Concept to Completion

I have had a lot of requests over the last year from students who want to see a photo-shoot from beginning to end including all the pre shoot briefing, post shoot workflow  and post processing. To answer this I have put together a brand new course called ‘Concept to Completion’. For two days you will join me and top MUA Nicola Thomas, professional model Simone and lighting assistant Jon Cook in a unique behind the scenes look at all aspects of a beauty and fashion shoot.

Over the two days I will take you with me from meeting and greeting the model and MUA right through to producing a correctly processed image, colour balanced for the chosen output media. These are some of the key areas I will be explaining:

Day one:

• Selecting a model for your own concept or producing images in response to a clients brief
• Working with an MUA and stylist
• Choosing outfits
• Directing models and clients
• Organising your time
• Deciding on the kit to use – lights, camera and lenses
• Release forms and copyright issues
• How to make a shoot flow
• Shooting tethered
• Making the most of your location
• Improvising

Day two:

• Importing, renaming and backing up images
• Key-wording and meta data
• Working with Lightroom Catalogues
• Selecting ‘keepers’ etc
• Producing contact sheets and web galleries
• Watermarking images
• Lightroom presets
• Must have Photoshop plugins
• Beauty retouching
• Fashion post processing and toning
• Soft proofing

Everyone will receive a selection of my favourite actions and the day’s PSD files.

The plan is to shoot one beauty set, two fashion sets and one editorial/lifestyle set on location

We are very lucky to have Nicola Thomas as our MUA for the day, her list of credits is impressive and include TV, Music Videos, live shows and Photo-shoots. Take a look at her website and be prepared to be amazed!  http://nicolathomasmakeup.yolasite.com/

Our model is Simone Chancee. Simone has been modelling for around a year and I think she has the possibility of making it big in the industry. The aim is to produce some portfolio images that will get her noticed!

Photo courtesy of Steve Saffin

Simone Chancee photographed by Steve Saffin

Days start at 10.30am and finish at 4.30pm

June 2nd and 3rd at Village Studios, Bexley, South London

Whilst it is possible to book the days individually I would recommend attending both days and we are offering a reduction for booking both, if you wish to attend both days please book on-line but do not pay, I will send you a Paypal request for the reduced amount.

Day 1 £49
Day 2 £49

Book both days together for £89

I know it might look like it all happens on the fly but I do like to prepare for the workshops, especially when it gives me the opportunity to spend a day in my studio with Angela Hudson. It’s a tough job but someones got to do it!

After the chair we worked on some lighting the would work with some straight on poses, I was trying to emulate something I had seen a while ago where the model took on the appearance of a bronze.

Monday 7th May 2012 is the May Day bank holiday and I will be running a boudoir workshop at Village Studios in Bexley with the fabulous Angela Hudson. But, that’s not all!

The bank holiday weekend starts on Saturday 5th with another dance workshop featuring the talents of model, dancer and choreographer Raine Cera.

Back in January Raine and I ran our first dance photography workshop together and I am pleased to say that all the students walked away with some fantastic images. We explored how to freeze movement and how to use blur creatively, this  is a shot by my namesake, Grant Appleton.

Raine by Grant Appleton

I have tweaked this workshop to include some extra things like using small strobes to freeze action with hi speed flash plus we’ll be working on using shadows creatively.

On Sunday and Monday I am delighted that we will be working with Angela Hudson. Although Angela is based in Yorkshire she is making the trip to Kent for the workshop and to visit family. I worked with Angela last year, not only is she fantastic to work with but she is very experienced in Art Nude and Boudoir – the two genres that we will be working on. There is a blog I wrote a few weeks back that reviewed the last art nude workshop, if you are interested in learning more about this style of photography take a look at the blog to see what we do in a day. And take a look at these shots by John Askey who attended the same workshop.

Angela Hudson

And to round off the weekend’s entertainment we have our usual monthly social in the Coach and Horses on Saturday night, last month we had around 30 people.

Get booking now as places are going fast on all the courses.

The first was with the single Arri light and the second is using the ambient flash mix and dragging the shutter.

Bev does Garbo

Last August I ran my first Cinematic Styles workshop at Village Studios with French model and Actress Mina Renoir. Over the two days the 4 delegates and I worked in the studio and on location to explore how some classic images from the big screen can be recreated with a digital camera, studio lighting and some post processing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

For this year’s workshop which is running over the Easter bank holiday we have tweaked the format slightly to improve on what was already a fantastic weekend.

