A Halloween Spooktacular Shoot with model Amelia Kate

Those of you who follow me along will know that, from time to time, I attend shoots organised by Amanda Caroline Courture. One of them recently was a Haunted House styled shoot featuring UK model Amelia Kate.

I had known of Amelia for sometime, but had never met her or worked with her until this shoot. A lovely young lady, full of energy and enthusiasm, I realised within about 30 seconds we were going to get along well. And we did. It's very important to me that the models I work with get my vibe, and I get theirs. Otherwise, the results suffer.

The shoot comprised 4 different looks. A kind of spooky possessed dolls house theme, followed by a haunted corridor zombie kind of look, followed by a witches layer and the final was a creepy swing in a wood kind of look.

All 4 were a bit of a challenge to light in a spooky way, but the results were very much to my liking anyway because I got a bit of both - some nice creative portraiture and a few weird shots.

The dolls house scene was a good warm up shoot and enabled Amelia and I to get into the zone, and she was helpfully adding her own ideas and thoughts into the mix. Of the 4, this set worked the least for me, just because I have some barriers in my mind around the whole dolls house and dolls element. But we got a few nice shots from it.

The 2nd theme, the zombie corridor, was even harder because it was a long narrow corridor, with my light at one end. Shooting that with a manual Hasselblad and changing both focus and f stops on the fly was a challenge, but we got some awesome shots from that. The funniest and most memorable part of this section was a weird porcelain doll that Amelia was holding as part of the look. But it wasn't working for me so I asked her to throw it to me, thinking it was a stuffed toy! Suffice to say I dropped it and it smashed! Very awkward. And Amelia made a very amusing hand gesture that showed me that she also felt "awks" about it! Happily, Amanda was not concerned in the least. What a pro set designer she is.

The 3rd theme, the witches layer, was the best for me and my style. I lit Amelia up with a 1Kw fresnel, which I knew would create some really strong contrast onto the Kodak Tri-X film I was using, combined with the set that Amanda had built. At this stage, we were flying high anyway. Amelia and I worked together like a pro team who had known each other for years. Some of my favourites from the shoot were captured here in a true kind of 1970s Hitchcock style of look.

The 4th theme, the creepy swing, was an outdoor set. The natural light was flat, but that helped create some fairly haunting aesthetics. But I knew I only wanted a few soft light looks, so after a few frames I lit her up with a Rotolight constant LED that was conveniently on set. This helped me get some higher contrast looks.

I shot 8 rolls, and of those 90 or so shots, I'd say about 30 were really great, and there's 5 or 6 that are true wall hanging pieces. I struggled to choose any single favourite. Amelia is a great model. I enjoyed our time together and I hope I'll work with her again some day. I am now starting to organise my own photography events, so perhaps she will agree to being part of one of those. Who knows.

Below are few of my favourite frames from the shoot.