I had a trash the dress shoot coming up for a client – she wanted to be Ophelia, so I thought I really ought to have a practice session to make sure I knew what was going to work well and what I needed to take on board.

So, with the terrifically game Lou and a couple of gowns that I’ve had in my props box it was time to set fire to one and drown the other.

We started off early in the morning with a serious hike up Leckhampton Hill which left us both knackered and Lou’s a serious hobbyist hiker!  So, after a rest…

Firstly we took the shots of the dress just blowing in the wind, we were blessed with terrific clouds that day and almost no photoshop was required to make the most of them.

You can see on the left the speedlist I’m using just to give a little extra push into Lou’s dress.  I was expecting to have to do some key-shifting to bring some detail into the sky, but in the event the sky was perfect and I didn’t need to do anything.

The biggest pain was the wind gusted so strong keeping the tripod stable was impossible and I ended up breaking the top of the stand and the remote trigger.

Not these shots were posed with the idea that next we’d hang the dress on a tripod and frame and set fire to it.   So I’m standing on another hill with the camera on a tripod.   But in the event it was impossible to set fire to the dress!!  I drenched in a whole bottle of meths but it just would not catch.   So we had to go to Plan B later in the day.

We went down into the woods behind the studio and setup the same hot.  This time we stuffed the dress full of newspaper, for a while nothing happened – the paper just burned quite happily inside the dress, then next instant the dress just went up – it was completely gone in about 5 seconds – a big lump of melted plastic on the floor.  Seriously if I was a bride I’d find this really scary!!

In the next post I’ll go through the “Drown the Dress” shoot.

These images are samples from our DVD series on photographing women at www.FilmPhotoAcademy.com.

These are 2 DVD sets with over 2 hours of material each. Each program features at least nine shoots with three professional models.You are guided through the thinking, the lighting, the shoot and a final critique.Each session is both inspirational and educational. The DVD's are available for shipping anywhere in the world.

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