When I was asked by Liz to come and shoot with her and some of her training partners I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the venue, but stepping through the door I instantly fell in love with it.

Based on a modernised Viking longhall concept, the Circusmash space is totally free from crossbeams, and super, super high. So high in fact that I topped out my backdrop stands with at least 3 metres to go, I couldn’t believe it. With absolutely no restrictions on height and space it really is an absolutely perfect venue to shoot in, which made setting up and lighting this small group shoot an absolute dream.

Nathaniel and Liz had a great 40’s sailor / navy theme going, and Charlie and Lisa nailed their period Flapper outfits and sports shots. All in all a really successful shoot, resuting in a easily a couple of my favourite aerial shots so far.

Honestly can’t wait to get back there to shoot more, such a great great space to work in!

View the Full Gallery

Shooting on white we got stuck right in to some of the crazier and more advanced moves that come up less frequently on the student shoots, simply due to the amount of training and flexibility they require.

We shot on silks, hoop and pole for pretty much the whole day – it’s easy to get carried away tweaking moves to get feet and hands “Just so” but when it’s so much fun and the sun is shining it simply doesn’t feel like work.

Retouching the shots after the fact, though, is aways the unseen labour which is the heavy price to pay for capturing so many awesome moves on camera.

Some fantastic poses from some fantastic people – always an absolute pleasure.

As is always the case with showcase gigs, it’s a mixed bag with what kind of lighting and environment you’re going to get, as well as where you can shoot from within the crowd.  I try to crop tight to minimise distraction from things like fire escape signs and studio backdrops, and then ordinarily have to do some heavy lifting in Lightroom to offset the tricky lighting conditions.

Group performances are also really common at showcases too, and they present a fresh challenge in knowing where to look! If you’ve not seen a routine before and there are 8 performers up on stage, trying to seek out the best moments as well as making sure all the performers are represented is quite a unique and demanding task.

Always hugely entertaining, they’re some of my favourite jobs to shoot, as not only do you have captures of the performances themselves, but also far more candid shots of the crowd and the performers that show you a different side to things than you ordinarily see from a studio photoshoot.

If you’re interested in hiring me to cover events and showcases, check out the rest of my event work in the main menu!

I arrived at flight and grabbed some behind the scenes shots of the prep while Kelly was hard at work, then set up to shoot the lyra  with Lauren in it. So far, so normal. We shot all the frames we needed on the hoop and Lauren disappeared off to the changing room for Kelly to start work on a second look for a different theme.  While they were changing up an idea started to crystallise, based on the ivy wreath that Lauren was wearing for the shoot.

It’d be cool, I thought, if we could make the hoop itself out of ivy, lending the shots something extraordinary and fitting in with the overall styling of the shoot. Obviously it was too late to do it in a single take, but it was going to be straightforward enough to composite, right ?

Wrong.

Turns out it’s really, really hard to find good stock imagery of ivy in a perfect hoop shape, lit appropriately, but instead of bailing out we just decided to do it the old fashioned way. Armed with a sack full of fake ivy (That Lauren happened to have laying around?!?) we bound up the hoop and shot it from the same positions under the same lighting, and then in what was to be Lauren’s most painful hoop shoot to date, grabbed some frames of her in the hoop wearing leggings , so that I could get some shadow data and some frames with hands and legs deforming the ivy.

From here it was a fairly simple masking job to bring the ivy into the shot and then just some toning and shadow work to sell the finished image!

Here’s a scroll-over Before & After of the finished work, you can see some of the minor adjustments to the dress and pose, as well as the compositing work on the Ivy hoop.