This is Rua 5 de Outubro, one of the major pedestrian roads in the old town of Alburfeira. It is also the only photo that I took with my Sigma 10mm wide angle lens; everything else on the trip was captured with my trusty 18-200 Nikon. I used the gorilla pod to keep the camera steady as I hadn’t bothered bringing a big, heavy tripod. The time of day was just perfect for a lovely evening sky. It’s just a shame that there weren’t more people in the town that night.

After my quick portrait session with Braveheart I carried on walking down Edinburgh’s famous royal mile with a new confidence to approach people for portraits. I didn’t actually talk to this man but I did pay him some money for his excellent skills with this notoriously difficult instrument. I am unsure as to what his uniform represents, maybe next time I see him I will have to ask.

I have published a number of photos of Lizzie taken in the old studio at the Manchester Met Uni. We did one of my first studio portrait shoots using a couple of models (mainly Lizzie) and a large number of balloons. The above image was more of a practice to try to get the single studio strobe in the correct place, so that it didn’t cast too much shadow over her face. However I liked it enough to want to share it with you.

I should definitely do more portraits with balloons because I really enjoyed this two day studio shoot / workshop a couple of years ago back in University. As you can see from the pink mess behind Sarah (and on her hand) we didn’t just experiment with balloons but also with powder paint. At one point we put small amounts of powder paint into a balloon, filled it with air and I tried to capture the explosions and combine this with portraits!