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This site provides aspiring and professional social photographers with an inspirational blend of creative, technical and business articles so that they can take better pictures and earn more money.
The comments within ProPhotoNut pull together the thoughts and ideas of many photographers, from fledglings to some of the finest professionals in the world.
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November 8th, 2011 10:51pm
damien
As if two days of intensive living and photography weren’t enough Chris and I decided to have some fun on a third day and shoot from lunchtime until dark on the streets of Pisa. We chose to keep it simple and not to use Speedlights, just the ambient light plus the light from my torch. A group of delegates joined us and we were off. Here are 38 of my pictures.
Our models were Charo Galura and Deborah Lyli Parcesepe
01. A low angle viewpoint and full sun make this shot of Charo and someone else's Fiat 500 work so well.
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November 3rd, 2011 10:47pm
damien
I am pleased and proud to present the pictures of Carolina taken on our Tuscan adventure by my friend and expert photographer Chris Hanley.
Words and pictures by Chris Hanley…
Last week I was in Tuscany teaching. Alongside my good friend and legendary photographer Damien Lovegrove, we had hired a beautiful old villa high in the hills of Tuscany just north of Lucca. Our mission was to teach bridal portraits, street portraiture and feminine beauty. With 12 delegates, we had 3 nights and two creative days shooting, eating, drinking, laughing and putting the world to right. I was blessed to have such a beautiful and professional model Carolina Rosini Here are 60 of my photographs (more…)
November 2nd, 2011 09:42pm
damien
Back in January, Chris Hanley and I hatched a plan to revisit Tuscany and create a magical workshop experience. Getting the right balance of learning, fun and friendship was always important for us and after a bit of juggling we finally had the right delegates we needed for this momentous event. Here are 58 of my Tuscan portraits…
01. A fabulous pot and a few spikey plants.
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November 1st, 2011 08:19pm
damien
Day three in Spain was a creative day for Martin and I. We invited two other shooters who have invested heavily in previous workshops to join us and we headed back to the Monastery for another shoot. I don’t think I could ever tire of the place. We took Katy and Maca with us and started shooting around 11am.
01C. Katy in the grass - I love the visual poetry captured with the 100mm lens wide open at f/2.8
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October 31st, 2011 08:46pm
damien
Day two of the workshop started with us all recalling the stories of the night before where a little Gecko had made an impact on some of the party. We met in the hotel lobby at 9am and journeyed to our first quarry location about 20 minutes drive away. Martin and I had identified the first location on our recce trip back in February and the second location was found by Mickie Imrie, a local photographer who acted as our contact throughout the planning stages and accompanied us on the shoot.
Martin’s shots will get blogged when he returns from shooting a wedding in India.
01C. The day started at the head of a disused mine. I photographed Katy into the sun with my 100mm lens.
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October 30th, 2011 11:32pm
damien
Where do I start? This event was always a highlight on my 2011 calendar and it didn’t disappoint. Shooting and teaching alongside my friend and fellow expert photographer Martin Hill is always a delight. Working with fab models Katy McGee and Maca Serano made our vision of life so beautiful too. All we needed was a great set of locations, a bit of sunshine, delegates who like to party and we were on it.
1C. I found a Stop sign in the undergrowth and I used it to add a graphical element to this sassy shot of Maca.
Blaise, my PA came out to Spain with us and performed all organising duties as well as providing us with lunch on location each day. With the organising taken care of it was easy to get passionate about the photography. Martin was set with the task of teaching and leading the group with the ‘big picture’ while I opted for texture and beauty details. We often swapped roles but the big location shots from day 1 will be in Martin’s set of pictures that I will post when he gets back from his wedding shoot in India. For now I give you 40 of my shots from day 1 (more…)
