Today I went to the 2009 SWPP Convention to see a seminar on glamour and nude photography. Today Damien McGillicuddy (Glamour photographer of the Year 2009) was talking about his approach to glamour and gave some demonstrations for lighting and posing. Later Trevor & Faye talked about how they approach nudes, Trevor gave many insights to his 40 years experience behind the camera photographing nudes, weddings, and general social photography.
Unfortunately I missed the beginning of Damien’s talk due to traffic and problems on the underground, meant it took four hours to get from Ipswich to Hammersmith! When I arrived he was demonstrating how to do a close up of the model’s face using butterfly lighting with his own design light modifier set up as a beauty dish. I didn’t take a picture as I was badly placed and the following pictures are only memory joggers for me about the day. But his set up is duly noted 
Damien has done away with studio lighting and uses flashguns exclusively as this makes working on location so much easier. He uses Qflash flashguns which are systems on the market; being very powerful, superior battery power and many light modifiers available. However not content with this, he has developed his own softbox/beauty dish modifier!
Here Damien shows how one could pose a couple that makes them appear natural yet able to convey expressions and mood.
This was a very quick demonstation of how to make a picture out of nothing. In this case using stacked chairs to make a background. Damien had one key light and another flashgun illuminating the back wall. The lighting seen here is just the ambient light.
Damien also gave us some marketing tips and charmed us with his witty sense of humour. If anyone know any really expensive hair dresses locally I would love to hear about it
After a short break Trevor & Faye gave many insights such as how he started out using 10×8″ plate film (large format) camera and still uses it sometimes today. At £10 a sheet and another £10 to develop you want to be sure that the image is correct before taking the picture. And how we should avoid the temptation to use our ditial cameras like a machine gun. Something I used to do a lot especially when I first started out doing Motorsports. But then I was throwing away 98 out of 100 until I mastered the skills required. Anyway a great tip for us all that I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing with you.
Trevor’s approach to nudes is very different from the world of glamour. That doesn’t mean his nudes cannot be provokative or explicit, they can, but through lighting they are made classical and convey a completely different message to the viewer.
Both are quite minimalist in their approach to lighting compared to many photographers you see on the net that make you believe you need £10K worth of kit before you can take a picture. Damien with his flashguns and Trevor typically using only one light whether it is the large softbox in the studio or the sun out on location.
I think this was a great reality check for us all and proves great images can be created without a lorry load of equipment. That has helped stop me worrying about spending several thousand pounds on equipment that I don’t have right now! As Trevor says the camera is a tool the iamge is captured in the photographer’s head and heart.
On that last thought I finish off now with a few pictures of Trevor & Faye in action. As with the previous pictures from Damien, these were just taken with the ambient light, i.e. ISO6400 f/2.8 1/30s and are purely record shots.
Trevor sets Lozie up for a few poses using one of the convention's travel boxes.
Trevor poses Christine aka Ulorin Vex using a hotel chair, I can't remember her name but apparently is one of the UK top fetish models as can be seen with her stunning dress.
There is so much more I could write about here but I’m tired and my brain is about to explode with the amount of high quality information these guys have shared with us today. I’m really looking forward to my next session in the studio!
If you enjoyed this article you may also like to see some pictures and insights from my wedding training at last year’s convention.
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The model is Christine aka Ulorin Vex, she also modelled on Mark Lauries’ seminar which I went to and was very interesting!
Thanks for that Phil, I have updated the information on one of the image captions with her name.
I looked for her at the end but only saw Lozie handing out business cards at the time. I saw Mark Laurie about a year ago and he also gave a very good talk.