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 🙂

So way back in the summertime; well, July anyways….it wasn’t much of a summer let’s face it, twas cold and damp and generally a bit keech weather wise. There was a few bright spots however and one of them was a chance to work with Ruby, she was on a tour of the country along with Fizzy for company. I took a day off work and picked her up from the railway station at Leuchars as our destination was right next door at Morton Lochs. There are a few places round Morton Lochs that are remote and quiet, and some are very busy indeed, fortunately this day was fairly quiet. After a cup of coffee from my never ending flask and a few mini doughnuts we headed off into the forest to do a mixture of nudes and clothed stuff.

But before we got down to it we made a friend

So off we go…

Then we found a lot more friends of a much smaller sort……..

These little froglets were all over the ground…heading for the lochs, their instincts seemed to be pointing them in the right direction…the trouble was trying not to stand on them!!
The next friend we had no chance of standing on…..

And so avoiding the frogs and horses we managed to work our way through the woods without getting caught doing unspeakable things to wildlife….

As the forest got busier we headed to the beach for a little change…..there we found some props washed up on the sand.

All in all a fun shoot and Ruby was definitely a great person to have on a shoot, chatty and full of life with a down to earth approach, highly recommended.

One rainy day in Scotland I managed to book Fredau for a fashion shoot in Dundee, and as luck would have it…it rained, a cold kinda damp and nasty rain….typical Summer this year. However we did the best to make the most of the day, only stopping for coffee when the rain was heavy enough to run down the camera lens.

We started of down near the Lifeboat shed at Broughty Ferry, luckily Fredau got wrapped up for the weather as it started to get a bit soggy.

I had been meaning to see Little Summer for a while but May being full of work and Holiday/Anniversary it wasn’t til July before I could get up to Arbroath. Summer is the beautiful daughter of Chris and Joe Cargill, I did pop in for 20 mins before but wasn’t armed with a camera so after a little re-arranging we organised a day to take some pictures. This is Chris Cargill :-

Not all went to plan though, I was to pop into Halfords get a radio fitted to the car, a job that should have taken 1 hour tops. Anyways 3 hours later, radio still not fitted and I’m busy phoning Chris to say sorry for the delay, eventually radio was fitted  and working after a fashion. I jumped in the car and headed up to see Summer, this time camera in hand. Like a pro model she had a few costume changes and a wealth of poses, the poses lasted for 100ms at most. We got some good shots though, mostly because Summer seemed mesmerized by the AF light on the camera, there was quite a few images with a bewilderd look on her cute face….she’s a bundle of fun 🙂

Toeses!!…….

and toys….

Thanks to Joe and Chris for letting me photograph their first born.

PS when I got home I found that Halfords had fitted the wrong radio module for my car model, cheers Halfords…….

How unpredictable is this Scottish weather…very!!! I was down in Nottingham in May for 2 weeks and during the first week it was cool with rain showers and I was hoping for better weather for the weekend between as I had booked Fizzy for 3 hours. Being away from home I didn’t have much chance to come up with a new location so I plumped for doing a different area of Little Ballo, where I had taken Chrissie earlier. I picked Fizzy up at the station, complete with an unfeasibly huge suitcase and we zoomed off to the country…we were also hoping to catch up with Chrissie as she doesn’t live too far away. We arrived at Little Ballo….in very different circumstances than my last shoot, it was piggin freezing….there was a slight cold damp wind and the temperature was quite chilly. Poor Fizzy is really was too cold for comfort…we did some test posing around the trees and other bits of the forest, then quickly off with her clothes…pose….quickly on with clothes again, move to another area and repeat the same thing. After a while I couldn’t let her go on getting cold, I had a coat, scarf and hat on and I was on the cold side. I called it quits after nearly a couple of hours, she was a bit worried that I wasn’t getting my moneys worth but I said no…it was my choice to come here and not hers therefore she gets paid in full so we chatted, compared wellies and joked as we walked back to the car and headed for Chrissie’s flat, unfortunately she was out buying carpets…but Fizzy got to catch up with her later in the year.

Hopefully I’ll work with Fizzy again…..this time I promise to take her somewhere warm!

For a while fellow camera club member Rory Wemyss had been talking about his new studio so I cornered him with requests for using it. I had an email from Bink asking if I was interested in a shoot and it seemed like an ideal situation as Rory’s studio is 10 mins away from Tentsmuir Beach. We came to an arrangement and a 2 hour slot was had in the studio, I had a quick look at it before Bink arrived…good grief, brand new purpose built studio with all the latest toys you’d ever need…Perfect!!
This was my first time with Bink, obviously I recognised her when I picked her up at the station, we had a quick coffee/hot chocolate before heading over the Tay to the studio. There was one feature in the studio I was keen to exploit…the make up mirror!

This is one of the first out of the camera….

and this image went ballistic on 500px

And then the mirror!!

And two of my favs from the mirror….

And…..nudes…

Then on the beach….blessed with a sunny day!

Bink is a fire, burning bright and with passion, strong with a hint of adventure. I can see why she is such a popular model, hard working and full of fun…lovely girl. Everyone should have a Bink experience…highly recommended.

By May it seemed like an age since I worked with Chrissie but it was only 3 months since our last shoot, even still it seemed too long. Now I had this location for a long time, it’s one of my favourite haunts for wildlife…full of deer, foxes, hares and all kinds of birds, however it is also full of broken down trees. During the last two years we have had some violent wind over the winter months and this has caused a lot of devastation to the local forests but this particular place has been actively worked by the forestry commision and as such some trees trunks have been left lying to rot. In the Autumn these trunks take on a silver hue and add to the dying landscape of fall, in the spring though they add an interesting contrast to bright green foliage of new shrubery and grasses, and of course the yellow of the broom and gorse. The idea of this shoot was to do nudes, the contrast between the gnarled trunks and Chrissie’s pale skin would work well. Fortunately this is a very quiet and little known location so working with a nude model is easy though a wary eye is still needed for the occasional dog walker.

Another lucky thing was the weather, sunny but not enough to cast shadows and warm enough for Chrissie to pose in comfort.

After avoiding a couple of dog walkers we moved on to a different area

and further own down the path…..

and on the way back…….

Chrissie was radiant, the sun and light played on her features and skin tones, there’s just too many pretty images to post.
This area has so much potential……I would be back again soon but in different circumstances.

Once upon a weekend my wife and I were invited by friends to the Trossachs for the weekend, there is a lovely hotel and restaurant called the Creagan House, it’s a tad olde world but a real country cottage hotel…four poster beds, old wood panels, wood fires…a perfect escape for the weekend. We stayed there in April and although it wasn’t cold it was the shape of things to come for this summer, cloudy and rain then bright sunshine, very very changeable….very very wet.
If you ever find your way into the Trossachs you should seriously consider staying at Creagan House, the surrounding countryside is just stunning and full of wildlife, at the back of the hotel is a woodland walk that can take to the heart of the hills. Not far away is a less rustic walk around Loch Katrine.

As you can see it wasn’t long before we got soaked and had to turn back and seek refuse in a small glass of something, however I did manage to catch a pied wagtail (cropped to an inch of insanity)

In the garden of the hotel I saw for the first time ever siskins, seemingly they are regular visitors to the hotel (but never allowed a glass of wine) along with pine martins and red squirrels. All in all a very pleasureable weekend 🙂

It was at this point I wondered about buying the Nikon D800 but that’s another story…