Anyway, I’m off point. Linda makes beautiful dresses, she’s a lovely person, and will create you something as individual as you and your wedding are. Talk to her, tell her what your dream dress is, and there’s a damn good chance she’ll make it even better than you’d imagined. I’ve been trying to photograph a wedding with her work since September last year when I photographed this image below.  Pretty dresses and beautiful brides make my job easy.

Linda’s been after a fancy new picture of herself for her own website for a while, and after a push from a couple of magazines that want to feature her and her dresses, I tweeted her and said, you grab me some lunch and I’ll shoot your pictures.  After some tasty New York deli sandwiches (that’s attention to detail right there; she’d read my blog on my trip to NYC), cups of tea and lots of talking, we got down to business and had 2 minutes to get the shot before Linda had to go to pick up the kids from school. Here’s the final result:

So if you need a beautifully designed, truly original and bespoke wedding dress that will fit you better than anything you’ll pick up off-the-peg, then give Linda a call.  You won’t regret it.

Among the new features I’ve integrated are:

• Faster and easier image viewing
• Download images directly from your gallery
• Side-by-side picture comparison (All you actors have been dying for this!)
• Flag your favourite pictures and come back to them later
• Black and white previews of colour pictures
• Secure online payments for sessions and wedding booking fees
• Secure online payments for prints, downloads and other photo products
• Secure payments can be made via all major credit and debit cards

There’s a few more features I’m still working on, and please let me know if there’s anything you’re keen to see and I’ll try and get it sorted for you.  The shop will be open for business at the end of January, and of course all you blog readers will be the first to know.

I’ve got plenty lined up to throw at it and in the next two weeks I have: two weddings, six headshots, one commercial architecture shoot, one music promo shoot, one fashion shoot and then a well deserved 10 day break (although I’ll probably be video-documenting the whole thing)

Launch Date • October 1st 2009

So as long as I keep on track of preparing all the pictures to go online we should be good to go then; take a ganders and tell me what you think.

It will be linked through my initial opening page at www.robbooker.co.uk

“Grab your camera, I’ll be round in an hour, I’ve got 2 press passes to photograph U2 in Sheffield”

We rocked up and found the press gate then got shouted the usual rules “3 Songs, no flash, get the hell out”.

Dull afternoon avoided!  Full blog post to follow next week after I’ve finished the full edit.

The three of us blog on a regular basis about the work we do, but we knew that with video it would be a lot easier, cooler and better to showcase how we do, what we do.  We also were keen to show potential clients that a photo shoot can and should be a fun thing to be involved with.  The majority of people we photograph are not professional models and we wanted to give them an idea of what to expect.

So after several half pints of stout we decided to put a shoot together at a mechanics garage in Leeds.  We all wanted to experiment with some new lighting techniques and put the bias of the shoot on high-end high street fashion.  I contacted a few models to come along for the day, we arranged a make-up artist and got our good friend Cris Matthews along to capture the video footage.  There’s another blog entry below to fill you in on the details of the day.

Anyway, I’m writing too much and ignoring the point of this post which is to show the video!  After some late nights in front of a MacBook Pro here’s my final edit of the video.  To watch in super spangly High Definition click on the HD logo once the video starts playing.  You can also see Cris’ edit here: http://www.vimeo.com/6010320

3B MEDIA • Fashion Photography • Lighting On-Location from Rob Booker on Vimeo.

We decided on the 3B Media name as an umbrella brand for anything the 3 of us do together.  Booker, Barber and for alliterative purposes Barnaby.  We’ll be working on a few more of these fashion and lighting days over the coming months, and as Cris did such a sterling performance of making us HD-Ready, he’ll be along for the ride too.

3B Media are planning to do some training workshops in January 2010, so if you’d like to come along to one then please get in touch.  There’ll be in a similar theme to what you see on the video here, giving all you photographers a chance to shoot some new portfolio material, learn and develop your skills behind the camera, meet some like minded people, and bug the 3 of us to death about how we do what we do!  As we shoot more videos over the rest of the year we’ll be posting them up on our blogs so you can get a feel for what the training days will be like.

More on 3B Media later, but for now here’s a few more of my pictures from the day.  There’s no geeky tech details here, but don’t be shy about posting a comment and I’ll fill you in on the f-stops and focal lengths and flash ratios.

First up we’ve got Matt who is a super cool all round good bloke, coming up with some crazy but awesome ideas.  I found this wedge shaped corridor and after clearing it out, Matt experimented with the space throwing out some acrobatics to get into these positions.

This was shot behind a couple of container crates I found in the yard of the garage.  It was raining pretty badly by this point, so we had about 2 minutes to get some pictures before my camera started giving me electric shocks.  The suit Matt’s wearing is a £3 charity shop special, and the cross of tape was his idea.  I think portraits are a lot more interesting, when you can imagine a story behind the details.

Next up we’ve got Clare who is a photographer as well as a model herself, so was keen to see what was going on both sides of the camera.  This picture was a pretty quick set-up with 3 flashes and again I let Clare experiment with the space.  The processing on the shot I pushed as much as Photoshop would let me,  I wanted it to have as much punch as possible, but ultimately it’s the red glasses that make the shot.

Stef was one of the first models who was ready on the day and most of the mechanics stopped work once we started shooting!  This set-up was shot with a ring-flash and giant softbox off to one side.  Processing again was pushed as far as I can take it.

Viv had Phil’s attention for most of the day, but I saw the potential of this yellow steel door as soon as we rocked up in the morning.  Then when Viv came down wearing a black dress and a splash of red lipstick, I was dying to put the 2 together.

Here’s a gallery with some more images on:

[svgallery name="For Blog"]

Check out Phil’s blog and Barnaby’s blog for their side of the day, and if you want to get in contact with any of the other guys involved you can do so here:

Make-Up • Katy Padam • www.ktmakeup.co.uk

Video • Cris Matthews • www.crismatthews.com

Models • Stef Jones via modelmayhem.com, Vivienne Edge via modelmayhem.com and Clareski via modelmayhem.com

Next week my camera won’t be out of my hands; Monday I have 2 headshots to photograph. Tuesday I have a Burlesque portfolio shoot with the amazingly talented and sexy Minnie L’Amour, we’re shooting at Sela Bar in Leeds. Make-up artist and lighting assistant in tow, I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. If the weather’s good we’ll be heading off to a field to get some more natural photos.

Wednesday is also going to be amazing. I’m shooting with two good photographer friends Barnabus Alrick Maximus and Major Phillip Barber Esq. at a mill in Wortley. We have the whole day to shoot 3 models again with a make-up artist and experiment with loads of cool lighting set-ups and generally have awesome time outside the pressures of a paid job. This day is still in planning, so fingers crossed that it’s going ahead, if not Wednesday then soon. Again, pics up here as soon as I can.

Thursday I’ve got another two headshot jobs. Friday I’ll be helping Phil & Barns with some video editing, then if I’m still feeling awake I’ll be heading into town to squeeze in some urban landscapes at dusk.

Saturday is the fantastic Anna & James’ wedding. I’m really excited about this one, they are two great people and the setting for their wedding is beautiful. Stay tuned for the pics!

Sunday I will be sleeping . . . And watching Top Gear

Anyhow, available to download now is the new Headshot Price Guide for Summer/Autumn ’09 • http://www.robbooker.co.uk/headshots.pdf

I’ll post some stuff up in the next couple of days of all the photo related stuff I’ve been getting up to.