On January 14th I made a return visit to the wonderful Celia’s Vintage in Nottingham for another shoot with ludicrously talented stylist, Samantha Barker, and model Rebecca Sampson, who looks amazing in anything that gets thrown at her. I was particularly pleased with myself for actually managing to navigate Nottingham’s terrifying one-way systems and park up outside. This was a relief, as I didn’t really want to lug a dirty great continuous light through the city centre.

The shop had moved to a new premises, just a few doors down from its previous residence. This brought the pleasant surprise of having a brilliant bit of space down in the basement avec white brick wall with arched inset. Hello built in backdrop! With Sam’s speedy styling we somehow managed to cram 5 outfits into the two hours the parking meter allowed us and had an all round lovely time. Here’s a cheeky little peek of outfit number two:

On Tuesday 17th, after scraping the frost off my car, I headed up north to Calverley (Leeds-ish) to a gorgeous gorgeous old cottage to photograph the magnificent Megson. It was a lovely day. Stu & Debs posed beautifully, the location was perfect and I even had a small canine assistant by the name of Moog for a few shots. The shots Moog wasn’t assisting on he was trying to sneak into, with varying degrees of success… Here’s a little peek-ette:

Do give them a listen, they’re really very good!

Factoid 1: Myself and David Gibb, as David Gibb & Elly Lucas, were lucky enough to support Megson at the Red Lion Folk Club in Birmingham last year!

Convenient linking Factoid 2: Stu Hanna also happens to be the clever chap who produced the fabulous Lucy Ward‘s debut album (which I did the photos for) AND her latest single, which happens to have just come out today! I might have also done the artwork for that too. It’s called “For The Dead Men” and it’s an absolute stunner, and you can buy it for just 69p off Amazon! I highly recommend you give it a listen, it’ll enrich your soul. Here’s the front cover, shot back in December with hair & make-up by the wonderful Rebecca Yeates:

And last but not least, I had a super morning photographing the lovely ladies and gents of Rosie Meek & The Open Road. Unfortunately the weather was against us which resulted in a last minute move indoors, but this did mean we had tea & biscuits & warmth and the artistic vibes that permeate from Banks Mill in Derby:

That’s things about up to date! I’m now off to watch Step Brothers and drink cocoa. Hope you’ve all had a super weekend,

E x

p.s. For some strange reason I decided it would be a good idea yesterday to take some self-portraits outside in summery clothing. As I’m sure you can imagine, seeing as I live in dear old Blighty, this was a foolish move and I froze half to death. However the light was perfect and I’m pleased with the results, which are here:

Brrrrrrr.

On Tuesday I met up with the delightful Cat Lane, a Bedford based photographer who does absolutely beautiful things with prime lenses (and anything else she can lay her hands on). Being photographers, we don’t get to spend much time in front of the camera unless it’s on a tripod with a remote control attached, therefore it was really good opportunity to take it in turns to be the model for the session. I strongly believe that if you’re a portrait photographer it’s important for you to occasionally step the other side of the lens, experience from both sides is invaluable for allowing you to better empathise with your clients.

…plus it’s just good fun to tart yourself up every now and again and pretend to be a rockstar. But mainly the empathy thing.

Our choice of location for the day was one of my old childhood haunts: Stanton Moor, near Birchover in Derbyshire. I used to go bilberry picking there every summer with my family, so it was lovely to pay it a return visit! It’s an amazingly diverse location boasting wild open moorland, a small quarry with an array of different coloured rocks and slabs, woodland, a stone circle, corkstone and more – so we had plenty of backdrop choices to experiment with.

Around midday we carted our big bags of clothing and camera gear from the car up to our first location on the moor. The weather was just ever so slightly overcast, which meant perfect lighting conditions! I ended up being first in front of the lens in a summer dress & bare feet (brrr!) It was really interesting to actually see things from the other side, and how Cat worked while she was taking the photos – I really admire the care she took over each shot.

We both tried several different outfits (hopefully without startling any unsuspecting hikers…) and locations throughout the day, and I came home feeling massively inspired, which was just lovely. I’m now itching to head back into the Peak District for a bit more location scouting and shooting!

Now, without further ado, here’s my photos from our little trip:

Check out Cat’s work on Facebook here or her website here.

That’ll be all for now, this year I’ll attempt to blog after each shoot rather than attempt to cram in everything once a month! Fingers crossed and all that.

