I can hardly be called a photographic year if I don’t work with Emma at least a couple of times, so despite restrictions, 2021 proved to be a photographic year as I had several shoots with Emma.
Similar to the first shoot after lockdown of 2020, Emma was again one of the first people I worked with once we were “released” and able to work with other people at the very end of March 2021. The 2nd of April proved to be a somewhat misleading spring day, sunny but actually about 8 celsius at the best, and a bit less by the end of the shoot. I also happened to have an EOS R5 on loan 🙂
This first shot, uses a mixture of daylight and flash. Emma is illuminated with an 80cm Lastolite medium octa soft box containing four Speedlite 600EX-RTs. The soft box also contains a sheet of 1/4 CTB gel, to add blue tones to the light. The camera was set to over 7000K to compensate for the blue flash on Emma and add warm tones to the rest of the frame including the inquisitive cows. Due to my intention to shoot as wide open as possible I had to expand the ISO down to ISO 50, and still use high speed sync as the ambient light required a shutter speed of 1/1000s for the chosen f/2.8 aperture.
Spring time, means daffodils and with a quick change of outfit, pose and location this completely natural light shot was created. Emma bravely saying it was not that cold at all, I can say she was wrong, it was blooming freezing. I use the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM wide open for the compression it brings to this this longer shot.
Blossom was still present in the trees, so we tried to confuse the eye AF in the EOS R5, but it was not having any of it. Unless I completely obscured Emma’s face it just kept on finding her eyes and focussing accurately on her.
Fast forward a couple of months to a proper warm summer evening in July and a delightful garden location and I arranged another shoot with Emma.
This amazing garden also had a pond with deck that was perfect for a spot of reading. What you can’t tell is that the book is a prop from my own collection; EF Lens Work III – The Eyes of EOS 🙂
Moving away from the garden to a courtyard part of the location, Emma changed outfit. 
What I can say is that Emma really looked stunning in this dress and boots. It was all but impossible to take poor pictures when you have this kind of location and subject to to work with.
Lastly this studio shot of Emma was taken at a local studio that held an open evening for local creative people. Emma arrived and since I had a camera with me I took a few quick portraits of her. It’s actually been quite some time since we’ve worked together in an actual studio. However it has proved to not be the only studio shoot we did this year, but more on that another day.
See you tomorrow for another picture and story.