Day 1- Cape Town   Our first few days have been spent in Cape Town, exploring the city and looking around. Number one on the list of priorities was a trip up table mountain, but we’ve been battered by high winds for three days solid, and the cable car which runs to the top showed no signs of opening up. I expected the real Africa to open up to me in Cape Town, but I …

For the last few days I’ve been working in Machester with Audi promoting the new A6. Rather than returning to my hotel room every night to watch hours of crap TV and enjoy the delights of hotel food I’ve been wandering the streets of Manchester picking up images.   Manchester is a beautiful city which has undergone serious regeneration and now boasts a youthful, vibrant centre, filled with beautiful red brick buildings giving a a …

So what would you wear in a headshot shoot? It’s trickier than you think. What to wear when getting your headshots taken. Your favourite top? The cardi your girlfriend gave you? Or your best suit you pull out once a year for weddings and and other occasions. The answer is all of them if you want, as long as they follow a few simple rules. Essentially an actors headshot is there to sell you and …

This month I made a little trip up the M1 to the Focus on Imaging trade show in Birmingham. It’s one big playground where manufacturers, photographers and consumers all get to see whats coming up, pick up some amazing deals, see the work of inspirational top-photographers and get to catch up with photographic fellows. The biggest talking point, and the one that overshadowed the show, was the FTA of Canon. Dropping out a week before …

February gave me the opportunity to revisit a favourite spot of mine for an actor headshot session in North London. Alexandra Palace, is a fantastic spot to carry out a headshot shoot, with so many different locations within a great park setting it offers plenty of opportunities to provide a wide variety of backgrounds for actors

Time to Update your Spotlight Book Headshot “The time has come” the Walrus said “to talk of many things”, “Like headshot renewals, spotlight books and agent offerings” Ok so there’s a grave in Oxford currently spinning around at several hundred rpm. My apologies. But the point is as an actor that time of year arrives when it’s necessary to renew your membership to the Spotlight casting directory. It’s not cheap either but it’s one of …

  Stage, Theatre and Film Photography – Why? Taking production photos or stills seems like an idea almost juxtaposed to theatre, stage and film. Trying to capture defining image of a living or moving production in non-moving silent format seems like a fools undertaking. And yet that is what is so exciting and so fascinating. Trying to create a concise point of reference to sell the show, is what engages me with theatre photography.   …

I was asked to help basketball player Philip Ip produce photograph some headshots and sports modelling images for his portfolio. My plan was first to create a studio space using a backdrop and my 2 trusty Nikon speedlights making good use of the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS). The photography shoot was to take place in a local gym, it was in the late afternoon so about halfway through the shoot the light began to …

You can just imagine the outrage in the Daily Mail… It’ll raise house prices, give you cancer, we’ll be swamped by immigrants…. Ok, maybe it’s not that radical, but as part of my service to actors I’m offering to set up a small, simple, and very effective headshot portrait studio in their own front room. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Using the Nikon creative lighting system (CLS for short) I can be up …

I guess it’s something all actors take for granted but when I started on the road to becoming an actor I didn’t have a clue as to what constituted a headshot. As far as I was concerned it was good enough for me to pop down the local high-street photographers (which is sadly no longer there) and get a nice portrait and job done. And he did a good job, a lovely classical mottled background, …