This shoot was to celebrate Amy’s birthday and also to celebrate the fact that she is moving to high school later on this year. Mum Elaine had the idea to get some of Amy’s friends together for a photo shoot and then on to Ketchup for some food afterwards. We met up at Recoat Gallery which Elaine had booked for the shoot, mainly down to the fact it was undercover (very important in Scotland) and also because they have the coolest lane I’ve seen. Either wall is a blank canvas for artists who have decorated it superbly. For me it is the perfect place to shoot some portraits

The kids were all great so we managed to breeze through the portraits pretty quickly. This left me with a bit more time to play with the group shot. The minute I saw the graffiti wall I knew that was the backdrop I wanted. The problem was I didn’t want to use a flat front on light, I was after something a bit more dramatic. I knew I wanted to put each of the kids in their own spotlight but the problem was I only had three flashes, and only one spotlight attachment. What to do? Cheat. I placed the camera on a tripod and asked the kids to remain pretty much in the same position. I took my first shot which was just the fill light (on axis umbrella) and then moved along the line taking a shot of each kid with their own little spotlight. So I had 9 shots, not much of a group shot. To combine them all into one I had to use Photoshop, which I’m not a great fan of, I use Lightroom for about 95% of my work. In P/shop I combined the 9 shots together pasting in the spotlighted faces and voila!

Many thanks to Recoat Gallery and for mum Elaine for all your help on the day.

Here are some shots of the cool kids