There are times during a shoot that I talk to my camera when something goes wrong and on the last one, I attempted to accuse the Sun of producing far too many photons when I was trying to get a bleak-looking shot. This was witnessed by my model for the day, Scarlett O'Hora! She did not look scared or worried that I was ranting at the Sun at all.

We had met earlier in the day to get several shots done and decided to shoot in and around Wimbledon Common. Scarlett had previously sent me examples of outfits to choose from. Our first outfit was a black dress fur coat and glasses. I immediately thought of Scarlett hanging off a bus stop pole and surprisingly she thought the same! Great minds etc!!

Being the professional I had worked out a plan so our time at Wimbledon Common was maximized. This was thrown out almost immediately when we got off the wrong bus stop. Yay me.. but this gave us time to walk up to the next stop while getting to know each other.

Arriving at the correct location we talked about how we wanted the shot to look. I wanted to blur out the background for this in case the traffic got in the way and I wanted the numbers to be unreadable. However with a 70-200mm Sigma lens I had to walk quite far away to get a shot that included the majority of the bus stop and Scarlett together. Having to direct Scarlett from a distance meant a lot of hand waving and I am surprised we didn't flag down the odd taxi and bus service.

Our next shot was planned for further in, this would have been a choice between the red suit or the black sorceress type dress. Crashing through the complaining foliage we stumbled across the large horse track which was very muddy. We gingerly worked our way around this and arrived at the main clearing. For once there was no one about so Scarlett got changed behind a large tree and I was on the lookout for passers-by. Quite typically as soon as Scarlett stepped out in a very revealing dress there were families and dog walkers all over the place.

When I was shown this dress I immediately wanted a bleak-looking shot with crows flying around, sort of a homage to the Morrigu of Celtic mythology. This is when the Sun started to annoy me. G-type main-sequence stars must like families and dog walkers more than photographers.

Our final shot meant we trudged further into the woods in search of a pathway that had a sort of tunnel effect by the trees. All we found was more dog walkers. None of them wanted to join in. The final shot had Scarlett in a fantastic suit. Even among such great trees I still wanted to blur them out so I was using the Sigma 70-200 f2.8 again. So off I went deeper into the woods to get a long shot. The tracking and fast lock-on of the Sigma meant I could ask Scarlett to spin around and try to get a few shots where her hair would be flying around her face. Some of the shots had her face obscured but we got some shots on others.

You spin me right round baby right round etc...

It was time to pack up and leave.. once again my professionalism shone though by having us walk further than we needed to get back to the pub for a drink, chat and a look through the photos.

This was a fun shoot, even though some of my planning went a bit wrong it flowed easily from one area to another... must do this again!