Instead of one model we have two. On Saturday we will be working with Kate Errington in the studio. Kate is a regular on my workshops and as well as modelling she is a dancer and performer. On the Sunday we are very lucky to have Jen Brook who is travelling all the way from Stockport to be with us! We also have a highly experienced Make-up artist and stylist working with us for the whole two days.

Kate Errington

Jen Brook

Day one is black and white cinema from the classic 40s and 50s. We will attempt to recreate the fantastic images that masters like George Hurrell produced of stars including Dietrich, Monroe and Garbo. As well as different types of lighting we will work with a variety of different post processing techniques to achieve a look that mimics the golden days of Hollywood. From this we move to Film Noir, think Third Man and Philip Marlowe. The name of the game here is smoke and shadows.

Day two we go out on location and move on to the 60s, think French art-house, Bardot etc. Could be black and white or maybe colour the choice is yours but the idea is to create images that reflect the style of that period. Finally we look at the work of French director Jean Pierre Jeunet. He is well-known for his film Amelie but his other productions are well worth looking at; A Very Long Engagement, Delicatessen  and City of Lost Children. The thing with Jeunet is his use of colour, something that US photographer Jaime Ibarra has used as inspiration for his work. I spent some time talking to Jaime last year about how he has adapted Jeunet’s style into his own highly acclaimed images..

For this workshop our model Jen Brook will be transformed from a 60′s Bardot styled sex symbol to the quirky innocence of Amelie by our fabulous make-up artist Pinklady.

Take a look at some of the behind the scenes shots from last year’s workshop

Lunch is provided on both days and we have a social on the Saturday night at a local pub for those that are local or staying over. At the moment we have a few places left, there are only six in total so everyone gets plenty of hands on experience.

Here are few links that maybe be interesting:

Jaime Ibarra

George Hurrell

Jean Pierre Jeunet

First of all I have to introduce Mildrid who stood in for Cassie while we got the temperature up!

First set were using a single light, this is a 2m strip box which gives a nice even light ideal for bodyscapes. This was actually taken with Cassie laying down but I think it works in the vertical format. Very little post work on this except for the mono conversion in LR4. All these were shot on the D3 with a Sigma 24-70.

Next we went on to a double light set-up using a pair of smaller strip boxes to rim light Cassie. We did standing and sitting with this set-up.

For this set we swapped from the Bowens studio flash and used my Arri Fresnel 650w. Everyone seems to like this light and using the wall as a reflector it bounces back on the subject to give a touch of rim light to the back.

Finally we played around with a flash/ambient mix, dragging the shutter to get the blur. This one takes a while to set-up but I think everyone got a couple of cool shots.

Next Art-nude workshop at Bexley is in May with model Angela Hudson.

Here’s the deal:

Book and pay for a course before midnight on Thursday 29th March 2012 and get these incredible savings. Remember there only 6 places on each course so don’t delay.

Friday 6th April, Fashion and Beauty in the Studio with Iveta was £125 special offer £50 per person.

Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th, Cinematic Styles with Kate Errington and Jen Brook plus the fantastic Pinklady MUA. Was £400 special offer £200 per person

Kate Errington

Monday 9th, Creative Speedlights with Demari Vi Syth, was £125 special offer £50

Demari Vi Syth

To take advantage of these limited offers you will need to use the discount code “easter” when you book on-line.

All workshops are at Village Studios in Bexley, S London. There is a maximum of 6 places on each which means everyone gets plenty of one2one shooting time with the models. Check all the details of the individual courses on the training page.

On Saturday 7th we have also got the monthly social at the Coach and Horses in Bexley so if anyone is staying over you are sure of an interesting evening as well.

Click HERE to book now!

One of the things that I enjoy is making the most out of a location, very often you can find a surprisingly different array of backgrounds in a relatively small space. Last week I spent a few hours with Becky at her house with the idea of working the stairs and landing and coming up with several different looks. I decided I would shoot all the sets with a single Arri lamp, the 650 watt fresnel. We did stray from the stairs on the last set as I wanted to capture a few boudoir images and they were better suited to the bedroom.

The beauty with the Arri is the way you can control the quality of the light by focussing the lens, the other great thing for me is using the difference in the colour temperature of the light compared to daylight in a creative way.

