I’ve finally got over one of my biggest photographic hurdles, and started doing “posed” photos. This last week, I’ve done photoshoots of one sort of another for four bands/musicians. None has been perfect, or anything even approaching, but all have made me realise how much I have to learn, and have pointed me in the right direction. I still have great difficulty with posed shots, because I am useless at directing people, too nervous myself (never a good vibe in a photographer) and never have any kind of mental image of what the finished photos might look like – I only really discover that once they’re on the computer. In fact, I think these are the two most important things for me to work on: confidence and visualisation, but in the meantime I also need to work a lot on lighting technique – my current approach of using remote flash units on ebay triggers, pointed in semi-random directions, yields some interesting but very inconsistent results. I could do with a proper lighting kit, and I certainly need a reflector. But with every random shot I take, I learn a little more about what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s a photo I took yesterday of The Cherokees: