The Buff Club

Ive been shooting in the Buff Club since March 2006. The picture above is from the 2009 calendar I shot for them. Just got to say the staff there have been fantastic towards me and i dont think theres a corner i haven't shot. When other places have let me down or not bothered returning calls the Buff has always come to the rescue.

The nights they have on at the Buff are great and you should check out the food in the Butterfly and Pig. Its all locally sourced and tastes fantastic. All in all a great bunch of people.

A big thank you to Michele, Gianni, Tall Paul, Charlie, Mairi, George , Matt,  Domenico, Amy , the rest of the  staff at the Butterfly and the doormen.

The Buff Club

The Butterfly and Pig

Ps if you know who stole the pig get them to return it

The Butterfly and Pig

The Tea Rooms

lumen8

Ive had these lights for about 5 months now and still getting to grips with them. They are murder on my back when carrying them as they are alot of heavier than my old beauty dish and bulb.

There has been a big improvment though in the focus of my pictures. Less camera shake shooting at 125 instead of 20.

The last picture was shot in two parts. The dancers were shot in the Buff Club while the background was shot the day before.

Its going to take a while  to find my style working with them but ill get there with trial and error.

How i light things. With a light

I just asked on facebook what people wanted to see on here and a few folk said my lighting setups. The thing is im not a technical photographer. Up till last year i was working with a beauty dish with a 500w bulb. The problem i had with that was i was working in low light situations in clubs which meant long shutter speeds and a steady hand. I wouldnt be bothered about setting the light a certain way. If the picture wasnt looking right then id just move the light till i got something i liked.

With this picture of Ivory Flame i was holding the light with my left hand so it was top left pointing towards the model. The distance the light was depended the shutter speed i could get a infocus picture with. It was quite hard , with a slow shutter speed shooting one handed with my weak hand.













Last year i started experimenting in the studio with strobe lighting. Well to start with it was just the modelling lamp i used.

This picture was done with a modelling lamp at the front left and day light from the back through curtains.

Something like this was shot on top of a shiny bar with the camera resting on it. It was lit with the lights above the bar and the wb set to daylight. The gold colour wasnt added later in post production.















I think people to get to caught up with thinking this is how you should light a subject instead of just experimenting till you get something your really happy with. Move the lights about and change the settings on them.

At the moment i work with 2 400w illumin 8's and my works in abit of a transition as i figure out shooting with a third dimension. Before i usually had a model against a wall but now i can attempt to light the scene instead of just the model. The person who's work i really admire at the moment is Stephen Kearney.

www.stephenkearney.co.uk 


I really like how he lights a scene and his work with dramatic.