Anyone that knows me will tell you that I’m not a morning person.

In fact you usually have to be up early to catch me before I go to bed ;o)

The BIPP 2009 conference and semenars were held on the 7+8th September in the RAF Museum in Cosford. A fantastic venue, but fantastic enough to get up at 05:30 for?

Definately

So I dragged my butt out of bed and lobbed it in the general direction of the shower. 30 minutes later I’m checking emails and munching on some breakfast and swigging strong coffee. I consider throwing the coffee down my pants to wake me up as I’m still half asleep, but 5 minutes later it kicks in and and the brain ticks into life without me jumping around the room swearing randomly

While packing I decided to make a small picture diary of the day. I’d already planned to take some reference shots during the semenars, but I decided to take a broader account of the conference and make them into a small video (below)

Bags packed, camera ready and off I go

Day 1
The day started with registration and a welcome speech from the president and then we all went straight into the day’s courses.
My first session of the day was Hair and Fashion with Jack Eames who is based in London. This short session was mainly about model interaction and the use of props in your session. At the end of his session he was presented with an LBIPP qualification as he wasn’t going to be around for the main awards ceremony in the evening. Happy days

The afternoon double session was ‘It’s only an Iron” with Jonathan Beer. He’s an amazingly talented product/still life photographer based in Manchester and he talked us through a basic product shot.
Jonathan says he has no photographic talent and that he’s 100% technician, but his understanding of texture, shape and attention to detail over a couple of hours was truly inspirational. He’s way more than a technician

Back to the cheap hotel booked from booking.com
Turned out to be a service station motel, but a welcome rest. Didn’t bother going to the evening BBQ and awards ceremony as it was a long drive this morning and I wanted to be alive for day 2. So I puttered around the bland hotel room and grabbed a couple of frames to add to the diary before heading to bed

Day 2
Back to the Museum for the morning session with Steve Howdle on Professional Lighting. This tied in with Jack Eames’ session, but was all about the lighting where Jack’s was more the feel and mood of a shoot. Both had very different styles of working and was an interesting contrast.

If anything Steve’s session was much more like Jonathan Beer’s as it was very technical (right down to 1/10th stops) except the model was the ‘product’
Steve’s model in the morning session was Ivory Flame and she appeared again for the afternoon session with Dave Hunt on the human form im fine-art images.

Dave has worked with Ivory Flame quite a few times in the past and you may notice that there are no images of this session due to the content, but the bare(sic) lighting setups were as expected.

I have friends that’ve worked in this style of art, but I’ve never been present during those sessions and so it was interesting to see some “behind the scenes” of how Dave worked with Ivory Flame. Particularly when they role-played the differences in working with a professional model Vs a client coming to you for this style of image.

Then a long drive home, tired, but happy