Overdue Wuthering Heights Writeup

Sadly I didn't have the chance to get any behind-the-scenes photos or videos for you guys but I'll try to get more in future.

The day started with a sigh of releif when the package arrived from the designer at 8.30am before we left for the shoot. Due to a mix-up though, the designer had thought I only wanted a jacket.  I opened the package and realised that there was no shirt etc so ran and grabbed a few standby items (a pirate shirt and a cream textured scarf) and spent the whole car ride down to bury and then derbyshire trying desperately to call Wes the male model to get him to bring suit pants and a shirt. But I didn't get through to him til he'd already got there and we were running an hour late (note to iphone users - the satnav app sucks balls), driving through torrential rain.
But by sheer chance Wes had a full suit including waistcoat in his car. Phew lol.

Now let me also note another thing that went 'wrong': Elen had forgotten to mention she was now a blonde. Imagine my suprise when a blonde answered the door in Bury lol!

So having picked Elen up from bury and then arriving in Hathersage we met Wes at the pub and sat outside while we waited for a food order to come through.
Then the rain caught up just as food arrived so we lugged everything in amongst much laughter, ate and then set-to on makeup and hair.

Wes was amazingly placid bearing in mind I had him sat in the middle of a pub putting makeup on him and curling his hair. lol

Just as they were both dressed, the rain finally broke and blue sky appeared so we rushed off to the location and started getting as many photos as we could.

Note please the dark clouds and the wall of rain looming in on us....

We were racing against the impending drenching, and chuckling at the comments from a family of climbers "oh how beautiful! I think they just got married!" We had to break the spell and tell them sadly it was just a photoshoot lol.

Blue sky dissapearing....

Aaaaand gone!

A brooding Heathcliff/Wes as the rain hit:















Over all though the shoot had eh... its issues, it went well - because at the end of it I still got photos that I love and it was a good lesson on ad-libbing and going with the things thrown in your path. Being a stubborn redhead comes in handy sometimes =)

Quite alot of news since my last post

so it's been a little while since I made my first post...

so since april here's a rundown of some things that have happened....
 
I did a shoot again with the wonderful Tanya Townley who's amazingly natural beauty just shone through the camera

© Katherine Roberts/Stargirlphotography 2010

Tanya styled the shoot and did her own makeup so it was nice for once to just play along with someone else's ideas and try to capture them in the best way I can.
Incidentally it was the same day as the parade for the Blackpool Football Club parade as they had just won the team a place in the premier league which will bring millions of pounds in revenue throughout the tourist based industry within the town. So the town was heaving and it was suprisingly sunny... I ended up with 2nd degree burns on my chest a la sunburn (accursed ginger/red hair and fair skin!) and ended up loosing two layers of skin from my chest... PAIN. Note to all fair skinned photographers tempted to shoot on location: even if it's supposed to rain or looks cloudy. keep a small bottle of suncream in your camera bag and PUT IT ON if the sun comes out (unlike me LOL)

 I did this on a day off while working at Debenhams. But I left my job in July for several reasons 1) I was fed up of being used by them and having my hours fucked around CONSTANTLY 2) I couldn't actually afford to stay in that job longterm 3) Doug (my american fiance) came over for the summer so I decided to save my sanity and leave the job and use the summer to do more shoots and spend time with him.

One of the shoots I did was this wonderful location shoot with Miss Ingwer (Tasha). Tasha normally does dark alternative work so it was a nice change for her to do something lighter and more fashion based - she soon got into it and was posing away like a natural fashion model =)

© Katherine Roberts/Stargirlphotography 2010

May I just also mention too how awesome she was to work with - It was our first shoot together and she travelled all the way from Wrexham in North Wales for the shoot in Lancaster in the old victorian butterfly house.

The concept was my own and I styled the whole thing and did the makeup and hair (to the amusement of some local bar staff)
The tunic/shirt is from miss selfridge and the broach is a gorgeous find from the store in town called dragonsrcute. I bought items for shoots from them before (the choker for the alice shoot for example) and they're always lovely in there, so if you get the chance stop in and have a nosey at their lovely shop.
Also I made the cream butterflies from feather cake decorations (ebay is my friend).

Some of you are going to be thinking 'but I don't have money to get stuff like this!' well 1) you can make stuff 2)raid ebay and charity shops and 3)I worked my ass off at debenhams at the end working nearly full time again while some people were off sick - I saved that last paycheck and used that to fund everything I did this summer, often buying items for shoots and then returning them as long as they weren't damaged - Tasha bought the clothes from this shoot cause she liked them that much =)
Also you can talk to your friends and family and see if you can borrow items or talk to your model and see what she has that might do.

I also spent most of the summer pulling my hair out while trying to organise two victorian (period clothing) shoots based on Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. I managed to get the Wuthering Heights shoot done (even with some crazy problems like not knowing the designer had only made a jacket for the guy and the female model turning out to be blonde even though all her profile images on modelmayhem are brunette, and the crazy rain you get in the BEAUTIFUL peak district. - Be warned, expect days/shoots like this regularily and get good at improvising). I will post photos from that shoot in the next few days and will write up what actually happened etc if anyone's interested lol

© Katherine Roberts/Stargirlphotography 2010

I also went and did a bit of touristy stuff with my family while Doug was here - we went to white scar caves and to the North Yorkshire Birds of Prey Sanctuary which is an amazing place and has given me cunning plans for a future photoshoot so keep an eye out for that in the near future.

