Virtual Photobooth - Get Involved

Hey all,

Thought I’d put together a little guide on how to get involved with my virtual photobooth project so here you go.

What is it?

You take some photos of yourself against a plain white wall and send them through to me. I’ll take a look at them, pick out a selection, edit them, put a few into photobooth style grids and send these grids back to you alongside the individual edited photos.

How do I get involved?

Take upper body photos of yourself against a plain white wall and send them to me via Dropbox or WeTransfer.

Tips for taking photos?

1. Pick a plain wall with no visual distractions or detailing on it.

2. Use the best camera you have, for most people that will be the rear camera on their phone but if you have a DSLR or “proper” camera feel free to use that. The better quality images you send me the more chance you have that I’ll use them.

3. Wear a plain t-shirt, vest, bra or nothing on top. The focus is your face so I don’t want clothes to distract from it.

4. Send me a big selection of shots so I have plenty to choose and work with.

5. Ideally use a wall by a window so there’s plenty of light, if you have a ring light or artificial light source that works too. Well lit shots are ideal for me but be careful not to “blow the highlights” as this is something I can’t easily fix in the edit.

How do I get them to you?

Once you have a Dropbox or WeTransfer link send it to me using the contact form on this site or via DM on my Instagram.

Will I definitely get my photos edited and used by you?

This project has proven to be much more popular than I imagined so I can’t guarantee it, at the moment I’m sharing one set of images per day and at the moment at least I’m recieving wayyy more sets than I can put out. Priority will go to image sets that are of good technical quality, combine a good variety of expressions and in general just have a vibe that I like. Feel free to drop me a DM on Insta first and I’ll probs be able to give you an indication on this if you dont want to shoot everything without knowing in advance.

Do I need to be a model / a woman to be involved?

No, you just need to have a cool face and a vibe that I like + the ability to bring that through on camera. Submissions from older people / men are encouraged. That being said this is a selective project so I am actively choosing people based on whether I think they look cool on camera for this particular project.

Example images

Here are some examples of photos I’ve been sent that tick the boxes for what I’m looking for.

Elevation - Finding Inspiration pt.2

In my last blog I wrote that my inspiration comes from two main places. Art / film and the model him / herself so I thought I’d get typing and explain what I mean by the latter.

One of the most key aspects of my style is that I am extremly model led. What do I mean by this?

Simply it means that I don’t try and push models outside the stylistic wheelhouses that I feel they operate best in. If a model has an awesome streetwear look I don’t try and make her do a pretty floral girly shoot. If a model always rocks the same stern model face I don’t try and make her smile and act goofy on camera.

The key aspect of my style is that I try to identify what makes that particular model excellent and then elevate those aspects.

A rough breakdown goes something like this.

• What kind of modelling work do they do often / do I think they do a good job at?

• What’s their experience level / probable confidence?

• What kind of wardrobe and styling do they look and feel comfortable in.

• What is their general vibe?

I’ll explain this further by showing off a couple of shoot with two of my favourite models who have distinctive but different styles.

1. Georgie Riot.

View fullsize

L-R - James Beddoes, Selfie, Jase Holzer, Unknown, Selfie, Stephen Smalls.

Let’s start with the excellent Georgie Riot.

So looking at the questions I use above what did I know about Georgie before I shot with her?

1. Big into streetwear, has a very distinctive sense of style. Doesn’t need a stylist or much guidance from me as she knows how to make herself look good.

2. Chilled about shooting nudity and does it well.

3. Tons of experience.

With that in mind when I created the mood board for Georgie it was pretty much along the lines of “you know what you’re doing, pack a bunch of stuff that you think you look ace in and we’ll just rock and roll on the day.”

As I mentioned in my last blog the way I use moodboards is to communicate a vibe as opposed to a prescriptive set of images that I want to copy. With that in mind the moodboard I sent Georgie basically just showed off the two aspects of the shoot I wanted to cover. which were “Streetwear location” and “Indoor sexy gritty attitude, I’m a boss bitch and I fucking know it.”

Selection of moodboard images.

With that in mind on the day I just reacted to what wardrobe Georgie had bought with her and shot some grainy, messy, imperfect kind of work which I felt matched her style.

Here are the results.

2. Courtney Baldwin

L-R Iulia David, Bartley, Iulia David, Sylwia Szyplik, Milianeyes, Milianeyes

Let’s jump straight to the obvious here. Courtney looks like Angelina Jolie in the 90’s. On the list of people to look like that’s definitely not a bad person to have so there is one of your starting points. Courtney is beautiful in the classical sense of the word, her face is perfection, it’s like a piece of art so with that all in mind what do I consider when planning a shoot with her?

