It seems such a long time ago now but its been just over a year since my first acceptance into a FIAP salon, I was mainly intrigued by Ciaran Whyte’s blog on What the F@ck is FIAP. So I thought what have I got to lose except for a bit of cash, I entered 6 images into Photoclub Danube and was surprised to get 4 accepted on my first try. I was a tad flabbergasted especially as two of them were nudes, in the past my art nude images have received luke warm attention yet here they were now in an international salon. After a bit more investigation into the is FIAP stuff I found the criteria for the distinctions had changed, the first level called AFIAP required at least 40 acceptances using 15 different images in 15 different salons and from at least 8 different countries, with 10% being prints (4). Hmmm that seemed do-able as I had 18 months to do it in as the FIAP submissions are in Dec every year and you must have over 12 months since your first acceptance.      
It all sounded a bit tricky at first glance but the more I looked at it the more I thought I could do it, I just needed 15 killer images. And in there lies the perplexing part of the issue, I have hundreds of images but which ones are killer images? in honesty I didn’t have a clue, I only had my experience at camera club competitions to guide me. I started off using images that I thought had impact and that were technically good and to some extent that worked and those guides are still valid, however I was soon to find out that certain images do not work in certain countries and that some salons prefer digital art or composites to straight photographs. And so into the FIAP maze I went, feeling my way along as best as I could.
The most troublesome part was gaining print acceptances, most of the English and Scottish salons did print based salons, however I got very few acceptances and this still stands today. It would seem that most of the print salons I had entered do not like nudes, even though these same images did very well elsewhere as digital. I found that gaining acceptances wasn’t much of a problem, within six months I had over 100 acceptances but I still only had 2 prints accepted, in fact I had well exceed the criteria for AFIAP except for prints. This was mainly due to inexperience at targeting the right image to the right salon, I had been sending prints to salons that just didn’t value my style of photography. By the time I did get 4 prints I was more than halfway to fulfilling the EFIAP requirements and had picked up some awards too. Awarded images :-

It was a great adventure that day, even though my car got stuck in 2 inches of snow, useless pile of crap in the snow and ice. Rory and I got some great images and Chrissie did fantastic stuff in the snow, Rory and I were cold with all our winter gear on, god knows how cold Chrissie felt….lol.
Roll on the Summer!!! 🙂

                  
Another excellent shoot with an excellent model, who I have to say works very hard indeed and at the end of the shoot still seemed to have bundles of energy and ideas. I love those dreads she has, they look fantastic and are a real bonus in images…it certainly makes her different from other models and I suppose it gives her an edge if a shoot calls for something a little different. However there’s more to Elle than just great hair, she’s good fun to work with and really delivers. So Elle Black, highly recommended?…hell yes! 🙂

 All in all a grand day out and somewhere that deserves more than one visit, there is an old tumble down church there that just cries out for a shoot however there were people there out on a ramble….some other day perhaps…after all Chrissie must visit the horses she made friends with, mostly by feeding them mints. Chrissie did very well with the cold that day, there were quite a few nudes and a few hiding behind rocks when cars came by etc etc…..a star as always, she never fails to impress at a shoot.

By the time we got to doing this image in the tower the weather had gotten very wet and windy, and we had to abandon the shoot, I was planning to take Bink to Morton Lochs as a last location but the fire brigade blocked us in the carpark at Lady’s Tower for 40 mins. We had just enough time for a coffee before getting Bink on the train, however Bink was a pleasure as always.

I had heard that Artemis was doing a tour of Scotland and I really did want to work with her however the time of her tour was extremely awkward for me, not her fault obviously, it just happened to clash with a particularly busy period at work, a time when I couldn’t really take time off work and if I did do the shoot I could be called away at any minute. Anyways I booked Artemis and was looking forward to it but really in the back of my mind I was expecting to have to abandon the shoot and pay her for her time (only fair). Fortunately things went smoothly and I picked Artemis up from Chrissie’s flat where she was staying for a few days, it sounds like she and Chrissie got on well together, always a bonus.
Anyways, on the way there, just 5 mins from Chrissie’s flat I came across a very strange site…..orange sheep!, yup…..orange sheep! I was telling the girls this when I got there but I’m not sure they really believed me, so on the way to the location we stopped off to have a look!.

Erm..yes a bit bizarre and the question is why?..but anyway I justified my sanity a bit..lol.

The location I went for was Lairds Loch, mainly because it was close and if I got called to work then I could pack up quickly. Artemis and I managed to drag along Chrissie as a lookout and general crazy person. It was a lovely September day and fairly sunny and it was my first shoot with the new Nikon D800, however it had been seriously raining for a few days before hand and the ground was distinctly soggy underfoot. However we soon got started and grabbed a few images.

