Work Experience. Wedding and Zombie Shoot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd04SwR2eU8 The reason behind the "Barbara" sash.

The MUA's within the Performing Arts team at Knightstone Campus required a photographer to cover their assessment / wedding / zombie shoot.

With a little more notice this time, I arranged a collection of kit, ready for any weather (It was to be a  mainly outdoor shoot) and collected a few props.

I took with me:

Canon 5D MkII with 24-105 lens.
Canon 5D MkII with 70-300 lens.
Elinchron battery flash lights.
Various stands, reflectors, and tripods.

Ultimately, there were three parts to this shoot:

• Informal / editorial style shoot of the MAU's in action, followed by a head and shoulders of the completed make-over.
• Wedding style portraits out at Grove Park (Jill's Garden).
• Zombie shoot in the afternoon in and around Grove Park.

Preparing the models.

I spent a good hour or so, informally shooting the MUA's at work with their respective models. Thankfully, everyone was way too busy to bother about me, so I (think) got some very nice "off-guard" moments.

Lighting was a bit of a nightmare, with tungsten, fluorescent, and natural light mixing it up.
I tried Auto, various metering modes, but finally settled on manual mode for most of the shots.​ I converted to Mono for some of the images where colour was not playing the game.

​ A selection of the images are below (You may have to click to see the proper proportions).

The Bridal shoot.

The Brides came out one by one for a series of set images in and around Jill's Garden. I was ably assisted by four junior MAUs, who lugged kit, held reflectors and were generally worth their weight in gold.

I tended to go with AE, but switched to on camera fill-in flash towards the end, so had to alter settings accordingly. You may have to click on the images to see the correct proportions.

Then, after a quick bite to eat, we were back up to Grove Park for the zombie shoot.

I tried a more flexible approach, and move around with minimal kit (If you consider severed hands "minimal"

Two spots in Grove Park were chosen for most of the shots, although some of the MAUs had done recce's. to check the area out. Some of the results were (Again, you may need to cick to see the full image):

So, as part of "Professional" development, here's a financial / time analysis.

Prep Time 3 hours.
Shooting time 09:30 - 16:30 (6 hours) 1007 images taken.
Editing time (Down to approx 35 contact sheets and 150 images) 6 hours.

Contact sheets were delivered within about four hours, with 150 Images ready to be delivered within 24.

So, in total, 15 hours have gone into this project, most of it in "invisible" hours (Editing, prep, etc.)

PLUS - there is the element of assistants. Without assistants at the shoot, it might not have happened. They held reflectors, lugged kit, and chatted with models and people while we waited for other models to turn up.

I'd say, from a purely financial point of view. I'd have charged £400 for this job. - £320 for me, and £80 for the assistant (In "real life" there would only be one assistant.)