Blog

I am part of a small 4 person portrait group and as well as helping each other to compete in national exhibitions we also organise portrait photoshoots from time to time, we usually have 2 studio setups in a large hall in my local community centre in Mirfield, the sessions are typically 4 hours long so we all get lots of time to shoot the models in different costumes and perfect our lighting and poses, this shoot was a mammoth 6 hours long but time still seemed to fly.
This session starred Ciaron a character model and actor from Manchester a man with many talents including comedy acting and costume making.
He brought a wealth of costumes for us to select from and we all came away with lots of great images to enter in future national competitions.

I paid another visit to the Boardroom studio in Derby to shoot Gem a top class model from London.
In an excellent 3 hour session we achieved 4 costume changes against a very creative backdrop created by the studio owner which comprised of 4 enormous decorators’ dust sheets.

My image ‘Working Girl’ that has always done well for me has been accepted in the FIAP World Cup exhibition out of 4,242 images from 51 countries and 213 clubs.

I am delighted that I have just been awarded an Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society with a panel of 15 large prints entitled ' Fashion and Beauty Through the Ages'.
The panel must achieve your aims and objectives that you set out in your Statement of Intent and hang together as a whole, be of excellent photographic quality and demonstrate that you have developed your own style.
Even though I passed with my first attempt it has taken me several years to produce the images so its great to be finally awarded this prestigious distinction.


See panel in my gallery:
https://www.harrywentworthphotography.co.uk/gallery.html

My daughter and niece attend a pole dancing class and 5 of the girls including the teacher asked me if I could take some photographs of them dancing in a grungy environment, so where else better than Antwerp Mansion, my third shoot there in as many months!
There is a pole installed in the ‘gig room’ as the Mansion was a nightclub in a previous reincarnation and one of the dancers brought her portable hoop along which we set up in the ballroom.
I got some very different shots using a smoke machine and coloured gels.
The girls were really impressed with the venue and the photos, so much so that they are talking about us going again in the summer.

This Photoshoot was a shared shoot at the model’s studio in Manchester, the model did a great job of styling images of 3 iconic artists, one of which was in the style of Edvard Munch famous for his painting entitled The Scream.

Having been so impressed by my first visit to Antwerp Mansion I booked it again, the themes I shot this time were Vintage Pierrot and Handmaid’s Tale,from the TV series. The model was Sweetchippy who came down from Cumbria, she it a big Handmaid’s Tale fan so delighted to do this shoot. I hired the vintage Pierrot costume from the West Yorkshire Playhouse Wardrobe Department. We had a great day and got some brilliant images,I will be going to this place again in the future because as well as being wonderfully grungy it also is full of interesting props.

I attended a location share photoshoot today organised by my photographer friend Ian Marshall at Antwerp Mansion a dilapidated grand house near Manchester, I had a couple of models booked, the wonderful Lucinda Van Tassel and the amazing Tinkerbella.


Black Queen (Lucinda Van Tassel)


Tinkerbella

I attended a group shoot organised by John Ayliffe a professional photographer from Liverpool at Woolton Hall near Liverpool this Sunday. John organises these shoots every 2 months and upto 15 models,10 photographers and 5 makeup artists attend.

I have wanted to photograph Jezebelle for some time now but she is based down south so I have had to wait for her to come up to Yorkshire.
Jezebelle has a head of amazing wavy light brown hair down to her waist and is ideal for the Pre Raphaelite look which is one of my favourite styles, I say style because it never really existed as an era it was a look created by the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists, poets and critics in 1848.

Going to kill a couple of birds with one stone on 14th November when I go down to a studio in Derby based in a Georgian house with beautiful white walls, windows, panelling and floor.
The first image is a re-creation of a Jack Vettriano painting we have at home called “In thoughts of You” see image below, and the second theme is based around Helmut Newton style images.
Below is my interpretation of the Vettriano painting, not quite as good as the original, but painting is easier isn’t it?

