Well now, here’s a thing.

I was recently re-reading Bill Bryson’s ‘The lost continent’ and was quite amazed to find him mention the little brown church in the vale, Iowa. Amazed because I photographed a wedding there last summer and it was quite an experience – let me elaborate.

The wedding I photographed was quite a low key affair, 2nd time around for both Bride and Groom, not a huge number of guests and quite informal – but I was not prepared for the controlled chaos that greeted us at the church.

The little brown church is hugely popular in the area and it is apparently quite normal to see 12 weddings in a single day there – when we arrived there was a service taking place, a photo session outside from the previous wedding, and a wedding party waiting to go into the church ahead of us.

The service was quite unlike any I had been to in the UK, and the minister told me that I could shoot from anywhere in the church (including up on the dias with him if I liked !!) and I could shoot at any time during the ceremony – there were no restrictions at all. Inside the church was beautifully light and airy and I was able to shoot at 800 iso handheld no problem, but the ceremony was only about 20 minutes long so not much time for overly creative stuff !!

After the service the scene outside was being repeated, except we were now the ones doing the photography whilst others were either getting married or waiting their turn – quite unusual for a UK photographer to see.

Interestingly it turned out that the majority of the local photographers there would have several clients in a day and used the same locations and shot setups repeatedly – this lead to a bit of a queue for the most scenic area’s, but all very good natured.

And a picture of the venue ??

But then Mr Bryson had a second sirprise in store for me – just a little further on in the book he mentioned that he crossed the mississippi river at Prairie du Chien – and I did that too !!, on the same old iron bridge he talked about. however, unlike old Mr Bryson I stopped in Prairie du Chien for lunch, and had the most amazing fried catfish platter – caught straight out of the river by the locals, yum. The venue by the way, was Coaches Family Dining.

So that’s my link to Bill Bryson exhausted for now, but I’m sure there will be more when I read more !!

As a professional photographer you owe it to your clients to keep abreast of new trends, techniques and styling – but this can be difficult to do whilst working with paying clients, after all they expect you to deliver outstanding images – not experiment on them.

So this can lead to a bit of a dilemma – how do you find the subjects to effectively practice on without breaking the bank on courses and professional models.

Well for some time I have been a member of a number of model boards where new and experienced models (and photographers obviously !!) advertise their availability, experience and prices to try and find work. Amongst these adverts you will often find people who work on a ‘time for prints’ (or TFP) basis – that is, the photographer provides his expertise and the model hers, in exchange for the photographer providing a few images at the end of the shoot.

I’ve found this to be a great way to develop my expertise without impacting on my paying clients – and they in turn are reaping the benefits.

However, there is a risk in this approach – you may be working with an experienced model who needs little direction – hardly what you find with the average family lifestyle shoot where they need all the direction you can give them. I’ve got round this issue by only working with new, inexperienced models who have had little time in front of the camera and thus enable me to develop my client handling skills as well as my photographic ones.

Recently I had one of these TFP shoots with a new model on Purestorm, a very well respected model board – her name is Gemma – this is how it went.

Gemma is a student at York University so we decided to carry out our shoot in York as she knows the city well (and I get to park for free, so a bonus) and she suggested we start in the Museum gardens which is the site of a ruined monastery so very atmospheric.

Although a public space, and with plenty of public milling around – Gemma was quite professional and relaxed and we had a great time working amongst the ruins

But I also wanted something a bit more urban and funky, not just ruined buildings – and as luck would have it there was a small refreshments hut a little way apart from the ruins that had been graffitti sprayed, almost as if they knew what I wanted !!

And as Gemma has quite reddish/ginger hair it made a really nice contrast with the building.

After we had spent a couple of hours around the gardens I needed fresh inspiration so we headed off to the river where I hoped to find something a bit different – and we did, some old warehouses which had been converted into apartments but with the old loading equipment left on the dock

and also some funky steel shutter doors closing off the car park

We had just finished exploring this area and were considering where to go next – when the rain started and looked like it was in for the day, shoot abandoned. Obviously had this been a paying client shoot then we would have just found an alternative venue and carried on but it didn’t seem fair to expect Gemma to do so – so Starbucks beckoned !!

As a way of developing both your photographic skills, client management skills and location shooting skills then TFP with new models has got a lot to recommend it – and the model gets to work with a talented photographer and gets some high quality images for her portfolio that are a bit different from the usual studio ones she will normally get.

Give it a go – I can highly recommend it.