KatieL - take 2

Lucky old me - got to spend a day in my own studio with Katie from way down south, she was on a mini tour of Scotland and it worked out well as she stayed in our cottage for a few days whilst working with Tim and friends from Smethwick, the next chapter in Tim's concurring of the Scottish Highlands. This was only the second time working with her which is such a shame being at almost opposite ends of the country.

Plan was for some studio work for print sales which as expected produced some great images for a current project looking at figures and the torso, more on this later....
We then spent a lot of time on some test dance images for a possible future project, not even started selecting these yet, one rainy day.. !
Apart from her great looks, true professionalism and fun personality what I love about Katie is her rather wild stage dance background, a lot of the shoot was unplanned portfolio work so she just goes into performance mode ... just brilliant !
Also did some casual portrait portfolio shots, did I say casual, more like just kicking back and having some fun. Very often photo sessions can become rather serious as there are constraints on time and cash, other folk to consider, or we just take it all a tad too too serious and forget what its all about. Yeah, we need to be creative etc and focus on what we want to achieve but lets not forget to play a little, its when we do that we can get something that we are not expecting. Asking Katie to go mad and have fun is like asking a fish to swim, it can be harder to stop her but I blame me for enjoying myself too much - call this work ??
I asked Katie if she likes chocolate, "love it, especially Milky Bars' she replied. Problem was she thought I meant for her to eat !! That's no good, you have fair skin and it won't show I said. Just something for fun that I have wanted to do to match the saying...

'Chocolate in the answer, who cares what the problem was....!'

Oh, and no, she took absolutelly no persuation to do this, am still finding bits of chocolate in the studio ... finishing with a sweet tribute to the great Helmut Newton....

Finished the day with something for her, a portrait to a style chosen by her to gift a large scale print, my way of saying thanks for being such a pleasure to work with, something I always try and do if time allows, assuming of course that the models wants a personal shot, some must get inundated with prints from photographers, don't know what they do with them all !
This image was printed about 900cm high, still think she should have accepted the offer of a life size print.
Thanks Katie, until next time, later in the year ... :)

Dancers in the dark - Art nude photo exhibition.

When was asked by ArtSpace of Bridge of Allan if I would put on a solo art exhibition at Clive Ramsay cafe/bar in Stirling I must admit I was curious at first how these works would go down at the cafe/bar. The venue is in a relatively new sports center and I wondered how art nude photography would be accepted in such a public spacer rather than a more formal gallery where the images would be well received. When I saw the cafe and realised that there are dance studios on the same floor it seemed a great idea, and the owner Clive himself had already purchased a couple of the small prints so I could see the reason for being asked. I must confess that I held back on some of the more full frontal works and did offer a range of images to the organisers for approval just in case but so far its all seen as tasteful art, which it is.

So, a collection of my full sized prints from the Dancers in the Dark project along with a selection of smaller images have now been put up for public display for over 6 weeks, brilliant !.

The finished hanging looks fantastic and I am really pleased with how it all compliments the existing decor, that was deliberate of course :). We have a couple of meet the artists events planned so cannot wait to get some public feedback. More details on the works and the event are at... www.davehunt.eu/dancersinthedark/

Venue :
Clive Ramsay Cafe/Bar, 1st floor, The Peak, Stirling Sport Village, Stirling, FK8 1QZ
Open every day - 10am to 8pm

Exhibition now extended to end of June :)