Love x

Now you’ve had the summary, here are the photos:

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Weddings 1, 2 & 3

The first wedding in September was the lovely Chris & Helen, at Highgate House in Northampton. It was a gorgeous venue featuring a beautiful dining hall with huge ornate windows and extensive grounds – all in all a very nice day! Here are a few little peeks:

Wedding number two was in Birmingham with Yvonne & Kevin and featured some of the most adorable kids in the universe. While driving round Brum is not one of my favourite past times, it was a really fun day and the decorations were just lovely – also kudos to Yvonne who did all of the hair and make-up for her bridesmaids! George Lamb also turned up just as I’d put my camera away. I can officially tell you that that situation caused me to set my new personal best for ‘fastest camera draw ever’.

The final wedding of the year was with a lovely young couple, Sean & Emma. They went for a vintage theme and it was utterly wonderful. See for yourself:

You can see more images from all of the above weddings on my website here.

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Over the last few months I’ve been lucky enough to photograph some of the bright young things currently on the folk scene. Here’s a selection of my favourites from each shoot, you can click the image to be taken to the artist’s website – be sure to give them a listen!

Lucy Ward

Tyde

Cupola:Ward

Heather Gessey (of Tyde)

Jim Molyneux

Hannah James & Sam Sweeney

I’ve also been photographing lots of other exciting people within the folk scene (including Andy Cutting, Roy Bailey, Miranda Sykes, Paul Sartin and Phil Beer) for an ongoing book project collaboration with the fantastic Jo Freya, entitled “The Food & Folk Book”. This will hopefully be being released in time for the festival season in May. You can keep up to date with all the goings on by heading over to the Food & Folk Facebook page here.

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That’ll be all for now as I’m off to see the new Sherlock Holmes film and will admit to being a bit too excited to type. If you’re interested in what I’m up to in between the big blog updates, head on over to my Tumblr or my Facebook page for a more regular dose.

Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas, and all the very best for 2012.

Elly x

So, today I’ve been photographing the lovely Cupola in their various forms – Cupola, Dance Cupola and Cupola:Ward.

In the morning we spent a pleasant hour or so at Allestree Park making use of a painted backdrop and the furrows in the field, and in the afternoon for the Cupola:Ward shoot (Cupola featuring the delightful Lucy Ward), the world exploded. There were buttons and feathers, party poppers, streamers, both powder paint AND finger paint, confetti, comedy wigs and colour everywhere (in a good way, a very good way).

Photographically we went for a blow-by-blow effect, I fell about giggling several times and thanked goodness I’d put a filter over the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 while the powder paint was flying. The lighting was provided by a single (enormous) reflector, expertly wielded by one of my two fabulous assistants for the day, the other doing excellent work throwing confetti and sparkly things around.

Now, without further ado, here are the results. Enjoy, I know we did

See? I really wasn’t kidding about the (glorious) mess. Thank you to Lucy, Sarah, Doug and Oli for being such good fun to photograph, and to Rob & Della for being such wonderful assistants. Look out for the slightly more demure shots (including wintery jumpers and paper snowflakes and silver ribbon) in the next blog or two!

The big September -> October catch up is on its merry way, so until then: have a lovely weekend everyone!

Elly x

As always you can visit the artists’ pages by clicking on the photos – and again as always, I implore you to check out the artist’s work if you like it and, even better, TELL them you do. Enjoy!

The Yellow Wallpaper by *Eptesicus7

Magic night. by *Affchen

Golden Fish by *elementik

Fairly dreams_04 by *hellwoman

Inspired by ~One-of-those-boys

ABSINTHE by =cetrobo

just a wish. by ~Sea-of-Ice

gosia 3 by ~thundereq

deeply by ~patrycjanna

To see the rest of my deviantArt favourites, go here: http://ellylucas.deviantart.com/favourites/#_featured

To see my deviantArt page, go here: http://ellylucas.deviantart.com/

Have a nice weekend!

E x

I went to see the final Harry Potter film. My childhood has officially ended.