The sun was very strong and low enough to use for some flare effect….

And with a few nudes along the way….

Now around the corner of the loch is a panaramic view of the hills of Perthshire, and the foreground is a grassy lane where the logging lorries used to convey tree trunks along…

This one is a snapseed version……check out this editor at Niksoftware..Bargain!

Then with Chrissie being lookout and people watcher…Artemis and I headed deeper into the woods just to the side of the path.

On the way to this wooded area we past a tree that grow out over the loch so we headed back there, however that area is more popular and Chrissie had to be extra vigilant…

By this time I was ready to call the shoot short because of work, we could have gone to another location but I would definitely be ‘chancing it’.
So all in all a great day out, Artemis?….lovely girl, absolutely top notch person and model, definitely on my ‘work with again’ list, highly recommended!
This image here is my favourite from the day and I’ve quoted what I have written on flickr :-

“Although on this shoot we got a lot of art nude and other interesting shots, this is my favourite from this shoot. As photographers we employ models to create images and we display these lovely images of models doing what they do best, sometimes just simple shots, sometimes photoshoped or whatever. If you look around at model shots you see fantastic poses, emotional scenes and whole variety of different ways that photographers and models work together. However seldom do we see simple shots that show the model in her natural relaxed and non posing state. There’s a difference between candid shots and unposed shots, a lot of the time models do not like ‘unscheduled shots’ as it often does not show them as they would want to be shown, therefore it is generally not polite  to take candid shots during a shoot. This image here is a shot of Artemis inbetween poses, and I love it because it shows some of her personalilty, capturing that lovely smile and her quick to laugh personality…it shows she’s relaxed and having fun (probably laughing at me in the middle of the loch wiv me wellies on). Artemis is a very professional and highly experienced model with an excellent portfolio, this standard has come thru hard work and sometimes harsh conditions, and sometimes even harsher unwarrented critisism, this shot shows a fun side.”

Earlier in the year Rachelle Summers put out a last minute casting call for a shoot near Leuchars, seemingly an organised shoot had been cancelled and she was going to be kinda stranded at the railway station for several hours. Now Leuchars isn’t a station you want to be stranded at, nice though it may be, it’s small and has limited facilities. Anyhow I tried to get a shoot organised with her for that time..however work was a bit iffy and there was a 50/50 chance of not making it. Fortunately alternative plans were made and she avoided the painful wait in the cold weather at the train station.
In the end though we made plans to have a shoot later in the year, so on a sunny day in September I picked her up from John Hewett’s flat in Burntisland and we made our way to RoRo studios in Tayport.
On the way up we regaled each other with horror stories from various holiday adventures and time passed very quickly, she is chatty, fun and good company. Due to work commitments we only had a couple of hours to do the shoot and they went very fast, in the end we ran out of time for a couple of ideas but it didn’t matter at all as we got some good shots….

We moved on to try some materials….some sheer and some movement….

As I said before Rachelle is fun and good to work with, petite and very talented. Highly recommended to anyone, she brings a certain energy and zest to the images. Hopefully I will work with her again soon, definitely on my ‘work with again’ list. 🙂
On the way to Dundee to drop Rachelle of at the train station, next destination Aberdeen, we saw some of the most amazing rainbows I’d ever seen. All in all a very good day!

With Summer fading fast my wife and I decided to take a weeks holiday and do ‘something’ but we found ourselves with odd things pre-booked to do during that week so we couldn’t go away for a break. However it turned out to be a good week none the less, during that time we managed to get a shoot with Chrissie Red who decided it was a good day for the beach. This was my wife’s first time on a shoot and it was good for her to see how it worked…plus she was reflector girl and chief lookout…..always a bonus.
Well it was one of those days where it threatened to be stormy but never really came to anything, clouds loomed and the wind blew yet the sun still shone.
Now Tentsmuir is one of those big expansive beaches with lots of sand and dunes on the edge of a forest, as such its really quite popular, so getting some nudes proved to be a waiting game.

Next Chrissie had this idea with a big red coat….sounds good to me.

Fairly dramatic clouds building up now, let’s step it up a bit….

Now the Storm really starts to brew…erm looks like its coming our way.

Shock Horror Scandal!!!….it was a nice day in Scotland!
So…..dial dial dial…..ring ring ring…..’Chrissie let’s go out for the afternoon!!’
And of we went…bound for the Glens…mainly Glen Prosen, wow its changed a lot since I was last there….wildlife took over a lot of places I knew as a child….in a wild kinda way. However we did find one good spot at the end of the glen.

Then off back in the car, we headed back towards civilisation or parts of Alyth, I had walked around this place before and found that it had a potential, a few interesting places….in the Den of Alyth

Then into the depths of the forest…..

Chrissie Red…stunning as always 🙂