A few weeks back I was very honoured to meet and photograph the writer and illustrator, Judith Kerr, the name behind the well known book, “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”! The book was first published in 1968 and was written and illustrated by Judith.

The story is now a live stage show and Judith has another book recently published, called “My Henry” …

Here are a couple of the shots from the session. Check out the Autumn issues of Baby Surrey, Baby London and Baby Hampshire for an interview with Judith.

Late last August I received a frantic phone call from a very charming gentleman who absolutely and positively needed some actor-style headshots, in my style. I tried to convince him that I was really busy that day, and could not see him for a week or so … he was rather insistent and offered to get the train to Guildford to minimise the amount of time I had to invest.

Less than two hours later, I met him at the station and after a quick coffee we rattled of some shots and he was back on the train into London some 90 minutes later. A little bit of a whirlwind, and really not how I normally like to do things!

One thing he mentioned to me was the fact that he was a writer, and had recently written a play, which was then adapted for screen … some story about a King with a speech impediment … yeah … starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter.

No lie, his words to me were, “I have no idea if it will do well though …”

Yes, my lovely readers, my subject that day was no less than the astoundingly talented screen writer David Seidler, winner of the 2011 BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for The King’s Speech.

At the time I thought it would be great to go see the movie at some point, but obviously had no idea just how amazing it would be. I finally got around to it yesterday afternoon (the perk of working for yourself!) and was just utterly blown away by it’s tremendous power, beauty and eloquence.

Below are a few of the images I took for David (one of which you can see on his profile on the Internet Movie DataBase – www.imdb.com ).

A thoroughly lovely gentleman, and a pleasure to work with.

Every now and then somebody comes into my life and rocks my world … and Rachel Golding has done just that – quite literally. You see, she’s this little rockin’ dynamo who, in my very humble opinion, is going to go a very long way. But then I may just be a little biased !

Rachel has just launched a new website, has been writing songs for years and has been singing forever. And she’s rather fantastic.

I have seen her perform live many times (and almost became her official stalker, so taken was I with the music!) and we soon became good friends & running partners – oh, and I also wrote a song for her to sing – currently unreleased though!

So, a few weeks back we got together for a shoot to produce some images for her new website and promotional materials. The first session was down in Brighton, Rachel’s home town. The brief was pretty open, but the requirement was to produce a number of different looks which could be used for promotional purposes.

We had a second mini-session in her parents’ very cold garden, as the light faded fast, one November afternoon – this was for something a little more “rock chick stereotype”.

I am listening to a few of her tracks as I write this post and I feel so proud & honoured to have been a part of this future star’s career launch. I just hope she keeps me as her photographer when she goes global !

To the images then … I’m not too proud to admit that this first one was a complete fluke. I had half-set the pose, the composition was right and I was just checking the off-camera flash, to the left of the frame. At this moment Rachel just looked down to sort her hair and in that split second I took a test shot. This was my (and her) favourite shot from the day !

This next one was a must – I wanted to incorporate something from Brighton, and what could be more iconic that the famous pier sign – I was inspired to take this image by a recent Vogue shoot. Also, whilst “Moody Rachel” works really well, I also wanted to make sure that “Happy Rachel” was part of the portfolio – she has a great smile so Sam & I shouting random rude things did the trick! (No, we couldn’t possibly divulge the details.)

This shot is my second favourite, but was nearly my number one. Again, almost a mistake … the downlighters at Karma, a Moroccan themed bar in Brighton Marina, were proving difficult to work with (or against), so I embraced them by having Rachel kneel on the bench, close her eyes and look up, whilst thinking of something totally unrelated to the shoot. She relaxed nicely, and suddenly we have a potential album cover!

Again, a happy shot whilst taking in some of the texture & details under the pier.

The final image i’d like to show is from the garden shoot – completely different styling & pure rock chick. I grabbed one of her monitor speakers from the garage, popped it on the grass and asked her to ‘deconstruct’ a little – gone were the nerves, gone was the uncertainty of the first hour from our first shoot. This is the beautiful, confident, sexy Rachel Golding – Singer, Songwriter, Performer .. and she’s gonna be big.

Rachel’s website is : www.rachelgolding.co.uk
For her version of our shoots, go see her blog : http://rachelgolding.co.uk/blog/
To listen to some of her music : http://rachelgolding.co.uk/the-music/ (Check out “Ain’t Me”)
And PLEASE go buy Like What you See on iTunes – it’s only 79p !

So, I met Karen Skidmore (from Can Do Can Be Small Business Marketing) some 12 months ago at the Grow Your Business event, here in Guildford. For most of that time I have been trying to convince her to allow me to do some updated headshots for her, and have also been trying to convince her that they don’t need to be done against a white background!

But what do you do when your subject is adamant that she wants images against a white background because she herself is convinced that it’s best like this for social media purposes ?? Well, you do it her way …. first … and then, you do it the proper way, and show her the results … and wait for the reaction.

In this case, the reaction was, “Put that white background away and delete all those photos. We’ll do it your way!”

Now, I’m not telling this story to sound smug, but to explain that sometimes you need to actually see something ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, to realise that there is an alternative to what you thought. As a photographer, I get these little creative visions sometimes, and it’s the relationship I have with my subjects that allows me to gain a good enough level of trust so I can try something different for them – and produce pleasing results.

So, my new brief with Karen was no longer a white background, but a darker, warmer & uncluttered background which would make her face stand out well in small images which will be used for social media – email, facebook, twitter etc She also needed shots with her facing a certain direction, hence the “to the left” & “to the right” pair of images too.

We were somewhat challenged by the cold & dark clouds which threatened rain at any moment, but managed to get a lovely set of images that really allowed Karen’s personality to shine through. This is most important when it comes to these types of images – one cannot simply snap away and take a nice picture; it needs to be engaging!

Here, then, is the new Karen !

Thanks for being open to the suggestion, Karen, and I hope you like them!!

With a massive number of shoots over the last few weeks I have so many things to post, and I hardly know where to start. So, I am going to go straight for a shoot I did yesterday for the amazing Elizabeth Cairns.

We had the most amazing headshot session, mainly in Gunnersbury Park. I used to go to school just around the corner from here, so it was a trip down memory lane for me. It was a very sunny day, and I usually like to be able to have far more control over my headshot lighting. However, I was up for the challenge. Elizabeth’s brief was for some natural shots in a place where she feels she’d be at her best – namely out in the open. Elizabeth runs a very successful life coaching company called Amovita and so the images needed to portray happiness and positivity.

She was so easy to photograph and made my job positively simple. I think we managed the brief, so here are my faves from the session:

I am loving the mix of colours and vibrancy in these images. I haven’t had so much laughter in a shoot for ages! Hope you like them, Miss Cairns, and looking forward to seeing you soon!