Swimwear in Sydney

Wow, its been a while!  Over a month since my last post...but I'm back!!

The main reason for this is I travelled over to Australia and New Zealand for the whole of December, mainly to visit family and enjoy the sun, but I also managed to get in a couple of shoots in the warmer climes during that time and here are some of the results, starting with a contemporary swimwear shoot at Bondi Beach...

Followed by a more fashion based story in Sydney...

Photography © Christopher Perkins 2008

Model: Rebecca Frith

Make Up by Danielle

City Wardrobe Stylist: Samantha Smith

SLASH The Dress!

This is the final part of our summer-long Bridal Fashion and 'Trash The Dress' series.

Having shot the dress with our model, Abi, in Manchester in the morning, we then headed along to one of the old mill's on the outskirts of the city (sorry, the location has to remain secret!) to really finish this dress off!

Deb, our Make-Up Artist, had got hold of the dresses at the beginning of summer, and was by this point sick of having the two of them cluttering up her house...so out came the scissors and attack it she did...

I should also point out that the original styling and combination of garments to create this unique look was also envisaged by Deborah Lawson, along with some help from the our very stylish model, Abi.

Thanks to Matt (you know who you are) for his fabulous help in finding and navigating our location for the day.

If there are any magazines out there looking for a contemporary take on the new new 'Trash The Dress' phenomenon with a fashion slant, then you know where to come....

© Christopher Perkins 2008

Make-Up and Wardrobe: Deborah Lawson

Model: Abi Lutwyche

Assistant: Matt 'Darkscore'

Trash The Dress Beach Video

Last weekend was interesting!

It saw the third part of our ongoing 'Trash The Dress' project take us to the beaches just north of Liverpool.

The day had been in the planning for over a month with everybody booked, but in the week leading up to the shoot all we were having was bad weather.  It was raining and raining and forecast to continue.  Now I don't much rate our weather forecasters so I preferred to stay optimistic.  However, we did decided to go out and recce some backup locations.

The day came though, and the weather didn't look too bad.  We would go for it!  We grabbed some studio shots first, cos Deb had done an amazing creative job with the make-up, which had to recorded in all its glory.  Then it was off to the beach...at the first location it was very windy but thankfully not wet.  The second location though was slightly different, by thew time we arrived it was bucketing it down.  What to do, what to do?

Well we'd come this far and the intention was to destroy this dress, we had to do it.  I say all this because I need to give huge huge credit to our superb model for the day, Kitty Chu.  I cannot imagine other models going to the lengths she wanted to to get the best images we could.  So Kitty, THANKS!!

Enjoy this video, the final images shall be up here soon....

(They now are...click here)

(Video editing by Deborah Lawson)

Fierce Creatures!

Sometimes you do a shoot and you just know from beginning to end you are producing something cooooool!!

I absolutely love this job when everything is coming together and as a team you can feel greats shots coming at ya, wham, bam, thank you mam.

On this shoot our aim was to create some really fierce looking images but that still retained a great, sharp, fashion look about them.

I'd actually been inspired by a set of photographs I saw Tyra Banks taking on 'America's Next Top Model' a few seasons back.  I wanted to give the concept a go and see where we could take it.  Here are the results...

Photography © Christopher Perkins 2008

Model: Stephanie Hopwood

Make-Up: Michelle Robinson

Urban Bride

Taking forward the Bridal Fashion theme, we wanted to push the idea away from the fairytale and into something a little more dark and sinister, whilst still retaining the high fashion look and feel...

I give you 'Urban Bride'!

Photography: © Christopher Perkins 2008

Model: Marina Fallahi

Make-Up and Styling: Deborah Lawson

Location: Macclesfield

Bridal Fashion @ Rookery Hall

Its time to get all romantic... Its wedding season!

The team has decided to get out to some beautiful locations this summer and create some new bridal fashion work.

For the first shoot, we visited Rookery Hall, near Nantwich, Cheshire.

My sincere thanks to Stephen Fearnley and his team for allowing us to use this beautiful venue for the backdrop to our photos.

Photography: © Christopher Perkins

Model: Marina Fallahi

Make-Up and Styling: Deborah Lawson

Castlefield Fashion Shoot

Here's a really interesting post for you, its got video and everything!!

A couple of weeks ago I did a collaboration shoot in Manchester, with the biggest team I have yet to work with.  The shoot was to be based upon an idea one of the models had come across, a little bit quirky, with the man constantly trying to impress the gorgeous young woman.

We shot it around the Castlefield area, which has stacks of character.  It is by the Manchester canal, and you will also see the very impressive Hilton hotel in the background.  This was perfect as we were trying to mix the old with the new, bringing in classic style with a punch!

This is a short video of the behind-the-scenes photographs, put together by our brilliant Make-Up Artist, Deborah Lawson:

Everybody was working for free and for their portfolio's, so here's a heads up of the team:

Photographer: Christopher Perkins

Models: CrZ and Martina Goodman-Withers

Make-Up: Deborah Lawson

Hair: Lee Nash

Wardrobe: Rachael Emma Sadler

So if you want to hire us, don't be shy!!

And here then are some more final images....

Click on them if you want to see them bigger and enter a gallery of close-ups.

Comments will be greatly appreciated.  Oh, and if you want to see the original inspiration to let us know how we did, have a look at the Celine website.

Retouching

Yesterday I posted some photos from a recent shoot, and included was the one you see below:

Today I decided to do some work on this image, retouching, airbrushing, colour changes and levels, etc. and so I thought it would be good to show the difference between the versions all side by side.

I'm very pleased with the results.  Feedback is appreciated though if you have a view on this kind of thing...

Lake Windermere Fashion Story

I would never have imagined when I first decided to get my photography business up and running, that one of my first paid jobs would see me with such a big team, up in the Lake District, shooting a fashion story, and riding aboard a luxury powerboat but thats what's gone and happened.

The shoot was to promote the new Harris Tweed Handbags, and as such our brief was to create a number of different scenarios, which would make up the day-in-the-life of a beautiful woman, and show the versatility/diversity of the bags.

It was a long day of shooting, as we had to try to cover around 12 different scenarios.  However, we had the best weather imaginable, our first blast of summer!

The story was shot around Storrs Hall, a beautiful country hotel with stunning surroundings, on the edge of Lake Windermere.  Now this would have been pretty impressive alone, with the history and the views and the possible different locations.  But everybody's highlight of the day was to come in the afternoon, when we went to shoot aboard a powerboat.

Now I had a feeling this thing was going to be nice, but when we arrived, it was liking rolling up in St. Tropez, this boat was huge and it got everybody obviously excited, thinking, 'Now this is why I got into this business'.  Needless to say, a fun day was had by all... Exhausting, but fun nonetheless.

Now bring on more!!!

The team photo, aboard the luxury powerboat.

From left: Me, Jim (The Client), Jenny (My Assistant), Andrea (Hair & Make-Up), Martina (Model) and Tom (Model for the day!)