Varied Textures of Pamukkale

360 Panorama of Pamukkale

The drizzle didn’t dampen my enjoyment of the thermal waters in Cleopatra’s Pool, replete with sunken ruins from Hierapolis.

Underwater chasm in Cleopatra's Pool

Sunken ruins from Hierapolis

This first photo is one of my very favourites of all time, not only because it looks like a movie poster (and straight out of camera, no less), but also because it makes Cassandra look: 1) tall (she’s not), and 2) like one of the superheroes she so admires.

The first time I saw Cassandra, I wanted to do a photoshoot with her, and these results just prove why I found her photogenic in the first place.


These two headshots were taken during our lunch break at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Gas Town. The white table and our seating choices round the table made for perfect lighting!





And to finish the shoot, a clothing-catalogue style shot on the waterfront.

I contacted Marta, a professional photographer and ex-model based in Nice, through ModelMayhem, one of the model-photographer networking sites I use. I took a few hours while the rest of my family were off shopping or resting, and I headed to the neighbouring town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, just 8 minutes train journey along the coast from Nice. She met me at the station, and straight away we started walking to some shooting locations she knew, and talking about photography and our backgrounds. Half an hour, and a three kilometres later, we found our location – a beach cove in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. At this point, I’d found out that Marta was smart, a great photographer, and very friendly. When I started shooting, I then added to that that she was a very good model. Great facial expressions all the time, strong fashion poses, and an effortless ability to be natural and move freely. We shot from late afternoon’s bright light, through the golden sunset light of Magic Hour, until the dim light of dusk, when even my trusty 50mm f/1.8 hinted that maybe we should stop. A welcome lift from her boyfriend saved us the half hour walk back in the closing-dark, and I made it to the train station a couple of minutes before the half-hourly train home.

It’s times like this, when you have a fantastic location, an amazing model, great light, resulting in dozens of great photos, that I’m very grateful for my passion, opportunity, and talent. All with the goal of sharing beauty and moving images with the rest of the world.

The full album from this photoshoot can be found at http://claude.gallereasy.com/gallery/363/

Normally I used Adobe Lightroom to select the best photos from a shoot (a 4-pass process that can result in 25-100 photos I love, and can’t leave out from my online gallery), and I then carefully post-process each photo (crop, skin smoothing, colour correction, and trying various colour-tone effects). This usually takes me a 10-15 hours. Definitely not sanity-preserving!

Lightroom makes it very easy to get very different results just by tweaking a few sliders, but working in Photoshop allows more creative control, as well as the ability to add textures and other graphic design elements. I was impressed with how varied these three photos came out, even though they were all taken within an hour’s shoot, using the same lighting and backdrop.

More photos are available in these related posts: Ballet Fashion shoot

I started the Cambridge Ballerina Project in June 2010, and have since photographed 13 ballet dancers from the Cambridge University Ballet Club. The images caught the attention of the current Varsity Fashion Editor, Leah Schabas, who approached me to be the photographer for one of the newspaper’s fashion spreads. She had an idea that combined ballet and fashion (not necessarily because of the popularity of Black Swan, but it would definitely scratch the public’s itch for more ballet imagery).

We met weeks before the spread was to be published in the paper, and bounced emails back and forth about ideas and logistics. She arranged permission to shoot in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and acquired designer dresses and accessories from various sources. I provided contact details for hair and make-up artists (both Cambridge students I’d worked with before), and the ballet club president nominated 4-5 dancers as the models. Unsurprisingly, I’d already met and shot with them all before, except for Glory, who was to play one of the leads in the forthcoming annual ballet show. Sadly, Jenny had pulled a hamstring in the ADC dance show Inspired, so wasn’t able to take part in the shoot. These were all the models I would have chosen, as they are all truly beautiful dancers and models.

Our shooting slot in the Founder’s Entrance of the museum was from 9am – 12:30pm. This meant that hair and make-up started at 6:30am! I joined them at 8am to get some preparation photos, and also because I prefer to be involved in the whole creative process, not just during the shoot. Megan Riddington once again did a great job with the make-up, and Hannah Punter (a ballet dancer whom I met during Inspired) managed to make ballet buns look beautiful.

At 9am (or a while later as the finishing touches were being done to hair and make-up), we braved the winds and walked to the back entrance of the Fitzwilliam Museum, signed in as contractors, and got set up / changed. I already had firm ideas about shooting angles in the vast marble atrium, and Leah was on hand to match up dancers, dresses and their accessories.

The enclosed location, off-camera lighting, and well-defined “fashion” brief made this feel more like a studio shoot than one of my usual Cambridge Ballerina Project shoots, but I still relished having such beautiful muses with whom to create and capture ballet AND fashion imagery that I’ve been focusing on for the last year.

I normally work on location or in a studio with just the model, so it was great to work with a team and end up with a set of images whose sum is greater than its parts.

A very hearty thank you to all involved:

Models: Ellie Morgan, Chantelle Burton, Gabriella Griggs, Glory Liu
Stylist: Leah Schabas
Make-Up: Megan Riddington
Hair: Hannah Punter
Assistants: Daisy Bard, Aurien Compton-Joseph, Chloe Wallis

View the full album of photos: http://claude.gallereasy.com/gallery/344/

Read the Varsity Fashion article at http://www.varsity.co.uk/fashion/shoots/tales-from-the-ballet

A model’s perspective of the shoot: http://gloriousbritannia.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/day-in-the-life-of-the-black-swan-behind-the-scenes-of-the-varsity-photo-shoot/

I performed in “Beauty” two years ago, introducing Acrobatic Rock’n'Roll to the show, and this year I returned to the stage with a contemporary duet that I choreographed. The show was well-received, and my first attempt at choreography in a new style met with surprisingly positive feedback. Fortunately there were other photographers present, so I have some images of my own piece.

Here are some of my favourite photographs from the myriad beautiful dancers.

Many more photos from the show are available at http://www.cantabphotos.com/tag/CUCDW/