If you’ve spent any time on my blog, you’ll know I like shooting on location. I love all the choices I get when it comes to balancing strobes with the available light – juggling all the variables is so much more fun than shooting in a studio where you have complete control over the lighting. Shooting at night takes that to the extreme. Capturing what little ambient there is can be tricky when your flashes want to nuke...

Sunset is my favourite time to shoot, not just because of the “magic hour” light you get, but because it’s the time adding flash to an image can change it the most. You can take a photo of your subject under what looks to the naked eye to be pretty dull conditions and then flip the camera around and show them something on the rear screen that they can’t believe hasn’t spent hours in Photoshop. It’s all...

If you have followed my on Facebook or Twitter, or been a read of this blog for a while, you’ll have seen Jen before. Last week we finally got the chance to work together properly on a Hollywood glamour-themed shoot in a local cinema. Once I had the location arranged it was obvious a mix Film Noir and classic Hollywood glamour was the way to go so I started researching. Google Images came up with the classic portraits of Dietrich and...

Last weekend saw Trax come to Silverstone and another chance to be to shoot in the famous Formula 1 pit lane. No planning, no preparation – just a beautiful car and an unlocked garage. Rather that just hitting you with the eye candy, I thought I’d de-construct a few of the shots and tell you what I did to get them. As always, start simple. At 1/160th (a safe sync speed on the 5DMkII using Elinchrom Skyports) at f/6.3 all ambient...

I’ve shot various types of motor sport and other fast moving subjects, but two weekends ago I got my first opportunity to shoot some drifting from the right side of the fence. For those that don’t know, drifting is different to most motor sports where speed and times are everything. It’s all about keeping your car sliding while you complete a course and competitions are judged on line, angle, speed, and showmanship rather...

It’s advice you’ll see over and over again, not just from photographers but from people in all walks of life: If you want to stand out from the crowd, do something different. Now while I am not lauding this as the great photograph ever taken, but I like to think it’s a good example of “different” Michelle, owner of this particular drift project S14, was proud to have her car on a stand at Modified Nationals and...

I’m lucky enough to have access to what can loosely be called some studio space (a huge empty room, large enough to get a car in that gives me completely control of the ambient light) so last night I tried a little automotive light painting. So armed with nothing more than a camera, tripod and an Elinchrom Quadra with the modelling light on although any constant light source would do though. I’d like to say that was all done in...