Location, location

Pre planning is essential when your doing a photography session with people.

Arabella and Emily, two award winning dancers are having a street/ head shot session and the location I choose was the streets in Stamford in Lincolnshire where I live.

Magnificent Georgian architecture, niche shopping, beautiful riverside meadows, prestige local food and a vibrant Arts Centre combine to make Stamford a visitor must. Stamford is the most complete stone town in England; whole streets unchanged over the centuries and with 600 listed limestone buildings.

I had already found suitable locations, taking into account the weather (which turned out not to be playing ball) around the town. Part two of the afternoon was going to be located in the Sculpture park within the garden of surprises at Burghley House, but we knocked that on the head due to the rain and the poor light. We are going back to this setting to do more... Will publish the results.

On a technical note all photos were shot with Fujifilm X series cameras and lenses ranging from the 16 1.4, 23,56 1.2 and 50-140.

If you are interested in having some location portraiture done please get in touch.

I also do head shots for Casting company's such as Spotlight. Your online CV is one of the most important tools you can use to sell yourself. It serves as your interactive calling card and can be the difference between securing an audition or being discarded at the first hurdle by a casting director.

The requirements are different to environmental portraiture, you need more than one photo, but not too many – don’t go overboard. Ideally, these should be a mixture of colour and black and white. If you’re using production shots, make sure these are of equal quality to any professional headshots on your profile.

Still on production shots, I make sure the pictures are heavily focused on you - there should be no groups on stage shots. Remember not to use any shots where you are heavily costumed or made up so you look like a completely different person. Don’t keep old photographs on your CV out of sentiment – they must be as up to date as possible. If you’ve gone for a new, permanent look, then make sure you update your headshot to reflect this.