Teen Model photo-shoot

You will need to make some plans and get yourself organised to what digital camera equipment and accessories you will need to take with you for the shoot.

Such as a separate flash gun, tripod, lenses, camera bag, memory card and a spare one, spare batteries for you flash gun and digital camera and most important of all a check list of everything you may need and a list of the shots and locations you want to shoot.

It's important to choose the correct time of day to shoot your images, that is 2 or 3 hours before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky and the light is warm in color. It would also be wise to visit the location the day before at the same time of day you propose to shoot your fashion spread. Keep in mind it's really not good enough to say that you know of a great location to shoot you Images, unless you have previously visited the exact spot.

Also you should use a separate flash gun for fill-flash at a ratio of 2-1. This simply means for example, if your camera exposure is say 125/second, with an aperture setting of f.8, with your separate flash unit set on the 'Auto' setting, set the output of the flash to f.5.6, this will tell the flash to reduce the power so as not to burn out the foreground. If you set your flash output to the same as the digital camera f.stop setting, you will get 'wash out' over exposed results.

Choose quaint backgrounds or a sandy beach for your photo-shoot. These pictures were shot at the old port of Jaffa, while I was visiting Israel. Jaffa dates back to the year 900 and has with many twisting and winding alleyways and steps. It still has a busy fishing industry to day.

It's hard work for a young girl when your on school holidays, staying up till after midnight and getting up at midday, then having to go out on location as a model. Yes it's tough at the top baby, of course you could try getting some sleep!

These images of our model show a variety of backgrounds at the same location and you can imagine how much up-hill walking and climbing steps we endured with the temperature around 95f, we were all pretty much exhausted.

We shot pictures down by the fishing boats in the old port and up the steps through narrow alleyways and down the other side, making our way to the beach below.

There had to be some casualties as we had to travel light, so the first thing to go was the tripod which was left in the trunk of the car. This was OK because we were shooting at a shutter speed exposure of 125/second and higher. Also the cold box was dumped as well and we carried spare bottles of water each.

However, after about an hour it was beginning to tell on all of us, but the picture top right, taken in extreme heat conditions, produced a great image, what you don't see is the fact that out little model nearly collapsed and she had to sit down while we poured water over her head to revive her!