create a set just for MJ and we would shoot some new promo shots.
Well after the third time of trying we got together today, both MJ and myself were a little under the weather but since we have been trying for ages to pull this off, bless her she turned up despite having a bit of a chest infection.
To get ‘real shots’ – I made MJ lug in her equipment for the shoot (which as it happens took place in my living room!) and was treated to a whole day of MJ singing just for me, well just for me and my lighting assistant 🙂
So here are a few of the photos,
First set – THE RED SET – Glamour lighting
The Green Set – A little smoke and a little harder light for a more edgy look
The Blue Set – Crisp light but still a little harder than the red set.
The Purple set – Just going for something funky – only 2 lights and 1 big reflector
A little Attitude !
and this one if just me playing around a bit – towards the end of the Purple set I decided that I wanted to do a nice black and white head shot of MJ – this is what I came up with, I hope she likes it, I gave it a bit of a glamour makeover – but it did not need much to be honest.
And last but not least, my lighting assistant for the day and MJ’s boyfriend Wayne Morse from Explosive Productions
Here are a couple of behind the scenes shots of my living room during the shoot ! – naturally Mrs P was cool with me turning our house into a studio for the day.
The lighting setup for the red set – I actually missed off one flash, its on the light stand closest to me, I used a SB800 Nikon strobe to trigger the Quantum Qflash using a peanut slave sensor – the sensor would not pick up the pulse so I set the SB800 to SU4 Mode (tech stuff) @ 1/64th and pointed it directly at the peanut.
The Blue Set – The softbox was the main light, and fill provided by a California Sunbounce reflector with couple of hard edge rim lights (I swapped the strip box before shooting) and a background light.
and the last behind the scenes photos – this was during my creating the light setup – I had MJ stand on ‘her mark’ and then started to paint her with light – you can see how I started to build it in this shot.
Well I hope you enjoyed your look at MJ’s shots, it was a GREAT day for me and took me back to my studio days when I used to shoot this kind of stuff all the time. I still shoot model, actors and singers / bands portfolio shots but only when they come looking for me – so if your in the market to get your portfolio updated give me a bell or drop me an email.
Take care, back to albums tomorrow,
Ciao
dp
David Purslow
Photographer
http://www.davidpurslow.com
01437 779412
0759 007 6666
david@davidpurslow.com