I asked Becky to find a romantic evening dress to use on the stairs and she appeared in a stunning pale blue pleated evening gown. The first set was shot with the Arri on the landing angled down on Becky who was standing on a half landing. The mixture of tungsten light from the Arri and the daylight that was backlighting her gives an interesting effect, it reminds me of early colour cinema. I could have gelled the Arri to match the daylight but that wasn’t the effect I wanted. I can’t remember if I shot it on auto white balance or tungsten but as I was shooting in RAW it didn’t matter too much as I wanted to tweak the colour balance in Lightroom later. It is shot on my Nikon D3 with the 85mm f1.8 at f2.0, this lens is one of my favourites for portraits.

The next shot of Becky in the window is lit in a similar way to the first but as there is far more ambient light the whole image has taken on a more dramatic blue cast.

Next I turned 180 degrees and shot back on the stairs. I felt these would look good in black and white as it gave a slightly more classic Hollywood feel that suited the dress. Lighting was still from the Arri, this time I tweaked the focus to emphasise the shadow a little.

A quick change into something completely different, Latex. We went back next to the window for this one. A slightly different approach in post processing and putting a light rug on the floor has changed the atmosphere from the previous shots with the blue gown.

Finally we shot some boudoir in the bedroom, the key light once again was the Arri from camera right and the fill from left was daylight from a window. The different colour temperatures is again quite noticeable here and gives and interesting effect. This was shot with the Nikon D3 and a 50mm f1.4 lens at f1.7. ISO was 1100 which gave a shutter speed of 1/2000th.

The post processing on all these images was done in Photoshop CS5, I use several different plugins including Portraiture by Imagenomic and a few actions that help with dodging and burning and sharpening. The toning I have adapted from some techniques taught me by a US photographer, if you are interested in how this is done they are part of my Cinematic Lighting Styles workshop which I run at Village Studios, Bexley.

Hi all, I am back with Jon and Lisa for another fantastic weekend of workshops on the 25th and 26th of February 2012.

We have now split the “off camera flash” course into 2 and renamed it Speedlights 1 and Speedlights 2. This is because there is so much you can do with small camera strobes that I was struggling to fit it all into one workshop. So on February 25th we will be running Speedlights 1 and our model is the fantastic Kate Errington.

Kate Errington

On Sunday 26th it’s Studio 1 with another sensational model Fiona York. Studio 1 is probably the most popular workshop that we run and serves as a fantastic introduction to working with people in a studio.

Fiona York

As always we will be gathering in the Coach and Horses on the Saturday evening for a bit of a natter and a few drinks.

You can book on-line now HERE

This is what a previous student said about the workshops:

I’m writing to give some feedback on the Studio Flash workshop I attended earlier in the year.

I thought the class was very well structured and kept at a good pace. My group was made up of a mixture of experience and ability but we were all familiar with our camera’s, which was great, as we were able to make good use of the time and I do think this course is better aimed at people past the beginner stage.

It helped me gain a knowledge of what was achievable, how to achieve it and most invaluable, what sort of gear I needed, as my first purchases.

Since then, I’ve brought myself some flash guns, brolly’s and reflectors and with the notes I made during the workshop, I’ve surprised myself with the  great results I’ve managed to get on my own, at home.

It was ‘exactly’ what I needed to get me started.

Thanks once again

After seeing the forecast for the weekend I thought it would be a good idea to squeeze in a snow shoot. After a quick phone call to my friend and model, Becky, we kept our fingers crossed that Sunday would still have snow and as a bonus some sunshine.

Becky lives around 30 minutes drive from me, it involves a road which runs across the top of the Wolds. At home on Sunday morning it was thick fog but Becky assured me the sun was shining at her house where we were planning to shoot. So after a foggy drive along the Wolds I dropped down into lovely sunshine glistening on the even layer of snow that covered the fields next to the road.

On nearly all the shoots I do with Becky she is responsible for the styling and her make-up. I said I thought something a bit fashion would be good and as it turned out she came up with three very different looks which we shot in about 2 hours.

The first was this set, strong sunlight was filled with some flash from an SB900 fired through a brolly via Nikon CLS system.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Second set was a lovely vintage wedding dress. This was shot with just a touch of fill flash on camera, I wanted to get the strong backlight to shine through the dress showing some of the detail in it. I have processed this set in several different ways as you will see in the slideshow at the end of the post.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Finally and in complete contrast we shot some red latex. It was absolutely freezing for this type of shoot so I had to work fast. The sun had started to drop so the lighting was becoming quite directional which I thought suited the outfit by creating strong high lights on the surface. These were mainly just ambient light although I popped a touch of fill from the on camera Nissin Di866 to create a few extra high lights on the latex.

Andrew Appleton Photography