Customer Questionnaire

SMT Interview

I was interviewed by my friend for her Uni newspaper, St Mary's Telegraph, and she kindly gave me a copy of it. Thought I would share it for anyone who wanted to have a read!

Sorry for the quality, my scanner is a bit pants.

Thanks Hannah!

A rubbish guide to good photography: Horses

"Potentially good advice written poorly in the hopes it's useful to someone." 

I don't think I have once ever posted genuine photography advice and I think it's because I don't feel i'm in a position to do so. That only comes from a comparative point of view though. Comparatively I have far less experience than a lot of other photographers but then if I take that same opinion and flip it slightly, I have a lot more than others. So I thought "why not?" and here I am biting the bullet and sharing what knowledge I have.
Had you not already guessed from the title, this post is all focused on horses so if you're here for portraits or fashion then i'm sorry to disappoint. Perhaps i'll write about something more specific to those two areas another time.
So if you're ready to join Lotte's class of 2012 then you'll want to keep reading because all the useful parts of this blog will start at the end of this sentence. Or this sentence. Maybe it will never start because i'll just keep writing in more sentences. If I were you i'd just stop reading the rest of this paragraph and start reading the good stuff. Seriously if you've not skipped this bit I question your value of time.

Retouching examples

(click to enlarge photos)

This is not my photo. All photo credit to the photographer

Ell & Cee Lingerie

W.I.P screen shot

Blue Daisies Florist shoot

Portraits

Now I make your photos pretty too, huzzah!

If you are interested/looking for someone to touch up a few of your photos then please send a low res copy of the photo and a specification of the adjustments you want made. Whether you need photos fine tuning for your portfolio or just want a family photo sprucing up, i'll be happy to help! Further examples are available upon request :)

e: info@lottesimons.com

web: www.lottesimons.com
follow: www.twitter.com/lottesimons
like: fb.lottesimons.com

Blue Daisies

So here's a little selection of images I shot for Blue Daisies, a new florist company. I'd not shot anything remotely bridal before now so it was a lot of fun doing something new and the kids certainly helped to keep things fun throughout the day!

Claire was kind enough to give each team member one of the bouquet's to take home which was a beautiful gift :)

If you need a florist I highly recommend them: Blue Daisies Website

Geneva Lane: Photos

So these photos have been a long time coming and even though I gave you some behind the scenes pics in a previous blogpost, thought i'd give you all a little video as well as!

They were shot back in April and I have only just caught word today that it's all good for me to release them. Just a little photo session I had with Geneva in the first half of this year, we played around with concepts a lot to begin with as it was important that we got the right image for her seen as this would be her first solo shoot but as this would just be promos and we were working without a stylist we kept it simple and treated it more as a good experience on Geneva's behalf to be infront of the lens on her own.

It hadn't been too long that she'd been out of the limelight after her appearance on the 2010 Xfactor as part of Belle Amie. Which meant 4 or 5 months after last appearing in my front room on the tv screen, she was back there in person. As the first recognisable face i've shot, it felt quite surreal.

I worked with make up artist Lucy on this shoot to create two different looks, one i'd wanted to do for a while with feathers in the hair and the second simply red lips & eyeliner. Realising I had some nerdy frames in my bag I handed her those too and think it really suited her character a lot more so the second look had a lot more personality to it.

Myself and Lucy both wore a feather in our hair too as we'd joked that we didn't want it to look like Gen had been the victim of a violent duck attack to passers by. Whilst at the second location we also sat and watched the ferry's coming into Dover port, observing one that appeared to be doing the slowest handbrake turn ever known to man (tryin' to impress the ladies! ;) )
Finally, aside from the photos, if there was one productive outcome from that day back in April it was that we forged an unbreakable bond from our shared admiration of one Spongebob Squarepants. To which I leave a tribute at the end of this post.

Jade & Zatessa

Click to enlarge

A couple of weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of meeting and photographing Jade and her lovely mare Zatessa (Tess).
It was a lovely warm day and courtesy of Tess's charming but adventerous personality compelling her to go forth and explore new patches of road, grass, tree, sky, fence, leaves, gate and all other inanimate objects worthy of her attention, I was boiling hot and probably managed to burn 2 days worth of food keeping up with her. I have to say thank you to Jade for her infinite patience riding back and forth up the road for the perpetual lens changes.

I adore shoots where I have the chance to photograph both portrait and ridden images as you spend most of the day getting to know the owner and the horse as individuals within a co-existence. A relationship that you then have the responsibility of doing justice in the photos, setting up moments that represent that as well as sneaking shots of the spontaneous incidents where that just naturally happens.

Ridden and working shots, on the other hand, tend to leave me on the sidelines. Aside from giving tips as to where exactly to ride or circle around me to catch the best light, this is a chance for me to take a step back and watch the pair transform into one perfectly attuned team.
This is why I love shooting for horse owners and taking on private clients, it gives me that opportunity to witness and document the I, You and We of equestrianism and the challenge of making sure each shoot depicts the unique form of each one of those.

Jade Power:
www.drewdana.com
info@drewdana.com