January

Soft Sleep

(The image used in the 2nd photograph is a photo I took of a page in Vogue magazine)

Goodbye January. I shall not miss you.

Katy

First Photo Shoot

A week ago I had my first ever ‘proper’ photo shoot. I use inverted commas because I’ve done photo shoots before, but they mainly involved using either my sister or me as models, or bribing my friends with cookies, and that doesn’t count.

Four of my friends are in a band called Optional Rubber Duck- who you should check out on facebook if you like really fun pop-punk. They e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago asking if I’d come over to the next band practice and take some promo photos for them and I readily agreed.

The whole day was massively fun. Obviously, the fact that I’ve known them for years helped make things a lot easier but I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with. I think I took about 800 photos in total, edited 200, and settled on 50 to send to the guys.

My basic aim was to avoid taking boring, clichéd band promos. Mean and moody shots can look awesome, but with this band it wouldn’t have fit them or the music. I wanted it to look like they were having fun rather than forcing them to be serious. I hope I succeeded in making the photos as different as possible. I avoided brick walls and train tracks, so that’s a start at least!

I spent the first couple of hours taking photos of them practicing and attempting to get some interesting close-up shots of them without getting in the way. I shot one of their gigs in November and I failed to get a decent photo of all of them so my other aim for the day was to get at least one photo of them performing where you can see all the band members clearly. Luckily there were some pretty cool results.

We spent the rest of the day working on the more imaginative ideas the guys had, including this one (THEY BUILT A SET) which will go down as one of my all-time favourite photos I have ever taken.

Overall I’m so happy with these and there are lots of learning points for next time. Plus I’ll be taking photos at their first ever London gig on Valentine’s Day at the 229 in Great Portland Street (they’re HEADLINING can you believe?! I’m like a proud parent, so excited).

Please check out the band because they truly deserve your support. Hopefully more photos will be uploaded either to my personal facebook/flickr account or the band fanpage in the next few weeks.

P.S. If in doubt, climb a tree.

Katy

We'll Take Manhattan

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I watched We'll Take Manhattan this morning on iPlayer and as a result I'm feeling rather inspired by David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton, New York and medium format film cameras. I want a Rolleiflex so much!

I'm in the process of writing a longer and more detailed post about the band photo shoot I did the other day. It was a ridiculous amount of fun and the boys loved the photos I sent over earlier in the week. I'm very happy :)

Katy

New

Othello

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I appear to have spent the past few days on Youtube looking up Photoshop tutorials. Lately I've been getting pretty bored of my editing so I'm determined to try something new and different. People on Youtube can be so knowledgeable and helpful. How did we learn new things before the internet?

Tomorrow I'm spending the day taking photos of my friends' band for their album. It'll be my first 'proper' shoot but the boys already have billions of weird and wonderful ideas for it so I'm very excited! As long as we don't have to do the moody and cliché band promos taken in front of a brick wall or on a train track I am happy :)

Katy

Hello!

Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park. December 2011. 
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Hello! This is my photography blog. 

I'm attempting a 365 photo project this year so I'll be uploading photos and out-takes from that as well as a few of my old favourites. 

I will also be writing about my ever growing camera collection and I'll be brainstorming ideas.

Thank you for reading.

Katy