Sometimes you have a shoot and it ends up exceeding your expectations and becomes the new benchmark from which all other shoots must now be measured.

To continually create images which you are proud of, which showcase your vision in it’s best light - this is what I strive for. But it’s never a given! We cannot take these things for granted and they most certainly do not just ‘happen’ it requires the alignment of many factors!

And what better medium to explore those factors than a blog?! Huzzah! I hear you cry! What’s that you say? You want me to tell you about the background to the shoot, the creative process and to dabble in some film photography technobabble and geekery?? Well if you insist dear reader… if you insist..

I was very fortunate to work with Theresa Terzonie AKA ‘Tree’ on this one- she’s an uber talented Songwriter, Vocalist and Guitarist based in Leeds. Check out her music HERE and find her on facebook HERE. I have to say that Tree was an absolutely amazing person to shoot with - she has great energy and together we were able to create some of what I believe to be my best work yet.

The three images above are my absolute picks from the shoot - in fact I think they work really nicely as a Triptych. It’s given me some ideas for incorporating more of a ‘short story’ element into some future shoots. I love that about stills photography, even when constrained by a single 35mm frame you still have the scope to convey a sense of story - definitely something for a future project.

We really wanted to incorporate some movement into some of these shots - remember I’m shooting a manual everything Nikon F2 so I’m manually focussing and only have enough time to take one shot during these jumping moves - no spray and prey around here thank you very much (some might say I’d have been better off with a rapid fire camera but you know what? I properly enjoyed the challenge and I love the results).

Shot on location in Leeds city centre I wanted to make the most of the bright sunny conditions that day so brought along a roll or Rollei Retro 80S - one of my favourite films which I’ve shot on quite a few occasions but always for travel/architecural stuff never for portraits. I love shooting portraits in an urban environment, by paying attention to your composition you can really incorporate the strong architectural features of your surroudings into your image, also working with someone like Tree helps as she is just great in front of camera, really relaxed, comfortable and creative.

A HUGE thank you to Tree for this shoot - absolutley some of my favourite images and it’s been amazing to get back shooting after the lockdown! For the static images like the one below I shot with the Nikkor 85mm 1.4 which is fast becoming my favourite lens - this combined with the wonderful sharpness, detail and contrast of the film just blows me away, who needs digital?! not me!!

Let’s get the camera geekery out of the way shall we: My set up for this shoot is pictured above I used everything except that roll of pro image 100 in fact! My Nikon F2 is fresh from a service/overhaul (read about that HERE) so I was uber keen to shoot with it. I’ve gotten into the habit of taking two cameras with me (often having one colour and one black and white) on most portrait shoots but just using the one body and swapping lenses worked really well for me so I think I’m going to stick with this format for a little while.

Lenses chosen for this shoot are some of my favourite in my collection the Nikkor 85mm 1.4 AIS, 50mm 1.4 and 24mm 2.8 AI - I was slightly concerned that I’d pull my usual trick of taking a few lenses and then only shooting with one of them but not on this occasion! I actually used each of the lenses equally (maybe the 85 got a bit more use). The observant amongst you will notice a roll of Ektachrome too - my first time shooting slide film, I’m saving the images from that roll for a film review blog coming soon!