They say good things come in threes and today's blog is no exception.... oh hang on, maybe it's bad things they say happen in threes - whatever, today's blog combines three 'things' and for the purposes of this exercise let's assume that's a good thing....

Thing number 1: I've just got a new hoodie from the awesome Clothing Label OTSO and I like it so flippin much that I've been inspired to share a few of the images I took a couple of months ago when I was invited to shoot some behind the scenes photos on a Studio shoot for them.

The shoot was led by my friend Ruth of Ruth Ellen Brown Photographic fame and took place in her Studio at everyone's favourite co-working space Co-Up in Slaithwaite. I had a great time on this shoot and Ruth's main images are fantastic - you can see them in all their glory if you click on the OTSO website Here.

OTSO is a Clothing label run by Simon Kenworthy and not only are the designs awesome but there is great ethos behind the company too - everything is ethically produced and manufactured from organic materials so you can look good and feel good about it at the same time :)

Thing Number 2: Working 'behind the scenes' on this kind of shoot you really get a sense of the underlying story erm 'behind' the shoot proper, the teamwork (and hardwork) that goes into making it happen, the planning and preparation, the meeting of minds, the Creative Direction, Hair Styling, The Models, Lighting, Photography and Editing - everyone aligning their specialist skills in order to create something greater than the sum of it's parts... i guess what I'm saying is that it's basically like Power Rangers (except without the giant robots and lizards and stuff)

But seriously it takes team work to make the dream work on this kind of project and to get a group of folk in one place all of one mind to achieve something special is not an every day occurance and requires a lot more effort and energy than i think people really appreciate, the creative process is one which seems to have a number misconceptions attached to it, one of which is that it is somehow 'easy' or it just 'happens' - well let me tell you that there is more to it and one of my aims shooting behind the scenes is to try and convey a sense of that.

And so on to 'Thing Number 3' on this occasion i was shooting Ilford HP5 400 film (a favourite of mine) - now usually once you've plonked a certain speed film (in this case 400) in your camera you are kind of stuck with that speed until you've used up the roll, however becuase I develop my own film i was able to use a marvellous process called 'Stand Development' which allows the careful film photographer to shoot at a range of ISO settings and change in between frames as you see fit, so some were shot at 400, some at 800 and some at 1600 and in so doing basically making it almost as flexible as a digital camera!! to me this was a revelation! tear off the shackles of digital opression brothers and sisters!! you are FREE to shoot film in all sorts of lighting conditions! FREE i tell you!!

so yeah - i was pretty excited by this prospect.... expect more ramblings along this vein in the future!

Now an extra special bonus 'number 3 thing' is that this was my first opportunity to give my Canon EOS 3 film Camera a whirl. The EOS 3 was a late 1990's high end film camera and was in production until about 2007 - it therefore looks and feels very much like a modern Canon DSLR which makes it very easy to integerate into my exisiting digital set up - basically I flippin love it!! I guess 3 really is a magic number