Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing OK.

I thought I would post some outtakes of the rain photo I did today, considering I got so cold and wet doing it!

Its been forever since I did a close up portrait of myself! Before all the airbrushing, it was pretty clear why!;)

Some of you guys were asking to see a picture of my cat!! So this morning I pinned her down for a mini photoshoot. She’s so cute. Aahh.

Question time!! I thought i’d take some time to answer questions people post on this site. Any questions you guys have, leave it as a comment and me and Aaron (he doesnt know about this yet, but he will) will answer them in posts. Unless they require a tutorial or something!

Question from ashley, discovered in the guestbook!

Do you go outside knowing what you’re going to shoot exactly? Or do you see something that sparks an idea, so you do it?

I go outside knowing what I’m going to shoot exactly. I spend the bus journey to school, all my free lessons, lunchtimes and sometimes lesson time just planning my 365. I have sheets and sheets of classics papers covered in mini doodles of my pictures before I have taken them! I should upload them on here sometime. I always have a specific image in my head, and I get nervous when it gets to the end of the day and I haven’t thought of anything yet. Sometimes I plan them out days in advance, they usually turn out the best because I have planned every move I will make. Very rarely I do one without planning - i have a couple of times though. I really admire photographers who can capture something spontaneous and unstaged. But I also think staging something can be very effective, as you can often get your point across much clearer. Hooray!

Life-wise

everything is getting so complicated in terms of what to do next.

My original plans were to move to the US next year, and me and Aaron would relocate to Savannah, Georgia and I’d go to SCAD for 4years. BUT then my dad checked out the prices (holycrapholycrapholycrap) and SCAD itself isn’t looking too much like an option anymore. My family and Aaron’s family had a huge family talk, and we ended up questioning whether it is even necessary for me to have a degree in photography for me to be a photographer. I think photography is one of those jobs where you very rarely work for a company- and if a company hires you, they judge you on your portfolio, not your degree. Like Aaron said, if he was to choose between the bad photographer with a degree and the incredible photographer without, there’s no way anyone would go for the guy with a degree. And anything I would have learnt from gaining a degree I can learn myself - from books, from Aaron, from experience, from the internet. Its not like me and Big lack the equipment. Everything I know so far I have learnt just by practicing taking pictures every day - no lessons, no books.

So I’m stuck.

I can either go to a community college, have my parents pay the fees and get a degree there.

or

I can do my own thing, slowly ease myself into our ARF business, continue my 365 for the next few years, and have my parents (who have very kindly offered) give me a certain amount of money to help support us both until I am 21.

What do you all think?

Opinions please!!!

<3

Here is the lighting set up I used for this photo.

I used a portaflash 336VM behind me, on continuous setting, full power. Thats the light to the left of the photo. To make sure there was light on my face too, I used my brother’s lamp because it’s bright and I didn’t have anything else. If you want to use lamps as makeshift lighting equipment, go for a very bright bulb - you can buy these things called daylight bulbs which create a very bright atmosphere so you don’t lose quality in your image. You can see the tripod to the right of the lamp, I used a remote for this photo.

This is the cleanest my room has ever been!!!! wow!!!!