Every Twist and Turn with Elli Stephanie

Shot for Beautica Magazine April issue, 'Every Twist and Turn' featuring @contortingcoopz at the Custard Factory in Birmingham.

Beautica magazine is an internationally publishing magazine. Specialising in all kinds of creative fashion and beauty, nude & boudoir.

As a photographer, working with a contortionist model like Elli Stephanie can be a unique and thrilling experience. The ability to capture the twists and turns of the human body in such an unconventional way can create stunning and awe-inspiring images. However, it can also present its own set of challenges.

Just like a contortionist, a photographer must be flexible and adaptable. They must be able to work with the model to find the best angles and poses that showcase their unique abilities. This requires both patience and creativity.

One of the first twists and turns that a photographer may encounter is finding the right lighting. Contortionist poses often create unusual shapes and shadows that can be difficult to capture without proper lighting. It is important to experiment with different lighting techniques to find the perfect balance that highlights the model's strengths.

Another challenge that may arise is communication. Contortionists often have a unique vocabulary when it comes to describing their movements. It is important for the photographer to understand the terminology so they can properly direct the model and capture the desired shot.

As the shoot progresses, the photographer may encounter unexpected twists and turns at every location too. The model may suggest a new pose or move in a way that the photographer did not anticipate. It is important to be open to these changes and adapt quickly to capture the moment.

The photographer may also encounter physical challenges. Contortionist poses can be intense and require a lot of strength and endurance from the model. The photographer must be aware of the model's limitations and ensure that they are comfortable and safe throughout the shoot.

Ultimately, the key to success when working with a contortionist model like Elli is collaboration. The photographer and model must work together to create a vision that showcases the model's unique abilities while also capturing the photographer's artistic style. With patience, creativity, and flexibility, the resulting images can be truly breathtaking.

Featured photographer - Brass Monkey Magazine

The year started well when the pole fitness Brass Monkey magazine contacted me wanting to feature me as photographer of the month in April 22.

They asked me to send in a handful of images I had taken on my rig, pole, aerial and contortion and then after a while, they asked for a few more. I was under the impression that the first batch weren’t up to muster, so added as many as I could that I thought they might be interested in.

It turned out that I was wrong, it wasn’t that they weren’t up to muster, it was they loved them so much they wanted more.

So much so that in the end 78 photographs of mine were sprinkled throughout the magazine (as you can see in the video) making it almost a ‘portfolio’ edition of my work.

It was lovely to see all my clients getting credit and recognition for their hard work and development. A true celebration of them and their skills.

Fashion portrait Shoot with Satara Ferriera

November 2021 wasn’t a great month for autumnal weather. Everyone was waiting for those lovely fresh sharp days with bursts of bright low angled early morning sunshine which traditionally lit up the trees and gave all those who witness it great pleasure.

Those early morning visual delights as the reds, yellows and greens of autumn burst forth in the early mist. Where mushrooms appear from nowhere as the crisp frost covers the ground encouraging us to draw our collars closer to defeat the chill and suddenly get obsessed with the idea of hot chocolate and rosy cheeks.

Well none of that happened sadly. Autumn was looking like a huge let down. Satara and I had been speaking with each other for months trying to organise our diaries, when there was suddenly a window and a November date was agreed. I was praying for bright weather, but was rewarded with days of drizzle as the leaves quietly fell without any frosty ceremony.

I met her and her mum Helen at Batsford Arboretum in the Cotswolds and as luck would have it, the sun also looked as if it was going to try and be present during part of the day.

So off we headed into the extensive gardens and sure enough, the first tree we saw was covered in red leaves bathed in sunlight. The first test for Satara was to see how she faired inside the branches buried under the leaves, which was also home to various insects and sharp twigs. Helen instantly started filming on her phone as her daughter was enveloped by nature and Satara really got into the swing of the shoot. Listening carefully and adjust her poses to work the patterns of light which played around her face.

We next moved onto a tree with yellow leaves and once again the sun decided to share some of her warmth, providing a gorgeous back light to the portraits. Helen once again was recording everything and while doing so I introduced her to the joys of reflector holding. She was a natural :)

And so the day continued as we moved from section to section around the grounds. Sadly the sun got bored and went to play elsewhere but we all still soldiered on, moving from bushes, to conifers, to hidden caves before returning the car park suitably satisfied with our days efforts.

This video will give some idea behind the scenes, however if you look around my portrait portfolio you’ll see the final results in much greater detail. More shoots with Satara planned for this year all being well.

Thanks to Helen for the extra footage and reflector holding.

