“Hi Paul, the photos look amazing! You have actually managed to make me look relatively attractive. Ha Ha.”
Jordan

A request to help my friend Mel with a studio shoot with two guys from the local gym gave me a chance to try out my new lens – Sigma 70-200 f/2.8.  It’s quite a big, heavy monster of a lens and I’m loving it so far. The quality and sharpness is everything I could hope for.

The two men arrived for the shoot. For Jordan and Paul it was their first time is a photography studio, so they were a little apprehensive. Mel quickly put them at ease and I set about helping with the lights and backdrops. We used three studio lights for these shots – one from the front and two giving rim lighting from the back.

I think there’s a temptation with male models sometimes to expect them to look ‘cool’. I saw a comment on a photography forum just this week where a photographer said that he didn’t like to see men smiling in photos as it didn’t look right. I disagree. I actually think it can work well when you allow the natural personality to show rather than the photographer always dictating a certain ‘look’. With Jordan (pictured below) the photos that I liked the most were ones where he was smiling. When I sent them to him after the shoot he wrote back to say how happy he was with them.  Job done.

I’ll post some of his mate Paul later.

Click on the photos to see them bigger and please feel free to leave a comment below.