It’s raining, after midnight and cold. Perfect conditions for a photo shoot? We thought so. Thankfully all equipment survived and Nadine wasn’t complaining too much 
Here’s a few of our favourites:
Thanks Nadine for braving the elements xx
Thanks also to Canon for making equipment that is at least mildly water resistant!
Hello,
A huge thank you to all of my clients over the past year. Has been a very interesting time and I’ve been able to see some parts of the the UK and the world that I otherwise would not have been able to make it to. I’ve got one more wedding this year which I’m very much looking forward to. Then it’s onwards to 2011!
Next year I plan to keep pushing the boundaries and try and make more time for personal creative work. I love that my work allows me to always be at least slightly creative, however making time for personal work really helps take me out of my comfort zone and try something new. It’s a great time to sandbox ideas, which I can then incorporate into my paid work (which is generally not the best time to experiment!).
Here’s an example of one such shoot. This is Nadine and I collaborating with hair and make up artist Heather, and our assistant for the session Suze. Like our last testing session, again we were trying to see how far we could push what is possible in a lounge room. I love it and think we achieved one of my favourite photos so far.
To get the look, I used 4 flash units. 2 were speedlites behind Nadine pointed directly at the camera. I then had 2 studio flashes at the front. The main light source had a softbox with the front removed for a very edgy look. The other was on extremely low power and shot through a white umbrella. That was just used for fill to make sure the shadows didn’t go too dark.
Thanks to my lovely girlfriend for modelling for me, again! And for being an amazing photo retoucher. A lot of my commercial work this year has been given the finishing touch by her talents so thank you xxx
Apologies if I haven’t had time to blog about your particular photo shoot this year. Has been my busiest year yet which I’m grateful for but means there’s not enough hours in the day to report on every single shoot! I will try and get some of them online over the coming months.
So, I’m now off to join my good friends Nicki and Cam for some festive celebrations. Merry Christmas to you and your families 
Cheers,
Damian
I recently got back from shooting a wedding in Canada. Had such an amazing time and am truly grateful to Steve and Lis for flying me over. I’m still processing those images (over 40GB’s of data…) and hope to have them online shortly. Since I got back though have had 4 commercial shoots so has been a very hectic time! To make life busier I also needed to test some new lighting kit, so I roped the girlfriend into doing some quick modelling in the lounge room. Here’s one of my favourites:
Image is pretty much straight out of camera apart from some minor skin retouching. We got the effect by combining flash and regular incandescent lights (the regular lights were covered with coloured gels). The streaks of colour were burned in using a long exposure while Nadine’s image was frozen with flash. Very experimental but I think it works. Just goes to show that with the right lighting (and model ) you can turn an average room into something interesting.
The lighting kit I was testing were 2 new gridded softboxes. They produce a beautifully soft yet directional light, which lets me control exactly where it falls. Love it and has already been used on a magazine shoot a few days ago (those photos to also follow shortly).
Thanks Nadine for volunteering for this shoot and also doing the skin retouching (quite handy dating a professional photo retoucher!) xx
Here’s some images from my shoot with Ben and Marc from Neutron Creations. Together they develop some very well put together web apps, and needed some new profile images to go with their recently launched site. Ben and Marc are also both keen photographers, so we wanted to do something a little bit creative and different to the usual corporate headshots. Here’s the result:
To achieve this look, we used 2 flashes to overpower the sun. This is what the scene would have looked like shot as is. Rather flat and boring:
The flash on my left was on full power, with the one on my right around 25% to fill in the shadows.
For this final shot of Marc we moved locations and just used the one flash and one reflector. This time I covered the flash with a blue gel, which when corrected in camera gives the sky more of a sunset look than can ever be achieved naturally in London:
Best of luck with the new venture Ben and Marc!
Way behind on my blog posts again! Here’s some pics from Mione and Steve’s wedding back in July at the Islington Town Hall. We were so lucky with the weather. Sunny for the ceremony and the after photos, then absolutely bucketed down about 2 minutes after we made it to their reception at Ziloufs.
One of the highlights was Mione’s family flying out from Australia to surprise her and Steve. Such an amazingly sweet thing to do. Apparently they decided literally a few days before and just booked the tickets and flew over. Love it.
Here’s Dad making sure he gets the sneaky iPhone shot in before the ceremony
The food at Ziloufs was superb
As were the copious amounts of cocktails consumed that evening 
Thanks Mione and Steve for having me along at your wedding. Met some really genuinely lovely people. Hope to see you guys cruising about Islington again one day.
Cheers,
Damian
© Damian Comans. For bookings please call 07717 453 393 or click here to send me an email
