As creative professionals it is important for photographers to keep challenging themselves and look for new ideas and techniques and go out of their comfort zone.  With this in mind I headed over last month to the Lake District for a very special two day fashion workshop at Aspire with Maria Carmel who had come all the way from Los Angeles.  You can see her amazing work at www.mariacarmel.com.  The aim of the two days was to make it as "real" as possible, so we had a fabulous location at Lowther Castle, Lucy Pearson doing hair and makeup, some amazing clothes and accessories supplied by Fran Boyd from Goodbye, Norma Jean, a professional model and portable lighting equipment, all ably assisted by Rachel Hayton from Aspire.

On the first day Maria discussed what happens on a shoot and we were able to see her interaction with model, makeup artist and stylist, discussing the looks she was wanting to achieve.  We then went to our first location where Maria explained how she works on a shoot and took some shots, after which we all had 5 minutes each to take our own shots.  These first shots were all done with natural light from a window. 

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After a lunch break we then went to the second location with a very different look in mind, using flash and an amazing hat/helmet with feather plume.  Again, after Maria had discussed what she was looking for we each had time to shoot on our own with the model.

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As you can see I was able to get some amazing images and use the opportunity to experiment with editing techniques to produce some really dramatic effects, but not something you would normally see on your family portrait!

Also present on the workshop was Will Cheung, editor of Advanced Photographer Magazine, and the workshop will be featured in an article in the near future.

Huge thanks to Maria, Rachel and Jenny from Aspire, Lucy, Fran and Erin (our model who braved freezing temperatures with no complaints) for all their hard work which enabled all of us to get some truly amazing images.