My previous post was about a shoot I did recently to create promotional studio portraits of a couple of very talented swing dancers. My assistant, collaborator and general partner-in-crime Brence Coghill came to assist with the shoot and ended up filming a lot of behind-the-scenes footage (on a Canon IXUS point-and-shoot, for those of you [...]

Portraiture is my favourite type of photography, but my absolute favourite-est types of portraits are promotional shots for performers – dancers, acrobats, circus folk – general ‘show biz’ kind of stuff. I had the great fortune to do a hugely fun dance shoot recently with Jess – she works as an event organiser but her [...]

My partner Brence Coghill is also a photographer, which means a couple of things: 1. We have a lot of photos, usually with one or the other of us in them, but 2. We don’t have many nice pictures with BOTH of us in them, because one of us is usually behind the camera. To [...]

Author Allison O’Neill has a new book in the works and she wanted an updated headshot for her website and other promo materials. She didn’t need anything too fancy or overly creative,  just a good solid studio headshot. Allison was a lot of fun to work with in the studio, and she has amazing big [...]

A little while ago I posted about doing a location scout on Christchurch’s Port Hills for an upcoming portrait session. The client needed a promo shot for her business website – a consultancy that assists people in applying to immigrate to New Zealand – and she wanted to have some interesting local New Zealand scenery [...]

This morning I went location scouting up on the Port Hills. In a couple of weeks I’m doing some headshots for a businesswoman who owns a New Zealand immigration advisory service, helping people who want to immigrate to New Zealand with navigating the paperwork and processes involved. For her website she wants a photo of [...]

I can’t count the number of times I’ve clicked on the ‘About Me’ page of an otherwise professional website and cringed at the out-of-focus snapshot being used for the headshot. Why go to all the trouble of designing a nice website only to let it down with a lackluster photo? I was in Auckland recently [...]

Christchurch couple Colin and Sharyn took advantage of my recent Summer Nights special offer to have some portraits done in the city centre. Here’s a selection of the best photos. I looooove Sharyn’s dress and shoes!

Always put the sun behind your subject. For one thing, it means they won’t be squinting in the picture. But another reason is to get cool backlight effects. Usually you can get a nice bit of rim lighting or some nice highlights on the hair, but when the sun is very low and you stick [...]

Last night Brence and I spent some time tidying up the home studio and putting up a new dark background I made of navy blue fabric. I fired off some test shots of Brence to see what it looked like – and it looks pretty good and works well in colour or b&w. We started [...]