These portraits are of my friend and Hair Stylist Tasha, we work together on a regular basis on various projects, most recently the Help for Heroes Calendar. She had mentioned about wanting to do a shoot for a while and decided she wanted to them for Valentines day for her boyfriend. I suggested shooting on location as they would look more natural and often make the sitter feel more comfortable. The studio enviorment is quite alien and unless you are confident it can be harder to get natural looking images.
I love shooting at the beach as the light is great regardless of the weather, and living in Hampshire we have some of the best beaches in the country are within a short drive. For this shoot we headed to West Sussex and to one of the most amazing beaches in the area. Alas the weather on the day wasnt the best, in fact it was blowing a gale and spitting with rain. Fortunately Tasha is slighty crazy and was still game to do the shoot.
We walked into the the sand dunes to find some shelter from the wind and also to find a spot where nobody was watching, its always easier to get relaxed shots if nobody is watching.
Sand is a great backdrop for shooting portraits but it always is great for posing people in, you can get them to walk, sit, roll, crawl and they all look great, depending the style of image you are looking for. Here are some of my favourite images from the shoot:
I often get asked how I get people to pose for me, and basically its all about getting somebody relaxed. Its sometimes easier to get the sitter to talk to you about stuff they are interested in, they are usually so busy talking that you can catch them unawares. With Tasha it was easy, we chat all the time about anything and everything, so once i got her chatting she soon loosened up and the images look more natural because of it. Yeah you will get the odd goofy image, however you can catch them if you time your shots correctly, the most natural smiles are just after somebody laughs, so this is what I aim for.
If you would like to book a shoot like this, get in touch and we can set a date and time up to suit you.