October 23rd, 2011 10:38pm
damien
1. Lit with an Elinchrom Quadra from about 5m to the right of Rebecca.
Most of you will know that I run a photographer development programme that lasts for one year called Evolve. And from time to time throughout the year we get together for a social and a shoot. Here are twenty or so pictures from our last meeting at Hogarths Hotel near Solihull, a few weeks ago. (more…)
October 21st, 2011 11:56pm
damien
The sun was behind me when I took this shot of Naomi Pilgrim. I used an Elinchrom Quadra rigged above and beyond Naomi to create a virtual sun in this shot. (Click on the more link to see the behind the scenes info). This was my chosen pose for Naomi as she reclined bathed in the light from my Quadra flash. Chris Hanley decided she needed boots by her side for some reason 
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October 4th, 2011 11:02pm
damien
1. One of Julie's pictures from yesterdays wedding photography workshop.
As the summer wedding season draws to a close we had just one last spell of fabulous weather for our shooting weddings workshop. These events are limited to just 4 delegates per tutor and with an overall group size of 8 delegates it is easy for everyone to get their shots without feeling hassled. (more…)
October 1st, 2011 01:24pm
damien
Designer: Yemi Osunkoya
Photographer: Damien Lovegrove
Models: Rosemary Chileshe-Ellis, Lisette Mibo, Naomi Sharpe and Olivia Wood.
Make-up: Kemi Imevbore-Uwaga
Hair: Kasia Fortuna
Tiaras/Head pieces: Claire Ogden
Photgraphy Assistant/ second shooter Adam Dunn
Venue: Room 17 at the Hempel Hotel in London
1. I went for a mixed colour temperature look throughout the set but changed the setting and lighting design to provide variety whilst mainting a style strategy.
I lit the dresses with a pair of Lupos, daylight balanced HMI fresnel spotlights, one with a full CTO and the other barefaced. I lit the room with a pair of Elinchrom BX500Ri flash heads bounced off walls with various grades of CTO gel as required fot the particular shot. It was a dark day with persistent driving rain so all the light had to be created from scratch. Here is a small selection of the 170 or so pictures submitted to Yemi my client. (more…)
September 26th, 2011 11:26pm
damien
I’ve been shooting at such a rate lately I don’t seem to have enough time to download, select and prepare my pictures. That’s the way I like it sometimes because I love being a photographer, setting up shots and capturing precious moments. In Berlin I set out to capture enough pictures of our model to fill an album with 40 prints. I had two workshops to shoot and here are 70 shots from the two days. As you know I love minimal post production so these meet my style requirements exactly. All the shots are 3×2 aspect ratio and apart from a couple of slight correction of the verticals they are as shot in camera. I used a combination of my Fujifilm X100 and my Canon 5Dmk2 with 21mm, 50mm and 100mm lenses. All the lighting was from a pair of Lupo 1200 fresnel lights. We had no make up artist, hairdresser or stylist. We had a couple of hotel rooms and a delightful young local girl to model for us. Here are my pictures in no particular order.
1.
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September 15th, 2011 12:13pm
damien
Speedlight Mastery Trailer from Damien Lovegrove on Vimeo. This video featured on the excellent Fstoppers blog yesterday and is already getting thousands of views.
All 35 chapters of this feature length HD production can now be downloaded here. The original Speedlight Mastery DVD and BluRay contained just 23 chapters and the 12 chapters are now availiable as an HD download. The DVD format is limited to about 2.5 hours of standard definition video and we had to cut out the extra 12 chapters to squeeze the content onto the disc. Now that we can offer the all the content in a HD format as a download it can be optomised by the end user for their iPad, iPhone and android devices.