I set the record for my latest starting shoot ever sorting out some album photography material for the delightful Gren Bartley. We started at 10pm with strong coffee, drove to our location for 10.30ish and were shooting with remote controls, bulb mode and torches until 1.30am. Hurrah for light-painting. I got home at 2.30am and foolishly excitedly edited until 4.30am. Here’s a little shoot teaser:

Look out for Gren’s new album, to be released on March 1st 2012! The evening after Gren’s shoot myself and my Dad had another go at some slightly more silly shapes. It turns out I can’t draw trees in the dark (it looks more like a road being attacked by a giant jellyfish) but my Dad can draw a lovely bird. Brilliant:

At the start of August I collaborated with fashion designer Nik Elder to photograph her fabulous futuristic sportswear collection. We were very lucky to be working with two gorgeous models, Ellie Bentley & Becky Hickman, courtesy of The Model Agency in Derby, and the artistic talents of MUA Deborah Bennett. The shoot took place at the old wireworks factory in Shining Cliff Woods in Ambergate, Derbyshire, much to the bemusement of a few stray dog walkers. I got attacked by a red ant (major pain!) and everyone almost melted in the heat, but six outfits later it was all absolutely worth it. Particularly once the car’s air-con had kicked in. Here’s one little preview, hopefully there’ll be a magazine scan in a later blog… :

Next up myself, David & the band’s accordion player, Julian, set off on a little tour of England’s back gardens to promote our latest album entitled “There Are Birds In My Garden”. It was literally a week of mini-gigs in our fan’s back gardens – fun, but utterly exhausting. We had the entire social & occupational demographic over the space of one week (from ex-miners to teachers & librarians to physiotherapists to 10 year old party goers to London businessmen and rugby players), saw lots of bunting and pretty home-made decorations, ate lots of BBQ food and had a lovely time meeting lots of new people. We also bought a vintage till from a flea market in Aylesbury that was so heavy (lead lined, in fact) that it needed its own seat in Cafe Nero, and we visited a Vintage Steam Fair in Weston-super-Mare. Here are a few little snaps:

As soon as we were home from all that, myself and David started on our debut duo album! My new viola (“Tango”, due to it’s fairly luminous orange hue…) made its recording debut and we finished the whole thing in one week. It was all very exciting and will hopefully be released in Feb / March next year. Our engineer / producer for the week was Chris Harding (Learn:Create:Record) who did a wonderful job, thanks Chris! Below are a few bits & bobs from the studio plus our brand spanking new promo photo, taken with a remote control and tripod in The Queens Head in Belper:

After not having any evenings off for two weeks (we had gigs after recording all day too!) my parents were kind enough to whisk me away to Wales for a much needed holiday. This involved rockpooling with my Dad & Uncle and catching a whole plethora of exciting things (including flatfish, pipefish, hermit crabs, weaver fish, blennies and even a baby cuttlefish!) and walking in the hills armed with a macro lens:

August saw two more music promo shoots, a trip into the Roaches for ceilidh band Albireo and a paper music-hall theme for Derbyshire duo Kendrick/Needham:

Finally, to end the summer festival season I went along to the only festival I will ever happily pay to go to just as a punter, my favourite music event of the year, Shrewsbury Folk Festival. It was a lovely weekend with lovely people and lovely music, and I spent far too much money on lovely things – including a tankard. I think this sign must have swung it for me:

Musical highlights include Sam Carter, Breabach, Derby’s very own Lucy Ward and Lady Maisery. Final photo of the summer:

See you a few weeks for the next Inspirations post and a weddings update!

E x

In the last blog you saw a sneaky peek of an edit from the lovely event that was the wedding of Mr & Mrs Thomas. So, now here’s a few more! It really was a beautiful day and I wish them both all the very best.

The wedding came along in the middle of the band’s (David Gibb & The Pony Club’s) tour to promote David’s new album, entitled “There Are Birds In My Garden” – now available to buy from all major retailers and to listen to on Spotify! For more information, go to davidgibb.com.

As part of the tour we took a nice little jaunt to Glastonbury Festival. It was VERY, very muddy – but definitely an experience. We played on the bandstand and, despite the mud on microphones, gear, cases and halfway up our legs, we had a lovely time and met some lovely people. The wonderful Lucy Ward even joined us on stage to do a guest vocal on our last song which was also lovely. Unfortunately I didn’t take my Canon 5D due to a lack of security / fear of the mud, so here are a few snapshots taken with a little Fuji Finepix:

Can't even begin to describe the mud. Just look at it!

I'm not sure I'll ever forget those portaloos. I wish I could, but it might not happen.

The bandstand - gorgeous stage!