Beauty Shoot with 2021 Miss England finalist Erin Smith

Thanks to Covid the Miss England contestants have had a very long year, with endless cancellations and changing of dates to meet the lockdown requirements and still keep their obligations to the contest thriving.

It’s a very complicated process now, long gone are the days of turn up with a few outfits and chat on stage. There’s more respect (thankfully) and work involved in charities, good causes and efforts to display you have the right credentials to represent England in the Miss World contest.

However in the midst of all this I was lucky to find that the local Miss Worcester did in fact live very close by, however it has taken until the end of the contest where Eric came third, before we could find time to shoot.

As I write this I look back on the shoot fondly as it was almost the last days of summer, working outdoors and still warm enough to experiment with a series of looks we had discussed during the previous months.

She wanted to break away from the recent past and try a more edgy look, implying a little bit of risk rather than the safer presentations she has been committed to previously.

It was the first shoot just for a few hours and as always it takes time for everyone to feel comfortable and confident with all involved. However we are both pleased with what we achieved and have now set another date for more just as soon as her busy social calendar allows it :)

Great fun, a lovely lady and more coming soon.

Beauty Portrait Shoot with Barbora Stasakova

Worcester University is only 10 miles away and currently they have quite a few oversea students studying Business, Sports and Media Studies. Several of the overseas students bring with them experience in the creative industries from their home country and Barbora is one of them, working as she was catwalk model for a clothing brand in Czechoslovakia.

Once again social media introduced us and we recently got together for a beauty and portrait shoot to work through a few ideas.

Libby MacMillan is a Make Up Artist from Cheltenham and it was a good excuse to invite her to the shoot. We had often talked about working on a project but Covid had once again stopped any of that for the last 18 months. It was good to meet both of them and we soon fell into the easy chat which comes when everyone knows what they are doing and slowly gets on with their work.

It was interesting to hear Libby talk of how the requests for make up had changed and the trends moving on from the ‘matt look’ to a ‘glow’, which all brides are asking for these days. As a guy I find make up skills a hidden secret weapon which women can deploy at will. Women are so lucky to be able to change their whole persona with these magic tools. A guy can put on a clean shirt and get a hair cut and that’s about it. It is the women who have control over this mysterious power and like any art form, it is such a pleasure to watch the transformation take place.

I built a ‘beach hut’ set for part of this shoot outside, using a garden shed, some left over bamboo fencing, lots of G-clamps and various potted plants pinched from around the garden. I mounted the Godox AD200 high on a stand with a CTO gel and fired the hard light to give the impression of setting sun.

Barbora was a trouper posing in her bathing suit, as it was a cold night, considerably colder than the 30C balmy evenings she was used to. If you zoom in close you can see her goose pimples.

The rest of the shoot took place in the studio with Libby’s help and the patterns on the wall behind were created by the hand panted cookies I had created on perspex. Using the CITI 600/ Godox 600 to shoot through. I find these patterns add much organic dynamics to the resulting images.

To see the resulting pictures of Barbora please check out the portrait page.

Many thanks and enjoy the video.

Beauty Portrait Shoot with Peri Le Riche

It has been a while since I did a blog post regarding a shoot. So I thought I would jot down a few notes in relation to a recent portrait shoot with Peri Le Riche.

Peri is an aerialist and a good one at that. Normally she is found suspended in the air on the high seas wowing audiences on luxury liners, but since Covid her life, like that of many entertainers, has changed for a while.

I happened to see one of her social media posts and realised she was close, so I offered her a shoot on my aerial rig and to be honest, she blew me away. I had worked with several performers by that stage, however her level of skill, strength and grace was breathtaking. I could see why she was so popular with agents around the world.

The negative side for all these performers is that during covid that still had to keep up their skills, strength and flexibility ‘on the chance’ that it would be all over soon. She like many I know, still continued to put the long hours training every day in the vain hope it would soon end. As we now know 18 months later ‘normality’ is creeping back (fingers crossed).

Please view the Aerialist page and you’ll see more of Peri on Hoop and Straps.

This shoot was purely for fun and personal record. I invited Peri to my studio for a series of beauty and fitness images. She admitted that it was a new experience for her and was slightly apprehensive. The idea that someone who feels comfortable when dicing with death at height found sitting and looking fabulous ‘slightly unnerving’ did make me chuckle.

Anyway she did a super job and I’m looking forward to working with her once again. Super professional and lovely character to boot.

The gear used for this photoshoot: Camera: Sony A7 III Lenses: Sony 50mm 1.8, Samyang 18mm 2.8, Tamrom 70-180mm 2.8 Flash: Pixapro CITI 600 / Godox AD600 / Pixapro 200 / Godox AD200

Winners of the photoshoot competition

In January of this year I decided that I wanted to widen my circle of dance, circus, aerial and pole performers and so decided to run an Instagram competition to win a private photoshoot worth £250.

