Personal work-Worth it

Last week was another busy week

I had the pleasure of photographing the talented and very lovely Kate Humble, presenter of the BBC TV 'Spring Watch' for the cover of the BBC 'Radio Times'

This was a commission of course, but how did it come about?

It was all down to 'The Forest' series which as some of you maybe aware is a personal project that I have been working on for the last couple of years.

I have shot this series for the love of it, nothing more.

As I have followed my heart though, people HAVE noticed

I had a near miss in Spain for a major advertising job, based on 'The Forest' and now of course the BBC.

It is easy to think when one is in the middle of an ambitious project to wonder 'is it all worth it?'

The answer is an empathic YES of course but those demons do surface from time to time

The BBC asked me to shoot Kate in a bluebell wood in Wales, and instead of much grinding of teeth I knew just how to do it, as I had done it before.

The Owl was flying to kate, the fox was there but the owl hated it so we had to shoot it in separate frames and comp the fox in afterwards, keeping the same lighting set up

One Elinchrom Ranger in a medium Chimera soft box for Kate, One Ranger(with a honeycomb) for Kate/fox/owl as a backlight, the smoke machine in the background lit with a Ranger and the sun of course.

A very similar set up to the waterbuffalo

It was shot on my Phase One P45+ 400th sec at F5 on a 50mm lens

This 'following your heart' thing does seem to pay off......