After all the touring was done with, serious planning work went into action for a project I’m currently working on with the wonderful Jo Freya (of Blowzabella, Token Women and many more). I’ll start dropping a few more hints as to what this involves over the next month or two, so keep your eyes peeled… But for now I can tell you that it involves the likes of Andy Cutting, John Spiers, Martin Simpson and Martin Carthy amongst others. It’s all very exciting indeed.

The start of July brought around David’s birthday followed by a week in which I trained up a work experience student. It was great fun and she learned really quickly, although I was about ready to fall asleep on my face by the end of it. Over the week we had a variety of different shoots, including a pre-planned fashion shoot, a family shoot which fell through and turned into an exploration of self-portraiture, a pre-planned musician’s promo shoot and finally a shoot planned by my student over the week. The models were all kind enough to work on a TFP basis, so I took a few photos for their portfolios alongside those taken by my student – see below:

Model: Maddy Berry

Model: Jess Bailey

The model for the musician’s promo shoot was none other than the aforementioned Lucy Ward. Seeing as she’s got bright blue hair at the moment, we decided the photos should be suitably bright and quirky – hence the variety of enormous headbands and distinctly woolly theme… Lucy’s just released her new solo album, “Adelphi Has To Fly” (which I may have done the photos for), with Navigator Records and again, you can purchase it from all major stores. She’s getting great reviews across the board, so go and check her out! Website here: lucywardsings.com

Alongside doing the promo for Lucy, I’ve also recently worked with folk & acoustic singer, Charlie Barker, on some new images. Here’s a little sample:

Last but not least, and as the title of this blog suggests, myself and the band were lucky enough to support the fantastic Seth Lakeman on Saturday evening. The crowd were fantastic and it was an all round excellent evening.

That about wraps things up for June into July, see you again in August!

E x

May heralded the start of the festival season for the band. First in line was Bearded Theory at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, and rather excitingly we got to play the main stage! This was lovely, even if I did freeze half to death and Wagner was playing in the tent next door. Seeing as Kedleston is only a short drive away, myself and David even managed to nip home to watch Doctor Who in the evening. Excellent. Here’s a photo of us all in costume (a 1920s boating theme to fit the music video for Two Dead Boys) taken by Ocean Hampson:

Between Bearded Theory and festival number two, we were lucky enough to be asked to support Jez Lowe as David Gibb & Elly Lucas, and then John Jones (of Oysterband) as the band. Festival number two came in the form of Ireby Festival, a teeny tiny twee and lovely event up in the Lake District. We drove up on the Thursday, ran a series of workshops in the village Primary School on the Friday and then played two sets and a concert with the children on the Saturday and then drove all the way home to Derby . It was a busy weekend. It also rained a lot, but thankfully we were spared camping in the damp in the old Vango Mk 5 by the wonderful Charles & Noleen who very kindly put us up in their beautiful house. Doctor Who had to wait on iPlayer that time.

Back on the photographic track, I got fed up of waiting for a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens to appear at a sensible price and indulged in a Canon 50mm f/1.4. This resulted in several very geeky days of lens joy, some fun photos from our drummer’s 21st birthday shindig and a whacking great multi-look shoot with old favourite, Heather Forknell, throwing the primary colours left, right and centre. I also spent a considerable amount of time photographing my garden at f/1.4 and have come to the conclusion that this particular aperture can make almost everything look beautiful. Another face to be photographed with the f/1.4 was Eleanor Dodson, a young actress from Birmingham with a slight look of Anne Hathaway about her. All the aforementioned photos can be viewed below:

Away from the photographic track, myself & my Mum went on a little jolly to Bradford to visit Texere Yarns. It was AMAZING. The below photo covers just one tiny corner of the whacking great warehouse of wool, so just multiply the amount of knitting possibilities there by a large number and you’ll get the idea.

Almost last but not least, we’ve been lucky enough lately to see a couple of baby foxes in the garden. Cutest. Things. Ever. I was fortunate enough to catch one snoozing on the grass in broad daylight alongside a few shoddy telephoto images taken from my bedroom window:

Very definitely finally, I eventually managed to get my paws on a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8. Happy days! I also photographed my first wedding with it this weekend, it was utterly wonderful and totally worth the hole that it temporarily burnt in my wallet. I’ll leave you with this sneaky peek from the edits:

That’s all for now, same time next month(ish) right?