September 13th, 2011 09:29pm
damien
I’ve often worked hard at unlocking the code of the Hollywood portraits to examine their DNA. In this post I discuss how we can recreate the classic look today using simple continuous lights. I have three images from the John Kobal collection to asses. These along with many others are in exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London until the 23rd October 2011. I’ve chosen one from the 30’s, one from the 40’s and one from the 50‘s and I’m starting with this portrait of Marlon Brando shot by by John Engstead in 1950 (more…)
September 13th, 2011 09:44am
damien
Some of you with time on your hands might like to watch the Skype video interview I did for the famous [F]ramed blog in the USA hosted by Melissa Niu. I was invited to judge their weekly competition and it went from there. Warning – I can talk. Haha
September 11th, 2011 11:36pm
damien
Here is a small selection of the recent pictures taken by me on my workshops or 1:1 sessions. I’ve been so busy shooting for clients this summer it has been a challenge to keep up. I’ll blog some of my commissioned fashion work soon but for now here is my random choice for the week.
1. A simple four light portrait of Edyta taken from eye level in my studio to capture intimacy and beauty. Contrast can be so delicately controlled with such depth because I'm not in a white studio. The fabulous make up was created by Vicky Waghorn.
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August 30th, 2011 01:41pm
damien
A few truths: Professional doesn’t mean high quality and part time doesn’t mean poor quality. There is no correlation whatsoever. I see a good cross section of the industry as a trainer and there are good and bad photographers on both sides of the fence. There are uninsured professionals that churn out rubbish and there are expert amateurs making fine wedding albums. I agree with several of my Twitter followers that the term ‘weekend warrior’ is derogatory so I will use ‘second income shooter’ instead. (more…)
August 24th, 2011 06:12pm
damien
1. A smidgen of smoke, Holly our model for the test shoot and a Quadra flash pack down at Ladye Bay in Clevedon. The behind the scenes shots and the techniques used are detailed in the rest of the post.
My 2 ‘A’ head Quadra kit arrived on Wednesday last week and on Thursday morning I was all set to go out on my first test shoot with it. I charged both batteries in seemingly no time at all and tested the Skyport transmitter was set to the correct frequency. Photographer Andrew Jackson joined me on location. He is on my Evolve course and instigated the shoot to build his portfolio for post wedding bridal fashion shoots. (more…)
August 13th, 2011 11:15am
damien
1. Shot using my Fuji X100 camera. Lit with a Lupo 1200 light and processed in Lightroom. I wanted to create quite a surreal look for this image of our model from the Gingersnap agency in Bristol. The gaze and colour tone remind me of the album artwork of Robert Palmer or Pink Floyd. There are influences of Edward Hopper in this image too.
Sarah Ferrara was my delegate from Italy for this 1:1 session and she is already a very accomplished photographer and digital retouching artist. Sarah and I shared picture ideas in the build up to this shoot because we wanted to go beyond the scope of the images we shoot together on the into the light workshop. Once I had created the mood boards on my iPad we sent them through to Katerina at Gingersnap to cast the shoot for us.
(not work safe after the jump)
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August 7th, 2011 04:41pm
damien
1. A modicum of planning and a bit of smoke allowed us to capture this striking image of our model Nia to start this sequence. All we needed was an enchanted wood with a cave, a lake and a few unicorns (I made that bit up).
As you may know I am working with a group of talented wedding photographers who are striving to become leaders in the wedding photography business. The programme is called Evolve and it’s now in its third season. Last month I joined Adam Dunn, (an Evolver on month 4 out of 10) on a creative shoot to refine (more…)
August 6th, 2011 01:30pm
damien
1. One of the last images of the day was this ballerina with attitude shot. I can hear the screams now "Balerinas don't wear nail varnish" Luke my picture editor decided to have fun with the split toning facility in Lightroom and I love the results.
I’ve been shooting regularly in my studio for about three years now and I’m finding the restrictions it puts on me to be very useful in defining my repetoir and house style. If I had a big studio I could easily get lost in the multitude of options open to me. Too much choice limits the creative process. Sketching at home with charcoal and chalks is strangely satisfying. I’d hate to but let loose in an artists shop with the instruction ‘use anything you want to create your piece of art’. No matter what I produced I’d be left feeling that I had not made the most of the opportunity I was given. (more…)
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