A new kind of shoot for me, outdoors, and a new model, Savra who lives in Scotland but I managed to catch her for a few hours on her trip to London. Savra is a talented model who is the ‘full package’ a model, a makeup artist, a headdress designer with a large wardrobe of fantasy costumes.

Put a lot of work into designing the set and had to beg, borrow and steal all the props, I even made a chaise lounge out of wood! Inspiration for these images came from early photographs circa 1920 a time when Britain 'let it's hair down' following the end of World War 1.
Model: Terri Watkins, HMUA: Rebecca Gathercole, both did an amazing job.
See gallery for more images.

My next photoshoot is Friday 20th April and is one I have been planning and looking forward to for a while.
Vampira was the first ‘Glamour Ghoul’ famous in 1950’s movies and created 10 years before Morticia Addams she was based on Disney’s Wicked Queen.
The actress Maila Nurmi was born in America to a Swedish father and went on to star in several ‘B’ movies in the 1950's.
I have a beautiful professional model selected especially to fit the look of the original star, she will be wearing a long black velvet dress made to fit her, also on board is a top class hair and makeup artist.

The first two are my images, the rest are original 1950's images.








ORIGINAL 1950'S IMAGES
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I organised a shoot last Saturday with brilliant model Terri Murder who did the pinup shoot with me a few months ago, she mentioned that she had a new costume being made for an androgynous look for her burlesque stage show, a re-designed man’s suit covered with black jewels, so as soon as she said this I signed her up for a shoot.
We did two looks, both early 1900’s the first look with the suit and the second a cabaret look using a top hat and tails, the coat hired from West Yorkshire Playhouse Costumes Dept and top hat loaned from the makeup artist for the shoot, Ambellina.
For the androgynous look I wanted the model’s hair greased, parted and slicked back to give a masculine look, a slight problem was Terri’s hair has a green fringe, this concerned me but it didn’t phase Ambellina the hair and makeup artist who greased it back and applied a black mascara type product to match the rest of Terri’s hair.
It was a long hard day but well worth it as I came away with many excellent images which are very different.

Had a great photoshoot at Cleckheaton studio with York model Satoria who specialises in alternative and latex images, Satoria brought a beautiful dress on loan from designer Wyte Phantom.

Had a brilliant photoshoot last week with the beautiful model Claudia Michon, whom I have worked with 3 times now, and the very creative hair and makeup artist Keli from Khaos Kreations.
The theme of the shoot was avant garde with two looks, the first a French 1920's look and the second a more futuristic look.
We got some great images and I will definitely be working with these 2 ladies in the future.

Very enjoyable photoshoot on the 28th September captured a few images For my project 'Fashion and Beauty Through the Ages' this time the theme is '1967 The Summer of Love' depicting model Cara Hopson in Hippy dress. First time I have used a smoke machine with filters, can be very effective when you get it right but a bit hit or miss as to where the smoke goes. Half the fun of these themed shoots is designing the theme and set, thanks to my mother in law Ivy for loan of the Buddha statue and candles, also my brother in law Gerard for loan of his precious guitar.

The intention of this photoshoot was to capture a few photographs to depict 'cavewoman' the first era of my project 'Fashion and Beauty Through the Ages'
When I first embarked on this project I wondered when female fashion really started and decided it must have been in the Stone Age, as prior to that there was only Adam an Eve and I don't think a fig leaf really counts as fashion!
Cavewomen were usually dressed in drab animal skins, but maybe one ambitious cave dweller decided to go one better and appeared wearing a fabulous sabre-toothed tiger skin...... female fashion had started !!!

Thanks to the very talented model Claudia Michon and Sabrina Tait an amazing hair and makeup artist.

A big thank you to model and makeup artist the very talented Harriet Dakin who supplied most of the costumes including an original 1912 Edwardian dress and a range of original dresses from the 1960's. As you can see Harriet is the spitting image of Twiggy the 1960's icon.

Twiggy


Edwardian