E x

"Fashion" by *mmonart

"leah" by ~payleyjean

"Rose Tree" by *sugarfixstudio

"Graced" by *LadyOfVelvet

"Sara V" by ~lestouis

"019" by ~Paool

"Overgrown" by ~Vinyl-Disco

"Carita" by ~meriirem

":like Eva:" by ~Avine

"L'Ecume des jours - Chloe" by ~SuzyTheButcher

"Underneath" by *fhrankee

"Gaia II" by ~acidmcp

Hopefully that’ll keep your visual tastebuds happy until the next installment. In the meantime, if you’ve liked what you’ve seen, you can see the full extent of my deviantArt love (a.k.a my Favourites gallery) here: http://ellylucas.deviantart.com/favourites/

Major general update coming soon! Including David Gibb & The Pony Club AND Lucy Ward’s new albums, weddings number 1 & 2 and more. See you there.

E x

JANUARY

January was a month of music and toying with new lighting equipment (continuous, yum). I worked with some lovely new models, including the gorgeous Montanna Lei Rosso, Caitlin Colder and Georgia Annable. There were also shoots with the talented faces that are Thomas Wynne and Rozzie Williams, and I photographed Twice-Gold-Medal-Winning swimmer, Ross Davenport‘s, pet dogs. Alongside that, my dear friend Lucy Ward got signed to Navigator Records and I got called in to provide some nice new promo & album artwork. Everything was shot in my conservatory and Lucy somehow managed to fit half of her house into an old Nissan Micra. I was impressed. See below.

Lucy Ward

Lucy Ward

Georgia Annable

Montanna Lei Rosso

Caitlin Colder

FEBRUARY

In February I had some of my work exhibited in the Sam Scorer Gallery in Lincoln, courtesy of the very talented Samantha Barker. The pieces were based around the theme “Skin” and featured the fabulously chameolonic Heather Forknell covered in stamps and three faux-polaroids of myself attempting to visually convey the following statements: “beauty is only skin deep”, “language is the skin of the soul”, and “thick skinned businessman”. February was also the month that I did some nice new business portraits for Tom Sweeney, who’s recently set up a new music agency venture entitled Slingshot Music, and the month that we finally did some new promo shots for David Gibb & The Pony Club (who have a new album coming out in June, keep an eye out for it!). We chartered a train on the wonderful Ecclesbourne Valley Railway for my Dad’s birthday, I had a lovely birthday down in Kent which included a trip to Bodiam Castle and a gig at our favourite pub in the universe, The Green Berry.

Exhibition piece.

David Gibb & The Pony Club

MARCH

March signalled the start of David’s Arts Council project, entitled When We Were Very Young, about the history of British children’s broadcasting. This involved workshops at primary schools and a children’s centre encouraging children to create their very own new TV character. All these new characters were exhibited in Belper and entered into a competition, the winning entry of which will eventually have a whole new animated episode created about it. March was also the month of endless gig photography as part of Fleet Arts’ GIGIT project, encouraging young bands from Derbyshire to play outside of their home towns. One of the highlights of this were a new band called “Yes, Lioness?” who had a really interesting sound, and who you should go support if they’re ever in your neck of the woods!

Yes, Lioness?

Yes, Lioness?

APRIL

Having finished off the final bits and bobs for the band’s new album artwork, everything got sent off to be pressed and turned into shiny CDs. This means myself and David will shortly be disappearing under a large number of large cardboard boxes, but we’re probably ok with it. April is the month when the robins in the garden get ridiculously tame (with help from a few handfuls of mealworms), the winter clothes gradually disappear into the loft and it’s tempting to whip the BBQ out of the shed as soon as there’s a hint of warm weather. This April I’ve also been down to Norwich for a wedding location meeting, run a £30 Photoshoot Day (discount-tastic), photographed three more gorgeous new models (Nancy Booley, Fran Walker and Charlie Simpson), enjoyed a geeky photographic jolly to Wollaton Hall with Rei Bennett-Photographer, gawped at Sudbury Hall, been filmed for the band’s next music video by Sam Jordan AND, most recently, photographed the first wedding of the year. Marvellous.

Nancy

Georgia Annable

Lorna Dean

Happy, happy robin.

Wedding no. 1

And now you should, hopefully, be about up to date. I’ll try to keep up with the one-per-month from now!

Elly x