But yeah I've started making an effort to get fit too now cause I'm fed up of being a huge blob. And me and my brother spent the summer turning Doug into a Trekkie as Doug had never watched Star Trek before! (and he calls himself a geek pssh lol)


I do have to mention the devMEET I organised in Manchester for deviantART.com's 10th birthday celebrations. Much fun and cake eatings was had by all.

And due to some changes in longterm plans, I've decided that all-being-well, I'm going to finally try for my degree starting next september! =)

The Long Overdue First Post

Right so I figured that as I set this up last year for my FMP and then we didn't use blogs, we used flickr instead, that it was high time I wrote something constructive here. Can't promise that it will be but here goes.

I know that there's alot of blogs out there that people follow, written by photographers - namely successful ones, or ones well on the way to achieving some kind of professional 'success'. But what I don't often see is blogs by those on those rickety, rotten away bottom rungs of the ladder trying to scrabble and leap for the next rung that seems a mile out of reach.

So my idea is to try and blog here about my attempts to reach the next rung. And maybe in doing so inspire people younger than me who're thinking about trying photography, to just say 'fuck it' and GO FOR IT! lol

To start you guys off I'll give you a bit of the back-story.

I was always artistic. I always drew and would paint (often on the walls if I remember rightly lol) I always loved expressing myself through art and music - music was my main thing as a child and through most of school - I was the kid with the dreams of becomming a singer and appearing onstage with my idols.

But then when I hit my GCSE's (for you americans that's age 15-16, the last two years of high-school in the UK with lots of horrendous exams) I chose to do music, drama and graphics. As soon as I was doing those, I was constantly bombarded with 'why didn't you do art!'. So after 2 years of hearing that and starting to think 'ok maybe I should try focusing on art...' Even though at that point i'd picked up a point-and-shoot camera and had started wanting to experiment with photography, I went to college in Lincoln and tried a National Diploma in Art & Design. (pre-uni course) and failed MISERABLY lol. I dropped out 2 weeks before the end of the first year to avoid the exhibition. I chose that course to experiement and figure out what I wanted. but we only picked up a camera once for a tiny thing. I had no motivation and just didn't suit the course.

That october I moved to Blackpool with my family.

Let me just interject here to point something out. This was the 2nd time i'd come to a 'failure' point. I did so at school with my GCSE's but at the point where I was going to be home tutored and taken away from my friends intirely, I fought back. And after being told I'd be aiming at scraping '4 or 5 A* to C grades, I walked out of school with 9. So yeah I have a history with failing miserably and then bouncing back with avengance.

I thought about doing A-levels, going in psychology etc but I really wanted to try photography. I figured if I failed again I'd just try for A-levels next year round. In the end I went for it and started an ND in photography here in Blackpool

I got a distinction (highest possible grade) for my first project. I'd scraped a merit once on my art course i think. That day when I got my results was such a massive wake-up-call. I though 'holy shit, I might actually be able to do this.'

Then I got another distinction, and another.... I ended up recieving straight distinctions for everything.
I figured that some people might think that I became abit 'full of myself' but I tell you this now. When you've failed totally like I did, you take every tiny success to heart, and never take them for granted.

I guess that failure and then realising I wasn't useless was like a slingshot to me, it gave me the passion and the drive to push myself further and further. Ask my tutor, by the end I got a squeaky 'are you trying to kill me?!' when I handed in my final major project work. Every project I expected more of myself, tried to better myself - not competing with anyone other than myself.

So yeah, I finished that course June '09.

and I'm sure most of you want to hear how I hit my feet running, how I got a photography job straight away, got lots of commissions.

I'd love to be able to tell you that. But it's usually not that easy. And never that easy for people like you and me eh?

I had to get money coming in, so I worked at a theme park as a ride op in the kids park until the winter. I did have a few paid shoots along the way but working weekends didn't really help with that lol. And then after spending xmas and newyear with my fiance over in america, I came back and I'm now working at Debenhams (dept store).

So there you have the back story.

Back when I was first interested in photography and told a journalistic photographer I knew, he told me not to expect to make any money for 5 years. And I've tried to bear that in mind, and so should you.
Photography is not easy to start up with, but with passion, with creativity and determination not only can it be your career, it can bring you such happiness.

I'm my happiest when I'm snuggled up to my fiance with a big bowl of cookie-dough icecream. Or whenever I'm shooting. Yes it's just that good ;-P

I'm not trying to say with this blog that I think i'm going to become some kind of photography mega-star. (I wish) Or that I'm even going to make it to that elusive next rung. But I want to document my attempts. To show others that it's ok to fail in life, that it's not the end of everything, you're just in the bottom of the next hill you have to climb.

I know how inspiring and yet soul destroying it is to see people - say for example Zhang Jingna or Lara Jade both of great internet fame and both around my age - surging off into success, leaving us in there wake lol it makes you think "shit I should be there with them already ahhhh!" STOP thinking like that. And slap me when I get like that. 'Cause I do (alot).
Lara and Jingna are utterly amazingly talented, wonderful people who have 'struck gold' and been noticed, they managed to make that leap to the next rung are are on their climb up. But I also know people just as talented who are still languishing at 'our' level, and aren't drawing the attention that they deserve. Lara and Jingna are those 'exceptions to the norm'.

Most pro photographers are at least 25 before they see any sense of 'success'.

So yeah, I'll hopefully be able to post some technical info on my shoots in the future and behind the scenes photos as and when. And just ask me if you have any questions bout my kit or my processes etc or if you want some advice, i'll do the best I can.

For now, I shall leave you with some quotes


" The key that unlocks energy is ''Desire.'' It's also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited. "
Earl Nightingale

 You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish -- if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.
Robert Collier