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Thank you to all for your comments and feedbacks on both this blog and my Flickr stream, much appreciated!

In exchange, I will share with you the secrets behind these photographs. What you will find inside today's post:

  • three terrific video footages of the photoshoot in Micheldever Wood. These were filmed by SnapperJack and edited with the help of Event DV.
  • analysis of the shots in the wood
  • analysis of the shots in the field

Here comes the "Micheldever Wood - Part III" with a series of photographs of model Amaya Jayne. Amaya has been modelling since she was younger and got back into it professionally after winning a catwalk competition: "I love everything about modelling my goals are to get as many shoots as possible to keep me occupied, I'd love to work with some amazing photographer to get the best out of my style".

Amaya's pictures have a different feel. And for the ones in the wood I played with the flashes to create a summery feel to this cold weather.

In "Micheldever Wood - Part I" I've introduce you to Lyvia one of the models the went on the shoot with photographer Dwiko Arie and I in Winchester. In this part II is all about her shots taken that day. Lyvia is an experienced London based model, she's blonde, 5' 4", blue eyes and medium length hair. She is shooting full time accepting paid work and limited TFP/TFCD.

Lyvia the Elf of Micheldever Wood

Twitter, what a great invention! Updating the world with what's is going on in your life, networking with talented people, promoting your business, you name it!

DwikoArie is a wedding photographer I've first met on Twitter. We have tweeted a few times but never actually met in real life. I've invited him to join the London Strobists and LPMG groups but never had the chance to meet yet. Two of my mates from the London Strobists group told me about Dwiko and having a look at his blog I was quite impressed of the quality of his wedding shots. One day Dwiko suggested that we should do a shoot together which I of course accepted.

It's only after couple of months that we managed to get a date where we were both available. After few selections, we finally chose to shoot in Micheldever Wood, Winchester.

A quick update to share with you my excitement being published on some more places, so here they are ordered from the most to least recent:

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I'm sometimes asked to cover a Christmas or birthday party and was thinking I might share few tips to other photographers out there. These tips are valid for any kind of indoors party where the light level is low.

I will try to show you how to take good shots keeping the existing ambient light in the photographs and how to create your own ambient when the party venue is dull.

I will be covering mostly off-camera flash technique and how to maintain sharpness and ambient light.

In November last year I've announced the start of my new personal project about espionage along with the very first photograph of the series: Vik Moreno as James Bond.

Following this, I've been to doing a photoshoot at a famous spy location in London: No. 2 Audley Square. This place on the South of Audley street has a lamp post that was used by the Russian spy in back in the mid 50's. The agent would mark an 'X' with a chalk on the lamp post to let his controller know he needed to meet. The photoshoot was held in the evening and the low light condition coupled to a continuous rain made the work quite a challenge. But I managed to get good shots of Alan Titchard from Wizard Walks in London. I won't be revealing too much about this photoshoot until the end of the project.

This month Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine issue No. 66 will be featuring Alan's portrait on the cover (bottom right) and a 4 page article about my espionage project featuring samples of my work. Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine is sold in 36 countries to a readership of about 100'000, so this is really good news for me and I'm really excited to share this with you all.

Eye Spy Magazine #66 is now available in any good newsagents.

I went to a London Strobist meetup recently, it was really cool as usual with lots of great photographers and models.

The weather was quite freezing so shooting outside was a bit tough but OK though.

Light wise I tried different things:

- for Murphy Thomas (top left), I've tested a new setup, one flash bounced into an umbrella and another flash clamped on the same stand pointing in the other direction to create a hard and soft single light source.

- for Rachel-Claire, the shoot was done in a student room so in order to re-create a night club ambiance I used three speedlights: the key light was gridded and clamped on a rail and pointing to R-C's face, a blue gelled flash on the desk in front of the model pointing towards the shelf, and a double full CTO gelled flash hand held by a fellow photographer behind R-C and pointing to the background.

- The light for _La is rather simple, an overcast day...

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Thanks to Permadaylight for creating this great video clip of the London Strobist meetup group last Halloween 2009.

The meetup was organized in Club Life, a night club in Vauxhall. Lot of photographers and models turn up with the help of MUA.

If you are interested in photography and particularly into off-camera flash then I strongly suggest that you visit the group's website (see links below).

There was another meetup today in Stratford, we managed to get an ex warehouse and gathered 20 photographers, 8 models and 4 MUA. Pictures will appear on the group Flickr stream soon.

Sorry for the long radio silence. After our holidays in Montpellier (France) that has started with a 4 days of nightmare trying to get into a plane: 3 flight cancellations, 12 tickets! I got sick with a very long and painful cough. But it seems to go away slowly now.

Back in September last year, I went to Paris for some training and to meet the Strobist@Paris meetup group. After the meetup, when all other photographers have gone home for dinner, I stayed around and waited for the sunset to see if there would be any photographic opportunity. I wasn't disappointed.

As I was wandering around I met a group of teenagers and proposed to take their pictures. They were over-excited and accepted the offer. They are a group of friends that live in the same town, dancing and doing music together. They are now a little association that regularly meetup in a room in their school and around Paris, especially here at "La Defence"

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