NO MAKEUP PROJECT WITH SASKIA VESE

March 30, 2017

I initially thought that I might struggle to find women to do this no-makeup project with me, it is after all making themselves quite vulnerable to appear bare-faced in front of a camera. But I have been pleasantly surprised that many (over 20 women) really have wanted to get involved. I haven’t had the time or resource to travel to some of them but I certainly have been able to get nearly 10 women working with me.

One of them was Saskia Vese, a singer with a great country-style voice, who contacted me and would love to shoot. She was just an hour away by car, had her own house that she was willing to shoot from and that it was a lovely old Wesleyan Chapel with some unique features and plenty of natural light. Coincidentally she said she had been wanting the chance to shoot with me since probably about 10 years ago when she first came across my photographer profile on one of the modelling sites. So it looked as though we were all good to go.

Leaving my studio with just an X-T2 with two lenses, the 56mm f1.2 and the 35mm f2, and just a couple of batteries is great. Nice and light and compact and all fits neatly into a small bag and bodes well for a nice relaxing shoot getting some great photos. And so it turned out to be. Plenty of coffee, plenty of chat about her singing and listening to a few songs and also discussing the possibility of getting a video sorted out soon. Oh …. and we took some pictures as well. I was only wanting to concentrate on getting some natural portraits really and so just the one room with bags of light coming through two good size windows was great, just bringing in a few props for the background and a couple of outfit changes and we were sorted.

Technically quite simple too. I love the X-T2 and the 56mm almost wide open at f1.6. Aperture priority is my preferred method of working outside of the studio and was appropriate on this occasion, but keeping an eye on exposure compensation as necessary depending on how the in-camera metering assessed the exposure depending on whether Saskia was wearing a black top or a white top. The viewfinder live preview is just fantastic for me in the way I work as I also don’t use the spot metering option very often. For a slightly wider shot, the very compact 35mm lens which like the 56mm was nice and snappy to capture focus with this X-T2. They really have made some great improvements on this camera since the X-T1, which is still good by the way. So that was it really, hope you like the photos.

You can find Saskia and her new song “Say Hello” on her Youtube channel and her Instagram account.