....... for the clichéd, yet obligatory, best-shoots-of-the-year round-up.

I've selected 15 shots from my favourite shoots of the past year................

I'm starting with a couple of shots from a shoot I did for Ooh La Latex with the always amazing Ulorin Vex. The Night City series has been published a few times already but I couldn't not include one here.

There were so many shots that I'm really happy with from this shoot, so I have to include another, it was a hard choice, but I love this headshot.


Sticking with a night city theme, this is from another Ooh La Latex shoot, this time with the lovely Fae Raven.... I think I need to arrange another shoot with her.


No round-up of the year would be complete without shots of the very wonderful Sohui. This was part of an editorial for StyleNoir with clothing supplied by Lacing Lilith. This particular image was also used by Torture Garden for their September Ball.


I started experimenting a lot with top-lighting over this past year, and I love this beauty shot of Katey Lauren.


And another headshot featuring the work of Tiger's Tat, modeled by Helene Atsuko, this was the first time in 2 years that I had shot against a white background! I had grown to hate white backgrounds due to the fact that our students seem to be obsessed with shooting everything against white, so much so that we've even discussed removing the white backgrounds from the uni studio!

And as you can see, I still wouldn't let it go really white!


For the next shot, it's Cervena Fox, a model who's been doing really well over the last year or so, with a seemingly endless number of trips to shoot in the US. Over the last few years we've shot together a ton of times, but hadn't for a while so it was a cool to get to shoot again in August, and then about 3 weeks later she came back again and modeled for a one-to-one lighting workshop that I delivered. So here's one from that workshop..... with the (not quite so) white background again!


Back in May I took a trip to Iceland with some other photographers, and it was during that trip that I finally succumbed to the iPhone. Prior to that I had refused to believe that a mobile phone camera was of any use other than for snapshots..... but okay, I'm now sold, but it aint gonna replace the Hasselblad! Here's a shot I took in the studio of Juchi using the oh-so-trendy Hipstamatic app.

I've used Hipstamatic a few other times during studio shoots since but never been as happy with the results as I was this first time using it!


I'd loved the work of Iveta for ages so it was great to shoot her for Kaori's Latex Dreams.


The next shot was part of an editorial for Alt Noir (now called Meuse Magazine) featuring the outfits of Eustratia. This particular outfit is modeled by Ryo.


In September, I did a 2 day shoot with Ophelia Overdose, we went through a ton of looks, with outfits supplied by a number of designers, although on Day 2 it was all GirlArmour, one of those made the cover of Marquis. But this pic is an outfit from Westward Bound.


Despite promising myself that I would get out of the studio more this year and do more location shoots... I only managed to do it four times!!! Here's a shot of the fantastic Olla with dress supplied by Louise O'Mahony. This was a really great location, even if it was in some hugely over-rated town called London!


The next couple of shots are of one of my favourite models of the moment Maja Stina. We shot together in January and got some cool shots but then we did another shoot in September.... and wow what a shoot, there are so many shots from then that I love.... but here are 2 of them, the first features the aforementioned top-lighting that's become a favourite technique of mine.

Looking forward to shooting with her again very soon as she's modeling for a one-to-one workshop I'm running in early Feb.



And lastly, this is a sneak preview from a shoot I did for Shhh Couture with the wonderful Ruby True. Although I've shot Ruby a couple of times before this was our first full day shoot together and we shot 4 very different looks which produced some amazing results. Unfortunately I'm going to sit on those results for a while until we get some of them published, but I just had to include one here.


And that's me done for 2011, taking a bit of a break, next shoot in mid-January with Anita De Bauch for Kaori.