1. Classically beautiful face which needs to be the highlight. No need for styling or makeup to detract from it.

2. Her looks lends well to beauty / 90’s Calvin Kleinesque underwear shoots.

3. Hard to get a sense of her dress sense + I don’t want to distract from her face so best keep the styling minimal.

4. I don’t like shooting beauty and she’s got tons of beauty already in her portfolio so how can I make the most of that face and give her something a bit different?

I’ve shot with Courtney a few times now so in the past the main things that have been in my moodboard are really simple and clean location type shots & 90’sesque black and white stripped back simple underwear / denim kind of looks.

Selection of moodboard images used across various shoots with Courtney.

With all that in mind here are a selection of shots from the few times I’ve shot Courtney.

I really love working with Courtney and if you take a look my work within her agency ports here and here you’ll be able to see that the work I shoot with her has a different vibe to the majority of her portfolio which is good for her range.

Summin’ Up

So in summary here’s a little breakdown of how I find inspiration for shoots from the models themselves and some general principles I follow.

• Models usually look best when they are asked to shoot a style which they feel comfortable doing on a day to day basis.

• If you can see a model has a cool look / sense of style trust them to style themselves. They’ve been dressing themselves / doing their own makeup forever, they usually know what looks good on them better than you do. My general principal for 90%+ of my shoots is to identify the ace aspects of a model that made you want to shoot with them in the first place and then elevate them within the work.

• If you’re shooting for a client and the styling / moodboard is in a brief then model casting is very important. I always try to get involved in model selection if possible to make sure the models I’m using suits the brief.

• Communication as always is key. Speak to the models about your general idea, allow them to give feedback and come up with their own ideas and go into the shoot with both of you knowing what you want to achieve. That being said I’m a big fan of improvisation so if something feels right on the day just go for it. If something you’ve planned isn’t working out feel free to throw it in the bin.

  Bartley - www.instagram.com/bartley.photo

Refn & Renaissance - Finding Inspiration

As a photographer the two questions I get asked most frequently are what gear do you use and what inspires your work; as my answer to the latter question is a bit different compared to what I hear from other photographers I thought I’d write a blog and cover it here.

I barely look at other photographers. It may be odd to hear a photographer say that but apart from a few very select examples such as the incredible Nicholas Fols the only other photographers I follow are people I know personally or are in my network. The vast majority of my inspiration comes from two places; the model her/himself (I may write another blog post about this later) and film / music / non photographic art.

In terms of shoot planning and creating moodboards I’m nearly entirely tonal, when I send a moodboard to a model before our shoot the moodboard exists to give a model an idea of the type of tone I want to create on the shoot, the feel, the vibe, the energy as opposed to anything that’s prescriptive such as outfits, locations or poses etc. I use a combination of the moodboard and pre-shoot communication to let the model get as good a grasp as possible of this so we both know what we’re looking for once the shoot starts.

Here are examples of two very different shoot types to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

1. Refn

Nicolas Winding Refn is one of my favourite film directors because his tone is so striking both visually and in the way that he compliments those visuals with interesting plots, music and sparse dialog. I find myself drawn to his work often when creating shoots.

Let’s take a look at some of his visuals.

Neon & noir.

Whilst watching these movies I was also listening to a lot of Bohren & Der Club De Gore who are a German jazz-noir band. These films / that music combined inspired a wave of photography I shot predominately in 2016- 2018 that heavily focused in on these elements.

Here’s a selection.

2. Renaissance

The second set I’m going to share is more up to date and is focused around my current little experiment with editing photos in a way that combines them with works of classical art. (I know all of these aren’t renaissance pieces, I just liked the alliteration, don’t @ me.)

The idea for this came when I did a shoot with Courtney Baldwin in a couple of different art galleries in Birmingham. Once I got home I had the idea to combine with photos taken next to works of art with actual works of art and it all went from there.

Here are a few example of pieces that inspired me.

And here are a few examples of some of my recent edits that incorporate classical art within them.

As opposed to the first example where the film / music influenced my photography style this second example shows how an influence can affect my editing style. Most of these photos were not initially taken to be used for this purpose but once I decided I wanted to incorporate these elements into some pieces I went back through the archive and pulled out shots that I thought would suit the idea.

Hopefully this gives you some insight into how I think about photography / producing work.

The photography world is an echo chamber and although it’s good to check out other peoples work I’d advise being cautious about only consuming that sort of content or you run the risk of only shooting models stood next to neon window signs or 90’s inspired California grainy film photography for the next few years.

• Bartley - www.instagram.com/bartley.photo