When wedding photography’s your full-time job, sometimes you need to take a little time out to create images just for yourself, which is why I love photographing models. There’s no time pressure of meals, services etc. to worry about as there always is with wedding photography, so you can just take your time to be as creative and complicated as you want (or not, as in this case).
I recently photographed the stunning Emily Anderson on a cold but sunny winters day. I made my way up to Emily’s home in East London without much of a plan, other than to just go with the flow and see what we could find and create – again, a bit of a change from some of my other model work which I plan quite thoroughly. I purposefully didn’t plan much as it’s good to be challenged to come up with something on the fly and without stunning, lavish backdrops.
We started the session in Emily’s amazing wooden-clad attic room which was an adventure in itself – to get to it, you need to go up what I described as ‘the stairs of doom’ – the steepest wooden staircase I’ve ever seen. The head room is also restricted – lucky I’m not exactly tall – I only smashed my head once. Dual skylights in the ceiling let in lovely directional light for some nice, soft portraits. On my way up I’d spotted a nice blank wall with directional light coming in from the open bathroom door, so once we’d finished upstairs we photographed a few images there.
Emily had mentioned a lovely bridge a few minutes walk, so we then headed out into the late afternoon sunlight (very bright and directional) to finish up with some shots on the bridge, which was fantastic for leading lines – we got a few odd looks but nevermind, worth it in the end!
All images copyright David Burke Photography 2016