"Charlie's" 1st Shoot

After plucking up the courage for her 1st shoot (it took months to my knowledge), Sarah `Charlie' Harding had the dubious pleasure of working with me for her first shoot. I like to get to know models a bit before I shoot with them as it puts both parties at ease and makes the whole experience a great deal more pleasant. We met up in Bristol Centre and had a chat about anything and everything for a while, before even discussing the shoot. I do tend to inject quite a bit of humour into the shoot and this gave me a chance to check before hand, what type of personality Charlie had and if my light-hearted approach would be suitable; luckily it was.

This was just a `Testing' shoot, to get Charlie over the 1st hurdle and to have some photos to start her portfolio and get used to working with photographers. I do tend to give a lot of direction which is pretty much always needed with inexperienced models. I did warn about this at the very outset and asked Charlie to let me know if she needed a break to just say so. Each time when trying something different, I stopped to show Charlie the shots in the back of the camera so we could discuss what was and was not working. I think this is very important and don't understand why some photographers frown on `chimping'; I suspect it's nothing more than snobbery or deluded elitism .

We had no make-up artist or stylist so given this and the above, I wasn't expecting too much given the circumstances, but I did get a few portraits (below) that I think worked well.

Click the images for bigger sizes (jump to Flickr):