Although I don’t have the largest Instagram following I still managed to receive over 100 entries from all over the country. All ages, all kinds of skills, all kinds of abilities. They all looked worthy of winning and I was grateful to be able to use a random generator on the computer to choose a winner for me.

Out popped the very wonderful name of Ziggy Starlett an aerial performer from Stoke on Trent. She chose to share this shoot with her team partner the Circus Witch and they perform under the name Pumpkin Spiced Lyra (yes there is a story attached to that name - you need to ask them).

After much too’ing and fro’ing they acquired studio space for March at Pole Fit in Stoke on Trent run by Faye.

When the time came I tootled up there with a friend to assist and found they had prepared our own room to use as we wish. This was fantastic as the rest of the studio was being used for lessons and training and so we didn’t have to worry about cables and smoke getting in the way of others.

Ziggy Starlett (Rachel) and Circus Witch (Tori) were really cool. They had been training and prepared a series of moves they wanted to capture specifically for this photoshoot. From initial discussions I knew they wanted to go for the whole ‘stage performance’ look, which meant setting up the special effects, smoke machine and split lighting with coloured gels.

They then spent a good 3 hours pulling themselves up, over and around the hoop creating all kinds of impressive shapes with pointy toes. This is a major upper body work for the best of them and they did this apparently without much visible effort looking elegant and calm thoughout.

Jim who was helping me, thought this wasn’t as difficult as it looked and so while they were changing between sets, he tried to get on the hoop. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing, he just managed to get his feet off the floor. With renewed respect he went back to the smoke machine muttering something about knowing where his true skills and talents lay.

Here’s just a few of the awesome shapes and images we produced together. They were definitely worthy winners and I just wish I could do the same for all the other entrants.

It was a great success and a joy once again to meet such enthusiastic professional aerialists. Maybe I’ll run another competition again later in the year. I’m currently looking for local ballet dancers close to Worcester for another project. If you know any tell them to get in touch

Shortly after I received this lovely note from them;

Imagine our surprise to win the online Instagram competition! Bob has been amazing from start to finish & completely open to letting us choose the concept of our shoot. Bob & his assistant Jim met us at our chosen location and made us feel completely at ease from the beginning. We were shown our previews throughout the shoot & given directions to get the absolute best set of images possible. Both of us felt totally relaxed & comfortable through out our day which went very very quick! 100% would recommend a shoot with Bob as he’s friendly and an all round professional, we’ve been completely in awe of the photos we received!

Dance as if no one is watching you

I have been a fan of Jordan Matter for a while. If you don’t know who it is, check out his Youtube channel and be prepared to be blown away by his infectious and enthusiastic attitude. Not to say his incredible images which require perfect timing from both the photographer and the performer.

Yes he may be American however his energy and drive is very natural and honest. He relates wonderfully to the young people he works with and the results just get more and more impressive as he pushes the human physical envelope every shoot working with incredible professional dancers circus stars.

The recent shoots I have been doing with pole fitness and circus skills individuals continue to excite me and I hope to capture their abilities in those fleeting moments along their particular journey. However there is an absence of contemporary and ballet dance in my long history of work so inspired by Jordan, I wanted to test myself at a booked classic location and correct this.

So I started asking around making contact with various dance studios and met Kym, a local dance and yoga teacher who recommended a couple of her students as being ideal victims, er, er, candidates.
We arranged to meet one bright but chilly afternoon at Great Witley Court just outside of Worcester for a test first time shoot. A lovely English Heritage location and a perfect backdrop for classical dance shapes and dance generally. 
The weather really whips across the exposed ruins most of the year, but on a good day there is much to appeal to photographers. More historic texture and atmosphere than you can point a stick at.

Anyway, Tori and Skye were excited to undertake their first professional shoot and their youthful enthusiasm certainly helped keep them warm as they revele’d, glissade’d, saute’d and tendu’d all across the grounds on the way up to the main building. It was the perfect combination for me with Skye ballet trained and Skye more contemporary in style.

Kym was there too, buried under thick jackets offering endless encouragement and ideas. And to be honest time just ran away with us. Due to the chilled weather it was a quite afternoon and we had only worked at 3 of the dozens of locations when the guide told us they were closing in 5 minutes. 

So frustrating as we hadn’t even got to the good bit. Kym, Tori and Skye all seemed to enjoy it so hopefully we will revisit this historic building and you’ll see more dance drama from them soon.

Thank you ladies you were awesome.