Hollywood starlet

Another of the shots from the boudoir shoot with Crimson Blush and make up artist, Charli Bignall.

A simple change of pose and angle and we turned 2013 Crimson Blush into 1950's Crimson Blush.

Time travel courtesy of picsbypete.

pete

Hellbound

Not Lou - she loves cats so she has a place reserved in heaven alongside all the cat owners of the world.  She does get a variety of reactions to her ink - some good, some very judgemental but as a frined said to me 'isn't it strange that no one with a tattoo thinks anything less of people who don't have them'.

Her t-shirt is a design by Guy Flectcher of Hellbound-inc.com and was perfect for a series of shots which I converted to black and white.

Cat people are the chosen people.  Cat people with ink work on a whole different level ;-)

pete

Once you go black you never go back

An old phrase I once heard when I dated a rather gorgeous black lady in my youth and it seemed to fit with this image of Laura for other reasons.

As part of her beauty shoot in Essex Laura turned up with this fantastic fur (fake calm down) coat and I knew instantly how well it would look against our black background.  Taking that cue to convert this image into black & white just reminded me how much I adore black & white portrait photography.  Increasingly I prefer to use my lastolite HiLite with a black cover against its standard white.

When you have an image this strong colour seems to serve no other purpose that to distract and reverting to black & white delivers a clarity colour can never achieve.

Black and white is the erm new black.

pete

Time out

Normally I am photographing other peoples special day - be that a wedding or a portrait session.  This weekend was different as it was my own wedding anniversary and I wanted to capture a few images.

We were fortunate enough to be staying at the Renaissance Hotel, St Pancras, a truly magical place.  I've stayed in a few hotels in my time and this was easily the most glamorous and beautiful place.

So on the morning of checkout me and Sam decided to wander around and capture a few images.  I could spend a month here doing photoshoots it is such a fabulous building.

Thanks to my lovely wife for the last 11 years and the next 'how ever long you put up with me' period

pete

What a tease

One of the things I love doing when I am photographing people is find out more about them - what's their story, what do they do for work, for pleasure etc

I already knew Crimson Blush was a model and burlesque artist but I was keen to find out more about the burlesque side of things.

While a lot of people think it's stripping to music the element of tease is at its heart, so much so that often burlesque artists will not actually remove any clothes during their act.  The style of a performance owes more to the grace of the performer than their degree of nakedness.

So with that in mind we took shots that teased rather than shocked and that tantalised rather than over exposed.

Subtle is always more erotic than obvious.

pete